Raffles, starring David Niven

 I first encountered Raffles through the 1970s series starring Anthony Valentine, who I adored in the role, and which led me to reading all of Hornung's original short stories.

But I was unaware that there was a film of Raffles, starring David Niven, until recently.

When I looked it up, I found that the co-star was Olivia de Havilland - two of my favourite Hollywood actors, so why had I never heard of it?

I sent off for a VHS video.

I can see why I'd never heard of it before - it's a pretty low budget production, and Olivia de Havilland and David Niven are the only actors I've heard of in it.  The plot updates the original 1890s stories to 1939, and most of the action is set over one country house weekend, where Raffles plays cricket by day and tries to steal his hostess's necklace by night.

Bunny Manders is sidelined in favour of his sister Gwen (Olivia de Havilland), who puts the clues together to work out who the Amateur Cracksman is.  This Raffles seems kinder than the original, too - showing concern for the kitten he uses in a jewellery shop break in, arranging for a retired actress he admired to collect reward money for a stolen painting, and planning to steal the necklace to help out Bunny, who has money problems.  But the film does stop rather abruptly, leaving the police inspector waiting for a rendezvous out in the rain, and no clear conclusion as to what will happen to Raffles next.

Still, it's always worth watching David Niven and Olivia de Havilland in anything.

I understand now that there is an earlier film starring Ronald Colman - and John Barrymore was in a silent version in 1917!

The Avengers - The Hour that Never Was

 I remembered this episode as soon as they got to the abandoned airfield - it's the one with the milk float and Roy Kinnear as a tramp.  There's also a bonus Gerald Harper as Steed's old friend at the airbase.

The Man-Eater of Surrey Green and Silent Dust

 In honour of Dame Diana Rigg's death, I brought out my complete box set of The Avengers again.  I've been watching it a bit at a time, in order, and by chance I had reached Series 4, Disc 4, and a couple of delightful Emma Peel episodes.

In The Man-Eater of Surrey Green, Steed and Mrs Peel are up against an alien plant that can control minds, which gives a lovely excuse for Emma to fight Steed.  A plot twist is that the plant cannot control deaf people, so there are three deaf people in the episode.  The first is a horticulturalist, and boyfriend of one of the mind-controlled scientists.  The second is a fertiliser merchant who Emma meets in the local pub, and the third is an elderly lady scientist who is brought in to analyse the alien plant specimen.  To protect themselves from the mind control, Emma and Steed wear hearing aids to get close to the control room where the growth of the plant is being regulated.

Fertiliser is also involved in the next episode, Silent Dust, but this time the formula went wrong and produced a pesticide that wipes out everything it touches.  The bad guy in this episode is William Franklyn, most famous for the "Shh - You Know Who" Schwepps adverts - here he's a keen country sportsman, and very involved in the local hunt when he's not trying to hold the government to ransom by poisoning the whole of Dorset.  I found it interesting that hunt protestors carrying placards were shown in 1965.  Also, Steed gets shot with no blood or marks on his jacket whatsoever - but it does lead to a very funny hallucination scene.

Tonight I'll be finishing off the disc with The Hour that Never Was, which I have no memory of whatsoever, and Castle De'ath, which is one of my favourites.

Dame Diana Rigg has Died

 

This is how I best remember her, as Emma Peel in the Avengers.  I wanted to be like her, when I was six.

But she was a brilliant actress in so many roles - the only Bond girl to marry Bond (just a pity it was George Lazenby - and that she died just after the wedding), a nun in In This House of Brede, and Mrs Bradley in The Mrs Bradley Mysteries, for instance.

More recently, she played the villain in the Doctor Who episode The Crimson Horror, which had been specially written for her and her daughter Rachel Stirling by Mark Gatiss, and of course she was the Queen of Thorns, Oleanna Tyrell, in Game of Thrones.

She did Shakespeare, and the Morecambe and Wise Show, and she will shortly be seen in the new series of All Creatures Great and Small (returning to her native Yorkshire) and as another nun, Mother Dorothea, in Black Narcissus.

