The Curator of Schlock #386 by Jeff Shuster

The Black Windmill

Michael Caine versus Donald Pleasence’s mustache.

I had blacked out after seeing the denizens of Mooseville devour a roasted kangaroo right in front of me. I came to.

Larry was standing over me. He helped me up and told me his story.

Apparently, Larry was an undercover agent working for the Canadian government. He was trying to uncover an illegal kangaroo slaughterhouse. I panicked.

Then Larry told me the kangaroo I saw was not Edwige and that she was still alive.

— To be continued.

This week’s movie is 1974’s The Black Windmill from director Don Siegel. I think I was waxing nostalgic for the trio of Harry Palmer movies I watched a couple years back. The Black Windmill is not in the Harry Palmer series, but Michael Caine plays a middle class spy in the employ of Her Majesty’s Government, so close enough.

The movie starts with two young English schoolboys exploring an abandoned military base with their toy plane. Two RAF officers grab them and drive them to one of the abandoned buildings, chiding the boys for trespassing. A man named McKee (John Vernon) drugs the boys and has them tossed in the back of a car. Turns out he isn’t really an RAF officer. The whole thing was a ruse to kidnap the son of a prominent British spy.

That spy is a Major Tarrant played by Michael Caine. He’s busy investigating arms smugglers selling weapons to the IRA. He meets a woman named Celia Burrows (Delphine Seyrig) who tells him to stop by next week to meet the big boss. That big boss must be McKee because he’s hiding out in that house and one gets the impression that he and Celia must be ten steps ahead of Tarrant.

Tarrant meets up with his wife, Alex (Janet Suzman), who’s in a panic over a call she’s expecting regarding their son. When the call comes in, it’s McKee. He says he’s kidnapped Tarrant’s son and he’s got some demands, first of which is to talk to Tarrant’s boss, Cedric Harper (Donald Pleasance). McKee will call back at 7 PM and Harper had better answer or else bad things will happen to the boy. Tarrant relays this request to Harper who agrees to take the call.

I don’t like Harper. The man seems more interested in the latest item from Q Branch, a travel bag that can shoot missiles, than the fate of a child. When Harper takes the call from McKee, he keeps fiddling with his mustache the whole time. You’re a grown man. Don’t fiddle with your mustache! It’s revealed that McKee wants a bag of diamonds that Harper has sealed away in a vault. Tarrant is supposed to travel alone to France and deliver them. Harper says no and gives Tarrant his condolences on the fate of his boy.

Tarrant has been surprisingly stoic during this whole affair. His wife is in pieces over the kidnapping, but Tarrant is strangely unaffected. Still, the decision by his boss to leave his son to a horrible fate, motivates Tarrant to steal the diamonds and confront the bad guys. A wine barrel gets blown up and McKee takes a bunch of bullets to his crotch area. Yeah, seeing John Vernon get machine gunned in the crotch almost made the movie for me. Almost.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, and episode 496) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #269 by Jeff Shuster

Funeral In Berlin

Harry Palmer is like James Bond except totally different. 

I’m so excited! The Star Wars Episode 9 trailer dropped! I’m just so excited! And I just can’t hide it! It’s called The Rise of Skywalker. What could that mean? I mean I hate to say this, but Luke faded into star stuff at the end of the last movie. Luke died as he lived, a failure. Who cares? We got Billy Dee Williams reprising his role as Lando Calrissian. I can’t wait to watch him die the painful and humiliating death he deserves.

Speaking of painful and humiliating, Michael Caine returns as secret agent Harry Palmer in tonight’s movie, 1966’s Funeral In Berlin from director Guy Hamilton. Hey, he directed Diamonds Are Forever, the worst James Bond movie—I mean, the worst James Bond movie starring Sean Connery, which is still the worst Bond movie.

I don’t count 1967’s Casino Royale, the comic atrocity starring Peter Sellers and Orson Welles. The 1967 Casino Royale barely counts as a movie. It’s more like a bunch of random scenes strung together by a coke fiend. Maybe I didn’t need the word like in that last sentence.

So how is Funeral in Berlin? It’s better than Casino Royale.

Better than Diamonds Are Forever?

