Bondathon #14: A View to a Kill (1985)

Director: John Glen

Starring: Roger Moore, Christopher Walken, Tanya Roberts, Grace Jones, Patrick Macnee

I thought it would have been impossible for Bond to sink any lower than “Octopussy.” That movie saw 007 dress up as a clown, for crying out loud! Then my long-filed away memories of “A View to a Kill” resurfaced. It is simply inexcusable for any movie featuring the character of James Bond to be THIS awful. If you find yourself squirming in your chair while watching a movie, there had better be some pretty intense imagery on the screen in front of you. Also, if you are sitting in stunned silence at the end of a movie, the producers would like to believe that’s because you’re catching your breath after the wild ride they’ve taken you through. The experience of watching “A View to a Kill” provides none of this. Instead it’s the predictable, tedious sort of action flick that causes you to check your watch every five to ten minutes.

During the prologue, James Bond has gone to Siberia to find the body of missing MI6 Agent 003, recovering the Soviet microchip which 003 had on him. This sequence includes what would be a pretty spectacular snowboarding sequence, but it’s ruined by an unwelcome and out-of-place cover of the Beach Boys’ song “California Girls.” Oh, I get it… because he’s ‘surfing’ on the snow. Ha ha. Stop it! After further analysis of the chip, it is determined to be a duplicate of one capable of holding up against even an EMP, manufactured by Zorin Industries. At a racetrack in England, Bond keeps a watchful eye on the company’s owner, Max Zorin (Christopher Walken). Zorin’s horse wins the race, but MI6 agent Godfrey Tibbett (Patrick Macnee) suspects the horse has been injected with steroids. In Paris, Bond learns some stuff about an impending horse sale from a French detective just before the PI is murdered by May Day (Grace Jones), Zorin’s personal bodyguard. Bond and Tibbett then travel to the Zorin estate. There Bond uncovers a secret laboratory where he learns that Zorin’s horses are indeed receiving steroid injections, but through implants that can be triggered mid-race. Dastardly. Boring, but dastardly.

As Zorin has gotten wind of Bond’s true identity, he has Tibbett killed and believes he has set Bond up to drown in his car. He hasn’t. Instead, a very much alive Bond heads to San Francisco, California where Zorin intends to erase Silicon Valley, killing many innocents and causing his microchips to skyrocket in value. Bond learns from his contact in the CIA… surprisingly not Felix Leiter this time… that Zorin may be the product of genetic engineering as the result of steroid experimentation on pregnant women during World War II by a Nazi doctor, who just so happens to be Zorin’s current personal physician. Ah, so the horse steroid angle really DID have a point to it! …It’s still lame.

Bond barges into the house of a woman he’d seen earlier at Zorin’s estate, curious as to why Zorin would cut her a check for $5 million. Bond is able to convince Stacey Sutton (Tanya Roberts) that he is not one of Zorin’s thugs come to pressure her into cashing the check when the real goon squad arrives. It’s Stacey’s family oil business that Zorin wants. Stacey herself is a geologist, if you can believe it. I know I sure don’t. At City Hall, Bond and Stacey run into both Zorin and May Day. Stacey’s boss is murdered with Bond’s gun, and Zorin and May Day set fire to the building with Bond and Stacey trapped in the elevator shaft. On top of that, Zorin made Stacey’s boss call the cops just before he shot him, so even after Bond and Stacey free themselves they still have to explain the situation to law enforcement. When this film’s version of inept cops refuse to by their side of the story, Bond and Stacey steal a fire truck and hightail it out of there. We’ve seen this chase in almost every Roger Moore Bond film, and it’s always mind-numbingly stupid. Moving on…

So, Bond and Stacey make their way into Zorin’s mine, where he plans to explode large quantities of dynamite that will disturb the San Andreas and Hayward faults to the point of flooding Silicon Valley. To finish the job, Zorin also has another bomb in place which will effectively destroy a so-called ‘geological lock’ that keeps both faults from moving all at once. Zorin and one of his associates then pick up machine guns and massacre the mine workers. In this moment, as I’m witnessing body after body being perforated by bullets, I’m starting to wonder if I’m still watching a James Bond movie. Becoming unrecognizable was an asset to “Moonraker,” but here it’s just another obstacle. While Bond fights with May Day, Stacey is given time to escape. Then something very odd happens. Zorin abandons May Day to die along with Bond and the mine workers. Seeing this, a scorned May Day abruptly switches sides and helps Bond get the bomb out of harms way, ultimately resulting in an unforeseen hero’s death for the same person who murdered no less than three of Bond’s informants.

