Scorpio is a 1973 spy thriller directed by the late Michael Winner. It was one of the first films that Winner worked on for American producers and reunited him with Burt Lancaster. The actor had starred in Winner’s American directorial debut, Lawman, three years earlier. French-Swiss superstar Alain Delon also stars and the film was one of several attempts the actor made to break into Hollywood. Lancaster plays Cross, an aging CIA agent and assassin, who is tasked with training Delon’s younger Jean ‘Scorpio’ Laurier in order to be his replacement. The plot is described on IMDb:
Cross is an old hand at the CIA, in charge of assassinating high-ranking foreign personalities who are an obstacle to the policies of the USA. He often teams up with Frenchman Jean Laurier, alias “Scorpio”, a gifted free-lance operative. One day, the CIA orders Scorpio to eliminate Cross — and leaves him no choice but to obey. Scorpio is cold-blooded and very systematic; however, as a veteran agent, Cross knows many tricks. He can also rely upon a network of unusual personal contacts, some dating back to the troubled years preceding WWII. A lethal game of hide-and-seek is programmed, but what are the true motives of every single player?
By all accounts the film was only a moderate success at the box-office and is largely forgotten today.
This Japanese B2 features a unique design but note the stylised logo that also features on some of the items used for the American campaign.
Great Bob Peak artwork on this poster for the third in the original series of Star Trek films, The Search For Spock. For some reason, despite Peak having done the poster for the first film, his artwork wasn’t used for the USA one sheets of the sequel or this film, but it did appear on the international posters for The Wrath of Khan and this film. The studio then went back to using Peak artwork on the US posters for the fourth and fifth films.
The Search For Spock picks up where the second film left off and sees the surviving crew of the Enterprise returning to Earth after their fight against the superhuman Khan. Before long Captain Kirk and the rest of the crew are hijacking the decommissioned Enterprise and racing to save the spirit of Spock, who was previously feared dead, from the clutches of a Klingon commander near an unstable planet created by the Genesis device from the second film.
Seen by many as the start of the ‘all odd-numbered Star Trek films are bad’ rule, the film was fairly well received by critics, but many fans reacted negatively to its talky script and poor production values, particularly the effects used to realise the Genesis.
The original trailer for the film is on YouTube.
One of the first films produced by Harvey and Bob Weinstein’s Miramax Films, The Burning is a slasher very much in the mould of the hugely successful horrors Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980). The film begins in 1976 and sees a group of teenagers at a summer camp playing a prank on the cruel, alcoholic caretaker Cropsy, which ends with him being accidentally horribly burned. Five years later he is released from hospital and heads to Camp Stonewater to seek revenge for his disfigurement.
Cropsy is nicknamed after the large pair of garden shears he used as a caretaker and then later wields as he carries out his revenge attacks, but the name (often spelt Cropsey) is also associated with an actual urban legend about a campsite killer in Upstate New York that has apparently been around since the 19th century. The 2009 documentary film Cropsey is an investigation of the mysterious disappearances of several children on Staten Island and the link to a patient in the nearby mental hospital.
The Burning was caught up in the infamous Video Nasties situation in the UK in 1983 (as DPP 39) due to the ‘raft massacre’ scene and a shot where a pair of scissors pierces the belly of a female victim. According to the Melonfarmers page on the Nasties, the film had been subjected to 10 seconds of cuts for the 1981 cinema release but was released uncut on VHS, which was what lead to to it being added to the list two years later. It was eventually re-released with cuts in 1992 and finally appeared intact in 2001. I highly recommend picking up the great documentary ‘Video Nasties: the definitive guide’ (available here).
The superb original trailer is on YouTube.
