In which 1980 sci-fi movie do Max von Sydow, Topol, Ornella Muti, Timothy Dalton and Mariangela Melato co-star alongside leading actor Sam J. Jones
LEVEL 3 — 🎞️ FILM BUFF
This Film Buff quiz is for demanding cinephiles who watch films constantly and love digging into the stories, people, and details behind them. Some questions will take us to other eras, while others will be much more recent. Some films will be familiar and heavily played, while others may be obscure discoveries that even experienced film fans have never come across.
To begin, we are going back to 1980 and to a science-fiction adventure directed by Mike Hodges and produced by Dino De Laurentiis. Its leading man was former Playgirl centerfold Sam J. Jones, surrounded by a remarkable cast that included Melody Anderson, Max von Sydow, Topol, Ornella Muti, Timothy Dalton and Mariangela Melato. The film was given an unforgettable musical identity by the rock band Queen, while its extravagant and colorful costumes were created by the great Italian designer Danilo Donati, who also served as production designer. But the story itself was much older. It first appeared in 1934, created by artist Alex Raymond, and Hollywood quickly brought the character to the screen. Between 1936 and 1940, three movie serials were made, all starring Buster Crabbe. Television later returned to the character several more times, in both live-action and animated versions.
Next, we move to a 1955 Western directed by Raoul Walsh. In The Tall Men, Clark Gable and Cameron Mitchell, who was 18 years younger than Gable, are two brothers looking for work when a wealthy businessman, played by Robert Ryan, offers them a job helping him drive a large herd of cattle from Texas to Montana. The journey, however, is far from easy. Along the way, they face countless dangers and obstacles, while, as any good Western of the era demands, a woman enters the story and complicates matters between the two men. But there is more to this journey than cattle and gunfights.
We now enter the impressive world of James Bond and look for the title of the film starring Sophie Marceau, Robert Carlyle, Denise Richards, Judi Dench, John Cleese and Pierce Brosnan as James Bond. The film also marked the final appearance of the much-loved British actor Desmond Llewelyn as Q. He first played the character in From Russia with Love (1963) and went on to appear as Q in 17 Bond films over the next 36 years, making him the longest-recurring actor in the 007 franchise. Yet, surprisingly, his total screen time as Q was only a little over 30 minutes. Llewelyn died in a car accident shortly after the film was released. Shortly before his death, he had said that he was planning to return for the next Bond movie.
The Dutch film The 4th Man (1983) opened the doors to Hollywood for both its director, Paul Verhoeven, and its cinematographer, Jan de Bont. Both would later move to Hollywood and go on to create some major successes. The 4th Man is an erotic thriller filled with strong Christian symbolism, and it also features a strikingly beautiful leading actress, Dutch star Renée Soutendijk. Christian images, symbols and references appear throughout the film, while its protagonist is a bisexual writer with a strong religious faith. But religion is not simply part of the film's atmosphere. It becomes part of the mystery itself, leaving us to wonder whether the visions experienced by Reve are divine signs—or simply products of his imagination and fears.
And now we move on to a little-known adventure film shot in Greece, starring and produced by the mysterious Greek-American actor and producer Nico Minardos. Assault on Agathon (1976) is an intriguing piece of forgotten cinema, with two beautiful women, Niana Van Pallandt and Marianne Faithfull, joining him in the cast. The story follows a CIA team operating in Greece as they try to capture a powerful drug dealer. But with Greece providing the setting and the mysterious Minardos at the center of the story, this forgotten adventure may have more secrets waiting to be uncovered. So, can you remember the title of this unusual 1976 adventure?
Yimou Zhang is one of China's most distinguished filmmakers, with a remarkable career that includes films such as Raise the Red Lantern (1991), The Story of Qiu Ju (1992), To Live (1994), Hero (2002), House of Flying Daggers (2004) and Coming Home (2014). His directorial debut was Red Sorghum (1988), based on the books of Nobel Prize-winning Chinese author Mo Yan. The film tells the story of a young woman who is forced to marry a leper, but her life takes an unexpected turn when she becomes involved with one of the men working for her husband. Red Sorghum was also the film debut of the young actress who plays the leading role. She and Zhang would go on to work together on ten films, creating one of the most notable director-actress partnerships in Chinese cinema. The film went on to win the Golden Bear at the 1988 Berlin International Film Festival.
