Tag Archives: James Bond

Friday Night At The Home Drive-In: 13 Frightened Girls (1963)

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William Castle never fails to entertain me. I’ve enjoyed movies like House on Haunted Hill (1959) and The Tingler (1959) for many years. And his legendary gimmicks are always an added plus to the experience (not that I’ve ever actually EXPERIENCED the gimmicks, but reading about them – and imagining what they would have been like -always adds to my enjoyment of his movies).

In the case of 13 Frightened Girls (1963), the gimmick is a little less visceral than, say, a giant skeleton flying over the audience (Emergo from House on Haunted Hill) or electric buzzers wired to theatre seats (Percepto in The Tingler). This time the gimmick was a world wide talent search for teenage girls to play the daughters of diplomats who attend a special school. So, presumably, this would mean that people from 13 different countries could take pride in one of their own being selected to appear in this movie. I’m not sure if this actually increased ticket sales in the winning countries, but I understand the spirit of the idea.

On the downside, this gimmick seems more like a pre-movie publicity stunt than something that would actually enhance the experience of watching the film. Still, it’s a fun idea.

Judging by the title and the poster, a person might be tempted to think that 13 Frightened Girls is a horror film. It clearly seems to have been named after Castle’s successful 13 Ghosts (1960) and, going in, I almost wondered if I was about to see some sort of sequel to that movie… but no.

13 Frightened Girls is unusual and unique – hard to classify or put into a category. As I watched the first few minutes of it I found myself wondering what Castle had thought he was creating. Did he imagine that this was his version of… a James Bond film? It did come out one year after Dr. No (1962) – and there certainly were a lot of James Bond knockoffs in the 1960s (including some spoofy comedies), but it seems unlikely that this one could have been a direct decedent. Let’s face it, a story about teenage schoolgirls doesn’t quite seem like an obvious riff on Bond.

As the movie wore on, I decided that Castle must have been thinking of Alfred Hitchcock when he made this one. Picture it: a suspenseful story about an ordinary person, in this case a teenage schoolgirl, who gets mixed up in a dangerous game of espionage when she accidentally stumbles upon a murder. That could be a Hitchcock plot – and Hitchcock certainly knew how to use humour in his films…

…which brings me to the point that while 13 Frightened Girls is sort of a suspense thriller, it’s also a fairly silly teen comedy. In fact, I’d say it’s more of a comedy than a thriller. It also contains a potentially uncomfortable Lolita-like sub-plot: Candy, our 16-year-old schoolgirl heroine, is in love with 40 year old Wally Sanders, an intelligence agent who works at her father’s embassy. Wally is in love adult woman named Soldier, so it’s not actually a Lolita story. Still, Candy’s feelings for Wally make her decide to “help” him by using her school connections to spy on other counties and pass the information along to Wally. She does this under her nom de plume, Kitten. 

As you can probably imagine, there is much silliness and humour in 13 Frightened Girls. There are also a few suspenseful sequences. It’s by no means William Castle’s best movie, but it’s quite a bit of fun. It’s also a fairly unique movie, as I can’t think of many (or any) others that are exactly like it. Some viewers might take exception to the cultural stereotypes that are on display. As a nearly 60 year old movie that deals with characters from 13 different countries, it’s almost inevitable that much of it would seem outdated now. For maximum enjoyment, it should be viewed as an artifact of it’s time.

Some reviewers have pointed out, quite correctly, that there are in fact 15 girls in this movie – not 13. I’m not sure how to explain that. Perhaps Castle was originally going to call it something else (The Candy Web perhaps), but then decided to cash in on his earlier hit movie, 13 Ghosts. Who knows? I suppose it should also be pointed out that most of the 13 (or 15) girls don’t ever appear to be particularly frightened, either.

No matter how you look at it, 13 Frightened Girls (1963) is #NotQuiteClassicCinema. I had no idea what to expect from it – and if I had, I might have thought twice about screening it on a  #FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn. After all, it’s not a horror movie, or a monster movie, or any other kind of typical drive-in movie. It’s certainly not an exploitation film… or is it? Maybe what William Castle was exploiting this time, was the national pride of 13 (or 15) different countries. Maybe he was trying to start a whole new kind of exploitation. Or maybe he was just making a PG schoolgirl comedy. Someone suggested that it might pair well with an old Gidget movie (Gidget (1959) or Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961) anyone?). And actually that might not be a bad way of understanding this film. Perhaps 13 Frightened Girls was William Castle’s Hitchcock meets Gidget movie. It may have failed to spark a whole new genre, but it’s a fascinating relic of another time. 

