BY LEE PFEIFFER

One of the great strategic blunders of the Cold War was the Western powers' decision to not militarily challenge the building of the Berlin Wall. Under the post-WWII treaty, Berlin was divided into four sectors with each one governed by a different nation : the Soviet Union, America, England and France. The terms of the treaty called for the former Allies to have free and unfettered access to each other's section of the city. Although Berlin was located inside Communist East Germany, it remained a symbol of freedom and liberty. This was a poke in the eye to the Soviets, who were determined to resolve the situation by simply building an imposing wall that blocked off East Berlin from the other sectors controlled by Western democracies. The world was outraged but in the end, no action was taken beyond exchanging some heated telegrams and phone calls. Thus, in a matter of days, Khrushchev's gamble had paid off. He would later confess in his memoirs that even he was skeptical he would get away with it. Suddenly, the entire population of East Germany was sealed off from other parts of the city. In many cases, families were now divided and would not see relatives for decades until the Wall finally fell in 1989. The building of the Wall was a particular blow to the new American president, John F. Kennedy, who was widely seen as having mishandled the situation. With the additional bungling of the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba that failed to topple Castro, JFK was increasingly being seen by the Soviets as a push-over, which is probably why Kennedy was willing to risk nuclear war to prevent a third Soviet triumph by not allowing their missiles to be based in Cuba.  The Berlin Wall did backfire in one sense, however. It came to symbolize the repressive nature of the Soviet regime that was being imposed even on their puppet states. No amount of propaganda could negate what people could see with their own eyes: valiant and desperate East Berliners risking their lives to find ways to get past the heavily fortified wall into the safety of West Berlin. Countless people lost their lives in the process but many others managed to escape. Occasionally, an East Berlin border guard would defect in plain sight. The Wall also provided a backdrop for countless Cold War novels and movies, most notably John Le Carre's classic "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold". Most famously, the Wall allowed another American President to win some propaganda points for the West when Ronald Reagan stood atop it and demanded, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!". 

The first film to deal with the Berlin Wall crisis was "Escape From East Berlin" (aka "Tunnel 28"), an MGM production that was rushed into production to take advantage of a story that had made international headlines: the escape of 28 people who dug a tunnel directly underneath the Wall. The effort was led by a daring young man whose effort resulted in freedom for his family and friends. Although this clearly is  an exploitation movie in one sense, we should not diminish its considerable merits. The film is tightly scripted and, considering its limited budget, highly engaging and suspenseful, thanks in no small part to the admirable direction of Robert Siodmak, who had brought to the screen two suspense classics: the original versions of "The Killers" and "The Spiral Staircase". Shot in B&W in West Berlin, the only "big budget" aspect to the production was the construction of a section of the Wall that plays such a pivotal role in the story. 

Erika and Kurt pose as lovers to deceive border guards who are hunting for her.

The movie opens with a harrowing scene of a young man who tries to drive a truck through a barrier at the Wall in a desperate attempt to get to West Berlin. His effort almost succeeds but he dies in a hail of bullets. The next day, his concerned sister Erika (Christina Kaufmann) searches for him near the Wall. She assumes his quest has been successful and begins an attempt to cross over. She is stopped by Kurt (Don Murray), a young man who lives with his mother, younger brother and uncle in the shadow of the Wall itself. Kurt, who worked with Erika's brother, tries to inform her that he has been killed but he cannot bring himself to do so. She is deluded by the notion that he has escaped and is determined to join him. Meanwhile, border guards are relentlessly searching for Erika because of her attempt to get into West Berlin. She is now confined to hiding in Kurt's home indefinitely, with the family living in fear that the next house check might result in them all being arrested. Kurt's family is also routinely visited by a young mother with a baby who relentlessly tries to convince the family to attempt to escape. Her motive is understandable: when the Wall went up, she was isolated from her husband, who is in West Berlin. Reluctantly, Kurt agrees to begin an escape attempt by tunneling underneath the wall, which is only a few dozen yards from the family basement. In doing so, the family must cope with the logistical problem of finding supplies as well as storing the immense amount of dirt from the digging operation. Additionally, there is the constant presence of border guards outside their window, snooping neighbors who might inform and the unexpected arrival of another man, Brunner (Werner Klemperer) who claims to be a participant in the dig but who may have other motives. The film does manage to present how an authoritarian regime can affect even the most mundane of daily activities, as people must consider the consequences of everything they do and say. 

