Subject: Here's the stuff!
Guns of Honor is not in yet, but I did get Passion and Valor - which, by the way, has been peddled under 3 different titles at various times, so you know it's a winner.
Here's what's on the back of the box:
"Burning Love Fuels A Mission Of Danger And Passion!
Explosive underwater action highlights this intense action drama. Michael Landon is John Everingham, and impassioned journalist/ spy. His love of a gorgeous woman gets him kicked out of Laos by Jürgen Prochnow (Das Boot) a fanatical Russian general who wants her to himself.
Priscilla Presley is a curvaceous diving instructor who helps Landon make the treacherous journey to grab back his lady love!"
The movie is rated G.
Without even watching a single frame you can see how hard they were trying... There's Jürgen, the Russian general with the German accent (n.b. it's Valachev - he killed Colonel Knowles after they turned the cameras off in The Fourth War, and he got a promotion), certainly a philanderer and conspirator, almost bound to be a murderer (if not, it won't be for lack of trying, you can be sure)... Now all he has to do is jump in the water after Landon and they got just about all the bases covered. If this had been an R-rated movie it could have been the holy grail of Prochnow films.
So close... So close...
Subject: Passion and Valor
Despite the fact that I jotted down 2 pages' worth of notes while watching this thing, I know exactly where to start: whoever was in charge of the music for this movie must be hunted down like a diseased rat and bashed up against a wall until he is dead, dead, dead, dead, DEAD.
Ahhhh... I feel so much better now.
There is no record of this film in my movie/video guide so I don't know what the scoop is, but it was made in 1982 and purports to be a true story.
Michael Landon is a photojournalist who's been living in Laos for 11 years. He writes articles denouncing whoever's in charge of the country, whoever that may be at the moment (I think he's working on his third denouncement in a row), and sneaking the material out to be printed in the west. Prochnow is a Russian/East German general (they actually said that) in charge of the secret police. He's trying to get the goods on Landon; notices that Landon has the hots for a babe of his acquaintance, Kao, and he recruits her to cosy up to Landon.
While she is doing this we are subjected to a montage of sickening, innocently lovey scenes accompanied by even more sickening and overbearing background music. Also, despite the fact that Kao is Laotian and the first time you - and Landon - see her she is doing a presumably traditional dance, Landon the westerner considers her naive and feels compelled to teach her what Laotian politics and culture are all about. You get to watch that too. Goody. You should understand that Kao's assignment was not to seduce Landon, just to stick with him for a while.
Then you find out that the whole time they were skipping around together, Prochnow apparently had somebody following them at a distance of 3 feet with a camera. I don't know who this clever boy was, but he managed to follow Landon into a men's room and get closeup shots of him getting subversive documents from his contact in the military while they were both standing in front of the sinks - and the wall-sized mirror.
Then... and somebody explain this to me, please... Prochnow decides to deal with Landon by going up against him in a public boxing tournament. But they're using different 'styles,' so while Prochnow is kicking the crap out of Landon, Landon is punching Prochnow's head to pieces. And I must say, it's a good thing Prochnow is a good kicker and has long legs, because Landon was seriously buffed. Frankly, as soon as they got in the ring I thought one hit from Landon, and Prochnow begins his next life as a chunk of dead meat.
So it was a relief that he went for kick-boxing. At least he didn't get killed. He never even tried to land a punch, but I wish he had; the boxing gloves they were wearing had fingers, so he might have been able to snatch some of that mop off Landon's head. (Next to the bad music, the thing that drove me craziest in this movie was Landon's hair.)
Prochnow lost the fight, which pissed him off, so THEN he had Landon arrested for subversive activities and - surprise - tortured for 2 weeks. Then he had him deported. It was somewhere around here that I found out bad words had been bleeped out of this video. Once upon a time this movie wasn't quite as G-rated as we were led to believe.
Well, Prochnow is in love with Kao; She and Landon are in love with each other; and Landon's making plans to go back and save her from a fate worse than death. (He and Patrick Bergin should get together for drinks sometime. They have a lot in common.) He somehow gets a message back to a guy who has a sneaky meeting with Kao in (oh, my god) a movie theater, where they discuss their plans and secret password in loud voices.
You think the boxing match was the good part, but you're wrong because you don't know about the Cinderella Scene. With Landon out of the way Prochnow has more or less appropriated Kao, and he takes her to a ball, he in the white-and-gold dress uniform, she in a long white gown, and they waltz... and kiss... and then... okay, hang on a second. I just want to say that I'm not making this up. This was the one part of the movie that I rewound so I could see it again, because I couldn't believe it. Kao tells Prochnow that he can have her; she says she knows he's married; but she wants him to set her up as his mistress because "I want to be your woman." He says okay. Then she says she wants him to meet her family because she wishes to be respected. Uuuuuuh-huh... In case this doesn't confuse you, the next time you see her she's panicking because "The general is forcing me into his house."
Anybody know how to say "DUH" in Laotian? Figure out now how dumb this woman is, because Landon is going to match her IQ point-for-point here.
He goes scuba-diving across the Mekong River, the plan being that Kao will get into the water when she sees him and they will then share his air tank going back across. So he goes in broad daylight, pops his head up out of the water in the middle of the river, and waves to her. Thereby inspiring the guards in the tower only a few hundred feet away to shoot at him and send a speed- boat out with detonation devices to chase him all the way back across. The trip is an hour each way, incidentally.
In the cause of equal opportunity, Prochnow isn't any smarter the next time Landon tries this very same stunt again. (Oh, yes he does!) Kao makes it into the river this time so now they're BOTH being shot at and bombed. Prochnow knows darn well she's out there, but he waits until she appears at the opposite bank to suddenly worry that she might get hurt, so after an hour of heavy artillery he yells, "Don't fire!"
