Where Eagles Dare and The Guns Of Navarone are both excellent - MacLean wrote the screenplay for the former at the same time as writing the novel. Apparently Richard Burton asked him to write a story that he could take his son of about 12 to see in the cinema, and this was the result. The Guns Of Navarone is the only really good MacLean film adaption to which he didn’t also write the screenplay. It takes a few liberties with the book, but it all works in context, so I can’t fault it.
Ice Station Zebra, on the other hand, goes quite some way off course from the book. The book has been described as something a bit like Agatha Christie, a closed-environment murder mystery (which you could also say about some of his other novels, particularly Bear Island and Breakheart Pass); but the film suffers for deviating too far from the book. And I mean way too far. Yes, they’re still on a sub, going to the north pole to find a vital piece of film, but the rest of it is nothing at all the same!
When I used the ‘If it isn’t broke don’t fix it’ metaphor I was meaning in the sense of the Live Action Transformers movies. Those have been massive financial successes for Hasbro. But they are awfully bad movies with a lot of faults. Rather than try and fix the various faults they are just keeping doing the same thing. Just because a movie makes money it doesn’t mean it’s a good movie.
Fair enough. Yes, there’s plenty of crap out there that makes money. Reminds me of something George Takei said about Star Trek when they first started making it - he smelled quality on the show, and was instantly worried that meant the show would fail!
For example look at their 1986 Inhumanoids line. Scientists with hi-tech suits fighting massive creatures from the Earth’s core. Did not do well when it was released. Even though they released 4x 6" heroes figures a couple vehicles, a few creatures and 3x MASSIVE 24" monsters. 2013/2014, films like Pacific Rim and Godzilla have been massive success. This would be a perfect time for them to try and capitalize on the Man vs. Giant monster theme, but they are not. Instead they would rather treat us to another Transformers movie…
Inhumanoids is a show that I’ve heard mentioned a few times without ever having known what it is until you just told me.
Hitchcok made so many good movies. Psycho is still one of the best (if not the best) horror movies made. The second Psycho sequel is very good even though he didn’t direct it. I love ‘The Rear Window’ and ‘Vertigo’. ‘The Birds’ and ‘The 39 Steps’ were also really good. As are the other’s you mentioned although I don’t think I seen all of ‘Dial M for Murder’. I have a book on all his films which shows production photographs and posters etc. I must get it and a few more for the DVD collection.
Actually, Hitcchock is a great example of the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mentality, because he did remake one of his own films, “The Man Who Knew Too Much”. I’ve never seen the original 1930s black & white version, but the colour version from 1956 with James Stewart is one of his best. Here is a man who was not afraid to say “this didn’t work the first time round, I’m going to go back and remake it, and fix what I did wrong”. A lesson that the rest of Hollywood never learned. They just think, “who wants to remake a flop?” instead of thinking, “why was this a flop? What was done wrong? Can we try again and make it work this time?”
Which brings me back to Star Trek - the whole history of which is littered with second chances! It took two pilots to get the show commissioned, and when they made the second one, Gene Roddenberry looked at what he had done wrong the first time and corrected it in a big way, that second pilot is still one of the very best episodes ever made! And then 15yrs later, when they hit the big screen, the first film, although a moderate financial success, was not viewed with much affection, so when making the second, they looked at what they had done wrong, and fixed it - and the result was Wrath Of Khan! Arguably still the best of the Trek films (and a worthy addition to any film collection in general!).
The Three Investigators books are similar to the Hardy Boys books. They are about three teenage boys in a fictional seaside town in California called Rocky Beach and they run their own investigating firm located in an old caravan in one of the members Uncle’s salvage yard. They ran from the mid 60’s to the late 80’s. I started reading the re-released reprints in the early 90’s. When Hichcok died they referenced it in the books and in that particular book they meet a former detective turned famous mystery writer who the writers use to introduce the books.
Not read the Hardy Boys so can’t comment there!
