Richard Johnson

  • Some Girls Do (1969)

    Some Girls Do (1969)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2021) You would think that a late-1960s lighthearted spy movie comedy involving fembots, ultrasound destruction, a supersonic airliner prototype and a dapper secret agent would be a lot more fun than Some Girls Do. It certainly starts on a promising note, with a title credit sequence that mixes a bouncy pop tune, some comic mayhem, and more late-1960s cute girls than even Bond would find sufficient. (Most of them are killer robots in service of a madman, if that makes it any more acceptable.)  It’s after that opening that the film starts to erode, or perhaps never finds its cruising altitude. The film’s spy spoof is ludicrous but not always supported by an execution that doesn’t take advantage of its own opportunities. There’s a heaviness to the film (in its staging, dialogue, and editing) that extinguishes the jokes meant to be funny, leaving a tone that’s not quite deadpan nor overly comic. Richard Johnson is not bad as protagonist Bulldog Drummond, but he has what I’d call the Lazenby problem: He’s all right, but being merely all right in a role that demands extraordinary charisma is not enough. I’m not saying that Some Girls Do is terrible. After all, I’ll be enough of a cad to admit that the film’s unabashed male gaze and its gallery of beauties may be a thing of the past, but it’s an almost refreshing past. Occasionally, you can even see the elements that a far more successful film would have been able to exploit (and indeed, you’d see fembots pop up again in the Austin Powers series) and some of the sequences manage to score a chuckle or two. Heck — Some Girls Do is the sequel to Deadlier Than the Male, and I’ll eventually watch that. But there’s a sense of many missed opportunities, and a result that barely scratches what could have been.

  • The Haunting (1963)

    The Haunting (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) If there’s a single path to longevity for horror movies, I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s atmosphere. The Haunting may be one of the best examples of this: As strangers travel to an isolated mansion to investigate its paranormal nature, the plot is far less important than the sheer oozing oppression of its setting. Taking place in a grand gothic manor, The Haunting never misses an occasion to crank up the eeriness of its location. Director Robert Wise uses a succession of askew angles in order to reinforce the foreboding production design. The Haunting is remarkable for its black-and-white cinematography in that it almost always imposes incredibly dense images, with immensely detailed walls, cluttered decoration and intricate architectural flourishes. By the time the house walls seem to breathe, well, The Haunting has earned its place in the horror pantheon. Richard Johnson is quite good in a familiar kind of role, while Julie Harris has perhaps the most skillful performance as a haunted person. There’s a dash of humour and self-awareness to the proceedings, but The Haunting still feels respectable and highly efficient—taking chances that still feel daring such as giving extensive internal voiceover monologues to the characters. Even the strong hints that the entire thing may be in the character’s heads isn’t quite enough to lessen the supernatural experience. This is one horror film that can still hold its own against more recent entries—in fact, it has now clearly outlasted even its own remake as a still-worthwhile film.