Stacey, meanwhile, has been standing out in the middle of a field with a big “KIDNAP ME!” sign on her chest, and guess what? Zorin nabs her and takes her up in his airship. Bond sees this and grabs hold of the mooring rope just in time. Eventually, the action spills out onto the framework of the Golden Gate Bridge, where Zorin tries to axe murder Bond. But Zorin loses his balance and falls to his death. The Nazi doctor, still on board the airship, attempts to kill Bond and Stacey with a stick of dynamite, but when Bond cuts the airship free from the bridge, the doctor loses his grip on the dynamite and the airship explodes.

Whew! What an ordeal! As I said, “A View to a Kill” shouldn’t have been this bad. Not when you have Christopher Walken as your villain. Grace Jones, of whom I’m normally no fan, is admittedly memorable as May Day. I do love the inclusion of Patrick Macnee, thus completing a trifecta of Avengers-to-Bond actors begun by Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg. There’s a bit of miscasting in the case of Tanya Roberts as Stacey Sutton… my personal least favorite Bond girl… although I don’t really fault Ms. Roberts, who I know to be a good actress when given the right material. For example, she was hilarious as Donna’s mom on “That 70’s Show.” Duran Duran had a hit song with the title tune, though I was never a fan. When Duran Duran was at the peak of their popularity, I was more into acts like Prince and Dire Straits.

After this one, Roger Moore did finally retire from the role of James Bond. To this day, he still calls “A View to a Kill” his least favorite, and rightly so. Also departing the series would be Lois Maxwell, who had portrayed MI6 secretary Miss Moneypenny every since “Dr. No” in 1962. No matter what, with the next Bond there would come a genuine sense of change. There is also a certain relief in knowing that, even with any remaining slips into mediocrity that the series would experience, 007 would never drop to this low a level of quality again… thus making the dismal “A View to a Kill” that much more of a curiosity.

31 Screams in October, Vol. 2, #7: Tourist Trap (1979)

Director: David Schmoeller

Starring: Chuck Connors, Jocelyn Jones, Jon Van Ness, Robin Sherwood, Tanya Roberts, Dawn Jeffory, Keith McDermott

Actor Chuck Connors is the answer to the trivia question of who was the first NBA player to shatter a backboard. This occurred during pregame warmups in 1946 while Connors was playing for the Boston Celtics (my personal favorite NBA team). Unlike most other instances of basketball goal obliteration, Connors was not performing a slam dunk, and the backboard technically broke due to improper maintenance. This would have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on Connors’ subsequent acting career, except that the story adds to his already intimidating presence. Personally, I like to think that the backboard shattered out of fear.

“Tourist Trap” begins with five friends traveling in two separate cars when one of them experiences a flat tire. Always a bad omen in a horror movie. Woody (Keith McDermott) goes wandering off to find a gas station, which he eventually finds, but the place looks deserted. Woody becomes locked in the back room, after which everything starts flying at him. One of the objects, a metal pipe, impales Woody as he’s trying frantically to open the door. Can it be that the place is haunted by ghosts/evil spirits? No, because that’d be silly… Meanwhile, the second car catches up to Eileen (Robin Sherwood), still waiting impatiently for Woody, and they all drive off together to look for him. They come across the tire which Woody was last seen pushing along the road, and assume that he must have ended up at the nearby tourist trap. It’s at about this time when their Jeep inconveniently breaks down, which would make it difficult to flee if the tourist trap turns out to be a shady place. Jerry (Jon Van Ness) tries to figure out what’s wrong with the Jeep and if he can fix it, while the girls all go swimming. Their skinny-dipping session is brought to an awkward halt by the appearance of the tourist trap’s owner, Mr. Slausen (Chuck Connors).