We now travel back to the 1950s and to Richard Sale, a screenwriter, pulp writer and film director. Sale, who was married to the equally successful and prolific screenwriter Mary Loos, adapted one of his own stories for a 1957 adventure film. The story began with his 1938 short story Seven Waves Away and follows a cruise ship that strikes a mine, leaving the captain dead and an officer facing an agonizing decision aboard an overcrowded lifeboat. The story has similarities to the real-life sinking of the American ship William Brown in 1841. The William Brown struck an iceberg and lost 31 of its 65 passengers. Two boats carrying 17 crew members and the remaining passengers escaped the wreck, but more than a dozen people were sacrificed because one of the lifeboats was dangerously overcrowded. Interestingly, the film was released under several different titles, including Seven Waves Away, Seven Seas Away, Seven Days from Now and Abandon Ship!
Before becoming a film, The Right Stuff was a 1979 book by Tom Wolfe, bringing together two remarkable chapters of America's postwar aviation history. It follows the daring test pilots who pushed experimental aircraft to their limits, while also telling the story of the men chosen to become the first astronauts of NASA's Project Mercury. Four years later, in 1983, it became a beautiful, bittersweet and unforgettable film. Despite an impressive cast that included Sam Shepard, Ed Harris, Scott Glenn, Fred Ward, Dennis Quaid, Barbara Hershey, Veronica Cartwright and Kim Stanley in her final film, The Right Stuff failed at the box office. But commercial success could not measure what the film achieved. Caleb Deschanel's magnificent cinematography gives the story a breathtaking sense of space and movement, while Bill Conti's beautiful music brings warmth and emotion to the extraordinary journey. The film can be spectacular without losing its human side, moving effortlessly from the excitement of the test flights to the hopes, fears, rivalries and sacrifices of the people behind them. It is both a celebration of courage and a bittersweet portrait of an era when reaching the sky seemed like the beginning of something even greater.
We move on to a rather strange and now largely forgotten film from 2012, directed by Billy Bob Thornton, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Tom Epperson. It was his first film as a director after All the Pretty Horses (2000). The story takes place in Alabama in 1969. When a woman who left her American family years earlier dies in England and asks to be buried in her homeland, the two families she left behind are brought together for the first time. On one side is the American family, headed by Robert Duvall, while on the other is the English family of the man she later married, played by John Hurt. The funeral becomes an opportunity for old rivalries, family wounds and cultural differences to come to the surface. Thornton was strongly influenced by the world of Tennessee Williams, and that influence can be felt in the large troubled family, the buried secrets and the tensions simmering beneath the surface. The cast also includes Kevin Bacon, Robert Patrick, Ray Stevenson, Frances O'Connor, and Thornton himself. There is also an interesting piece of casting trivia. Tippi Hedren, best known for The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964), filmed scenes for the movie, but they were ultimately left on the cutting-room floor. Even so, the producers thanked her in the closing credits.
We move on to the directorial debut of the acclaimed Greek-American cinematographer Phedon Papamichael. It is Sketch Artist, a 1992 television crime thriller that tells the story of a police sketch artist who helps a witness remember the face of a woman she saw leaving the scene of a murder. As he begins drawing the woman's face, he makes a disturbing discovery: the woman described by the witness looks remarkably like his own wife, Rayanne. What begins as a routine police procedure suddenly becomes much more personal, as he has to question what he knows about the woman closest to him. The cast includes Sean Young, Drew Barrymore, Tchéky Karyo and Charlotte Lewis. The film was followed by a sequel, Sketch Artist II: Hands That See (1995), with the same leading man but this time with Courteney Cox alongside him and a different director.
We go back in time to 1934 for a light and entertaining pre-Code comedy directed by Marion Gering. The story involves a European princess, her look-alike, and a wealthy American businessman, leading to a series of misunderstandings and unexpected situations. At the center of it all is Cary Grant, who finds himself caught in a strange game of mistaken identity, trying to understand who the woman in front of him really is and what is going on behind the change of identities. One of the screenwriters was Preston Sturges, who would later become one of Hollywood's most celebrated comedy writers and directors.
And we will close this quiz with another commercial failure, which is also one of the reasons this film has become so little known today. It is the British comedy Honky Tonk Freeway (1981), a film whose impressive cast could not save it from becoming a box-office disappointment. The cast includes William Devane, Teri Garr, Beau Bridges, Beverly D'Angelo, Daniel Stern, Celia Weston, George Dzundza, Geraldine Page, Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. The film was the idea of British producer Don Boyd, who was originally set to direct it. He imagined an American-style comedy based more on his idea of American life than on actual knowledge of it, but he was eventually replaced as director. The film also has an unusual musical credit. The score was shared by Elmer Bernstein and George Martin, the legendary producer of The Beatles. Bernstein provided the bright, upbeat symphonic music, while Martin contributed the more melodic and melancholy passages, often using blues guitar and strings. This creates an interesting contrast, with an upbeat scene sometimes leading directly into a much sadder musical theme.