I was lucky enough to hear her rehearsing, once.  I was on a coach tour in Scotland with my gran, and we were looking round the Church of the Holy Rude in Stirling.  Diana Rigg was in the pulpit, rehearsing a speech - there was no mistaking the voice.  I was thrilled, and wanted to stay to listen, but my gran wasn't terribly sure who Diana Rigg was, and wanted to go and have a cup of tea before we had to get back to the coach.  I see from her Wikipedia page that she had an honorary degree from the University of Stirling, where she was also Chancellor for a time.

She also collected a book of theatrical reviews called No Turn Unstoned.

I know what I'll be watching later this evening....

Spider Woman's Daughter by Anne Hillerman

 I've read a few of the Tony Hillerman mysteries set around the Navajo Nation.  When I read a mystery novel, I'm less interested in the whodunnit aspect, and more interested in the background details, especially if the setting is a place or way of life I'm unfamiliar with.  Reading about the Navajo Nation from the point of view of two Navajo police officers has been fascinating, even though Tony Hillerman was not Navajo himself.

When Tony Hillerman died, his daughter wrote a new novel in the Lt. Leaphorn and Officer Chee series, so I was interested to see how she carried on the story.  Anne Hillerman was already a journalist, but this was her first novel.

Well, the first thing she did was almost kill off one of her dad's main characters!  Retired Lt. Leaphorn is shot, and Sergeant Chee and his wife, Officer Bernie Manuelito, have to solve the mystery.  So this story is from Bernie's point of view.

As an ex-archaeologist, I was very interested in all the details about Navajo pottery and the various archaeological sites in the plot, and as someone with an interest in fibre arts I was interested in the details about Navajo rugs.  Bernie's mother was a weaver of Navajo rugs, so that's one meaning of the title.

Anne Hillerman continued the series, and is now on her sixth novel - I'll be interested to read more of them.

The Feathered Serpent

 I have quite clear memories of watching The Feathered Serpent when it was first on TV in 1976.  Diane Keene, who played the Princess Chimalma, also starred in The Cuckoo Waltz, a sit com in which Bodie from the Professionals was the lodger with a young couple, and the mother-in-law (I think it was the mother-in-law) "knew how many blue beans made five".

What I hadn't realised when I first watched the series was that the evil priest was played by Patrick Troughton, so I thought it would be interesting to re-visit it with this knowledge in mind.

I had imagined, when I first saw the series, that I was learning something about the Aztecs and Toltecs, but it quickly became apparent that this was not the case.  All the Aztec and Toltec stuff was really window-dressing for a very basic plot where the good king wants to marry his daughter to the Prince of the neighbouring kingdom to bring peace and the evil priest wants to thwart this and increase his own power.  There's also a lot of sneaking around in secret passages.  I also remembered the Princess being paralysed by poison and having to lie still without blinking for long periods.

Patrick Troughton is wonderful, of course, in a dark, glittery robe and occasionally a head-dress with a black skull.  He also seems to be the only member of the cast who wears anything on his feet - everyone else is barefoot, even the Emperor.  He does a wonderful job of manipulating the other characters, quickly changing his story when it seems they don't want to go in the direction he's leading them. 

"You know the Toltecs are famous for sorcery, don't you?  That's what must have happened, or why could the Prince defeat you so easily?" he murmurs in the ear of the the General who is the rival for the hand of the Princess, when his honour will not allow him to launch a surprise attack on the Toltec camp - for which they clearly had no budget whatsoever, so it all had to be done by suggestion and off screen.

There's also an incredibly convenient eclipse of the sun at the climax of the story.

Poor Princess Chimalma is the only woman in the cast with a speaking part - a serving girl is glimpsed in two scenes, and that's about it.

Still, it's all great fun, and the plucky boy hero, Tozo, is very good - it's the sort of part that could have been annoying, but he was very convincing, despite having to wear a pale blue mini skirt and bikini top.

Thinking of costumes, the big gold head dresses do have a certain Time Lordly look to them.  And, my goodness, the eye makeup!

I was also surprised to recognise the name of the composer of the music for the series, David Fanshawe.  He's most famous for his album African Sanctus, which he did a couple of years before The Feathered Serpent - and when I looked him up, I saw that he had also composed the music for Flambards, with it's distinctive whistling theme.