Fear not, for ‘ere this day is done, you shall have a hole in one.

The Avengers

4.16: The Thirteenth Hole

A strange one this, for the first twenty minutes The Thirteenth Hole looks as if it’s going to be the most generic of all oddball Avengers scenarios – super villains up to murderous acts on the golf course, and Steed and Mrs Peel must investigate – but turns things around for a highly entertaining last half as Steed engages in a tournament filled with dirty tricks (many of them courtesy of Mrs Peel, aiding and abetting him).

Steed: Poor Ted. Never had the chance to swing his steel-shafted handle-to-head niblick. He was shot with a rifle at long range.

Mrs Peel: Right down the fairway?

No time is wasted showing who is doing what, namely Reed (Patrick Allen, his most illustrious credit being the announcer of The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer. I’m kidding. Or am I?) and Jackson (Victor Maddern, Hobson in Fury from the Deep), offing agent Ted Murphy (Bill Hibbert) at the thirteenth hole in the opening scene (303 being the “club” of choice). This sets Steed and Emma on the trail, owing to Ted having kept tabs on scientific types. Helpfully, there are a load of score cards in his wardrobe, so soon they are off to the Craigleigh Gold Club, to hang about, get admonished by patrons and generally snoop.

Waversham: I wouldn’t mind giving you a stroke or two. On or off the course.

Various types announce themselves, including the club professional Collins (Francis Matthews), who acts suspiciously but is actually just suspicious (of others, and who ends up killed by a gas-propelled golf ball for his troubles) and Waversham (Donal Hewlett, Hardiman in The Claws of Axos), who’s keen on Emma, in the lascivious old buffer sense.

Also present are Colonel Watson (Hugh Manning) and Dr Adams (Peter Jones, the Book in The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, keeping with the voiceover theme), who is part of Reed’s scheme (it’s eventually revealed that the bunker at the thirteenth contains an actual bunker – geddit? – complete with mastermind Colonel Watson, periscope and communications with a Russian satellite, Vostik 2).

Mrs Peel: Fear not, for ‘ere this day is done, you shall have a hole in one. I am your fairy godmother. I want you to win this game.

Steed: Why, have you got money on me?

By this point, Emma has been taken captive while Steed completes his round with Adams, who has been told to let Steed blow himself up on the twelfth via an explosive in the hole (“I’m afraid it will damage the greens considerably”). But that’s getting ahead of the good stuff. If you can get past the constant alternating studio close ups and location wide shots (and you’ll need to, to enjoy any of the latter seasons of the show), Steed’s various matches are hugely enjoyable.

Helping matters is Allen, not because the part is up to much, but because he gives such incredulous reactions to Steed’s various put-ons (checking the course with various gauges to judge wind, course and correction; he also keeps his ball in his hat), and is such a dirty cheat (dropping his caddy as Steed is about to strike). Whatever Reed gets up to, though, Emma gets up to worse, burying his ball in mud and depositing Steed’s in the hole.

Mrs Peel: It really is the height of pessimism to have a hat lined with chain mail.

Adding to the amusement, Jackson fails to execute Steed with a golf ball (“If it hadn’t been for my trusty hat”), so the latter is raring to go against Adams, whom Jones gives just the right air of out-of-his-depth angst (“Got you worried, ay? The game ahead?”), added to by the fully-apprised Steed needling him (“One up, Still, things may change. Around about the thirteenth”) and procrastinating by cutting the grass with nail scissors. When Steed eventually comes across the landmine, he manages to win the round by potting his ball from the shelter of the bunker with some impressive cueing action.

Even the big fight is entertainingly offbeat, with the Russians on the other end of the TV monitor reacting to the altercation (until Steed smashes the screen), Emma fighting while cuffed to a chair and Steed finally taking out a fleeing Watson with a well-aimed ball.

The handcuffs inspire a gag about Emma’s handicap and there’s another during the subsequent golf cart drive off in regard to Steed’s champers-uncorking wrist action (“I thought you said you could do it in one”). Why the bad guys need the ruse of playing at all is anyone’s guess, but that’s part of the pleasure of this kind of episode. It’s not so much the final logic, but the playing of the game.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

Mondo bizarro. No offence man, but you’re in way over your head.

The X-Files 8.7: Via Negativa I wasn’t as down on the last couple of seasons of The X-Files as most seemed to be. For me, the mythology arc walked off a cliff somewhere around the first movie, with only the occasional glimmer of something worthwhile after that. So the fact that the show was tripping over itself with super soldiers and Mulder’s abduction/his and Scully’s baby (although we all now know it wasn’t, sheesh ), anything to stretch itself beyond breaking point in the vain hope viewers would carry on dangling, didn’t really make much odds. Of course, it finally snapped with the wretched main arc when the show returned, although the writing was truly on the wall with Season 9 finale The Truth . For the most part, though, I found 8 and 9 more watchable than, say 5 or 7. They came up with their fair share of engaging standalones, one of which I remembered to be Via Negativa .

Isn’t it true, it’s easier to be a holy man on the top of a mountain?

The Razor’s Edge (1984) (SPOILERS) I’d hadn’t so much a hankering as an idle interest in finally getting round to seeing Bill Murray’s passion project. Partly because it seemed like such an odd fit. And partly because passion isn’t something you tend to associate with any Murray movie project, involving as it usually does laidback deadpan. Murray, at nigh-on peak fame – only cemented by the movie he agreed to make to make this movie – embarks on a serious-acting-chops dramatic project, an adaptation of W Somerset Maugham’s story of one man’s journey of spiritual self-discovery. It should at least be interesting, shouldn’t it? A real curio? Alas, not. The Razor’s Edge is desperately turgid.

