Being a lover of Odd Cinema, you soon develop a myth about yourself. After five bad movies, you start to think that you can stand anything cinema throws at you. After ten, you can basically say you're tough. After twenty, you start to think of yourself as a God, a man blessed to go through life laughing off the various "Ishtars" and "Waterworlds" the world has to offer.
Then, it comes at you. Twice as life, Four Times As Ugly. And I met my match tonight in "The Doom Generation."
It was made in 1995, which makes me feel better: nowadays, it's easier to sicken and disgust people thanks to the lack of restraint that past films/TV series had. Nowadays, any idiot can grab a camera and a naked Goth chick and make a completely repulsive film with no talent and less meaning. Insight and plot and entertainment value sharply turn into making the audience depressive and broken. Imagine a film which involves scenes of people sticking fingers up each other's asses then tasting it and you have the idea of what I went through just a few short hours ago.
Which brings me to a few rules that I'll live by from now on:
1. Rose McGowan is NOT an actress.
2. Whomever made this film deserves to be beaten by some of our
nation's finest peace officers.
3. If the opportunity comes in which I hold the only surviving print
of this film, I will burn it without a moment's hesitation.
4. If there is a God, please let me forget whatever I saw in that
film.
But, this experiment concerns my rebound for the "Doom" incident. After running from this.....'movie,' I decided I needed a rebound, something to reaffirm my faith in humanity. And what is better than a journey to the Spy Genre? Not just one of those rehashed post-Cold War flicks of current years, but one of the staples of what created the Genre? Or, rather, had a hand from old Ian Fleming himself? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, "Odd Cinema" now sets foot in The Man From UNCLE territory.
I won't say U.N.C.L.E. It's just annoying to type.
Anyway, "The Man From UNCLE" began it's life right before the big spy boom of the '60s, when the James Bond films were still in their infancy ("Dr. No" and "From Russia With Love"). America needed to get into the action and, as a break from all the Westerns of the time, a few producers put together America's first serious spy show: The Man From UNCLE. It concerned the adventures of Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, two agents from the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, whose main job was to keep the world safe for capitalism for EVERYBODY. Note that the producers didn't pull the old "USA is A-OK/USSR sucks" attitude, which was quite cool and quite easy, considering the role of Illya was that of Russian defector. Oh, well. So, every week, Solo and Kuryakin fought against the international forces of THRUSH (Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and Subjugation of Humanity) in a bunch of Bondian schemes. The parallels become even more interesting once you learn that the name 'Napoleon Solo' was borrowed from Ian Fleming's 'Goldfinger' with the author's permission.
Sidenote: Yes, the original "Solo" appears in the movie 'Goldfinger.' He's the guy who refuses Goldfinger's plan and meets his ultimate end being shot by Harold "Oddjob" Sakata and having his corpse crushed into a cube. That's the namesake.
Anyway, the first season of "Man From UNCLE" was a black and white spy show. Then, with a change of producers, the show became an (sometimes) uneven mixture of both comedy and action during it's second and third seasons, eventually climaxing with the "My Friend, The Gorilla Affair" which involves Robert Vaughn and a guy in a Gorilla suit and which makes all "UNCLE" fans scream and convulse when you mention it. By the time the show reached it's Fourth and Last Season, the comedy was abandoned and the show tried to take on the more serious roots of it's maiden season. But, thanks to a rescheduling of "Gunsmoke," the "Man From UNCLE" found itself at the other end of it's modified gun and was killed halfway through the season.
This story, unwittingly, became the last "Man From UNCLE" episode ever done before the TV movie "The Return of the Man From UNCLE" in 1983.
The story begins with both Solo and Kuryakin raiding the HQ of a THRUSH operative until they unsuccessfully lose him thanks to a pair of driveway gates and a few rockets. This coincides with a bunch of scientists being abducted and taken to a secret base in the Alps (I believe) where they are going to take place in a mad scheme to take over the world using a 'docility gas' which will cause all of humankind losing their wills (and will to fight), creating world peace. All except the scientists being kidnapped, who will actually help this scheme to take place. However, the main scientist is getting his funding for his scheme from THRUSH. To make this worse, the scientist's wife is cheating on the scientist with the same THRUST operative that Solo and Kuryakin were chasing at the very beginning of this episode. So, both Solo and Kuryakin have to stop the kidnappings and the plot before THRUSH gets ahold of a gas to take over the world.....
But, sadly, I won't tell you the rest of the plot. This tape is easily available through many resources. Plus, it's the final episode of the series...almost ANYTHING can happen. ANYTHING. So why bother telling you before hand what you could go easily watch? Hell, I got the tape from a video store. It's not like it's not out there.
Either way, the episode wasn't meant to be two episodes long. Thanks to the sudden cancellation, "Seven Wonders" was stretched to two episodes with obvious results. The first half of the first episode (Acts 1 & 2) are disjointed and just tacked on action sequences that make no real sense. How did Solo and Kuryakin get from a crushed car on a dock to a helicopter out at sea? Even with a commercial break, the director should have seen the need for connecting footage. Either way, all the padding makes it difficult to see how this story could be just one single episode: maybe one-and-a-quarter shows, but not just a mere one hour show.
Either way, it's a end to an era, the beginning of the American Spy Genre.
RATINGS: A lot of story but not enough for two episodes. Robert Vaughn and David McCallum had a chemistry between them that could never be matched, and Leslie Nielsen's role (which I won't tell you about) and ultimate fate make this episode a bit darker than it's Season Three Counterparts. Not a bad ending, but I wish the network had let them finish off Season Four first. Three stars out of Four. Check it out, it won't hurt.
--Zbu