Skip to main content

It seems we have two Arthur Peevers. One dead, one learning to swing a dainty foot.

The Avengers
4.19: Quick-Quick Slow Death

Coming straight after The Girl from Auntie, it’s impossible to ignore the similar “villains cover their tracks by whacking wacky eccentrics” structure, but since I’m a sucker for such Avengers tales, it scarcely matters. Robert Banks Stewarts writes, but particular laurels are due James Hill for his deft touch during the musical climax.


The episode’s main thrust concerns a dance school “for infiltrating foreign agents into the country”, in which the students are offed and replaced with trained operatives. This eventually explains the dual Arthur Peevers, the one found dead in the teaser, in a pram in full evening dress, and the one who shows up at the dance school Terpsichorean Training Techniques Inc (James Belchamber).


The dead man’s inked arm leads to the first in a mounting series of dead bodies, as Emma visits tattooist Fintry (Alan Gerrard, Bovem in The Dominators). Diana Rigg seems genuinely amused during her scenes with Gerrard, as he recounts with gusto the most popular designs (“I love whoever it is” and “a mother’s loving touch”) and how a certain inscription needs sufficiently sizeable clients or the results can be undesirable (“So it ended up ‘What is home without a moth’”). When Fintry is shot in the head, he still has the wherewithal to tattoo his Italian sausage with vital information about the murderer before expiring (“Killer has tattoo on right wrist”).


Steed: You’ve seen pictures of those Russian diplomats?
Huggins: Hmm.
Steed: Well, where do you think they get those terrible clothes from?

Steed, posing as a representative of Baggy Pants Limited, who do “top secret work – Diplomatic Corps only”, visits Litchen & Co and attempts to mine information on Peever from Huggins (Graham Armitage, Barney in The Macra Terror), who is stabbed in the changing room, much to his colleague’s alarm (“Why, without us, Ascot would look like a nudist convention!”) He then finds his way to Mulberrys Bank, where the manager (Ronald Govey, Relf in Ultraworld) is most upset about losing a client (Manager: Bad. Steed: Very bad. Manager:  Very, very bad”), and his next lead sends him – nowhere. Opening the door to Purbright & Co onto an empty space, he very nearly plummets to his doom.


Peidi: Such expressive feet. Look, ah they talk-a to me. You naughty little chatterboxes, you.

Diverting, undoubtedly, but Emma’s on the receiving end of the best encounters in this one, particularly as the Italian sausage isn’t the only dubious European in Quick-Quick Slow Death. At Peidi’s shoe repair, Peidi (David Kernan) feigns a continually slipping Italian accent as he obsesses over Mrs Peel’s feet (“So pale, so tender, so exquisitely elegant… Oh senora, they’re a poem, they sing and they soar”) and gets quite excited over what he might be able to make for her once he has cast them (“A pair of slippers for the boudoir? Wellington boots in the kinkiest black leather?”) Peidi doesn’t end up dead, but his assistant Bernard (Colin Ellis) does, drowned in plaster of Paris.


Steed: Now you, Mrs Peel, back to your pupils, and be quick-quick slow about it.

After this succession of curious characters, the main action at the dance school isn’t, initially, quite as scintillating, with Emma posing as an instructress and Steed brushing up on his technique. Eunice Gayson (Sylvia in the first two Bond films) scores as the head of the school, Lucille Banks, and has some particularly fine interaction with Macnee (she notes his good English name, and he replies “Came over with the Vikings. They were between raids and discovering America at the time”).


Lucille Banks: Are you attempting a reverse, double clip feet?
Steed: With you, Miss Banks, I reach for the rainbow.
Lucille Banks: You mad, impetuous man!

However, the grand finale at the gala dance contest, as Steed is targeted for elimination and Emma proves more than effective at turning the tables, is a delight. He shows off his acumen to Miss Banks as he and Emma warn each other of dangers (“You’re Number Nine”: “And you’re dancing with garlic sausage!”). Each time someone dances around the back of the dance floor, they mess up their adversaries’ plans. Emma changes Steed’s 9 to a 6, 9 being the identifying number of the intended target. Steed turns Ivor Bracewell’s (Maurice Kaufmann – the tattooed killer) 6 to 9. She dances with Ivor round the back so the spy coshes him, and Steed consequently coshes the spy, with Emma dispatching the drunken commander Chester Reed (Larry Cross): “Keep ‘em coming”.


