When Eight Bells Toll

Wait, you're telling me there's a 70's movie with Hannibal Lecter's Anthony Hopkins as a secret agent, James Bond wannabe, blasting his way across Scotland and it's written by Alistair MacLean of "Where Eagles Dare" and "Ice Station Zebra" fame?

Indeed. Welcome to 1971's WHEN EIGHT BELLS TOLL.

When Sean Connery announced that he was done with OO7 after "You Only Live Twice", film producers Elliott Kastner & Jerry Gershwin thought they had just the recipe to fill the gap. They asked MacLean to adapt his first novel featuring agent Phillip Calvert for the big screen and paid him to write two more screenplays for further Calvert film adventures.

But then this one hit theaters with a thud and the plans for the series faded faster than my hopes for an entertaining first chapter.

The film opens well, with Calvert (Hopkins) climbing aboard a vessel with some Bond-like intrigue and a fun main title song by Walter Stott. About halfway through the film, I heard some music that sounds exactly like Angela Morley's music for a favorite movie as a kid, "Captain Nemo and the Underwater City". That's not a coincidence. Walter became Angela between the two films. My ear for film music remains intact.

Anyway, Hopkins, in his first starring role, struggles to find the right tone as British Agent Calvert. He's not quite as intimidating as you'd like in the action scenes and way too grumpy in many of his interactions with his fellow agents. I think instead of a license to kill, Calvert's got carte blanche to be an a-hole.

The case he's on isn't exactly Bond-like world domination either. Calvert's on the trail of a team hijacking ships with gold aboard. It spins off in all sorts of directions, none of which are particularly interesting.

There is an occasional action sequence and they aren't bad. James Bond stunt coordinator Bob Simmons was hired to get Hopkins into shape for the film and stage some scenes and that pedigree shows.

But every time you think it's heading somewhere, the film just kind of wanders off in another direction.

During the finale shootout in the cave, there's a little rowboat with an outboard engine that drifts into a cave wall and explodes, it's hilarious. Maybe it was the inspiration for the shark blowing up like it's full of dynamite at the end of "Jaws: The Revenge". Not a comparison anyone wants for their film.

Instead of M, Hopkins reports to Uncle Arthur, played by the pompous and rotund Robert Morley, who's fallen a long way since his role in "The African Queen". Arthur is a bizarre character, often more concerned with his next meal than solving the case.

Nathalie Delon is Charlotte, probably the most interesting character here as you're never quite sure where her loyalty lies. She's a sexy, mysterious wannabe Bond Girl and Delon (Frantic, Bluebeard) is well cast.

This pales in comparison to some of the other modern classics made from MacLean's undeniably enjoyable action novels. "Ice Station Zebra" made for a fantastic film that I watch almost every year and 'Where Eagles Dare" remains an all-time favorite with Eastwood and Burton blasting Nazis across endless snow set scenes. But those films were mounted on a massive, big budget scale by major studios.

This is just one of two MacLean film adaptions released in 1971 by Cinerama Releasing in the states. The other, "Puppet on a Chain" is similarly limited by its budget, but features a fantastic boat chase that's worth watching.

Eight Bells may toll, but I can't come up with even two reasons to watch this. It's sole redeeming quality is seeing Hopkins in his one and done effort to become a big screen action star.

If they were shooting for OO7, they ended up with about a OO1.

WHEN EIGHT BELLS TOLL sinks with a D.

Check out the trailer below for a taste of Hopkins as Calvert, Phillip Calvert. The trailer is WAY better than the movie.