Let’s be glad that the coronavirus shows no signs of developing into the kind of bio-warfare shown in John Sturges’ surprisingly-on-the-money-for-1965 tech-talk thriller. The virus shown here arrests the subject within seconds; collected in a number of glass containers, they’re the deadly Macguffin that The Satan Bug revolves around.
Alistair MacLean’s reputation as a storyteller was cemented by Ice Station Zebra; he published The Satan Bug under the name Ian Stuart to see if he could still hit big without drawing on his growing reputation. He was right; The Satan Bug film features an adaptation by a young James Clavell that carries forward many of the novel’s key points. George Maharis plays Lee Barrett, a security office brought in by the government after a deadly toxin is stolen from a desert facility. Barrett is, like many of MacLean’s heroes, a journeyman of exceptional ability, and there’s a zinger of an introduction aboard his yacht where he sniffs out a government test of his corrupt-ability. Barrett heads to the Station Three facility in Southern California, where he figures out how the theft was completed in old-school, Hercule Poirot style; the deductions seem credible and establish Barrett as a no-nonsense type. There’s a dalliance with Anne Francis, some hard talk with a general (Dana Andrews) and a patient build up to an extended chase, during which the fate of the world depends on the delivery of the glass-flasks intact.
The Satan Bug has an exciting title that doesn’t quite get visualised here; there’s no sign of giant bugs or indeed of Satan himself. There’s also no sign of the kind of teaser disasters that one expects of a disaster movie; we’re told through dialogue that hundreds have died in a preliminary skirmish in Florida, but there’s no visual information about this at all. That’s par for the course for the mid-60’s, but Sturges does manages to whip up impressive tension in a baseball stadium/helicopter action scene for the finale.
The Satan Bug is dated, for sure, but there’s also a modern film fighting to get out; Maharis does well as the proto-Bond hero, and some of the location work is ahead of its time. And what Sturges manages to convey is fear; with just a few glass flasks and a serious tone, he conjures up a grounded sci-fi drama that works well for patient viewers.
There are reasons for liking something other than it being ‘good’; this 1977 thriller based in a 1962 book by Alistair MacLean is perfectly awful in many ways, but somehow these flaws only make it more endearing. “Everyone was drinking on that movie, we were all so f**king miserable’ explained star Richard Harris in a magazine article, defending his consumption of a bottle of vodka every day while re-writing the script. If you want to understand what drinking a bottle of vodka every day does to your writing process, try watching Golden Rendezvous; director Freddie Francis and Christopher Lee abandoned ship while the film was in production.
The Alistair MacLean cycle of blockbuster action/espionage movies had well and truly run its course by the time 1993’s Death Train came along, dropping this thriller into the dustiest distribution hole imaginable until the internet came along and offered salvation. The YouTube copy of Death Train under review has a cool 4 million viewers; using Netflix’s famously shonky calculator, on a $20 a ticket multiplier, that’s equal to an $80 million opening, bigger than Bad Boys for Life or any 2020 release so far. Presumably your friends, workmates and family have been sneaking off and covertly watching this engagingly hokey film without telling you. Either way, it’s time for you to take a free ride on the Death Train, also known by the equally duff title Detonator.
After enduring an age of pretty-boy vehicles (Alfie), Jude Law has gained in intensity what he’s lost in looks. Law plays Robinson, a submarine expert in Kevin Macdonald’s serviceable action film, pulling together a mercenary crew in a search of hidden gold on an abandoned Nazi submarine. Something in the vein of Alistair MacLean’s Ice Station Zebra, right down to Scott McNairy in the Patrick McGoohan role of US interloper, Macdonald maintains a decent tension through a few tricky hairpins, which Michael Friend typically oily in support. Law’s accent is flawless, and if the action doesn’t have a big-budget for spectacle, the close-quarters action makes for a grown-up slice of derring-do.