Other amusing moments include the opening sequence, in which Steed, who has been shooting empty beer cans, hits a full one Emma has let fly (“That was my lunchtime refreshment”). John Woodnutt (Terror of the Zygons, The Keeper of Traken, Jeeves and Wooster) is on top form as Captain Noble; having survived an attempted choking to death, he can only croak at Steed (and, we are informed, phone Emma via whistling Morse Code at her). 


The laugh off is also particularly good, with the duo dancing into the darkness as Emma delivers a breathless sentence:

Mrs Peel: Steed.
Steed: Mrs Peel.
Mrs Peel: Did you know they’ve just arrested a band leader for being drunk in charge of a pram containing a man in full evening dress with a plaster cast on his dead, tattooed on his right wrist, clutching a dance diploma in one hand and a garlic sausage in the other?






















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

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…
1 comment
Read more

Dude, you're embarrassing me in front of the wizards.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
(SPOILERS) The cliffhanger sequel, as a phenomenon, is a relatively recent thing. Sure, we kind of saw it with The Empire Strikes Back – one of those "old" movies Peter Parker is so fond of – a consequence of George Lucas deliberately borrowing from the Republic serials of old, but he had no guarantee of being able to complete his trilogy; it was really Back to the Future that began the trend, and promptly drew a line under it for another decade. In more recent years, really starting with The Matrix – The Lord of the Rings stands apart as, post-Weinstein's involvement, fashioned that way from the ground up – shooting the second and third instalments back-to-back has become a thing, both more cost effective and ensuring audiences don’t have to endure an interminable wait for their anticipation to be sated. The flipside of not taking this path is an Allegiant, where greed gets the better of a studio (split a novel into two movie parts assuming a…
2 comments
Read more

I don't like bugs. You can't hear them, you can't see them and you can't feel them, then suddenly you're dead.

Blake's 7 2.7: Killer

Robert Holmes’ first of four scripts for the series, and like last season’s Mission to Destiny there are some fairly atypical elements and attitudes to the main crew (although the A/B storylines present a familiar approach and each is fairly equal in importance for a change). It was filmed second, which makes it the most out of place episode in the run (and explains why the crew are wearing outfits – they must have put them in the wash – from a good few episodes past and why Blake’s hair has grown since last week).
The most obvious thing to note from Holmes’ approach is that he makes Blake a Doctor-substitute. Suddenly he’s full of smart suggestions and shrewd guesses about the threat that’s wiping out the base, basically leaving a top-level virologist looking clueless and indebted to his genius insights. If you can get past this (and it did have me groaning) there’s much enjoyment to be had from the episode, not least from the two main guest actors.
Post a Comment
Read more

When two separate events occur simultaneously pertaining to the same object of inquiry we must always pay strict attention.

Twin Peaks 1.5: The One-Armed Man
With the waves left in Albert’s wake subsiding (Gordon Cole, like Albert, is first encountered on the phone, and Coop apologises to Truman over the trouble the insulting forensics expert has caused; ”Harry, the last thing I want you to worry about while I’m here is some city slicker I brought into your town relieving himself upstream”), the series steps down a register for the first time. This is a less essential episode than those previously, concentrating on establishing on-going character and plot interactions at the expense of the strange and unusual. As such, it sets the tone for the rest of this short first season.

The first of 10 episodes penned by Robert Engels (who would co-script Fire Walk with Me with Lynch, and then reunite with him for On the Air), this also sees the first “star” director on the show in the form of Tim Hunter. Hunter is a director (like Michael Lehman) who hit the ground running but whose subsequent career has rather disapp…
Post a Comment
Read more

An initiative test. How simply marvellous!

You Must Be Joking! (1965)
A time before a Michael Winner film was a de facto cinematic blot on the landscape is now scarcely conceivable. His output, post- (or thereabouts) Death Wish (“a pleasant romp”) is so roundly derided that it’s easy to forget that the once-and-only dining columnist and raconteur was once a bright (well…) young thing of the ‘60s, riding the wave of excitement (most likely highly cynically) and innovation in British cinema. His best-known efforts from this period are a series of movies with Oliver Reed – including the one with the elephant – and tend to represent the director in his pleasant romp period, before he attacked genres with all the precision and artistic integrity of a blunt penknife. You Must Be Joking! comes from that era, its director’s ninth feature, straddling the gap between Ealing and the Swinging ‘60s; coarser, cruder comedies would soon become the order of the day, the mild ribaldry of Carry On pitching into bawdy flesh-fests. You Must Be Joki…
Post a Comment
Read more

He mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.

