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.

Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

Enemy Mine (1985) (SPOILERS) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies ). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “ lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming reluctant bedfellows. Perhaps germanely, both movies were box office flops.

If I do nothing else, I will convince them that Herbert Stempel knows what won the goddam Academy Award for Best goddam Picture of 1955. That’s what I’m going to accomplish.

Quiz Show (1994) (SPOILERS) Quiz Show perfectly encapsulates a certain brand of Best Picture nominee: the staid, respectable, diligent historical episode, a morality tale in response to which the Academy can nod their heads approvingly and discerningly, feeding as it does their own vainglorious self-image about how times and attitudes have changed, in part thanks to their own virtuousness. Robert Redford’s film about the 1950s Twenty-One quiz show scandals is immaculately made, boasts a notable cast and is guided by a strong screenplay from Paul Attanasio (who, on television, had just created the seminal Homicide: Life on the Streets ), but it lacks that something extra that pushes it into truly memorable territory.

Say hello to the Scream Extractor.

Monsters, Inc. (2001) (SPOILERS) I was never the greatest fan of Monsters, Inc. , even before charges began to be levelled regarding its “true” subtext. I didn’t much care for the characters, and I particularly didn’t like the way Pixar’s directors injected their own parenting/ childhood nostalgia into their plots. Something that just seems to go on with their fare ad infinitum. Which means the Pixars I preferred tended to be the Brad Bird ones. You know, the alleged objectivist. Now, though, we learn Pixar has always been about the adrenochrome, so there’s no going back…

Other monks will meet their deaths here. And they too will have blackened fingers. And blackened tongues.

The Name of the Rose (1986) (SPOILERS) Umberto Eco wasn’t awfully impressed by Jean Jacques-Annaud’s adaptation of his novel – or “ palimpsest of Umberto Eco’s novel ” as the opening titles announce – to the extent that he nixed further movie versions of his work. Later, he amended that view, calling it “ a nice movie ”. He also, for balance, labelled The Name of the Rose his worst novel – “ I hate this book and I hope you hate it too ”. Essentially, he was begrudging its renown at the expense of his later “ superior ” novels. I didn’t hate the novel, although I do prefer the movie, probably because I saw it first and it was everything I wanted from a medieval Sherlock Holmes movie set in a monastery and devoted to forbidden books, knowledge and opinions.

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies.

Watership Down (1978) (SPOILERS) I only read Watership Down recently, despite having loved the film from the first, and I was immediately impressed with how faithful, albeit inevitably compacted, Martin Rosen’s adaptation is. It manages to translate the lyrical, mythic and metaphysical qualities of Richard Adams’ novel without succumbing to dumbing down or the urge to cater for a broader or younger audience. It may be true that parents are the ones who get most concerned over the more disturbing elements of the picture but, given the maturity of the content, it remains a surprise that, as with 2001: A Space Odyssey (which may on the face of it seem like an odd bedfellow), this doesn’t garner a PG certificate. As the makers noted, Watership Down is at least in part an Exodus story, but the biblical implications extend beyond Hazel merely leading his fluffle to the titular promised land. There is a prevalent spiritual dimension to this rabbit universe, one very much

In a few moments, you will have an experience that will seem completely real. It will be the result of your subconscious fears transformed into your conscious awareness.

Brainstorm (1983) (SPOILERS) Might Brainstorm have been the next big thing – a ground-breaking, game-changing cinematic spectacle that had as far reaching consequences as Star Wars (special effects) or Avatar (3D) – if only Douglas Trumbull had been allowed to persevere with his patented “Showscan” process (70mm film photographed and projected at 60 frames per second)? I suspect not; one only has to look at the not-so-far-removed experiment of Ang Lee with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk , and how that went down like a bag of cold sick, to doubt that any innovation will necessarily catch on (although Trumbull at least had a narrative hinge on which to turn his “more real than real” imagery, whereas Lee’s pretty much boiled down to “because it was there”). Brainstorm ’s story is, though, like its title, possibly too cerebral, too much concerned with the consciousness and touting too little of the cloyingly affirmative that Bruce Rubin inevitably brings to his screenplays. T

You ever heard the saying, “Don’t rob the bank across from the diner that has the best donuts in three counties”?

2 Guns (2013) (SPOILERS) Denzel Washington is such a reliable performer, that it can get a bit boring. You end up knowing every gesture or inflection in advance, whether he’s playing a good guy or a bad guy. And his films are generally at least half decent, so you end up seeing them. Even in Flight (or perhaps especially in Flight ; just watch him chugging down that vodka) where he’s giving it his Oscar-nominatable best, he seems too familiar. I think it may be because he’s an actor who is more effective the less he does. In 2 Guns he’s not doing less, but sometimes it seems like it. That’s because the last person I’d ever expect blows him off the screen; Mark Wahlberg.

Piece by piece, the camel enters the couscous.

The Forgiven (2021) (SPOILERS) By this point, the differences between filmmaker John Michael McDonagh and his younger brother, filmmaker and playwright Martin McDonagh, are fairly clearly established. Both wear badges of irreverence and provocation in their writing, and a willingness to tackle – or take pot-shots – at bigger issues, ones that may find them dangling their toes in hot water. But Martin receives the lion’s share of the critical attention, while John is generally recognised as the slightly lesser light. Sure, some might mistake Seven Psychopaths for a John movie, and Calvary for a Martin one, but there’s a more flagrant sense of attention seeking in John’s work, and concomitantly less substance. The Forgiven is clearly aiming more in the expressly substantial vein of John’s earlier Calvary, but it ultimately bears the same kind of issues in delivery.

Maybe the dingo ate your baby.

Seinfeld 2.9: The Stranded The Premise George and Elaine are stranded at a party in Long Island, with a disgruntled hostess.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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