Tag Archives: Michael Parks

ffolkes (1980)

Posted on February 19, 2022 | Leave a comment

ffolks2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Loves cats, hates women.

Rufus Excalibur ffolkes (Roger Moore) is a cat loving misogynist who dislikes women because he grew up the youngest of five sisters and forced to wear their hand-me-downs until he was age 10. As an adult he is a counter-terrorism expert and trains a team of men to go onto ships at sea that have been hijacked. When a North Sea oil production platform nicknamed Jennifer gets taken over by a group of men posing as reporters their leader (Anthony Perkins) demands an enormous ransom and it’s up to ffolkes and his team to board the platformed and kill the terrorists without allowing the ship, which has been booby-trapped with bombs by the criminals, to blow-up.

The film, which was based on the novel ‘Esther, Ruth & Jennifer’ by Jack Davies, who also wrote the screenplay, starts out well and has all the ingredients to being a compelling thriller. The on-location shooting done on an actual ship makes the viewer feel like they’re out at sea themselves and I found the foot chase done on the vessel during a raging rainstorm to be riveting. Perkins makes for a particularly slimy villain and Micheal Parks, as the mastermind who constructs and implements the bombs, was also impressive wearing glasses that make his eyes look like they’re bulging and it’s just a shame these two men had to co-star together as they’d be able to eat-up the scenes had they been allowed to do it alone without any henchmen.

The ffolkes character works against type playing a good-guy that tests the viewer’s assumption of what’s acceptable behavior for a protagonist. Too many movies create a hero-like caricature of someone who is overly noble, brave, and virtuous until it becomes boring and contrived. At least here the guy we’re supposed to cheering for is interestingly flawed therefore more human-like than super-heroes in most other films, especially those made today, who are just too-good-to-be-true.

ffolkes though does spend too much time sitting in the background working on a crochet of a cat while giving-off glib remarks and not being as active as he should. He’s also constantly drinking scotch at all hours of the day, straight out of the bottle, which should’ve made him inebriated and this most likely would’ve come into play at some later point where he wasn’t able to pull-off an intricate task because he was too drunk, but after introducing his drinking problem during the first half, it gets completely forgotten by the second.

While the character acts extraordinarily arrogant and cocky he’s not able to pull-off the assignment quite as easily as you’d think for someone with his amount of confidence. One scene has him stupidly walking right into a gunmen and it takes the sheer luck of someone hiding in a lifeboat to save him. Another scene has him almost killed by one of his own men making him seem like he’s not as good of an instructor as his reputation suggests and all leads to him unintentionally coming-off more like a deluded idiot than the crafty mastermind with a few personality quirks that he’s supposed to be.

The story, while having a solid set-up, ultimately becomes the biggest letdown. For one thing it never shows us how they’re able to pull-off the fake explosion of Ruth, another oil platform. They talk about rigging it to seem like it exploded to fool the bad guys, and we do see something exploding, but no explanation of what it was since the real Ruth secretly remains standing. Also, most ships have a radar system, which should’ve shown that the real Ruth never went away and that they had been duped, but for whatever reason they never catch-on.

The ending surprisingly lacks very little action, which is what was blamed for the film’s poor reception at the box office. People are expecting a movie that stars Moore to have a lot of stunt work and special effects and for the most part it never happens. The villains go down too easily making it not very satisfying to see them go. There needed to be more wrinkles to the scenario and more unexpected twists as the pay-off and climactic finish is weak making one feel, despite the excellent performances, like it wasn’t worth sitting through.

Alternate Title: North Sea Hijack

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: April 3, 1980

Runtime: 1 Hour 38 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Andrew V. McLaglen

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, British Movies, Drama on the High Seas, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Novels, Thrillers/Suspense

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Wild Seed (1965)

Posted on April 22, 2018 | 3 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Runaway falls for drifter.

Daphne (Celia Kaye) is a 17-year-old who runs away from her foster parents (Woody Chambliss, Eva Novak) in order to meet her biological father (Ross Elliot) who resides in Los Angeles. On her journey from the east coast to the west she meets up with Fargo (Michael Parks) a drifter who teaches her the ropes of surviving on the streets. As their trip progresses so does Daphne’s feelings for Fargo who resists her advances despite having feelings for her as well.

This black-and-white mid ‘60s drama has too much of the same trappings of the teen runaway films that came both before and after it. There’s just nothing that particularly distinguishes it from the others, which hurts the ability of the viewer from getting into it because you think right from the start that you’ve essentially ‘seen it all before’. The film also has very little action and Daphne who at times acts with extraordinary naiveté could’ve had far worse things happen to her than what does giving the film a sanitized feel in regards to the runaway experience.

Kaye, who later went on to marry famous writer/director John Milius, lacks visual appeal and fails to seem all that ‘wild’ despite what the film’s title suggests. Much of the time she comes off as someone who is quite sheltered and timid about things and not anyone who would even consider going out recklessly into the world without much ‘street smarts’ to go with it. Her character shifts from being overly paternal about certain things, particularly the ‘lectures’ that she gives to Fargo, to acting incredibly naïve making her character lack any type of real center. She also fails to display a vulnerable side just a crusty defensive one. Instead of being someone the viewer cares for she replicates a pesky nag nobody would want hanging around.