Darkest Hour (2017)
(SPOILERS) Watching Joe Wright’s return to the rarefied plane of prestige – and heritage to boot – filmmaking following the execrable folly of the panned Pan, I was struck by the difference an engaged director, one who cares about his characters, makes to material. Only last week, Ridley Scott’s serviceable All the Money in the World made for a pointed illustration of strong material in the hands of someone with no such investment, unless they’re androids. Wright’s dedication to a relatable Winston Churchill ensures that, for the first hour-plus, Darkest Hour is a first-rate affair, a piece of myth-making that barely puts a foot wrong. It has that much in common with Wright’s earlier Word War II tale, Atonement. But then, like Atonement, it comes unstuck.
1 comment
Read more

Well, who’s going to monitor the monitors of the monitors?

Enemy of the State (1998)
Enemy of the State is something of an anomaly; a quality conspiracy thriller borne not from any distinct political sensibility on the part of its makers but simple commercial instincts. Of course, the genre has proved highly successful over the years so it's easy to see why big name producers like Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson would have chased that particular gravy boat. Yet they did so for some time without success; by the time the movie was made, Simpson had passed away and Bruckheimer was flying solo. It might be the only major film in the latter's career that, despite the prerequisite gloss and stylish packaging, has something to say. More significant still, 15 years too late, the film's warnings are finally receiving recognition in the light of the Edward Snowden revelations.

In a piece for The Guardian earlier this year, John Patterson levelled the charge that Enemy was one of a number of Hollywood movies that have “been softening us up f…
Post a Comment
Read more

Luck isn’t a superpower... And it isn't cinematic!

Deadpool 2 (2018)
(SPOILERS) Perhaps it’s because I was lukewarm on the original, but Deadpool 2 mercifully disproves the typical consequence of the "more is more" approach to making a sequel. By rights, it should plummet into the pitfall of ever more excess to diminishing returns, yet for the most part it doesn't.  Maybe that’s in part due to it still being a relatively modest undertaking, budget-wise, and also a result of being very self-aware – like duh, you might say, that’s its raison d'être – of its own positioning and expectation as a sequel; it resolutely fails to teeter over the precipice of burn out or insufferable smugness. It helps that it's frequently very funny – for the most part not in the exhaustingly repetitive fashion of its predecessor – but I think the key ingredient is that it finds sufficient room in its mirthful melee for plot and character, in order to proffer tone and contrast.
Post a Comment
Read more

You're going to need a nickname, cos I ain't saying that every time.

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
(SPOILERS) I had a mercifully good time with Solo: A Star Wars Story, having previously gone from considering it a straight-up terrible idea when first announced, to cautious optimism with the signing of Phil Lord and Chris Miller, to abject pessimism with their replacement by little Ronnie Howard, to cautious optimism again with the advent of various trailers and clips. I have numerous caveats, but then that's been par for the course with the series ever since Return of the Jedi, whichever side of good or bad the individual entries end up falling. The biggest barrier to enjoyment, judging by others’ responses, seems to be the central casting of Aiden Ehrenreich; I actually thought he was really good, so the battle for my allegiance was half won right there. No, he isn't Harrison Ford, but he succeeds admirably in making Han Solo a likeable, brash, smug wannabe scoundrel. Less so at being scruffy looking, but you can’t have everything.

It looks as i…
Post a Comment
Read more

Whoever comes, I'll kill them. I'll kill them all.

John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)
(SPOILERS) There’s no guessing he’s back. John Wick’s return is most definite and demonstrable, in a sequel that does what sequels ought in all the right ways, upping the ante while never losing sight of the ingredients that made the original so formidable. John Wick: Chapter 2 finds the minimalist, stripped-back vehicle and character of the first instalment furnished with an elaborate colour palette and even more idiosyncrasies around the fringes, rather like Mad Max in that sense, and director Chad Stahleski (this time without the collaboration of David Leitch, but to no discernible deficit) ensures the action is filled to overflowing, but with an even stronger narrative drive that makes the most of changes of gear, scenery and motivation.

The result is a giddily hilarious, edge-of-the-seat thrill ride (don’t believe The New York Times review: it is not “altogether more solemn” I can only guess Jeannette Catsoulis didn’t revisit the original in the interven…
Post a Comment
Read more