By Erin Free
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit they deserve. In this installment: editor and director Peter R. Hunt (second from left), who helmed On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Gold, Shout At The Devil and Death Hunt.
When it comes to the mighty behemoth that is the James Bond 007 action espionage franchise, the issue of due credit is a fairly free-floating one. The various actors who have played the famously suave British super-spy over his decades-long cinematic reign sit somewhere close to the top of the proverbial tree, followed by Ian Fleming, the author who created the character, and flame-carrying franchise protector and producer Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli. With the flamboyant overseer’s passing, current producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson now occupy that exalted position. The many directors who have sat at the helm of the Bond films, however, remain largely unsung, with the likes of Terence Young, Guy Hamilton, John Glen and Lewis Gilbert hardly registering as household names, and only big-name helmer Sam Mendes (Skyfall, Spectre) really rating as an “above-the-line” director lavished with praise. Even with all of this in mind, however, director Peter R. Hunt hovers around the superspy franchise as an especially Unsung Auteur.
Born in 1925 in London, England, Peter R. Hunt served as an infantryman during WW2, and after working his way through a variety of jobs, ended up in the field of film post-production, where he first toiled as an assistant cutter for Alexander Korda, before working as an assembling editor on 1952’s The Man Who Watched Trains Go By. The following year, Hunt moved up the production ladder and graduated to the position of editor on future Bond director Lewis Gilbert’s seafaring adventure films The Admirable Crichton and Ferry To Hong Kong and compelling war drama Sink The Bismarck! Hunt then began his very fruitful run in the James Bond franchise, editing the essential Sean Connery 1960s entries Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger and Thunderball, along with other films from Bond backers Eon Productions such as The Ipcress File and Call Me Bwana. Hectic and fast, but wholly precise and lucid, Hunt called his editing style on the Bond films “crash cutting.” Though a skilled and imaginative editor credited by Bond producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli with helping to set the visual and stylistic template for the 007 flicks, Hunt wanted to spread his wings and move into directing. “My feeling was always that one should make the films seriously, but never take them seriously,” Hunt has said of his approach to the Bond franchise.
Though he was passed over for 1967’s You Only Live Twice in favour of his friend Lewis Gilbert, Hunt finally got his chance at the helm when Gilbert declined an offer to direct On His Majesty’s Secret Service. The established editor grabbed his opportunity to direct with both hands. “I wanted it to be different than any other Bond film would be,” Hunt has said of the film. “It was my film, not anyone else’s.” Hunt certainly succeeded. Along with Bond outliers and oddities like non-Eon Productions efforts Casino Royale (1967) and Never Say Never Again (1983), 1969’s On His Majesty’s Secret Service is unquestionably the most unusual film in the franchise. In a Connery-created casting hole and temporary reshuffle, the film stars one-time-only Bond and noted Aussie macho man George Lazenby, who really makes the role his own.
On His Majesty’s Secret Service is exciting and winningly against-the-grain, and now rates as one of the best in the franchise. At the time of release, however, it was a major disappointment. Despite rollicking action sequences, one of the classier Bond girls (Diana Rigg), a menacing villain (Telly Savalas’ Blofeld), and an above average screenplay, the film’s downbeat ending combined with the public’s reluctance to accept anyone but Sean Connery in the role led to a downturn in ticket sales, forcing producers to offer Connery the world in order to lure him back for the lacklustre Diamonds Are Forever. The failure of On His Majesty’s Secret Service is one of the real sad points of the Bond franchise; both Hunt and Lazenby could have made many more fine films featuring the debonair superspy. Though Hunt was offered the opportunity to direct other films in the franchise – including the excellent Live And Let Die, The Spy Who Loved Me, and For Your Eyes Only – the director politely declined, choosing instead to focus on other projects.
Post-Bond, Hunt worked on the British TV series The Persuaders!, where he ironically forged a strong, ahem, bond with the show’s impossibly dapper and charismatic star, Roger Moore, who would, of course, go on to become 007 with Sean Connery’s departure. During Moore’s tenure as the superspy, Hunt also tapped the actor for two fine, wholly under-appreciated films with 1974’s Gold and 1976’s Shout At The Devil, both based on novels by prolific adventure author Wilbur Smith. [For an utterly fascinating look at Wilbur Smith’s cinematic output from Stephen Vagg, click right here] Expertly directed by Hunt with a fine sense of pace and spirit, and well played by all performers, this is a great one-two from Roger Moore, with the ridiculously handsome and engaging actor first playing an engineer battling a bunch of avaricious execs who want to flood a gold mine, and then taking on the role of a British aristocrat who teams with Lee Marvin’s American entrepreneur to blow up a German battle cruiser in WW1. Rollicking and entertaining, but also rich with thought and meaning, these two fine films suggested Hunt as a possible master of action and adventure.
But despite this, Peter R. Hunt never quite got the opportunity to really go large with his filmmaking. He certainly crafted some excellent movies, but none of them made a huge impact. Witness the vintage wonders of Hunt’s wholly intriguing 1977 adaptation of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, which winningly and inventively mixes live action with animation to tell the famed tale of Richard Harris’ eponymous adventurer’s experiences in the tiny kingdom of Lilliput. It’s an incredible technical time capsule of a film but remains largely forgotten today.
After the excellent Gulliver’s Travels, Hunt worked successfully in TV (on the likes of 1984’s The Last Of Pompeii, 1983’s Philip Marlowe: Private Eye and 1978’s truly excellent – and excellently titled – The Beasts Are On The Streets, in which a truck crash looses the animal inhabitants of a wildlife park on a small town, with entertainingly dire results), and also helmed a small collection of enjoyable, old-school action-adventure films. Hunt made two fun pictures with stony-faced action man Charles Bronson in the form of 1981’s Death Hunt (a highly enjoyable outdoor adventure flick which pits Bronson’s crafty Yukon trapper against Lee Marvin’s determined Mountie) and 1987’s Assassination (a fun romp in which Bronson’s taciturn Secret Service agent has to protect Jill Ireland’s objectionable First Lady from wannabe political assassins), as well as the wholly serviceable sequel Wild Geese II, in which the director does his best on a film with little to no real connections to the classic original. It’s not a bad show, but it would have been better if Hunt had been able to convince his old mate Roger Moore to reprise his role from the much-loved 1978 barnstormer.
A quiet master of highly effective, inventively staged and thrillingly entertaining action-adventure films, Peter R. Hunt was much more than just the director of one of the best and most original James Bond films…though that’s certainly a damn impressive feat in itself. A truly Unsung Auteur, Pete R. Hunt passed away from heart failure in 2002 at his home in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 77.
Additional reporting by John Harrison.
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs Shaun Grant, James B. Harris, Gerald Wilson, Patricia Birch, Buzz Kulik, Kris Kristofferson, Rick Rosenthal, Kirsten Smith & Karen McCullah, Jerrold Freeman, William Dear, Anthony Harvey, Douglas Hickox, Karen Arthur, Larry Peerce, Tony Goldwyn, Brian G. Hutton, Shelley Duvall, Robert Towne, David Giler, William D. Wittliff, Tom DeSimone, Ulu Grosbard, Denis Sanders, Daryl Duke, Jack McCoy, James William Guercio, James Goldstone, Daniel Nettheim, Goran Stolevski, Jared & Jerusha Hess, William Richert, Michael Jenkins, Robert M. Young, Robert Thom, Graeme Clifford, Frank Howson, Oliver Hermanus, Jennings Lang, Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.
