The Guns of Navarone (1961) – Their mission: take out massive Nazi guns on a Greek island before they blow up Allied troop ships. Their assets: Gregory Peck, who can speak any language like a native and climb cliffs, and Anthony Quinn, who hates Peck’s guts. Their liabilities: David Niven is a passive-aggressive prick, and there’s probably a traitor too.
Modern audiences will find this style of big-budget filmmaking to be dated — too much studio lighting and rear-screen projection. But there’s still a good time to be had following the clash of personalities and priorities that threatens the Allied team before they ever get in shooting range of the Nazis.
The Octagon (1980) – This is one of the first wave of movies credited with introducing ninjas to the Western audience. And Chuck Norris is at the top of his game. And the script…
Oh, jeez, the script. Chuck and his best friend Art Hindle apparently have no jobs, they just hang around encountering women in danger. Half of the movie is built around the most agonizingly contrived “meet cute” ever. Lee Van Cleef is a sorta-criminal guy that they know, but their connection is never made clear. There’s the eleventh-hour addition of a love interest. Chuck is told repeatedly he can’t just be given directions to the ninja training camp, he must be led — and yet Art apparently follows directions and arrives no problem. No one acts like an actual human being would ever act in that situation.
Ah, well. At least ass is kicked in copious amounts.
Cube 2: Hypercube (2002) – A mind game with a bunch of disparate people trapped in a three-dimensional maze? Check! Recognizably Canadian actors? Check! One of them is mentally deficient, and one turns out to be a psycho? Check!
A couple of factors make this more than just a rehash:
- There’s now a time distortion effect; as the hapless prisoners move through the maze, the can end up meeting each other — or even themselves — in different moments. Even worse, there’s a little bit of multiversal tomfoolery, as they run across their own Plan Bs even after they chose Plan A.
- Rather than being utterly disconnected strangers thrust into this challenge for no reason, each person has a labyrinthine connection to a certain defense contractor which is apparently behind it all.
- There’s a teeny-weeny hint that at least one of the characters knows about the events of the first movie (though a lot of good that does him).
Still, if you’ve seen the first Cube, your expectations of this one aren’t really challenged.
Abandoned movies:
The Monster (1925) – It may be a Lon Chaney “horror” classic, but it spends at least a half hour in unfunny buffoonery — the kind that relies on dialogue for the humor, but since dialogue can only be delivered in title cards, has absolutely none of the timing that makes comedy work.
Black Eagle (1988) – The director of The Octagon says, “You thought that movie had stupid character motivations? Ha! In this one, no one acts or behaves like they’ve even met a human being!” I love me some Sho Kosugi, but when the entire movie rests on his thespian abilities rather than his ninja stunts…