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RIP: Director Mike Hodges: Get Carter, Flash Gordon...Psycho?

posted 2 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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I"ve been sitting on this one since December 2022, when director Mike Hodges died:

Mike Hodges was a British director of TV and movies. Died at age 90. A nice long life.

A nice long career, too, though for me, he boils down to only four movies and one interesting Psycho anecdote. Here goes:

Hodges "made his name" with the 1971 British Michael Caine crime film, "Get Carter." Its my second favorite movie of 1971(after Dirty Harry) and sometimes when I see it again, I like it BETTER than Dirty Harry. Dirty Harry had that Hollywood Panavision polish -- Get Carter is down and dirty, gritty, immensely powerful -- I'll never forget it. It has won titles like "Best British Crime Film" and "Best British Film"(period) in some polls . That's OK by me.

The plot is simple but vicious. London mob enforcer Michael Caine defies his London mob bosses and takes a train north to the seaside village of Newcastle to investigate the drunk driving death of his brother, and to try to care for his brother's teen daughter. Caine is certain his brother was murdered, and he's gonna get him some revenge and its GLORIOUS.

Newcastle circa 1971 is at once very depressing and somehow exotic and alluring. We see how its very poor people still manage to eke out a living and to forget their woes in pubs and dance clubs. Aside from the "innocents" it seems that every man is a criminal and every woman is a hooker or in porn. That's the world Caine confronts and when he finds out what REALLY happened to his brother -- and his niece(who might be his daughter)...watch out. A lot of vicious, semi-psychotic killing ensues. And a lot of great comedy lines!

Caine turned down the rapist-killer Bob Rusk in Frenzy around this time, but he's pretty damn psycho as Carter. Difference is..he's OUR psycho..our hero. He roughs up two women, kills one of them directly, one indirectly so we get a sense of Rusk in the performance. Still, he's killing CRIMINAL women here -- in Frenzy, Rusk kills innocent women. Caine knew: there is a difference.

Get Carter also has a tres cool, synthesizer jazz score by Roy Budd that gives the movie its bleak mood as surely as Herrmann makes Vertigo romantic -- and it also fits in with the Shaft and Dirty Harry(Lalo Schrfin) scores of 1971.

It was all the way to 1980 before Mike Hodges got a "big movie again" and it couldn't have been more different than the realistic Get Carter. Flash Gordon was Dino De Laurentis trying to cash in on Star Wars with a bizarre, surreal "spaghetti SciFi actioner" that had Prestige Max Von Sydow as Ming the Merciless, a vapid American blond named Sam Jones as Flash , and a handsome British guy named Timothy Dalton in SUPPORT. It had weird orange skies in space and a classic Queen soundtrack including the title tune.

Its a cult classic, and decades later, a young teen in my circle showed me how the modern comedy "Ted" (about an oversexed talking teddy bear and his adult pal, Mark Wahlberg) made both Flash Gordon and Sam Jones hot again. Ted the bear LOVES Flash Gordon and LOVES the rather broken down blond beauty Sam Jones. In Ted 2, Ted seeks Jones' "seed" to impregnate his girlfriend. Jones woefully reveals that years of cocaine have rendered it useless...so Ted and Wahlberg sneak out to get the same baby making stuff from...Tom Brady. But I digress. "Flash Gordon" joined "Get Carter" on Mike Hodges cult classic list.

Years and years passed, and then in 1998, Hodges returned to his London/England crime roots for a movie called Croupier, which helped make Clive Owen a star as a London card dealer with mob ties (and some hot women.) The James Bond talk began immediately and hey -- Hodges had launched Timothy Dalton....

Another 5 years took Hodges and Clive Owen to a movie called "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" which I saw out of loyalty to both men. It was a weird story. I can't remember any of it except the climactic dialogue scene, which my sig other and I started laughing at because Owen keeps saying the SAME THING OVER AND OVER when told something shocking about his dead brother:

Man: Well, your brother is dead but..
Owen: What are you trying to tell me?
Man: Well, its what happened before then..
Owen: What do you mean?
Man: Well...he was raped.
Owen: Really what are you trying to tell me?
Man: You know...raped.
Owen: I don't understand. What are you trying to tell me?
Man: Well...he was raped. He couldn't handle it.
Owen: What are you trying to tell me?
Man: Well, he was..
Owen: No..I don't understand. What are you trying to tell me?

And on and on. I'm exaggerating but only a little.

So let's leave Mike Hodges with Get Carter(an all time great), Flash Gordon(fun camp) and distantly with Croupier.

BUT: Let's also leave Mike Hodges with a great big connection to ...Psycho.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Psycho: Let's leave Mike Hodges with the April 1976 issue of Film Comment magazine, which celebrated Hitchcock's entire career to promote Family Plot. Various famous people offered short interviews -- even Cary Grant(about four lines). And James Stewart.

But Mike Hodges wrote the best essay. About how Psycho changed his life and set him on his director's path when it came to his small North England town in the summer of 1960.

Hodges noted how the town had a giant Palace Theater that usually played the "regular stuff" to near empty houses..a melancholy salute to the death of the movie business (in 1960!)

Until it was announced that Psycho was coming to the theater. The WHOLE TOWN knew about Psycho, had heard about it "through the grapevine," had read some reviews and articles.

When Psycho played that old Palace Theater, the lines were forever and the theater was packed to the rafters the night young Mike Hodges saw it. The crowd murmured through the "Certificate X" sign put on screen before the movie started and stayed rapt throughout.

Hodges took pleasure writing this: "The private detective Arbogast looked up at the stairs. The whole crowd screamed DON'T GO UP THERE! And when Arbogast DID..pandemonium! The DOG WAS OUT OF THE MANGER."

Hodges wrote that in caps(clever man.) I don't know what "Dog was out of the manger" meant, but he communicated how the whole British crowd screamed as one and how, for one blessed night(perhaps a few weeks more) Psycho brought back the movies and their magic to his small England town...and set him on course to become a director. (Indeed, there is a BIT of Psycho in Get Carter, come to to think of it.)

So RIP, Mike Hodges. Get Carter. Flash Gordon. And one of the best pieces on Psycho I have ever read....