Well, you can’t really compare Harry Palmer to James Bond. Harry Palmer wears glasses. James Bond does not. Harry Palmer can’t afford a car. James Bond drives an Aston Martin DB5. Beautiful women seduce Harry Palmer. James Bond seduces beautiful women. Harry Palmer enjoys gourmet food. James Bond enjoys gourmet food. Hey, they’ve got something in common.

The plot of Funeral in Berlin involves Harry Palmer taking a trip to Berlin so a Russian Colonel can defect to the United Kingdom because retirement isn’t looking so good for this old communist. He doesn’t want to defect to the United States because Americans are just another bunch of revolutionaries with better pants.

Let me tell you something, my Soviet friend. Those revolutionaries gave the world Skyline Chilli, Teddy Ruxpin, and seven seasons of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. What did England give the world? Mushy peas, the Crooked Man, and the cancellation of Wire in the Blood, the greatest crime drama to ever to grace—ah, never mind. Where was I?

This movie seems less eventful than The Ipcress File, which wasn’t all that eventful. Harry Palmer goes to Berlin pretending to be a lady’s underwear salesman. He meets a gorgeous Israeli spy played by Eva Renzi, and the actress dubbing her voice sounds pretty cute too. I think there’s a double cross. Someone gets shot. Twists and turns with as little action as possible. I know I’m not supposed to expect Tom-Cruise-attacking-a-helicopter-on-top-of-a-speeding-train kind of action, but we get nothing here.

I don’t know. Keep in mind that the second greatest Bond movie of all time, Thunderball, came out the previous year. I think I’m nearing to my five hundred-word count. Next week is Billion Dollar Brain, the final film in the Harry Palmer trilogy. I like the title. Lets hope this series goes out with a bang.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #268 by Jeff Shuster

The Ipcress File

Michael Caine is Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File!

I discovered an old audio clip of Orson Welles going on a furious rant while doing a commercial for frozen fish sticks. The script called for Welles to say “crisp, crumb coating.” Or was it “crumb, crisp coating”? Regardless, Welles yelled at the director. I guess those words don’t roll off the tongue so well. Kind of like the word Ipcress.

Ipcress.

Kind of reminds me of watercress. Watercress sandwiches. I don’t get the English.

Tonight’s movie is 1965’s The Ipcress File from director Sidney J. Furie. The movie is adapted from the novel, The IPCRESS File by Len Deighton. Why Ipcress is in all caps for the novel and not for the motion picture remains one of history’s greatest mysteries. The film was touted as the “Thinking Man’s Goldfinger” and was produced by one of the producers of the James Bond series, Harry Saltzman. And most importantly, it was the movie made Michael Caine a household name.

Michael Caine plays Harry Palmer, a bespectacled member of Great Britain’s Ministry of Defence. That is not a typo. That is how the British spell defense. I guess when they’re done stuffing their faces with watercress sandwiches, they’re busy trying to undo the hard work of Noah Webster, but I digress. Much like your Curator of Schlock, Harry Palmer enjoys the finer things in life. He’ll buy the fancy canned mushrooms at the grocers even if said mushrooms cost more money because they have the better flavor.

Don’t be expecting exotic locales in this movie. The film takes place in dismal, dreary London. That, or the movie needs remastering in 4k. You get to see Harry Palmer shopping for his fancy canned mushrooms in a 1960s American-style grocery store, crashing his cart into other carts. That’s the closest you’ll get to a car chase in this flick. Remember, this is a cerebral Bond picture so put on your thinking cap and don’t bother waiting to ogle Ursula Andress because she isn’t in this movie.

There’s some action. I think Harry Palmer gets into some fisticuffs with some bald guy before losing the tail. He accidentally shoots and kills a CIA agent at some point. I’m not sure who the bad guys are. Communists or some kind of SPECTRE-like organization? They’ve been causing scientists to quit their profession, causing a severe deficiency in British Intelligence. It’s up to Harry Palmer and they rest of the Ministry of Defence to get to the bottom of this, all while ignoring the misspelling of their defense department.

Do you like seeing Michael Caine get tortured? The bad guys have some sort of brainwashing machine they invented, tucking Harry Palmer in some kind of metal-rimmed room while blaring noise at him. Palmer keeps self-inflicting pain to avoid the brainwashing. Will he triumph? I guess he will since they made two sequels. Next week we’ll see Harry Palmer in Funeral in Berlin. Maybe 1960s Berlin will be cheerier than 1960s London.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.