Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by danj (A) on March 17, 2002 at 12:06:06

In Reply to: Joseph Losey posted by edta on March 16, 2002 at 16:21:00:

A second-tier director but quite capable of good work, when presented with the right material.

Modesty Blaise was a real kick. Brainless but funny, like most camp from the 60s.

I used to live in the town where some of Modesty Blaise was filmed. Actually, it was filmed in Gaeta harbor some seven years before my arrival. Seeing the movie is like "old home week."

Losey loses points with me for his BOOM! and SECRET CEREMONY. Two films which starred Liz Taylor in her biggest I'M A BIG MOVIE STAR period. I think Losey did his best but seeing Taylor on screen being so relentlessly awful is downright painful! Thanks to WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLFE? her career survived. (She was great in that)

Actually, SECRET CEREMONY was just mediocre. BOOM!, on the other hand, is horrible. And I can't really say why I hated it so much. Taylor was awful, but no worse than in 50% of her other films. I guess it was just that the total was so much less than than the sum of its parts. Honestly, when I think of bad films, I not only think of Ed Wood and Roger Corman' early work, I think of the big-budget turkeys like BOOM!.

MODESTY BLAISE! was much better because it never pretended to be anything other than what it was.