Parks, in his film debut, channels James Dean a bit too much while his character remains an enigma that we learn very little about. The fact that he resists Daphne sexual advances, at least initially, was confusing as usually it’s the man that makes the first move. I kept figuring there had to be some reason for it that would come out later, like for instance he was secretly gay or insecure about his ability to perform, and yet no explanation is ever given.

The second-half improves as this is the type of film that grows on you if you’re patient. I enjoyed some of the long shots showing to the two from an extreme distance making them look like tiny little ants on the landscape, which nicely accentuates their place in the world as a whole. Bringing in the parents, both the biological and foster ones helps add to the drama and fills in the holes of the story, but having a relationship develop between the two leads didn’t seem authentic. Spending so much time trying to survive on the outer fringes of society doesn’t allow for much else most of all a romance. The film would’ve been more interesting had it expanded its timeline and shown how things ended up for the two 5 or even 10 years later and whether the relationship had remained, or whether they were even still alive at all.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: May 5, 1965

Runtime: 1Hour 39Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Brian G. Hutton

Studio: Universal

Available: None at this time.

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Posted in 60's Movies, Black & White, Drama, Obscure Movies, Road Movies

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The Happening (1967)

Posted on December 30, 2012 | 1 comment

the happening

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Kidnap him for kicks.

After a night of partying a group of hippies wake up the next morning hung over. Sandy (Faye Dunaway) and Sureshot (Michael Parks) are two strangers that find that they’ve slept together outside for the night and slowly become acquainted. To escape a police raid that is rounding up the drunken partiers and arresting them for vagrancy they hop onto a nearby boat with two other men that they’ve just met Taurus (George Maharis) and Herby (Robert Walker Jr.). They happily go along the lake until some neighborhood kids who are dressed in army gear shoot at them with their toy guns. Taurus doesn’t appreciate this and docks the boat and chases them into their house. Inside is the boy’s father Roc Delmonico (Anthony Quinn) who is a former Mafia Kingpin. He thinks these four strangers are aware of his past and there to kidnap him. The group decides to play along with the ruse hoping to get some money from the ransom and also because they are just bored and looking for some kicks.

The set-up has to be one of the flimsiest I have ever seen and the fact that it took four writers to come up with something that is full of holes and ludicrous is all the more confounding.  The concept seems like something that never got past the first draft and very poorly thought out by everyone involved. The idea that four strangers who have known each other for just a few minutes could get together and kidnap someone that they don’t know on a mere lark is ridiculous. I would think a former kingpin would be better prepared for something like this and have a back-up plan instead of passively and stupidly falling into the kid’s clutches with no idea of what to do. The story would have been far stronger had this been a planned crime.

The film’s overall vapid nature is shocking when you realize that is was done on a good budget by a major studio and top director Elliot Silverstein making me wonder if anyone even cared or thought about what they were making, or simply more interested in getting into the mod mood of the times. The filmmakers portray the younger generation as being one-dimensional thrill seekers with no real or discernible personalities and in the process creates characters that are boring, unrealistic, and uninteresting. The attempts at hipness are shallow, flat, and ultimately annoying.

Despite the low plausibility the movie is slickly done making for periods of fluffy entertainment. Case in point is when the kids have their car pulled over by a policeman (Eugene Roche) when they go through a red-light and carrying Roc tied up in the trunk. In an attempt to create a ‘diversion’ Sureshot decides to get out of the car with his hands up in the air. When the cop tells him to put his hands down he refuses, which then somehow makes all the other cars on the road crash into each other. Yes, it is fun to see a big pile-up, but believing that something like that could happen over something so silly is pushing things too much to the extreme like with a lot of things in this movie.

Things improve during the second half when Roc with the help of the kids turns the tables on everyone he knows after finding out that no one is willing to pay for his ransom. The scene where they tear up his house is kind of funky despite the fact that all the furniture they smash up looks like obvious stage props. Unfortunately the ending is as weak as the beginning and offers no pay off, which most likely will make most viewers feel like they’ve wasted an hour and 45 minutes of their time.

Quinn is good and gives the script and character a lot more energy and heart than it deserves. Dunaway, in her film debut, is hot and plays the part of an immoral lady looking for cheap thrills even when she knows better quite well. Walker Jr. is good simply because he plays the only character that has any type of believability, but unfortunately he is not on enough to be completely effective. Maharis who is best known for his excellent work as Buz Murdock in the classic TV-show ‘Route 66’ is solid as the volatile and slightly unhinged member of the group.

Oskar Homolka has a few memorable moments as an aging crime boss. One scene has him in a steam room along with his henchman wrapped tightly in towels and looking like giant carrots while another segment shows him at a poolside surrounded by a bevy of beautiful bikini clad women, which like the first scene, is visually funny.

The Supremes sing the film’s theme song, which became a top ten hit, but it doesn’t get played until the closing credits and even then not in its entirety.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: May 17, 1967

Runtime: 1Hour 41Minutes

Rated NR (Not Rated)

Director: Elliot Silverstein

Studio: Columbia

Available: None

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Posted in 60's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Gangster Movies, Kidnapping Movies, Obscure Movies, Quirky

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