Reeling Backward: "The Last Days of Sodom and Gomorrah" (1962)

"The Last Days of Sodom and Gomorrah" is a classic example of mid-century ersatz Hollywood cheese, a cynical attempt to rip off a spectacularly successful film on the cheap.

Stewart Grangers plays Lot from the famous biblical tale of "Sodom and Gomorrah" (as this film was known everywhere else in the world but America). He's got the same poofy white-and-grey pompadour that Charlton Heston wore in "The Ten Commandments," though sans beard. Ostensibly this is because Lot is in mourning after the death of his wife, but he remarries midway through and the chin whiskers never appear. I think the filmmakers just didn't want to hide Granger's famous jutting chin.

The movie was a French/Italian/American production financed by the likes of Joseph E. Levine, famous for bringing cut-rate Hercules and Japanese monster flicks to these shores and promoting the hell out of them. (He also financed prestige projects like "A Bridge Too Far.") He and his fellows did a fair job on this film, making it a modest international hit without any of the sumptuous production values of "Commandments."

It was directed by Robert Aldrich, who had a fine career with the likes of "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?", "The Dirty Dozen," "The Flight of the Phoenix" and "The Longest Yard." Screenwriters Giorgio Prosperi and Hugo Butler loosely based the script on the book by Richard Wormser, taking great liberties with biblical texts to flesh out Lot's story into a 2½ hour movie.

As I remember from interminable Sunday school classes, the basic tale of Lot is one of loss and redemption, and more loss. Lot leads his portion of the Hebrew tribe out of the desert to the edge of the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, famous for their salt mining and lecherous ways. After initially keeping the Jews upright in their faith as farmers, Lot eventually succumbs to power and vanity, as they move into Sodom and become corrupted.

But then the angels of God warn him of the city's destruction, and he pleads to let the city be spared if he can find 50 men of good will in Sodom -- which he then haggles down to 10. Strangely, in the movie he never actually seems to go looking for the 10 good men, and the Lord's wrath is unleashed in the form of a storm that looks eerily like an atomic bomb explosion. Despite the warning of the angels, Lot's wife looks back on the city's destruction and, seeing the power of God unveiled, is turned into a pillar of salt.

The film adds a whole bunch of new characters and subplots from Wormer's book, while leaving out chunks of biblical text. For instance, the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah and Lot's capture by the Elamite leader Chedorlaome, and subsequent rescue at the hands of Abraham, is omitted.

And, needless to say for a film released in 1962, Lot's subsequent incest with both of his daughters is left out. Though there is a fair amount of flesh for a movie of this era, including a languid tracking shot across a bunch of sleeping revelers, who are clearly implied to have just held an orgy.

"The Last Days of Sodom and Gomorrah" also shows Lot leaving Sodom not only with his family, but the entire Hebrew tribe. This is obviously an attempt to replicate the exodus scenes of Moses from "The Ten Commandments." (Don't forget, back then extras were cheaper and more effective than special effects.)

Anouk Aimée plays the exotic heavy, aka Yul Brynner's counterpart in this movie. As Queen Bera, she rules with a benevolent but depraved hand, encouraging her people to engage in all sorts of debaucherous pleasures. Her brother, Astaroth (Stanley Baker), longs to overthrow her, and isn't particularly subtle about it. He secretly arranges a compact with the Elamites to attack the Hebrews and Sodom.

Astaroth spars with Lot from the get-go, and have a couple of duels in which the much older Lot easily bests him, despite using only a shepherd's crook as a weapon. The prince manages to deflower both of Lot's daughters (off-camera), Shuah (Rossana Podesta) and Maleb (Claudia Mori). As is typical for this type of movie, the children become resentful of their father and enamored with the glamorous ways of their adopted homeland.

Lot's primary relationship is with Ildith (Pier Angeli), a Sodomite slave and chief of Queen Bera's household retinue. She is given to Lot as a peace offering during their negotiations -- Bera agrees to allow the Hebrews to occupy the land across the River Jordan in exchange for a share of their crops. Ildith, used to the soft ways of the city, is mightily put out but eventually becomes Lot's second wife.

