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5
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6 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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This
action-oriented melodrama was the second of a proposed three-picture
collaboration between Britain's Hammer Films and the Shaw Brothers
of Hong Kong, prolific purveyors of internationally exported
kung fu movies. (Legend Of The
7 Golden Vampires was the first; the third flick was never
made.) Though primarily known for its output of gothic horror
films, Hammer had, from its earliest days, also produced a number
of a crime dramas and noir-style thrillers totally devoid of
supernatural elements. Keenly aware of the worldwide popularity
of martial arts pics in the early 1970s, Hammer attempted a
fusion of the crime/espionage and kung fu genres in a bid to
cash in. The result, Shatter, is
uneven at best —
a middling actioner that benefits from its Hong Kong setting.
American character actor Stuart Whitman (Night
Of The Lepus) heads the cast. That a Yank was given the
lead in a British-Hong Kong co-production was likely an effort
to make the picture more marketable in the States. Another American,
B-movie director Monte Hellman (Beast
From Haunted Cave), was brought in to helm, but a falling
out with producer Michael Carreras resulted in Hellman's eventual
departure from the project. Carreras, himself the director of
some of Hammer's lesser efforts (Prehistoric
Women, The Lost Continent),
then stepped in to complete the shoot.
Whitman plays the title character, who's
never given a first name
— but who does have a superkitschy wocka-chicka-wocka-chicka
theme song more appropriate for a blaxploitation film. Shatter
is a professional assassin who does "wet work" for
Western intelligence agencies who can't be seen getting their
hands dirty. The movie opens with Shatter's James Bond-style
hit on the military strongman running a fictional African nation.
He literally shoots the general with a flash camera containing
a concealed pistol. Shatter then jets off to Hong Kong to pick
up his $100,000 payment from a European banker, Mr. Leber (Circus
Of Horrors' Anton Diffring). The moment Shatter arrives
he realizes he's being followed. During the cab ride from the
airport a gunman takes a shot at him but misses.
Shatter gets a cold reception from Leber.
He refuses to pay up. Pissed off, Shatter warns the banker to
pay him the money or else. When he turns to his Agency contact
in Hong Kong to find out why he's been stiffed, he's informed
the CIA did not order the hit — his usual employers knew nothing
about it. "You're like the plague," his contact tells
him. "You're bad news, Shatter. You're completely on your
own." Not exactly buoyed by the news, Shatter's on the
way back to his fleapit hotel when a group of thugs attack him
in an alley, beating the crap out of him. They work for Rattwood
(Cushing, in a small "guest star" role), a sinister
British intelligence agent who tells Shatter to leave Hong Kong
immediately or else end up as a corpse floating in the harbor.
But the assassin isn't going to split without the bread that's
owed him — "I get paid for my work. Always!"
— or before finding out why he's now a marked man. Alone in
a strange, hostile city, luckily Shatter is befriended by Tai
Pah (Bruce Lee wannabe Ti Lung), a bar-owning kung fu master,
and Mai-Mee (Li-Li Li), a pretty massage parlor girl. For some
inexplicable reason these two take a liking to Shatter, who
is one surly, grouchy, seemingly perpetually hung-over dude.
Mai-Mee even falls in love with him (why?); Tai lets
him move into his martial arts school after Shatter's hotel
is attacked with a rifle grenade. Shatter vows to get his money
— with plenty of interest — and split it with Tai if the kung
fu champ will help keep him alive long enough to collect it.
