We don’t want to offend the effendi.

The Avengers

26: Honey for the Prince

The last of the season, and the last black-and-white episode, Honey for the Prince isn’t quite as strong as I’d remembered. It’s also a tad problematic in places. That said, Brian Clemens’ teleplay maximises the accompanying quirkiness, the guest cast includes a particularly memorable turn from Ron Moody as Ponsonby Hopkirk, the director of QQF (Quite, Quite Fantastic Incorporated), and there’s an even more memorable Dance of the Six Veils courtesy of Mrs Peel (it would have been seven, but she was “poorly educated”).

Who is also again memorably in early hours post-party form this episode (see previously The Girl from Auntie), only this time with Steed too, who has evidently been getting down with the younger generation, and with a teddy bear and balloon in tow. He even gets a pat on the posterior for his dawn treading.

Indeed, there’s much in the way of carnal considerations in Honey for the Prince, what with a masseuse (Carmen Dene) attending to villain Arkadi (George Pastell, Kleig in The Tomb of the Cybermen) by various methods, ranging from lighting his cigar, to massaging his chest with a well-oiled leg and stroking him with a bear claw glove.

Prince Ali: Ah, Number 33. Charming girl, cost me a bag of salt and four goats. I’ve got lots more out the back.

Steed: Goats?

Prince Ali: Wives. Got to have a lot of them. Matter of status, you see. What was it at last count?

Grand Vizier: 320, your Highness.

Then there’s the harem of Prince Ali of Barabia (Zia Mohyeddin, later of Gangsters), where Steed is impressed by his roster of 320 wives (“The Prince is renowned for his ardour”) until Ali offers the sobering qualifier that this also means he has 320 mothers-in-law (eat that, Terry Medford). When Steed has successfully saved Ali from certain death, the latter announces “Anything I have is yours. My horses, my jewels. My favourite wife”; Emma’s stern “Steed!” calls a halt to any further discussion of the matter. We also learn of the fantasy life persona of “One of the best undercover men in the business”, Ronny Westcott (Jon Laurimore, Count Frederico in The Masque of Mandragora): chief eunuch in a harem.

Steed: Tell me, Mrs Peel, what size do you take in Turkish trousers?

But the main selling point of Honey for the Prince is Emma’s dance, giving what is rightly hailed as a cracking display. In the manner of bedroom farce, this is followed by the lusty Prince’s intention to consummate with his 321^st wife (“Retarded, your majesty. Definitely what you’d call retarded” Steed explains of Emma’s earlier unresponsiveness to questioning; the Avengers HR department subsequently had words with him over his choice of language). Prior to setting eyes on Mrs Peel, Ali seems much more preoccupied with playing cricket (such that it vaguely recalls Denis Quilley's reluctant lothario in What the Butler Saw).

Mrs Peel: Good morning.

Mr Bumble: Good morning, dear lady. Oh, forgive me, I’ve just been attending to my little charges. Buzzing around the hive, so to speak. Bumble. B Bumble at your service.

The episode has its share of eccentric vignettes of course, most typically in the form of Mr Bumble (Ken Parry), seller of honey and outfitted in an appropriately-striped jumper (“Happy bees make bumper honey” he enthuses). Admittedly, there’s something of formula to the character, but Ken Parry’s effusive performance (and Rigg’s responding cheerfulness) make him irrepressible.

Hopkirk: Well, the QQF, the Quite, Quite Fantastic Incorporated, can help you, quite simply, to help you satisfy your most repressed desires. In a nutshell, Mr Reed, we will recreate your fantasies and let you live them.

Hopkirk’s business, “A million dreams made to order”, provides the setting for Arkadi and gay hit man Vincent (Ronald Curram: a comparable performance to Philip Locke’s in the same year’s Thunderball) to practice their various assassinations, Ali being the target of one of them, inevitably. Hopkirk nurses the illusion that it “helps him get something out of his system and no one gets hurt”, until he’s on the receiving end, that is, in a blackly comic scene where he coaxes Vincent to be more forcefully murderous (“Point it at me!”)

Hopkirk: Got it, you’re a secret agent. Yes indeed, ideal for you. Licensed to kill, pitting your wits against a diabolical mastermind. Make a change from your everyday humdrum existence, wouldn’t it?

Steed: Hah ha ha, yes. Certainly make a change.

Hopkirk’s most ambitious fantasy recreation was the sinking of Titanic (“Several of my staff had to be resuscitated afterwards”) and his most delightfully meta is Fantasy Number Four – “Escape of Arkadi from Pursuing Agents” – since Steed discovers it just as Arkadi has taken flight. Also self-reflexive is Hopkirk’s suggested fantasy for our hero, right down to another reference for diabolical masterminds.

Steed: I’m most terribly sorry, colonel. It’s another body entirely.

Earlier, there’s an amusing scene between Steed and the unseen Colonel Westcott, in which he calls to ask for a body to be removed from his apartment, only to learn it already has been; this is a different corpse, that of Bernie (Peter Diamond, stuntman extraordinaire), eliciting Steed’s profuse apologies.

The laugh-off has the appearance of a complete flight of fantasy (a magic carpet ride), until it’s revealed that Steed and Emma are on the back of van (“How do you stop it?”: “That’s a very good question”, making you wonder who’s driving).

Honey for the Prince is less than sensitive in its trading on Middle Eastern stereotypes; it’s said the Hyucks studied the episode when researching offensive ethnic tropes for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. What just about saves it, however, is its prevailing self-awareness and undercutting of assumptions (a magic lamp yields a machine gun killer, the exotic prince, who offers Steed the left eye of a mountain rat – “A very rare delicacy” – is revealed as an anglophile – well, it is The Avengers – female objectification, the value of a wife counted in goats, is taken to ridiculous, even banal extremes; a duty roster is necessary for the week) via the same general irreverence exhibited by the rest of the series at this point. Nevertheless, it occupies similar ground to How to Succeed… at Murder; where many episodes of the season transcend their era, the prevailing sensibility means this one is very much confined by it.

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.

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.

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.

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…

Haven’t you ever heard of the healing power of laughter?

Batman (1989) (SPOILERS) There’s Jaws , there’s Star Wars , and then there’s Batman in terms of defining the modern blockbuster. Jaws ’ success was so profound, it changed the way movies were made and marketed. Batman’s marketing was so profound, it changed the way tentpoles would be perceived: as cash cows. Disney tried to reproduce the effect the following year with Dick Tracy , to markedly less enthusiastic response. None of this places Batman in the company of Jaws as a classic movie sold well, far from it. It just so happened to hit the spot. As Tim Burton put it, it was “ more of a cultural phenomenon than a great movie ”. It’s difficult to disagree with his verdict that the finished product (for that is what it is) is “ mainly boring ”. Now, of course, the Burton bat has been usurped by the Nolan incarnation (and soon the Snyder). They have some things in common. Both take the character seriously and favour a sombre tone, which was much more of shock to the

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

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.

Twenty dwarves took turns doing handstands on the carpet.

Bugsy (1991) (SPOILERS) Bugsy is very much a Warren Beatty vanity project (aren’t they all, even the ones that don’t seem that way on the surface?), to the extent of his playing a title character a decade and a half younger than him. As such, it makes sense that producer Warren’s choice of director wouldn’t be inclined to overshadow star Warren, but the effect is to end up with a movie that, for all its considerable merits (including a script from James Toback chock full of incident), never really feels quite focussed, that it’s destined to lead anywhere, even if we know where it’s going.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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