Once Before I Die (1966)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The biggest problem with this one is the fact that John Derek couldn't resist the temptation to make it artsy, using every camera trick in the book to awe his viewers. All it ends up doing is making us want to turn away from it in disgust. The story is a mix so ambiguous that it ends up making no sense. It's interesting that he cast James Dean lookalike Rod Lauren in a major role and then filmed him in torrid love scenes with his then-wife Ursula Andress, especially odd since Derek and Andress both bedded James Dean........just before he died. Lauren's death scene in the film is downright laughable as he is somehow shot multiple times through a large tree trunk, with not so much as a single facial expression of shock, pain or agony. Weird scene. Andress is obviously there to be the "one before they all die", and the film is a total waste of some fine actors. A real mess.

***SPOILERS*** It's December 1941 and the Japanese have just bombed Pearl Harbor with the Philippines their next target on the agenda that has a unit of US Army cavalrymen playing a game of polo caught with their pants down and strafed by Japanese Zero fighter planes. It the man is charge Maj. Bailey, John Derek, who's job it is to get his unit back to Manila and join the US/Filipino troops there to fight the soon to be invading Japanese who are planning an assault landing there.The movie soon degenerates like the US positions on the Islands into total chaos with the outnumbered US troopers slowly picked off and wiped out by the advancing Japanese military. With their commander and chief Maj.Bailey blowing himself up with a loose hand grenade while looking for a puppy that got itself lost in the fighting.It's Bailey's girlfriend Alex, Ursual Andress, who now takes center stage in trying to find a way out of this mess with the few US troops still left alive. It's the crazed eyes Lt. "Blood & Guts" Custer, Played by a clean shaven and skin head looking Richard Jaeckel, who eventually leads the remainder of the US unit into a Japanese trap. That by him staging a hopeless and suicide assault on the far more superior in both men and equipment Japanese that leaves Alex as the only survivor. Alex for her part showed her kind feelings for humanity or mankind by offering her womanly pleasures to 22 year old virgin US soldier Rpd Lauren just before, with a big smile on his face, the Japanese troops gunned him down.***SPOILERS****Not much to see with the exception of actress-boy is she hot-Ursula Andress who gives her all, off camera, for her fellow man as well as country in the fight against the Japanese Empire. It's while the film was being made that Ursula and her husband John Derek called it quits that gave the film an extra reason for watching it. It also explains why John Derke was killed off so soon in the movie in him not just leaving his wife Ursula but the rotten script that he was handed.

I first heard about the film, in a book by Danny Peary called Guide For the Film Fanatic. The question he seemed to ask was, How someone like John Derek could have made such a good film? Having seen this film on TV, I have to agree with him.While John Derek may have made many bad films, and I can't say they were all bad, because I have not studied his work. However, I wonder if those other reviewers who hated this film so much just hated John Derek.When I watched this film, I couldn't help but feel that Derek was influenced by the Polish Films of the 1950's by Wajda, particularly CANAL. While filmed in color, this film has that despair of war. Considering that most of television, and some movies portrayed World War II as something heroic, this film was ahead of its time. It shows war as very ugly, almost a warning about the Viet Nam conflict that the US was just getting involved with. I also enjoy his shots of other people who inhabit the scenes, as if they have stories to tell themselves, particularly the native population of the Phillpines. It is a use of the camera I believe called 'foregrounding', something that was used in the Cuban film THREE JULIAS, which I think was made later. Another person, not on IMDb, mentioned that he felt this film had an influence on Appocolypse Now, especially if you see the Redux version.His use of Freeze Frames was ahead of it's time, though occasionally it looks cheesy, and may have helped keep the budget down. Also, with John Derek as the star of the film, he does have some surprises in the story, something that has been copied in later films, which I will not name. Finally the Use of Mrs. Andress in the film, may have helped get more financing for the movie. While some of you might look at her as only eye candy, I would suggest that her performance and presence does not distract from this film, and is not wrong. The final image of her on the screen, with the beautiful song, is a haunting image.

John Derek has never made a good movie in his life. He's been IN some good ones, but he's never MADE a good one, and there's no better example of his almost complete lack of talent as a filmmaker than this. He takes a potentially interesting story--the guerrilla war waged against the Japanese after their takeover of the Philippines in World War II--and for some reason turns it into a game of who's going to nail Ursula Andress before the Japanese kill everybody. Derek apparently thought that the sight of Andress, his wife (or girlfriend, or whatever she was) at that time, in various stages of undress was enough to draw people into the theaters (it wasn't). Because of that, he obviously paid no attention whatsoever to minor things like having a coherent script, directing the other actors, maintaining a semblance of continuity--trivial matters like that. The only saving grace (professionally, that is) is Richard Jaeckel's performance as a soldier eventually driven insane by the fighting. Jaeckel was always one of the most watchable actors around; he had that cockiness and explosive quality that Cagney had, and no matter how lousy the movie was (like this one), he always pulled it up a couple of notches. Unfortunately, he wouldn't have been able to pull this thing up with a crane. Its infuriating pretentiousness is its main undoing. The dialogue is so Ed Woods-ian in its rambling, nonsensical "what-the-HELL-are-they-talking-about?" absurdity that you finally find yourself wishing that the Japanese would come in, whack everybody and put the cast--and the audience--out of their misery. An absolutely painful experience that makes you wonder, "How in God's name did he get anyone to put up the money to make this thing?" Skip it.