THIS IS A HIJACK
Moderately diverting melodrama, but theme is dated and needed ballyhoo values missing. Will get by in action houses, drive-ins, but requires dual bill support. Rated PG.
THIS IS A HIJACK is a fairly entertaining
programmer which will have to depend on what- ever continued public interest still exists in the passé skyjacking theme. Joe Solomon’s Fan- fare presentation does have enough routine action values to hold audience interest (thanks mainly to a rip-roaring, teeth-gnashing perfor- mance by veteran heavy Neville Brand), but it’s not really distinctive enough on its own to make much of a dent outside the drive-in and sec- ondary action markets—and even in such situ- ations, it will need a fairly good co-feature. Under mob pressure to pay a huge gam-
bling debt, desperate Adam Roarke hatches a scheme to hijack creepy millionaire Jay Robinson’s personal jet and demand a mil- lion dollars for his safe return. Complicating the plan are several unexpected extra pas- sengers (government man, writer, honey- mooners, etc.), not to mention sadistic mob enforcer Brand and two henchmen who brow- beat and brutalize everybody until shot by Roarke. Writer-director Barry Pollack (COOL BREEZE) infuses this standard material with an uneven mixture of tongue-in-cheek touches and straight melodrama, but the better moments have a nice sense of the absurd (“Don’t get blood all over me!” wails Brand petulantly to a wounded hostage). A possibly controversial angle is that skyjacker Roarke is portrayed sympathetically through- out, despite his responsibility for several deaths—and he successfully escapes with the loot at the end, proving, perhaps, that sky- jacking pays if you’re really sincere about it. Dub Taylor, Milt Kamen and Don Pedro Colley are among the familiar faces on view. The airplane model work is not bad if you over- look the wires that are visible in almost ev- ery shot.
1973. Fanfare Corp. (South Street Productions). Deluxe Color. 90 minutes. Adam Roarke, Neville Brand, Jay Robinson, Lynn Borden. Produced by Paul Lewis. Directed by Barry Pollack.
Previously released by Monterey Home Video on tape and now OOP.
18
VAMPIRE CIRCUS
Better-than-average Hammer fang opera has sufficient fright elements to please horror fans. Being co-billed with COUNTESS DRACULA, this one merits top spot and might get some response from sci-fi devotées. If combo gets plenty of ballyhoo, it should turn in good grosses in appropriate markets, especially drive- ins. Rated PG.
VAMPIRE CIRCUS is a somewhat ingenious
attempt to vary the familiar Hammer vampire formula. It doesn’t quite work for a variety of rea- sons—low budget and uncertain direction, mostly— but, for at least some of the time, the 20th Century Fox release does have a weird qual- ity hovering somewhere between Ray Bradbury and THE CIRCUS OF DR. LAO to intrigue both hor- ror and science-fiction devotées. The more off- beat ideas are nipped by intrusions of formula elements, but the general run of horror fans should find the mixture to their liking despite five minutes of cuts that rob the horror stuff of much of its impact. According to Jud Kinberg’s screenplay (from
a story by George Baxt and Wilbur Stark), the town of Stettle is cut off from the outside world by a plague—and this 15 years after the vampire Count Mitterhouse was destroyed by the villag- ers. A strange circus comes to town and soon the children of those who staked out the Count are being drained of blood—it’s the Mitterhouse Curse! Meanwhile the entertainment-starved vil- lagers continue to troop dumbly to the circus, where the performers change into bats and pan- thers before the applauding crowd, and where the Mirror of Life draws children into its midst to be vampirized. The circus people, all vampires, are destroyed in a final scene that looks like the last act of HAMLET and hero John Moulder-Brown dispatches the resuscitated Count (Robert Tayman) apparently by shooting him in the mouth with a crossbow—whatever happens, it’s been excised. Performances by a capable cast includ- ing Adrienne Corri, Thorley Walters, Laurence Payne and heroine Lynne Frederick are better than the recent Hammer average, and it’s too bad that debuting director Robert Young is unable to sus- tain the mood of sinister fantasy, because with a slightly larger budget and more resourceful direc- tion, this might have really been something.
Century Fox. (Hammer Films). Deluxe Color [1.85:1]. 82 minutes. John Moulder Brown, Adrienne Corri,
1972. 20th
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