Friday Night At The Home Drive-In: That Man Bolt (1973)

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Back in the late ’80s (or maybe it was the early ’90s), I remember coming home from work just before midnight, making myself a late night dinner/snack of frozen pizza, and sitting down in front of the TV to watch whatever happened to be on. There were a couple of channels that showed movies at midnight, and I would often put one on, not even knowing what it was if I missed the opening credits, and get caught up. On this particular night it was That Man Bolt (1973). I knew who Fred Williamson was, and had already enjoyed movies like Vigilante (1982), Black Caesar (1973) and Three the Hard Way (1974), but I had never heard of That Man Bolt.

I knew right away that I was onto something, when Fred’s character, Jefferson Bolt, was told by a mysterious government figure that he would have to work for them if he wanted to get his valuable (perhaps incriminating) documents returned to him. This mysterious organization had kept Bolt locked up for a week while they searched his home for the important papers. In the end, they had to use a metal detector to find his safe – which, as we can all see, was hidden behind a picture on the wall.

I think I fell off my chair. laughing. They couldn’t find a safe that was hidden behind a picture on the wall?! Every safe I’d ever seen in the movies had been hidden behind a picture on the wall. But these guys were checking, where – behind the sofa? Under the kitchen sink? And if it hadn’t been for the use of that metal detector, the location of Bolt’s safe would still be a mystery to them.

I was less than ten minutes into That Man Bolt, and I knew I’d struck cinema gold – and without the use of a metal detector.

That Man Bolt was probably made to cash in on the recent success of the so-called Blaxploitation genre. Movies like Shaft (1971) were very successful and led to sequels like Shaft’s Big Score! (1972) and Shaft in Africa (1973). Apparently, Universal signed Fred Williamson to star in three movies as Jefferson Bolt, so they clearly intended That Man Bolt to be the start of a movie series (or franchise, as people now say). It probably also helped that Fred Williamson had been successful in Black Caesar (1973), which had led to its own sequel Hell Up in Harlem (1973).

Universal seemed to be aiming for something a little closer to the James Bond, international intrigue kind of feel as opposed to the more typical urban crime setting of many Blaxploitation films. James Bond. Jefferson Bolt. Bond. Bolt. Coincidence? Look at one of the tag lines found on a movie poster for That Man Bolt: “He’s “Bonded”! “

Setting the film in British Hong Kong, where Bolt lives, and casting British character actor Byron Webster as Griffiths, the mysterious government man who forces Bolt into service, gives the film a more British feel. And even though Bolt asks Griffiths if he is CIA, it’s obvious that he would more likely be on her majesty’s secret service.

Another market that the movie seemed to be aiming for was the martial arts crowd. Bolt is described as a black belt, and some of the movie posters say this:

SEE these famous MARTIAL ARTS experts in action: Mike Stone–World Professional Light Heavyweight, Karate Champion, Ken Kazama–Japan Kick-boxing Champion, Emil Farkas–European Black Belt Karate Champion, and David Chow–Former California State Judo Champion.

I suppose that the success of Bruce Lee and Enter the Dragon (1973) may have had a hand in that.

Considering everything that it had going for it, That Man Bolt seems like it should have been a surefire success. I’m not sure how it did at the box-office, but none of the sequels were ever made, and Jefferson Bolt did not become an iconic character. As much as I enjoyed the movie on late night TV all of those years ago (and on home video several times since), the truth is that it’s not as good as it needs to be. It has moments of brilliance, and Fred Williamson is perfect as the charismatic, clever, tough and capable action hero. But it never rises up to the level of James Bond, Shaft, or Black Caesar. Perhaps if they had made the sequels, each one would have improved and Jefferson Bolt would have gone down in history. Even James Bond had an iffy start with Dr. No (1962). It’s a good movie, but most fans agree that From Russia with Love (1963) and Goldfinger (1964) were better. If they had simply stopped after Dr. No, would people still be talking about James Bond now? Who knows?

I have always had a soft spot for That Man Bolt (1973), and I’ve been a fan of Fred Williamson since I first saw William Lustig’s Vigilante when I was 12 or 13. So, Jefferson Bolt will always be a welcome visitor on a #FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn.

And I, for one, wish that they had made the sequels. But oh well… we’ll just have to make do with one “Big, bad and beautiful” piece of #NotQuiteClassicCinema.