"Escape From East Berlin" is a consistently suspenseful tale that is extremely well-acted, with Murray particularly good in the kind of role that somehow eluded Horst Bucholz, who seemed to have a lock on every part that required a handsome young German back in the day. Murray even provides a convincing accent. Christine Kaufmann is largely wasted, however, in a part that is pure window dressing. Fortunately, the screenplay doesn't saddle her character with having the anticipated romance with Kurt, although they do pose as lovers to escape the scrutiny of border guards. Even the smallest roles are expertly filled with Werner Klemperer as impressive as always as the mystery man. The film builds to a nail-biting conclusion as the plot is revealed by an informer and there is a race against time to get across the border as authorities break into Kurt's family home.

The region-free Warner Archive release boasts a fine transfer and an original trailer that is played for pure sensationalism. Highly recommended.  

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BY HANK REINEKE

On the surface it appeared somewhat brave of Kino Lorber to greenlight a Blu-ray edition of Peter Hunt’s 1974 conspiracy-thriller Gold. It’s not that the film isn’tt deserving of such treatment, in this case an almost flawless restoration from original elements courtesy of Pinewood Studios. It’s only that this film has already been exhaustively exploited on peddled by every budget VHS and DVD label over the last several decades. So fans of the film would surely have this title – perhaps in multiple editions and action-film multi-packs – already sitting on their collection shelves. If so, I can promise your copy is a greatly inferior version to what we’ve been happily provided with here.

The back story of this film’s production, as so often the case, is nearly as interesting as the film itself. Michael Klinger, the British film producer who had given us the great Michael Caine spy thriller Get Carter in 1971, had previously optioned the film rights to such novels as Gold Mine (1970) and Shout at the Devil (1968). Both of these adventure-thrillers had been authored by the Rhodesian novelist Wilbur Smith. Smith would, alongside co-writers, later share screenwriting credit for both films. Klinger was able to raise funds for the film’s production through South African investments and a promise – soon to be controversial - to shoot both of his films in Johannesburg and neighboring communities.

Klinger brought on Peter Hunt to direct the film – whose working title of Gold Mine was soon shortened to Gold. In doing so, Klinger would not-so-coincidentally rescue Hunt’s career as a director of big-screen adventures. Following production of the Hunt helmed sixth James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), the former editor was sadly offered only two subsequent directorial assignments, both far more modest efforts for British television. In what everyone hoped would be his deserved return to big screen respectability, Hunt would bring on a number of veterans from the James Bond series to assist him on his return to big feature filmmaking: editor John Glen, sound recordist Gordon K. McCallum, camera operator Alec Mills, title artist Maurice Binder and production designer Syd Cain amongst them.

It was likely a Godsend to Cain that he wasn’t tasked to replicate an actual working mine in full scale. Klinger had been able to secure the full cooperation of South Africa’s General Mining Corporation for the film’s production. The British souvenir program for Gold, later sold at cinemas in the UK, boasted that the GMC was “one of the great mining and finance houses in the world,” adding the production team was given unfettered use of their mines at West Rand and Bufflesfontein. It was at the latter location that most of the surface photography was shot, with filming having commenced “beneath the 160-foot high shafthead and above the 500 miles of tunnels which twist 9,000 feet below and from which are torn 5,000 metric tons of rock every month.” Cain did impressively replicate portions of the gold mine to film interior action scenes at Pinewood Studios.

Tapped to portray Rod Slater, was another – if more recent – member of the James Bond film family: Roger Moore. Moore’s character in the film was recently promoted – or perhaps one should say “set up” – from “Underground Manger” to General Manager of Sonderditch GMC Ltd. It’s a South African mining company that will soon fall victim to a nefarious plot hatched in London by a board room of ruthless financial investors led by Sir John Gielgud. Their plan is to covertly flood the mine to manipulate prices on the gold market in an effort to increase their own fortunes… even if their windfall would come at the at the expense of the miner’s lives. I’m not giving away anything here, this film is by no means a mystery; the protagonists are identified nearly from the film’s very beginning. Gielgud has many accomplices in his plot including the mine’s very own Managing Director Manfred Steyner (Bradford Dillman).

