Michael York and Germany don't mix

Another of the movies that I forgot to record off of TCM and had to watch on the Watch TCM app before it expired was Zeppelin.

The year is 1915, which means that the UK and Germany are at war during the Great War. As you may recall, back in that war the Germans hoped that their relatively new airships would be able to bomb London from the air, since planes were not advanced enough to drop bombs until the next war. The British are well aware of what the Germans are doing, setting up the sort of searchlights that you've seen in a hundred other movies about the two world wars.

Stationed in London is British army lieutenant Geoffrey Richter-Douglas (Michael York), who, as you might be able to discern from the name, is of mixed heritage, both Scottish and German. Now, for various reasons, including the fact that his girlfriend is a spy, both the Germans and the English have reason to believe that Geoffrey might be useful to their side in intelligence gathering. With that in mind, Geoffrey's commanding officer suggest that he fake a defection back to Germany.

The reason for this is that the British have reason to believe the Germans are working on a more powerful zeppelin than what they've been trying to deply up to this point. Geoffrey's mission would be to get the information on the new Zeppelin, code named LZ36. He flees to Germany, even getting himself shot in the process, which also helps in that the Germans might be more likely to believe that he's sincere about his defection should anyone question him.

And as you might guess, people are going to question him. Working on the LZ36 is Prof. Altschul (Marius Goring), who has a much younger trophy wife named Erika (Elke Sommer), although she's no dummy herself and is actually working on the zeppelin, not just married to the professor. Erika thinks Geoffrey might be a spy. Some in German intelligence think so, too, but need him in part for his knowledge of the Scottish coastline which is going to be necessary for their mission. Besides, if they take him aboard the LZ36, they can keep their new friend close and enemies closer, as the phrase go.

As for that mission involving knowledge of the lay of the land in Scotland, it's a fairly audacious mission. One is to bring paratroopers armed with mustard gas over to Scotland; the other is a morale-sapping mission to invade the castle where a whole bunch of historical documents have been moved to to get them out of London where the documents would be in greater danger of being destroyed. Crazy, I know, but some of these war movies have even dafter missions.

Zeppelin isn't exactly great, but it's definitely modestly entertaining. It's definitely worth watching if it shows up again, but I'm not certain I'd pay the Warner Archive prices for it.

Accident

Dirk Bogarde having been TCM's Star of the Month last September, it gave me the chance to record quite a few of his films that I hadn't seen before, since most of his work was in Europe. Among those movies was one with an intriguing premise, Accident.

The opening credits are over what looks like one of those large houses on the outskirts of town, with some traffic sounds in the background. As the credits come to a conclusion, we hear what sounds like a terrible crash. It is indeed a terrible crash. Hearing it and coming out of the house to investigate is Stephen (Dirk Bogarde). He's a professor at Oxford who lives in the house with his wife Rosalind and their two children, although it's about to become three.

In the car are two of Stephen's students, William (Michael York) and the Austrian Anna (Jacqueline Sassard, who must have been yet another of those Europeans that English-language studios were trying to groom for stardom since I don't recognize the name. Sadly, William is dead, while Anna is in shock. So Stephen brings Anna into the house before calling the police, and keeping Anna from having to deal with the police. Since Stephen's house is out in the middle of nowhere, the police realize that William and Anna were on their way to visit him, and ask the obvious question of why.

Flash back to the rest of the story. Stephen has already been working as a sort of thesis advisor to William when Anna first shows up, supposedly the daughter of a former prince. She's good-looking, so naturally everybody becomes interested in her. Stephen is of course already married, so he shouldn't show any interest in her. William's the right age, and he's going to be one of Anna's fellow students, so it seems more natural for him to try to start a relationship with her. Even some of Stephen's colleagues seem to want Anna.

So we get a bunch of talky scenes where all of the prinicpals are together in some fairly nice-looking locations since this is Oxford, after all, and Stephen's house has some nice gardens. Stephen goes looking for nookie while his wife is in confinement, various people keep pursuing Anna, and there's a bizarre party scene where all the men play what seems to be a British grown-up version of keep away.

And this is where I had huge problems with Accident. It's one of those movies that seems like it's trying to be daring, and a bit arthouse, with the ultimate result that it's just boring and overcomplicated. None of the characaters are worth getting emotionally invested in.

Unfortunately, when it ran on TCM, Ben Mankiewicz seemed more concerned with the fact that the film's director, Joseph Losey, was one of those Americans who left for Europe as a result of the blacklist, as though this makes the movie immune from criticism. Accident is just plain lousy. But as always, judge for yourself.

Four of the musketeers

About six weeks ago, I mentioned the 1970s version of The Three Musketeers, and how because the producers really made too much material, they decided to split the movie into two, even though this would piss of the actors. The second of those movies got the name The Four Musketeers (sometimes also subtitled Milady's Revenge or The Revenge of Milady), and that movie will be on tomorrow (Oct. 4) at 10:30 AM. in honor of Charlton Heston.

If you remember the first movie, as it ended the musketeers had just saved the bacon of Anne (Geraldine Chaplin), the Queen of France, who was haing an illicit relationship with the English Duke of Buckingham (Simon Ward), even though their two countries were at war. Part of that war was religious in nature, and French Protestants were in rebellion in the Breton port of La Rochelle. Cardinal Richelieu (that's Charlton Heston) had figured out that it's the queen's dressmaker Constance (Raquel Welch) who has been passing the message between Anne and Buckingham, well, with help from D'Artagnan (Michael York) who is her boyfriend. So Richelieu orders his men to capture Constance.

Meanwhile Milady de Winter (Faye Dunaway) wants to gain revenge on the musketeers as well, so she goes in with Richelieu by seducing d'Artagnan to get him away from Constance. D'Artagnan can't be bothered to think with his big head, so he takes the bait. D'Artagnan also finds out that Milady has a brand, which was a sentence for a crime she committed. It's also a sign that she had been in a relatonship with Athos (Oliver Reed), but he killed her -- or he thought he did -- when he found out about Milady's criminality.

Anyhow, the musketeers set out to find Constance, and all of them but D'Artagnan eventually do, sending her to Armentières for safe-keeping until the musketeers can do their other duties and go back and fetch her. Milady, for her part, still wants to kill d'Artagnan and Constance, and the rest of the movie is one long series of adventures and action scenes as Milady's right-hand man Rochefort (Christopher Lee) pursues the musketeers across western France.

The plot of The Four Musketeers is not hampered as much by the editing of the movie into two separate features as I thought The Three Musketeers was. That having been said, I thought the main plot was fairly thin, and more or less a hook on which all those action scenes were hung. Now, it does feel like the stars making this are having a blast doing it, since they didn't know yet they were to get shafted by only getting paid for one movie while making two. Oliver Reed is well cast; Heston is getting into the eminence grise phase, and all of the women feel slightly miscast. But The Four Musketeers is ultimately just about entertaining enough to be worth a watch.