Film Albums: The Avengers Album

This month's film album is actually a compact disc album and it's an oldie and a goodie: The Avengers by the London Studio Orchestra. The cover states in big letters that it also includes themes from Dr. Strangelove, First Men in the Moon, etc... but Laurie Johnson's name is in small print at the bottom. The album really should have been called "The Music of Laurie Johnson" because it features a lovely sampling of some of his most popular themes. 

This was a Varese Sarabande release (VCD 47270) that implements songs from one of its Soundtrack Series LP releases from 1982 titled The Avengers. 

Of course, "The Avengers" theme is the highlight of the album but you don't want to miss hearing "The Joker" theme from the famous Emma Peel episode, or the lovely romance theme from "First Men in the Moon." The themes to "Hedda" and "Captain Kronos" are also worth listening to. 

Click here to listen to the album in full on Youtube. 

Track Listing

The Avengers - Suite

Theme 

Pandora

The Joker

The New Avengers - Suite

Theme 

Cat Amongst the Pigeons

Obsession

Tale of the Big Why

Dr. Strangelove

The Bomb Run

First Men in the Moon

Title

Moonscape and Descent

The Selenites

Trek to the Giant Doors

Monster Caterpillar

Eclipse and Staircase

Escape of the Sphere

End Title

Hedda - Suite

Title

Hedda and Thea

Judge Brack

Hedda and Lovborg

The Manuscript

Death and End Title

Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter

Title

Death Duel

Top Picks: The Avengers, The Joker, First Men in the Moon main title, Hedda main title.

The Avengers - You Have Just Been Murdered ( 1967 )

Terence Canote, the blogger behind A Shroud of Thoughts, is hosting the 8th Annual Favourite TV Show Episode Blogathon and this year I could not resist sharing an episode from one of the best British shows of the 1960s - The Avengers. 

The Avengers were comprised of the crime-fighting duo of John Steed ( Patrick MacNee ), a dapper English gentleman, and his good friend and colleague Mrs. Emma Peel ( Diana Rigg ), a spunky young woman with a talent for karate. Together, they worked as field agents for the "Ministry", a top-top secret intelligence agency that handled highly unusual cases involving British defense and security. 

Unlike most crime dramas of the era, The Avengers was unique because the cases were strange and uncommon. For example, in The Bird Who Knew Too Much, they had to track down a missing parrot who memorized information about a secret missile base; in The Man-Eater of Surrey Green they tangled with a man-eating plant from outer space; in Dead Man's Treasure, they partook in a treasure hunt on a car rally to retrieve secret papers; and in The Cybernauts, had to wrestle with a robotic killer (!). Yet, our intrepid heroes handled all of these strange occurrences with customary British nonchalant efficiency and a good deal of humor. 

The Avengers ran for six seasons, between 1961 and 1969 with Honor Blackman co-starring with Patrick MacNee in the first three seasons and Linda Thorson taking over in the last season. Like most of the show's legion of fans, I feel the best episodes were from the "Emma Peel Era" with Dame Diana Rigg, especially the color episodes of 1967....which brings us to You Have Just Been Murdered, Episode 21 of Season 5. 

In this classic, Steed receives a call from millionaire Gilbert Jarvis asking to have a word with him about a private matter. He tells Steed he has "just been murdered". A fair-haired well-suited man broke into his apartment and shot him! Only he didn't. It was a fake killing. But the intruder leaves an ominous calling card with only the words You Have Just Been Murdered printed on it. 

At a cocktail party at George Unwin's mansion, Steed and Mrs. Peel have a chat with Lord Maxted, chairman of British Banking, who informs them that a number of his clients have suddenly withdrawn £1,000,000 in cash. Sounds like blackmail. Gilbert Jarvis has just requested a million-pound withdrawal as well, which leads Steed to dash over to Jarvis' apartment...only to find that he has just been murdered - this time for real. 

The Avengers' cases are not mysteries that you are intended to solve. Quite the contrary, usually the audience sees what is happening and it is Steed and Mrs. Peel who need to put the pieces of the puzzle together to find the criminal. In this case, we clearly see that multiple millionaires are being threatened by mock stagings of their own death. If they pay the £1,000,000 blackmail, they will be left alone, otherwise, they die. 

It's a clever premise for an episode, one of many clever plots penned by Philip Levene for the series. He was the screenwriter behind other Avengers classics such as From Venus With Love, The Fear Merchants, Death's Door, Something Nasty in the Nursery, and Return of the Cybernauts. 

After Jarvis' death, the other victims of this blackmailing killer are doubly alarmed....but, in typical British fashion, not afraid enough to pay the ransom and "give in to the scoundrel". When George Unwin ( Barrie Ingham ) becomes the next target, Steed urges him to let Mrs. Peel and himself take the matter in their own hands, but Unwin insists he can defend himself and puts in a good effort, too. 

