Ten Statements About....THE 2nd BEST SECRET AGENT IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD a.k.a. LICENSED TO KILL (1965)

"Why yes, I did get this job because I look vaguely like that
other fellow...."

1) Okay, we get that Tom Adams was hired to play Charles Vine because if you squint in a dark room, he sorta looks like Sean Connery....but do you have to keep reminding us with jokey references to 007?

2) I can’t decide if this film is meant to be taken straight or as a burlesque.  Adams and other actors play their role with a grim earnestness, but then we get villains named ‘HeShe’ and ‘Sadistico’ that seem a touch broad.

3) And since we’re on the subject of villains, the script never gives us a solid one.  We get a group of Soviets, a doppelganger and the aforementioned HeShe and Sadistico--but none of them are vividly enough drawn to qualify as a superspy baddie.

4) As non-sequitorial as the idea of Vine taking a first in Mathematics at Oxford is, it cleverly allows for the exposition about Regrav to be better disguised as a dialogue between peers and not a scientist explaining his work to a blunt object.

5) You know what’s really jarring?  That weird ass guitar based musical score.  It seems too jaunty to belong in a spy movie.

6) While it’s obvious that the film is very low budget, I have to admit I didn’t realize that the big MacGuffin was never seen until after the fact...which is pretty effective screenwriting by Lindsay Shonteff and Howard Griffiths.

7) I guess I should be grateful that Vine barely gives Veronica Hurst’s Julia the time of day save for looking at her legs because she’s....well, a very bad actress and decidedly mannish in appearance.  I almost expected her to be revealed as HeShe at one point.

8) Okay, you make a big deal about the soviet baddies having a doppelganger of Vine they plan to replace him with so he can assassinate Karel Stepanek’s Jacobsen.  Then why don’t you ever even tease that Vine has been replaced, rather showing him being thwarted in his attempts before being uncerimoniously killed at the climax?

9)  You know how you can tell a film’s low budget?  When they use stock footage to represent the hero showing his charge the sights of London.

10) This ending makes. No. Sense.  Even with that seemingly endless scene of Vine’s superior explaining the plot afterwards.

Overall...a peculiar little oddity that may not be the greatest low budget spy movie of the era, but has some charm.  And to think there are two sequels and three sort of rip off Shonteff wrote featuring ‘Charles Bind,’ one of which starred Gareth ‘I was in The New Avengers’ Hunt!

Ten Statements About....THE FADES EPISODE ONE (2011)

"Yep...riding bikes indoors...'cause we're DAREDEVILS!"

"Do you think I'm mad?"

"Well if you're mad, we'll find a way to cope with it. But it's equally possible that what we're seeing is what other people can't, and you're, you know, special."

1) Well, this is a much different version of estate living than we got in the Davies-era Doctor Who, that's for sure. This is a much more broken down environment for our hero to play in. But then, given that this show makes it clear that it's a horror show--from its earthy color pallet to the skittering figures in the background to the shot of series lead Paul (Iain De Caetecker) doing his best Anthony Perkins upon seeing the ghostie of the week--the show's background is appropriate.

2) I know Mac, assayed by Daniel Kaluuya, is meant to be the Xander to Paul's Buffy--you know, the wisecracking comic relief guy who can get truly annoying--but the guy won me over fairly early on. The the way he sells his rationalization of the gunfire he heard as 'they can't be real gunshots. We're in England' won me over in a flash.

3) Eyeball licking monsters...ewwwwwww.

4) Somehow I can't imagine an American horror or suspense show that makes such a big deal about the hero peeing his pants. A comedy, sure...but a deadly serious show about ghosts infringing on the real world...

(But then, given the girl on the toilet in a later scene, I'm beginning to think the producers of this show have an obsession with urine.)

THIS is the true horror of The Fades....

5) Wow...so I see overacting teenagers confusing brattiness with psychotic behavior isn't confined to the United States.  Thanks a lot, Lily Loveless...

6) Am I the only one who wonders if Tom Ellis was hired solely for his remarkable resemblance to Dylan McDermott?

7) I have to say...of all the characters, I think I like Daniela Nardini's Helen the best. She's got an edge of ruthlessness and practicality right from the start...and there's there's definitely a sense that her hard bitten nature is not derived from her losing faith--that it may actually be there because of her faith. Pity I suspect she won't be around for Episodes two through seven.

8) You know, the script by Jack Thorne plants in our heads the idea that having organic matter pass through the fades burns them...but the surprise in learning that it isn't a metaphor, and that a fade will burst into embers and ash once you walk through it, is one of the better supernatural moments of the story.

Boy, the Ghost Busters sure fell on hard times....

9) Okay, the constant pop culture references are beginning to get on my nerves. They're forced, and only serves to remind me that this is yet another attempt by the BBC to get a second lil' Whedonverse-esque merchandising machine up and spitting out cash.

10) You know, now that I've got a better look at it, maaaaaybe I'd be more freaked by eyeball licking monster dude if he didn't look like Andy Dick after a few too many nights of partying.

Overall...this is better than some of the earlier attempts British television had made to recreate Buffy (I'm looking at you, Hex and Demons)...but I don't know if there's enough there to raise it up above being nothing more than a pale imitation of Joss Whedon's baby.

Of course, I have to also wonder why a nation with such a rich heritage of horror fiction keeps looking to a series over a decade old for inspiration for their own television genre shows.