Schnell, you stinkers! Come on, raus!

Private’s Progress (1956) (SPOILERS) Truth be told, there’s good reason sequel I’m Alright Jack reaps the raves – it is, after all, razor sharp and entirely focussed in its satire – but Private’s Progress is no slouch either. In some respects, it makes for an easy bedfellow with such wartime larks as Norman Wisdom’s The Square Peg (one of the slapstick funny man’s better vehicles). But it’s also, typically of the Boulting Brothers’ unsentimental disposition, utterly remorseless in rebuffing any notions of romantic wartime heroism, nobility and fighting the good fight. Everyone in the British Army is entirely cynical, or terrified, or an idiot.

You have done well to keep so much hair, when so many’s after it.

Jeremiah Johnson (1972) (SPOILERS) Hitherto, I was most familiar with Jeremiah Johnson in the form of a popular animated gif of beardy Robert Redford smiling and nodding in slow zoom close up (a moment that is every bit as cheesy in the film as it is in the gif). For whatever reason, I hadn’t mustered the enthusiasm to check out the 1970s’ The Revenant until now (well, beard-wise, at any rate). It’s easy to distinguish the different personalities at work in the movie. The John Milius one – the (mythic) man against the mythic landscape; the likeably accentuated, semi-poetic dialogue – versus the more naturalistic approach favoured by director Sydney Pollack and star Redford. The fusion of the two makes for a very watchable, if undeniably languorous picture. It was evidently an influence on Dances with Wolves in some respects, although that Best Picture Oscar winner is at greater pains to summon a more sensitive portrayal of Native Americans (and thus, perversely, at times a more patr

It’s not as if she were a… maniac, a raving thing.

Psycho (1960) (SPOILERS) One of cinema’s most feted and most studied texts, and for good reason. Even if the worthier and more literate psycho movie of that year is Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom . One effectively ended a prolific director’s career and the other made its maker more in demand than ever, even if he too would discover he had peaked with his populist fear flick. Pretty much all the criticism and praise of Psycho is entirely valid. It remains a marvellously effective low-budget shocker, one peppered with superb performances and masterful staging. It’s also fairly rudimentary in tone, character and psychology. But those negative elements remain irrelevant to its overall power.

My Doggett would have called that crazy.

The X-Files 9.4: 4-D I get the impression no one much liked Agent Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish), but I felt, for all the sub-Counsellor Troi, empath twiddling that dogged her characterisation, she was a mostly positive addition to the series’ last two years (of its main run). Undoubtedly, pairing her with Doggett, in anticipation of Gillian Anderson exiting just as David Duchovny had – you rewatch these seasons and you wonder where her head was at in hanging on – made for aggressively facile gender-swapped conflict positions on any given assignment. And generally, I’d have been more interested in seeing how two individuals sympathetic to the cause – her and Mulder – might have got on. Nevertheless, in an episode like 4-D you get her character, and Doggett’s, at probably their best mutual showing.

I tell you, it saw me! The hanged man’s asphyx saw me!

The Asphyx (1972) (SPOILERS) There was such a welter of British horror from the mid 60s to mid 70s, even leaving aside the Hammers and Amicuses, that it’s easy to lose track of them in the shuffle. This one, the sole directorial effort of Peter Newbrook (a cameraman for David Lean, then a cinematographer), has a strong premise and a decent cast, but it stumbles somewhat when it comes to taking that premise any place interesting. On the plus side, it largely eschews the grue. On the minus, directing clearly wasn’t Newbrook’s forte, and even aided by industry stalwart cinematographer Freddie Young (also a go-to for Lean), The Aspyhx is stylistically rather flat.

You’re a disgrace, sir... Weren’t you at Harrow?

Our Man in Marrakesh aka Bang! Bang! You’re Dead (1966) (SPOILERS) I hadn’t seen this one in more than three decades, and I had in mind that it was a decent spy spoof, well populated with a selection of stalwart British character actors in supporting roles. Well, I had the last bit right. I wasn’t aware this came from the stable of producer Harry Alan Towers, less still of his pedigree, or lack thereof, as a sort of British Roger Corman (he tried his hand at Star Wars with The Shape of Things to Come and Conan the Barbarian with Gor , for example). More legitimately, if you wish to call it that, he was responsible for the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu flicks. Our Man in Marrakesh – riffing overtly on Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana in title – seems to have in mind the then popular spy genre and its burgeoning spoofs, but it’s unsure which it is; too lightweight to work as a thriller and too light on laughs to elicit a chuckle.

The best thing in the world for the inside of a man or a woman is the outside of a horse.

Marnie (1964) (SPOILERS) Hitch in a creative ditch. If you’ve read my Vertigo review, you’ll know I admired rather than really liked the picture many fete as his greatest work. Marnie is, in many ways, a redux, in the way De Palma kept repeating himself in the early 80s only significantly less delirious and… well, compelling. While Marnie succeeds in commanding the attention fitfully, it’s usually for the wrong reasons. And Hitch, digging his heels in as he strives to fashion a star against public disinterest – he failed to persuade Grace Kelly out of retirement for Marnie Rutland – comes entirely adrift with his leads.

You know what I sometimes wish? I sometimes wish I were ordinary like you. Ordinary and dead like all the others.

Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) (SPOILERS) Bryan Forbes’ adaptation of Mark McShane’s 1961’s novel has been much acclaimed. It boasts a distinctive storyline and effective performances from its leads, accompanied by effective black-and-white cinematography from Gerry Turpin and a suitably atmospheric score from John Barry. I’m not sure Forbes makes the most of the material, however, as he underlines Séance on a Wet Afternoon ’s inherently theatrical qualities at the expense of its filmic potential.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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