What makes this episode so enjoyable is its most ingenious plot and its appealing villian: the boisterous and scheming Mr. Needle, admirably played by George Murcell, a very familiar face in British television during the 1960s. The banter between Steed and Mrs. Peel and the location filming around Elstree ( especially Tyke's Water Lake ) are an added plus that make for an altogether delightful bit of viewing. 

To see a full list of The Avengers episodes, check out Wikipedia's summary here. And if you really want to explore the series, then stop by these two fan sites, which have some excellent material to gander at: 

The Avengers Fan Site 

The Avengers Forever 

And lastly, but not leastly, be sure to head on over to A Shroud of Thoughts to read more entries in The 8th Annual Favourite TV Show Episode Blogathon. 

Athene Seyler - A Commander of Comedy

The first time I saw character actress Athene Seyler she was examining a dead specimen of a man-eating plant from outer space under a microscope. She was doing this with her customary aplomb under the watchful eye of Mrs. Peel in "Man-Eater of Surrey Green", a classic episode of The Avengers.

The circumstance of this first encounter was unique in itself but what made it particularly memorable was how remarkably British Athene Seyler was. Across the spectrum of film and television, one comes across all varieties of Brits but certain people stand out as being quintessentially British. Athene is one of those people.

Just look at her face! It is so wonderfully English. Loose jowls, large round eyes with even larger bags underneath them, a rotund figure, and a perfectly circular head. She was often found wearing tweeds, stout shoes, and carrying a walking stick. Like most character actresses, she was a type and portraying delightfully dotty women was her specialty. Her characters were a marvelous median between the kind of roles that Margaret Rutherford or Dame May Whitty would play.

In "Man-Eater of Surrey Green", Athene's character, Dr. Sheldon, is fascinated with the plant specimen that John Steed and Mrs. Peel ask her to examine. The fact that it came in a space-ship from another planet doesn't seem to faze her in the least. She is more excited in discovering that the plant had a brain, an embryonic brain. "Such a shame it was axed!", she exclaims. Quintessentially British. 

But don't let her assumed dottiness fool you. Seyler was an accomplished actress on the stage as well as in film and television. It was in the theatre that she began her career, making her debut as early as 1909. Throughout the years, she had a number of fine roles in such classics as "Harvey", "Watch on the Rhine", "The Importance of Being Earnest" ( as Lady Bracknell ), "Romeo and Juliet", "The Cherry Orchard", "Bell, Book, and Candle" with Rex Harrison, and "Arsenic and Old Lace", where she starred alongside her dear friend Dame Sybil Thorndike as one of the murderous spinster sisters.

In film, she was often seen in Charles Dicken's adaptations, probably because her physical appearance was pure Dickensonian. She was Rachel Wardle in The Adventures of Mr. Pickwick ( 1921 ), Scrooge's charwoman in Scrooge ( 1935 ), Miss La Crevy in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby ( 1947 ), Miss Witherfield in The Pickwick Papers ( 1952 ) and Miss Emily Pross in A Tale of Two Cities ( 1958 ).

Seyler was equally adept at portraying cockney-washerwomen and prison inmates as members of royalty...in fact, she passed herself off as Queen Elizabeth twice (Royal Cavalcade, Drake of England )! She often played ladies, dukes, and duchesses, but her most frequent role was that of an aunt or a curious spinster. She was Aunt Harriet in Happy is the Bride ( 1958 ), Aunt Buona in Francis of Assisi ( 1961 ), and Aunt Heather in I Thank a Fool ( 1962 ). 

Two of my personal favorite films of Athene Seyler are Yield to the Night ( 1956 ) and Curse of the Demon ( 1957 ). In the former, she portrayed Miss Bligh, a kindly old woman who makes regular rounds at prisons visiting with the inmates. She is one of the few visitors that Mary Hilton ( Diana Dors ), who is sentenced to hang for murder, takes pleasure in seeing. In Curse of the Demon, Seyler memorably portrayed Dr. Karswell's mother. She not only knows of her son's demonic associations but, as a spiritualist, aids him in his pursuits. 

Off-screen, Seyler was quite an independent and determined woman. In her youth, she campaigned against blood sports and was active in an ethical society. She learnt early on that she was "different from the other girls. I was much plainer" and so she made up for her lack of beauty through comedic talent. ‘I think to make people laugh is a lovely thing to do...When I was a little girl, my first performance, I went to make my exit, my drawers fell down. And the audience roared with laughter. I had to pick them up, you know. And I thought from that moment on I would do for a comic role.’’

