Fail Safe (Lumet, 1964) & Juggernaut (Lester, 1974): Cinema Museum, 6pm
Lost Reels continues its series of classics, curios and forgotten gems on 16mm with two edge-of-your-seat suspense thrillers.
Time Out review of Fail Safe:
Eclipsed by its contemporary, Dr Strangelove, Fail Safe
eschews the former's black humour and opts for a deadly serious mix of
cold-war melodrama and rampant psychosis. Creeping unease builds up to
terminal paranoia as the machines run away from their masters, the 'fail
safe' fails, and the unstoppable 'Vindicator' bomber homes in on Moscow
- all by accident. Lumet sensibly avoids pyrotechnics in favour of
tightening the psychological screws, as Larry Hagman (the president's translator - nice looking kid) does nervy trade-offs
on the hot-line, and everyone, from President Fonda down, starts
drowning in a sea of cold sweat.
Chris Peachment
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Time Out review of Juggernaut:
Juggernaut has been stuck with a 'disaster movie' tag when in
fact it bears little relation to the Hollywood crop of calamities. The
potential catastrophe here is seven steel drums of amatol timed to go
off and destroy 1,200 passengers unless a ransom is delivered to the
mysterious Juggernaut. But Lester's movie is no glossy catalogue of
modern living with a holocaust thrown in for the climax. On the
contrary, it is a penetrating and sardonic commentary on a fading and
troubled Britain, neatly characterised by the lumberingly chaotic ocean
liner, 'The Britannic', in which everything is falling apart: newly
fitted stabilisers rock the boat, the general facilities are shabby and
run down, bombs keep exploding to the dismay of the stoical passengers.
Anyone who's ever had to endure that peculiar form of torture, the
luxury ocean liner, will find an exact description here with not a jot
of misery omitted. The pace of the thriller aspect is unflagging, and
the characters are unerringly drawn, from the perfect casting of Omar Sharif
as the seedy, demoralised captain, to Richard Harris as the bomb expert (the
film's research in this direction is painstaking). Without a doubt, one
of the best movies of 1974.
David Pirie
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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