#39 at 40: From Russia with Love (1963)—Directed by Terence Young
The posters all proclaim: “James Bond is back!” Back like he never left, because for me…he never has, and never will.
Appearing on my Top 40 at 40 list as well as my Top 40 at 30 (at #29), the sophomore cinematic outing of Agent 007 was even in my Top 50 at 20 (that’s right I expanded these lists because I’m a lunatic).
I don’t think I need to rehash the importance of James Bond to my development as a film fan or bore you to sleep by revisiting my personal connection to them. In honor of the passing of my father, we did three solid months of James Bond programming on the podcast two years ago, which you are both welcome and encouraged to peruse. Instead, I think it pertinent to discuss how this film fits within its own franchise in order to contextualize its specific appreciation.
From Russia with Love is not the most bombastic James Bond film. It doesn’t have as many giant action set pieces as some of its subsequent entries, one decent boat chase notwithstanding. It is instead far more focused on the espionage tactics and protocols of The Cold War. The spycraft takes center stage here, not the stunt work nor the gadgets; Q isn’t even called Q when introduced in this movie ( instead Maj. Geoffrey Boothroyd, as he was known in the novels) nor is he played by the franchise legend Desmond Llewelyn. It is in the first two Bond films where Connery most explores the coldness and savagery of Ian Fleming’s character. All of these elements combine into a film that, even though it resides within a series with so many entires as to de facto be contemporary, feels like a very specific relic; uncovering a chapter of world history so many nations would just as soon forget.
But why I prefer FRwL to Dr. No is no mystery: Robert Q. Shaw!
Ok, his middle name is actually Archibald, but he will always be Quint. I was already in love with Jaws before ever seeing a single Bond film, so it took quite a bit of convincing from my dad and my grandfather (the captains of my first Jaws excursion), that the clean-shaven, toe-headed Russian adonis sent to 86 007 was the same man who crushed cans of Narragansett beer, told amazing fish stories, and ultimately got swallowed by his great white nemesis as his ship sank off the coast of Amity Island. His close-quarters fisticuffs with Bond on the train in From Russia with Love‘s finale is one of the simplest, least-sensational, most-effective action sequences in the franchise.
While I can create lists upon lists of my father’s favorite films, my grandfather was always more of a mystery to me. I knew he loved movies, and was aware of some of his go-to’s, but his preferences were harder to nail down. From Russia with Love and Jaws were two movies that I knew definitely both my dad and granddad loved. These were the scant two titles that connected these two very different men to each other in my mind, and thus connected them both to me. And what is the common thread within that thread? Robert. Q Branch. Shaw.
From Russia with Love is a film beloved of three generations of Salisbury’s, and, god-willing, it will be handed off to my children like an illicitly-obtained Lektor decoder.
#39 at 30: The Monster Squad (1987)—Directed by Fred Dekker
So many of the films that rank on my Top 40 at 30 list do so in large part thanks to the circumstances of their viewing; in many cases, in fact, the circumstances of my first viewing of said film. It was in my early 20s that I moved to Austin, TX and, without the demands of fatherhood or a particularly involved day job at the time, attended a metric fuckton of Alamo Drafthouse special screenings.
One such screening was a cast and crew reunion for a late 80s kids film that I had never even heard of, much less seen: The Monster Squad. I believe by this point I had attended a similar screening for Night of the Creeps, another directorial effort of the great Fred Dekker, and one with which I immediately fell in love. Stay tuned for Night of the Creeps to rear its grimy, undead head in this series. Plus, I was, at the time, becoming enamored of the screenplays of Shane Black, who co-wrote The Monster Squad with Dekker. Suffice to say, I was frothing at the mouth for another epic Drafthouse screening, and for some Black & Dekker in my life. Sorry, that joke sucked.
Throughout this series, you may begin to suspect that my objectivity in my 30s was compromised by the hoopla of all these myriad Drafthouse screenings. While you’re not wrong, you are woefully archaic in your selection of descriptive language. Seriously, “hoopla?” Are you a seldom-used streaming service or an outdoor gathering attended by all seven brides and seven brothers? Despite your lack of timely turn-of-phrase, I will freely admit that there was always something intoxicating about those old Alamo special screenings. Every single person in attendance was buzzing with excitement at the chance to engage in the communion of cinema. You couldn’t help but become a convert. But as this is a project cataloging the movies I loved (an affective response to film) at various points in my life and not a listing of the best movies from various points in my life, subjectivity is the price of admission.
We’ve said this in our episode(s) covering The Monster Squad, but it is a PERFECT 80s kids movie. It allows the youthful leads to be edgy and crass, but also lovable and vulnerable. It boils the supernatural conflict down to kids vs. monsters with adults more-or-less relegated to supporting players in the darkly magical story. It then takes that proven recipe and adds to it a dash of blistering 80s soundtrack and a heaping helping of Universal Monsters! I remember being in that theater and feeling so very sorry for little kid Brian, who grew up without this amazing flick in his VHS rotation.
While sheer rule of numbers has pushed The Monster Squad off my Top 40 at 40 list, the wild, wonderful consolation is the fact that over the last few years, I have, through happenstance and blessed fortune, become friends with its now-grown star Andre Gower. Funny how life works, ain’t that a kick in the nards?
#39 at 20: Die Hard with a Vengeance (1994)—Directed by John McTiernan
At nearly 40 years old, I know that John McTiernan is not only one of the greatest action filmmakers of all time, but generally one of the most deft and economical visual storytellers as well. But at 20, even if given all the time in the world, I would not have been able to recall the name of the director of Die Hard. And yet I knew the title Die Hard so well that I grew familiar with a catalog of films that spoke Die Hard‘s language; albeit with varying degrees of fluency. As would become standard operating procedure when I would later move to Austin, once I got a taste for Die Hard, I became ravenously obsessed with consuming all Die Hard knockoffs, wannabes, and any and all films that adopted the plagiaristic Seussian boilerplate of “Die Hard on/in a_____”.
If you’ve listened to the podcast for some time, you’ve heard me talk about my brother Blake and I spending summers with my grandmother in Indianapolis; further, about the formative role in my film education as was played by her closet containing floor-to-ceiling stacks of VHS tapes. I would regularly raid this closet with abandon, and often with a singular objective of sussing out the films that fit that week’s/month’s oddly specific completionist criteria. When the Die Hard bug bit me, I would thrill at the uncovering of titles like Speed, Under Siege, Sudden Death, Passenger 57, Con Air, Air Force One, Cliffhanger, and even Detonator. And yet somehow, as much as Die Hard opened this can of obsessive worms, I watched all of those pretenders before I ever watched Die Hard with a Vengeance.
If only I had understood at 20 the dire (hard) imperativeness of McTiernan to Die Hard‘s greatness. If only my barely-two-decades-old mind could have comprehended how this is yet another PERFECT action film in the crown of an already anointed master of the genre who had now proven his dexterity in both solo vehicles and divergent-buddy two-handers. If my not-quite-ready-for-happy-hour brain could have fathomed how the third installment of this franchise would–among so many other lasting ripples–advance the science of titling versus numbering sequels, Die Hard with a Vengeance would have been a Top 10 at 20.
Look, I was an idiot, what can I say? What even could Simon say?