After her first marriage fizzled in 1922, she met and fell in love with actor Nicholas Hannen. His wife had denied him a divorce but Seyler changed her legal name to Hannen regardless and she patiently waited until 1960, when Hannen's wife passed away, to marry him ( she lived with him in the years between! ). 

Indomitable is another aptly descriptive word for Athene. She penned a book entitled "The Craft of Comedy" in 1943 and was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire ( CBE ) in 1959. She claimed to have never taken a holiday, enjoying her work so much, and, at the venerable age of 101, she appeared onstage at the Royal National Theatre.

When one thinks of fine character actresses Seyler's name rarely comes to mind, and yet this marvelous woman deserves to be ranked alongside those other fine character actresses, Dame Margaret Rutherford and Elsa Lanchester. 

This post is my contribution to the 7th Annual "What a Character! Blogathon" being hosted by Once Upon a Screen, Paula's Cinema Club, and Outspoken and Freckled. Be sure to visit any of these sites to read more articles about your favorite character actors of film and television. 

Dead Man's Treasure - The Avengers ( 1967 )

The Avengers has long been one of my favorite television series, so, when A Shroud of Thoughts announced the 3nd annual Favorite TV Show Episode Blogathon, I naturally chose to write about a classic from the 1965-1967 "Emma Peel Era" of The Avengers - "Dead Man's Treasure". 

This episode features Ministry agents John Steed ( Patrick MacNee ) and Mrs. Emma Peel ( Diana Rigg ) embarking on a motor rally in order to retrieve a top-top secret paper from you-know-where that a courier hid in a treasure chest, which happens to be the prize for winning the rally. However, this top-hush document is not so secret after all, and information of its whereabouts has leaked out....not only to the enemy agents who murdered the courier, but to a third agent as well. Hence, Steed and Mrs. Peel must not only match driving skills with their competitors, but also contend with a deadly killer on the rally. 

"Steed Rallies Around,

Emma Drives for Herself "

Treasure rallies have been around since the late 1940s, but few movies or television shows feature this fun sport ( with the exception of Walt Disney's Diamond on Wheels ), so "Dead Man's Treasure" is an especial treat to a rally enthusiast like myself. Unlike regular rallies that have teams ( made up of a driver and navigator ) who try to reach certain checkpoints within a precise time slot, treasure rallies instead have these drivers put their puzzle-solving skills to use and solve riddles to find the location of their next checkpoint. The first team to solve their way to discovering the final destination is the winner. If you ever participated in a treasure rally you would know that it is a thrilling jaunt that takes you to locations you never knew existed in your hometown. 

In Steed and Emma's case, the clues take them to some familiar and typically quaint English locations that were used in other Avengers episodes, such as the village of Aldbury ( a.k.a. Little Storping in the Swuff from "Murdersville" ) and Benstead's house ( Shenley Hall in Hertfordshire ) which also was Jordan's house in "The Bird Who Knew Too Much". 

 "Swingingdale.....get a move on!"

All of The Avengers episodes have such intriguing beginnings but "Dead Man's Treasure" ranks among the best with the courier, having just been shot, racing towards Steed's flat to stagger in and utter the words "red....treasure chest" just before expiring. The series had a no-blood rule ( something that should be implemented in many of today's television shows ), but for this episode they broke the rule for drama's sake. Steed and Emma manage to deduce that the "red treasure chest" the courier had mentioned must in some way be connected to the invitation to the rally, and so they attend it. Once at the rally they do not expect to have new partners assigned to them. Poor Steed is stuck with Miss Penny ( Valerie Van Ost ) who enjoys rattling on about her numerous ex-husbands, while Emma is partnered with Mike ( Norman Bowler ) an affable young man at first, who later takes dangerous measures to ensure he wins the prize. Neil McCarthy and Edwin Richfield also star as two particularly amusing villains who are bent on sabotaging their competition. 

It is the location settings in this episode, the spunky Mancini-esque background music, and the light-hearted way that Emma and Steed handle the race that makes this such a fun way to spend an hour, but "Dead Man's Treasure" also features some witty lines that are up to the usual Avengers-class standard. For example, when a heavy parcel arrives for Steed in the mail, Emma inquires "Lead weights for your diving boots?", to which Steed replies, "Rock cakes from my Auntie Penelope". Steed takes a glance at Miss Penny's legs while racing towards a checkpoint and, distracted, he unintentionally makes a sudden turn, quickly saying "Short skirt.....er, short cut!". High octane stuff!

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If you have not yet discovered the wit and tongue-in-cheek hijinks of The Avengers, be sure to give the series a try. To learn more about The Avengers and check out reviews of episodes like "Dead Man's Treasure", click here. Also, stop by A Shroud of Thoughts to read other blogger's reviews of their favorite television episodes.