Slausen comes across as a nice enough fellow, whose only real problem is that his establishment doesn’t get the traffic that it used to. He offers to help Jerrry with the Jeep, while the girls wait inside the tourist trap, which they notice is filled with amazingly life-like wax figures. Out the window, they notice a big house, which Slausen flatly denies living in, and adds that no one else does, either. Since the only phone in the tourist trap doesn’t work, Eileen wonders if perhaps there might be one inside the house so she goes up to investigate, leaving Becky (a dark-haired Tanya Roberts) and Molly (Jocelyn Jones) to fend for themselves. Eileen is met with a fate similar to Woody’s, as she is strangled to death by her own scarf. A masked individual, who will soon come to be known as “Davey,” is responsible. However, Davey never touches Eileen, and it is then that we realize that he has the power of telekinesis.

After some further miscommunication with Mr. Slausen leaves Becky and Molly frustrated, the remaining girls go looking for Eileen. Only Becky is dumb enough to go trespassing into the house, and she gets attacked by Davey, waking up tied up in the basement, along with Jerry and another girl, who is strapped to a table. The girl is suffocated when Davey covers her face with plaster. Jerry frees himself, but his and Becky’s escape attempt is put on hold when Davey once again displays his telekinetic talents. Outside, Molly is met by Slausen who hands her his gun and goes inside the house. Molly gets the chance to use her gun a few minutes later when Davey shows up, but it has no effect because the bullets are blanks. Molly uses the butt of the gun to strike Davey in the face, after which he removes his mask to reveal that Slausen has been “Davey” all along. Slausen had earlier told of a sad story about how his wife had died of cancer and he’d made a wax figure to keep her memory alive. That was only half-true. He’d made the wax figure after she’d died all right, but only after he’d caught her and his brother Davey having an affair and murdered the both of them. Slausen’s elaborate backstory and Chuck Connors being Chuck Connors make Slausen by far the movie’s most interesting character.

Sadly, the movie takes a few wrong turns that hurt its overall grade. The plot is a slow-burning one, so you’re left waiting for things to happen the same as the characters are. Becky and Jerry spend WAY too much of the film tied up in the basement. When they do finally get free and split up, Becky’s death at the hands of Slausen’s Western-themed wax figures is a bit anti-climactic. Speaking of climaxes, the film’s ending is just plain stupid. Molly gets captured by Slausen and appears well on her way to joining his cast of wax characters when Jerry shows out of nowhere with an axe to save the day. Only thing is he can’t save the day because, unbeknownst to him, he’s been made into a wax figure and is only doing as much as Slausen will allow him to do. In his arrogance, Slausen still allowed Not-Jerry to have the axe, which Molly is able to use to ultimately kill Slausen and escape.

Finally, lets talk about the whole telekinesis angle. I have a big problem with this because I thought having this movie be a hybrid of “Psycho” (1960), “House of Wax” (1953), and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) was enough. The link to “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is especially fitting, since it shares in common the same art director, Robert A. Burns, with “Tourist Trap.” How Mr. Slausen developed his talents, or how it’s even possible for him to have these powers is never explained. It’s not even used very effectively, since the only reason we have it is to bump people off without the need for the killer to be in the same room. That’s cheating. Besides all that, when you’ve got Chuck Connors, you don’t need for his character to have mental powers for him to appear nigh invincible. As endearing to the public as he is for the TV series “The Rifleman,” Connors also had the ability to play creepy bastards, like the slave owner he played in the miniseries “Roots.” Just thinking about that guy gives me chills. Mr. Slausen isn’t nearly that creepy, but he remains an extremely effective villain. Fans of gore and of fast-moving plots will be disappointed by “Tourist Trap.” (I know I was the first time I ever saw it!) However, if you’re lucky enough to focus your attention on the right part of this movie, which is Chuck Connors’ performance, you might enjoy yourself.