But they're safe now and the bad guys go home and the good guys live happily ever after except for the loud hideous Burt Bacharach-type music that plagues them whenever they're together. Maybe it's not as bad for them as it is for us. Landon's hair probably muffles it.
[My complaint about the kickboxing is not that it was done badly; in fact, it was awesome. My complaint is about the whole setup. Despite my "somebody explain this to me, please," of course I know what it was about - the general said it himself. He wanted to humiliate the journalist in front of Kao and her family. He fully believed he could do it, too.
But when you watch this movie you know before the fight even starts - you know the instant the general gets the idea - that he is going to get creamed in this contest. Oh, he held his own... he even had the upper hand for a while, or at least the upper foot. But the complete lack of suspense attached to this sequence makes it horrendous going. All I could think was "Stop that, you idiot! You're going to end up in traction, and everybody knows it except you!" Of course I also realize you're supposed to WANT him to end up in traction; he's the bad guy. I'd still rather see a real fight, not the cliche bad-guy-whips-the-good-guy-for-a-while-then-gets- the-decking-he-deserves. You expect that from fiction. This thing was supposed to be a true story, the fight occurs in the middle of the movie, and anything could have happened. But only one thing does happen, and you know precisely what that's going to be well in advance.
But this is just another symptom of a bad movie. The general was supposed to be a champion at this sport, but they wait until the contest between him and the journalist is suggested to even mention it...and then it's utterly impossible to believe (oh, sure - where did THAT come from?). Once he gets started you can see that he does know how to do it, but it's too late then. You know how it will end, but you have to sit there and writhe while watching it until he (finally, mercifully) gets knocked into the middle of next week. Had they given you a little more on the general prior to that, and shown him practicing or something, it would have thrown doubt on the outcome of the contest...and then it might have been okay. As it stands, impressive though the athletic display is, this remains the one fight scene I'd really rather not have seen Jürgen do.
At the same time, Kapler is one of Prochnow's better bad-guy roles in terms of what Kapler does and how Prochnow has him do it. He's not a generic villain. He's very real, and you can easily get deja vu watching him; we've all met people like this (unfortunately). See the free-ranging commentary on A DRY WHITE SEASON. -ed.]
I want to say, straight out, that I am extremely grateful that I DID NOT pay more than 3 dollars for this video ! I took a look at some of the screen shots that you had taken from the video. I wanted to be on the lookout for them when I watched the movie. (Thank goodness for the fast forward button)
I've pretty much decided to not do any serious nitpicking. (Although I have every right to considering some of the glaring inaccuracies) And so, to start......
Jürgen Jürgen Jürgen... WHAT WAS HE THINKING !!! I'd like to say that this misjudgement in acting choice was a youthful folly, except, he was 42 when he made it. So, that's out as an option. I was just watching this video with my jaw wide open. Don't get me wrong, I actually enjoyed watching Jürgen on screen in this. He was fun to watch. I liked him playing an over the top character. The problem is that the character of General Kapler was nothing more than the old-style Nazi B-movie villan and he played it that way. I mean really, he was striding around with one of those riding crops in his hand in just about every scene. Did you see a horse anywhere? No, of course you didn't see a horse. Because the villans in the old B-movies had a riding crop, so did he. You know, in the scene where Michael Landon is at Jürgen's feet being interrogated, I was waiting, just waiting for Jürgen to say, "We have ways of making you talk."
Ok, do you want to move on to the sound or the music ? Both stunk.
I'd like to thank you for clarifying the I-Want-to-Be-Your-Woman scene in your review. I'd have spent another fifteen minutes going over that scene.
And then there's Michael Landon. Did you happen to notice in the scene where Kapler has Landon at his feet in chains that Michael Landon's hair color is dark brown ? And yet, in the rest of the film it's that greyish white color?
Ok, I still liked Jurgen in it. He plays a nifty villain.
That movie was the first "Hollywood" film Jürgen made, the first non-German film after Das Boot, and, as we all know, Jürgen doesn't care if the scripts are any good! He was probably happy to have such a large role in his first English-language project.
Really, moving to a new venue he was fortunate to get roles where he'd be seen a lot, even if they weren't the greatest parts. One thing I've been forcefully reminded of by the correspondence with Bhupinder: you don't start out getting to pick your roles - you take anything you can get so you can eat! I've also been forcefully reminded how much of the nonsense is the directors' fault (though I've always been quick to blame the director for anything I don't like). You do what they tell you, no matter how idiotic.
Ya know... the hair color thing bugs me too. I assume they were trying to make Michael Landon's hair look filthy, but it sure didn't work. It just looked like kaplan had given him a dye job while he was beating him up.
When you watch the opening credits, you notice something very interesting. Hmm... the producer, writer and director are all the same person. So, ultimately, I'm laying blame for this fiasco on him. But, that aside, Jürgen's portayal of the general got better the more I watched and paid close attention to the minute details he was giving the character. Considering the one dimensionalness of the character, Jürgen did a nifty job interpreting the role. Goodness knows that the script wasn't any good, but Jürgen did the little things that we now know him for that took attention away from the bad writing and focused on his talent as an actor.
And I'm not saying that because I love the ground he walks on. Jürgen is really a tremendous actor. If you really watch what he does, the small motions he makes with his hands or the facial expressions; all of these things add to the character. I'm sure the director didn't even notice that Jürgen was even doing these things. Which even adds to his abilities. After re-watching the video, I really can appreciate what Jürgen does as an actor.
A quickie attachment, I started thinking about how dark Michael Landon's hair was in that interogation scene. I've decided that was the first scene that they shot. I figure sometime a little later, it was decided that Landon should go with his natural hair color and the director decided to not re-shoot the scene. Thus dark hair in one scene and light grey in all the rest.