There's really not much to recommend about "The Last Days of Sodom and Gomorrah." A couple of the battle scenes are fitfully entertaining, and Granger has screen presence as the stiff-but-honorable Lot. Most of the people involved with the production apparently considered it the low point of their creative careers, and I don't find much reason to disagree with them.

Reeling Backward: "The Wild Geese" (1978)

"The Wild Geese" is just an aggressively bad piece of crap. It was part of the "war adventure" pictures that seemed to have a heyday during the 1970s and early '80s, often idolizing the mercenaries and spies who had so often played cinematic heavies. In many ways these movies, largely exploitative escapist fantasy, were a reaction to the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era.

The hook here is that it's four old mercenaries having another go. I'd call it the proverbial "one last job," except that while half the four main characters have to be lured back into the game, the other two see it as just another in a series of missions.

Stars Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Roger Moore and Hardy Krüger were, respectively, 53, 48, 51 and 50 when the film came out in 1978 -- though Burton, long beset by ailments self-inflicted and not, looked closer to 70 than 50. I don't know if their chronological ages qualify as "old," though maybe that's a self-defense mechanism on my part, since I'm not much younger than that.

The set-up is that Allen Faulkner (Burton), a former colonel in the British army, is hired by Sir Edward Matherson (Stewart Granger), a powerful banker and nobleman, to rescue a deposed African president named Julius Limbani (Winston Ntshona). Limbani is a true reformer, a force for good in a continent that has often known despotic rulers who only wish to exploit their own people and natural resources.

But Matherson is not in it for altruistic purposes, nor indeed is Faulkner. The bankers want him back in power because they think he'll be better for business that his autocratic usurper. And Faulkner, who has fought on the behalf of clients both noble and not, sees a big paycheck -- as well as a taste of the adventure he craves.

That's a recurring theme among the 50 or so ex-soldiers Faulkner recruits for the mission: a desire to return to a life that had meaning, even if it was very dangerous. Most of the men are over 40, a few out of shape, but mostly still fellows in their prime who want to hold a gun again and make a difference -- while collecting a huge paycheck, of course.

Like so many movies of this ilk, the first half has to do with recruiting the team and putting the pieces into place, and the second half is the mission itself, which always starts out smooth as whipped butter and soon turns to disaster. In this case, it's because Matherson pulls his support at the last minute, choosing Limbani's successor over the man he's just paid to have rescued. Their plane literally leaves them at the airstrip.

Faulkner's first recruit is Rafer Janders (Harris), a logistical whiz and military tactician. A man of conscience, he regrets having used his skills at the behest of unworthy dictators, and has settled into a contented life as an art dealer, raising a young son, Emile, alone after his much-younger French wife abandoned them. So beneficent is Rafer, he refuses to speak an ill word about his former lover. He's convinced to join because of Limbani's status as "the real thing" who will help his nation.

Moore turns up as Shawn Fynn, a rakish ladies' man who has fallen onto working for the local mob -- or "mah-fia," as they pronounce it in the British lilt. Other than a sequence where he kills a mobster's jerk kid and then briefly has a contract put out on his head, Fynn doesn't really serve much purpose in the story.

There's a ridiculous part where the hitmen, in the midst of trying to take out Fynn, Rafer and Faulkner, learn the contract has been lifted and suddenly flee away from the scene. Because those sorts of guys would hate to kill someone by accident.

Last, and least, is Krüger as Pieter Coetzee, a white South African who wants to use the money from the job to buy a farm in his homeland and settle down. Pieter has worked for a lot of despots to keep the black man down, and delights in calling Africans "kaffir," which is the roughly the American equivalent of the n-word.

After the rescue has been effected -- in a tightly wound action sequence that is probably the movie's best -- Pieter and Limbani start sniping at each other, with the African eventually convincing the Afrikaner that there are some things worth fighting for. Of course, this epiphany arrives just in time for Pieter to sacrifice himself for Limbani.

Director Andrew V. McLaglen (son of actor Victor) and screenwriter Reginald Rose, who adapted the then-unpublished novel by Daniel Carney, seem intent on creating an old-school "adventure film" with some modern themes. That's all well and fine, but they ended up with a straightforward, downbeat piece that plays out like a geriatric swan song.

The film did well overseas but flopped in the U.S., partly due to some studio troubles and partly because of the lack of an American star in the cast. It did spawn a 1985 sequel, which is even more lightly regarded than this film.