At times Shatter
seems as tired as its main character. Whitman really looks haggard
and burned out, his rumpled appearance apparently a substitute
for actual character development. Shatter's a professional player
in a dirty, dangerous game who's finally grown tired of it all
and starting to feel guilty about his past. But rather than
set up this premise through the script the film relies mainly
on Whitman's craggy mug... In most of his scenes the actor looks
like he just woke up after a serious all-night bender. (Which
was, he admits in the audio commentary, actually the case a
few times.) This doesn't mean Shatter isn't up to busting a
few skulls when necessary but he mostly relies on his trusty
.38 revolver. The majority of the hand-to-hand ass whuppin'
is handled by Ti Lung, a competent old style fu fighter without
a hint of Bruce Lee's charisma. Just why his character is willing
to risk life and limb on the promise of an eventual payoff from
a boozy-looking American he hardly knows is never satisfactorily
explained. His martial arts school is only in the story to pad
the running time with a few minutes of pointless chop socky
demonstrations. Shatter's love interest, Mai-Mee, is almost
totally irrelevant to the plot and her sudden affection for
him completely unbelievable.
After a mildly interesting opening, Shatter
spins it wheels for a time as Whitman
strolls about the seedier side of Hong Kong —
nothing much happens
during the middle act. Peter Cushing is always a welcome presence;
he seems to be enjoying his small role as the amoral MI6 spook.
(He has exactly three scenes in the entire picture but
provides the key dialog that ties all
the plot threads together.) Anton Diffring, of course, never
fails to make an effectively oily villain. Happily things pick
up a bit in the final act. The two action sequences that cap
the film actually aren't half bad, with Tai and Shatter resolving
the situation by simply killing everyone within fist, foot or
pistol range. The demise of the two main heavies is spectacularly
cheesy, as both are blasted out a high window to plunge together
to their deaths through a glass verandah. (They don't call him
"Shatter" for nothin'!)
Basically, Shatter
plays like a gritty TV drama padded out to movie length with
only a bit of nudity and bloody violence to remind one it's
actually a theatrical feature. (Carreras hoped to develop a
syndicated television series out of this, starring Whitman and
Cushing, but poor box-office quashed that notion.) It's strictly
a grungy espionage tale until halfway in, then suddenly switches
gears to become a kung fu movie. It never really succeeds as
either. Were it not for Cushing and Diffring I'd have rated
it only "4" (out of 10).
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Anchor
Bay's recent DVD release of Shatter
marks one of the last installments
in its long-running Hammer Collection series of discs.
The
transfer used by AB reportedly has a few seconds of violence trimmed.
I only detected one noticeably clumsy edit, when Tai knocks one
of Leber's thugs off a wharf.
Big deal. I don't see how a few extra seconds of anything
could work to the film's benefit. As for the transfer itself,
colors look good and there's very little print damage but grain
is regularly evident. Audio quality is more than adequate, benefiting
the funky score and sound effects more than the dialog.
Along with the
the British trailer and some quickie TV spots, the disc comes
with an episode of the World of Hammer documentary series.
Narrated by Oliver Reed, its a nice collection of movie clips
from the company's non-horror crime/suspense films, but barely
tells you anything about the pics themselves. Then there's the
full-fledged audio commentary. This proved quite interesting;
it certainly enhances the overall value of the package. It was
apparently lifted from a mid-'90s laserdisc edition of Shatter.
A 'patch' job, the track consists of a discussion between moderator
Norman Hill and uncredited director Hellman, with separately recorded
snippets of Stuart Whitman edited in. Despite this the commentary
is a pretty good one. The opportunity for Hellmann to talk about
his experience at length —
he was fired from the production after three weeks —
is a novel one. He discusses his fondness of Hong Kong, the very
strange and ultimately exasperating filmmaking practices of the
Shaw Brothers, and his difficulties with Carreras (who doesn't
come off as a very sharp or particularly nice guy here). Whitman,
too, provides a number of anecdotes about the rather odd Shaws
and their Hong Kong movie "factory". He seems a laid
back, genial guy who likes the movie (probably his last starring
vehicle) despite its evident shortcomings.
(Trivia note: The film was retitled Call Him Mr. Shatter
for release in North America in 1976, two years after it was made.
It bombed.) 6/29/02 |
| UPDATE
Out of print since 2004, Shatter
was later re-released by Anchor Bay as part of a double feature
two-disc set (pairing it with 1957's The
Abominable Snowman Of The Himalayas, also
starring Cushing); it, too, is now OOP. |
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