There was little doubt that the producers of Gold hoped their film might ride the coattails of Moore’s surprising international success as James Bond in Live and Let Die (1973). The lobby cards for Gold, one guesses not unintentionally, would boast “Everything They Touch Turns to Excitement!” Which may have been a great line of ballyhoo, but one whose promotional zing would seem awfully familiar to the one found on the Goldfinger (1964) one sheet: “Everything He Touches Turns to Excitement!” I suppose it can also be argued that Gielgud’s intention to create a crisis to manipulate gold prices and increase his fortune by “five thousand million dollars” (whatever amount that is) is essentially an idea torn from Auric Goldfinger’s playbook. Interestingly, Gold would later be paired in the UK as a double-feature with Diamonds Are Forever (1971). The very collectible British Quad poster assembled for this odd cross-studio pairing would trumpet “At last! Moore and Connery Together in One Terrific All-Action Programme!”

Moore wasn’t the only actor on hand to bring a little star power to the marquee. Actress Susannah York was cast to play Terry Steyner, the Cessna piloting wife of conspirator Dillman, and Slater’s immediate boss. If Dillman’s Steyner is a complete tool, Moore’s Slater is, to be honest, a bit of an anti-hero himself: he’s a philandering rapscallion, who carries a checkered past of broken marriages, debt and high-living tastes that he can ill afford. Moore easily seduces York and their ill-advised affair begins... though, to be fair, she was desperately unhappy in her marriage to begin with. Ray Milland, who plays York’s father, is also on hand as the curmudgeonly but amiable CEO of Sonderditch. Also working on the film was famed composer Elmer Bernstein, whose emotive score would earn him (and lyricist Don Black) an Academy Award nomination in the Best Music, Original Song for “Wherever Love Takes Me”… but they would lose out to “We May Never Love Like This Again” from The Towering Inferno.

So the film certainly doesn’t lack for talent. The problem with Gold is that the story is a maddeningly meandering slow burn. Every stage of the nefarious plan and every criminal and marital double-cross is dutifully documented at length… at the expense of the film’s action which is relegated to the film’s final fifteen minutes. Hunt’s best and most dramatic moments are captured in scenes involving the dangers of the dank, claustrophobic mines, all groaning beams of lumber, dynamite fuses, trapped miners and unsettling cave-in catastrophes (one which includes a grim on-site medical amputation).

As already mentioned, there were a lot of film technicians associated with the James Bond franchise who would work on Gold. The most notable, perhaps, was this film’s Editor and Second Unit director John Glen. There’s little doubt that this film would later prove influential to Glen when chosen to direct the fourteenth Bond film A View to a Kill (1985). Much of the visual mayhem on display in Max Zorin’s soundstage mine was eerily similar to those in Hunt’s Gold. Glen would go on to direct Moore in three James Bond adventures from 1981-1985. Hunt, on the other hand, had previously worked with Moore on a single episode of The Persuaders (“Chain of Events,” 1971), but would work again with the actor on Gold and Shout at the Devil (1976). Despite their friendship, Hunt would confess in a fascinating interview with the short-lived sci-fi magazine Retro Vision, “I love Roger, he’s a lovely man and I’ve done three films with him. But he was never my idea of James Bond.”

The World Charity Premiere (“In Aid of the Star Organisation for Spastics”) of Gold was held on the evening of Thursday, September 5, 1974 at the Odeon Leicester Square. On Friday, September 6^th, the film was to set to enjoy a limited roll out to just short of two-dozen theaters across the UK. Hemdale, the corporation set to distribute the film in the UK afterwards took out a full-page ad in the trades trumpeting “Gold is proving to be 24 carat – 1^st Week Box-Office Total in 23 Cinemas: 81, 660 GBP. Every situation held over. Mr. Exhibitor Make Sure You Get Your Share of Gold.” The film would make less of a splash in the U.S. Though the US would not see a version of the colorful souvenir program brochure that British audiences were offered, Pyramid Books would publish a paperback movie tie-in with a promise their pulp edition would include “an 8-page photo insert from the film.”

Unfortunately for the producers, critical reaction to the film in the U.S. was less enthusiastic, with many newspapers writing off Gold as one more run-of-the-mill “disaster films.” There was some morsel of truth in that. The success of The Poseidon Adventure (1972) had kicked-off in its wake a rash of box-office and pop-culture disaster-film successes as The Towering Inferno (1974) and Earthquake! (1974). One critic would, incorrectly, but understandably, describe Hunt’s adaptation of Gold “as one of the cataclysm of disaster movies that have lately been making cinemas look like Red Cross centers.”