The Simbas, the force of supposedly elite African soldiers whom the Wild Geese fight -- I should mention this term is never used during the movie -- end up as a faceless bogeymen who fall down when the good guys shoot them. This is one of those pictures were the villainous bullets rarely (though eventually) find their mark, but the machine guns of the hero can take out four or five of the enemy in one deluge.

"The Wild Geese" has been criticized as racist, mostly because the film shot in South Africa during Apartheid, but also because of the way the Simbas are portrayed. Normally I resist this sort of politicized critique of movies, though here it's rather hard to avoid. 

I would swear that in several shots they used non-African actors or stunt men done up in blackface. And during one scene where they kill the mercenaries' homosexual medic with knives, I clearly heard the cries of chimpanzees on the soundtrack.

About that gay medic: Witty, played by Kenneth Griffith, somehow manages to be both a progressive and regressive icon in one depiction. On the one hand, he's a fairly stereotypical mincing fag, seemingly attracted to every straight man he comes in contact with. He even makes out his will to a beloved proctologist. But he's completely accepted by the other men of the mercenary unit, and he proves himself a brave and capable soldier.

Reeling Backward: "King Solomon's Mines"

Stewart Granger was the biggest film star in England before 1950, but few in the States had heard of him. "King Solomon's Mines" turned that around overnight.

The most famous adaptation of the novel by H. Rider Haggard was not the first one, or the last. Cedric Hardwicke played hunter/adventurer Allan Quartermain in a 1937 version, and people of my generation think of Richard Chamberlain as that character from the 1985 version. There have also been numerous foreign cheapies, an Italian Hercules crossover, and a Patrick Swayze TV movie.

Interestingly, all the film versions have sexed up the book by adding a female character for Quartermain to woo. In Haggard's original story, it was pretty much an all-male affair, except for some native women they meet on their journeys. Quartermain is hired to lead an expedition in search of a Captain Goode's brother, who wandered into the African desert in search of the fabled diamond mine.

In the 1937 and 1985 versions, the Goode character is changed to a woman and the lost relative is her father. For 1950, Elizabeth Curtis (Deborah Kerr) is searching for her missing husband. This adds an extra layer of intrigue, since she and Quartermain fall for each other during their journey, but must restrain themselves because of social mores (not to mention Hollywood's Production Code).

Capt. Goode is still around, although he got decommissioned into Elizabeth's brother, along for the journey.

My biggest problem with the movie is that it's 90 percent journey and 10 percent adventure. Quartermain et al spend so much time getting to the mines, my eyes glazed at the thought of yet another shot of crocodiles sliding into a river or giraffes leaping across the plain. I suppose this was pretty novel stuff 60 years ago, but for me it got old rather fast.

The most interesting thing about the film now is its depiction of African natives. On the whole, directors Compton Bennett and Andrew Marton and screenwriter Helen Deutsch -- who also wrote "The Seventh Cross," recently featured in this space -- paint a fairly progressive portrait of the native tribes.

Yes, there's a lot of gee-whiz shots of them in strange outfits and dancing around, but the film seems to respect their culture while clearly exploiting its entertainment value.

Khiva, Quartermain's right-hand man, is shown to be a respected friend rather than a mere employee. Umbopa, the freakishly tall stranger who offers to be a bearer for the expedition, is revealed as a prince in exile returning to claim his throne.

It's notable that for the climactic showdown at the end of the film, Quartermain is a mere spectator. The duel is between Umbopa and Twala, the evil king who has usurped the throne.

Can you imagine Indiana Jones being a mere cheerleader for the big fight?

I was fascinated how the characters seem to be utterly disinterested in the riches of Solomon's mines. After being taken to the mines filled with diamonds -- where the skeleton of Elizabeth's husband is found -- they are sealed into a cave by the tribal witch doctor. (In the book, this was a female witch.) They escape through an underground river, but no one is shown filling their pockets with precious stones (as in the novel).

Once the fighting is all over, Quartermain, Elizabeth and Goode ride off into the sunset, leaving Umbopa and his tribe in peace, the riches of the mines intact. That's about how I feel about the film, one with great potential that remains unplundered.

2 stars