Review: Shatter

Mr. Shatter (Stuart Whitman) is an assassin is in Hong Kong collecting payment after finishing an assignment taking out an African dictator (Yemi Ajibade). Unfortunately, his slimy employer (Anton Diffring) stiffs him, denying any knowledge of him or the job he was given. And then Mr. Shatter manages to survive two attempts at extinguishing his life. A police inspector (Peter Cushing) requests that Mr. Shatter leave Hong Kong. Lung Ti plays a local man whom Shatter hires to be his bodyguard while in Hong Kong trying to figure out what in the hell is going on.

 

Hammer combined with Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers for two films in 1974. The other one, “The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires”, is pretty good fun. Started by director Monte Hellman (“Beast From Haunted Cave”, “Two-Lane Blacktop”), this one’s a mess I’m afraid. It sounds like it was a bit of a nightmare shoot, with Hellman replaced by the film’s producer Michael Carreras for the rest of the film. Meanwhile, both the film’s affordable star Stuart Whitman and original cinematographer John Wilcox fell ill during filming. The latter was replaced by assistant Roy Ford and eventually Brian Probyn. All three are credited in the final product. With Mr. Whitman they persisted and it caused production delays (This is the same Stuart Whitman who lived to 90+ years old, dying in 2020. So it was clearly a temporary setback). The film isn’t entirely worthless but I had more fun subsequently listening to the hilarious DVD commentary with Whitman and Hellman, than watching this rather cheap-looking film. Whitman’s unflattering comments about producer Run Run Shaw are priceless and Hellman keeps apologising for how bad the film is before we even get to the stuff he didn’t direct.

 

Whitman seems like he’d be more convincing as a cop than an assassin but he gives a better performance here than you might expect, especially given his health during filming. Old pros Peter Cushing and a slippery Anton Diffring are given little to do but add a bit of class otherwise lacking with the film. This and “The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires” were Cushing’s last feature film assignments for Hammer and his dry performance here is fun in a film where fun is awfully intermittent. The score I’m giving this film is significantly higher than it would’ve been without him and Diffring. Speaking of Diffring, is he having his lines fed to him via an earpiece or is it a character choice? If it’s the former, he does a dreadful job of hiding it. Lung Ti is terrific to watch in full flight, but unfortunately one of the film’s biggest issues is the lack of action. To call this a martial arts film would be a fraudulent claim. The finale is quite violent, but action fans will be left wanting a lot more than the film delivers. The performances are all good – with Lung Ti and Lily Li handling the English dialogue just fine. The film is kinda muddled and looks incredibly cheap, more indicative of The Shaw Brothers than Hammer. The nadir is probably the incredibly irritating theme song, one of the worst movie themes of all-time.

 

Scripted by Don Houghton (“Dracula AD 1972”, “The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires”), this is one of the more middling, forgettable Hammer efforts indicative of a studio on a downward trajectory and not sure what to do to try and turn that around.

 

Rating: C+ 

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