Duell in Vaccares

Of all the adaptations of books by Alistair MacLean, I feel that this qualifies as the worst, but don´t blame MacLean!. It would appear that all that this film shares with the novel is the same title. We have no suspense, no sense of foreboding of mystery, no chance to really empathize with the main characters. We spend the entire duration (or at least I did) waiting for Charlotte Rampling to shed her clothing (for Charlotte, this appears to take a remarkably long time!). Still, a glimpse of Charlotte Rampling´s tits really can´t save this disastrous film. MacLean has once again been kicked into the gutter to endure the sniping of those bitter hacks and nit-pickers who would appear to blame him for all the ills that befall attempted filming of his books. Poor old Alistair must have crawled into a corner and whimpered when this one came out. At least "Bear Island" - which also uses the Maclean name but apparently none of his novel - was a LITTLE exciting. The excitement here is in waiting for the final credits.

In France, Neil Bowman (David Birney) picks up British photographer Lila (Charlotte Rampling). They get invited to dinner with a French duke who hires them to accompany a scientist to New York. They are pursued by kidnappers who really want the scientist.

Charlotte Rampling is one of the great beauties of cinematic history. There is also plenty of beautiful European locations in this film. It's too bad that it has all been wasted in the boring action thriller. They try quite a bit of action, but I wouldn't call any of it thrilling. Mostly, this is boring and I find myself more interested in the locations.

The existing reviews for this are useful and I'd agree with pretty much everything that people are saying. As someone who finds Alistair MacLean books and films a guilty pleasure, the decision to film on location and work in a little-documented actual festival gives the film a certain atmospheric appeal. However the subsequent commitment to using this footage appeared to hamper the creative team's ability to tell a coherent story. The frequent use of cutaways and montage such as the bullfight with the killing of De Croyter's daughter, suggests that the availability of the documentary footage drove the film's structure and so effectively killed opportunities to create suspense with more carefully constructed shots. Perhaps more unfortunate is that the Director constructing the shots was the hapless Geoffrey Reeve who managed to increasingly mess up three MacLeans. In addition to Vaccares, he directed the flawed, though undoubtedly watchable, 'Puppet On A Chain', noting however that the memorable boat chase was shot by Don Sharp. Then after 'Vaccares' he helmed the appalling 'The Way to Dusty Death' which confirmed that he was totally out of his depth as a Director in the industry. Writer, Paul Wheeler should also carry some responsibility for the eventual cinematic carnage. Maybe Reeve's TV work was better but he and the writer really didn't haven't a clue how to build suspense and handle this sort of material and as a result, a decade of exciting Alistair MacLean branded entertainments started to lose credibility with audiences. Starting here.

American Neil Bowman is traveling through France when he meets British photographer Lila. They are hired by French land owner Duc de Croyter to escort a Hungarian scientist to New York. But they soon realize that the job is not a cushy number, and have to deal with a gang of kidnappers who will stop at nothing to get their hands on the scientist.

One of my favourite Alistair Maclean novels is turned into a flat and dull cinematic affair, lacking the excitement, the suspense and thrills that Maclean is renowned for, however there are some bright spots such as the scenery of Provence, the culture, the aerial shots, and some exciting action scenes especially the bullfighting scene at the end. It's just a shame the film overall lacks that spark, not very engaging, and dull. I normally like David Birney and he looks the part but his character isn't too likeable and he smirks most of the time. It's a shame that this doesn't match up with the exciting book. The problem is that the filmmakers deviated significantly from the book, which had a great plot and was tailor made for the big screen, and settled for what now is on film. A big faux pas on their part.

The last time I saw this was in high school on the last day of term when you were allowed to watch a movie in class. We were looking forward to watching something like the Karate Kid when one of our classmates, Murphy, excitedly whipped out this tape THAT HE HAD BROUGHT IN SPECIALLY - this film, Caravan to Tedium. To our utter dismay our Geography teacher put it on and the class spent a double period thoroughly disenjoying themselves watching this Alastair Maclean snoozefest - all except Murphy that is, who was lapping it up big time. When our class wasn't collectively daydreaming about shoving Murphy's face into a vat of pig excrement we endured PG rated thrills and Wednesday afternoon level excitement as Charlotte Rampling and David 'personality' Birney run around dodging bullets while attempting to achieve something tiresome. I watched it again today, so the question is, was it better 34 years later? No, not really. Murphy if you're out there, this unfortunate event may have happened in 1986 but you're still a bell end for instigating it.