Craig D. Lindsey
Welcome to Harvey’s Hellhole, a monthly column devoted to spotlighting the movies that were poorly marketed, mishandled, reshaped, neglected or just straight-up destroyed by Harvey Weinstein during his reign as one of the most powerful studio chiefs in Hollywood. The 30th anniversary of Quentin Tarantino’s revolutionary Pulp Fiction is fast approaching. But let’s give special attention to a less-than revolutionary movie that came out twenty years ago — on home video! — that QT slapped his name on.
In 1963, British writer Peter O’Donnell created Modesty Blaise, a comic strip featuring the titular action heroine (best known as the female equivalent to James Bond), illustrated over the years by such artists as Jim Holdaway and Enrique Badia Romero. Eventually, this crime boss-turned-secret agent would headline novels, short-story collections, and even a campy 1966 movie adaptation with Michelangelo Antonioni muse Monica Vitti as Blaise. (O’Donnell abhorred the kitschy retelling so much, he bought back the rights to Blaise and the rest of his characters.)
If you’re a diehard Quentin Tarantino fan, you probably know how much Modesty Blaise means to the man. In Pulp Fiction, John Travolta’s hitman Vincent Vega often takes the debut 1965 novel to the bathroom. And in Jami Bernard’s 1995 biography Quentin Tarantino: The Man and His Movies, Bernard reported that Tarantino got in trouble in the first grade when he told his teacher that his mother’s name was, in fact, Modesty Blaise. (It’s not, BTW.)
Also, during the ‘90s, Miramax optioned the rights to the Modesty Blaise character, just in case their golden boy Tarantino wanted to direct a movie adaptation. (Tarantino once claimed he had an adaptation of the fourth novel, A Taste for Death, all cooked up in his head.) Of course, Tarantino never got around to it, opting to make his own Modesty Blaise story with the Kill Bill movies. (Americans trying to get a Blaise project off the ground isn’t new; in 1982, ABC produced an Americanized pilot that didn’t get picked up.)
Back then, it seemed like Modesty-mania was just around the corner. Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Lopez and Bill star Uma Thurman were all rumored to be interested in taking on the role. La Femme Nikita creator Luc Besson was supposed to direct an adaptation starring Species siren Natasha Henstridge. Of course, that didn’t happen.
Harvey and them eventually made a straight-to-video Modesty Blaise flick just to retain the rights. (“Modesty Blaise” eventually became a term the Weinstein bros used in explaining how they held on to IP they bought, like the eternally-trapped-in-development-hell Fletch prequel Fletch Won.) Along with attaching his name as a “presenter,” Tarantino also brought in longtime buddy Scott Spiegel (who directed such straight-to-video sequels as From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money and Hostel: Part III) to direct.
Titled My Name is Modesty, the 77-minute movie is not based on any of the books. Screenwriting couple Lee and Janet Scott Bachler (Batman Forever, Pompeii) were hired to write an origin story that dives into Blaise’s early years with her mentor Lob, a storyline that interested Weinstein. The Bachlers pored over the books and wrote a script for a big-budget production. However, with the rights about to expire and Weinstein ready to go to Romania and shoot a low-budget quickie, the Batchlers wrote a scaled-back script, with most of the film taking place in one location.
That location is a casino, where croupier Blaise (British actress Alexandra Staden) and her employees are being held hostage by a gang of machine gun-wielding criminals, led by Miklos (a pre-Game of Thrones Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a vengeful, Eurotrashy thug who killed Blaise’s boss and wants all the money in the casino’s safe. Miklos forces Blaise to call a co-worker (Raymond Cruz, aka Tuco from Breaking Bad) who already left the casino to come back and open the safe. The rest of the movie is Blaise and Miklos killing time by playing a game of roulette, with Blaise playing to let hostages go and Miklos playing to get the truth out of his beguiling creature. This is where we get mawkish flashback scenes of a young, orphaned Blaise being educated by Lob on everything from reading to tai chi.
As expected, since this is a straight-to-video feature, not a lot of fucks were given during filming. Corners are cut in a blatant fashion — even the war footage in the flashbacks is actually stock footage from the 1977 Richard Attenborough film A Bridge Too Far. It feels more like a TV pilot than anything remotely cinematic. (I could easily see a TV version of this playing alongside that small-screen, Le Femme Nikita adaptation that ran on the USA Network during the ‘90s.)
For a movie that’s supposed to introduce us to a beloved badass, Modesty is more about Modesty being a cagey-yet-resourceful beauty. I got so used to seeing Staden just standing around, being wily and defiant, her climactic fight scene with Coster-Waldau is almost jolting. The pair do muster up an intriguing, watchable chemistry, making you wish the material they’re stuck with was as game as they are.
Modesty hit video stores in 2004 with little fanfare and damn-near-nonexistent reviews. The only one I could find from that time is a flaw-forgiving rave from Variety. “For a vidpic filmed in 18 days by a helmer hired scarcely a week before the start of principal photography,” the review begins, “My Name Is Modesty isn’t half-bad.” Modesty does seem to have some proud fans out there. In an interview with Scott Batchler on his blog The Trainwreck’d Society, blogger Ron Trembath called it “absolutely incredible.”
Sadly, we may never get another chance to see Modesty Blaise on any screen. According to a 2020 Twitter post from author (and O’Donnell friend) Neil Gaiman, O’Donnell was so displeased with how the Weinsteins handled his creation, when he passed away in 2010, O’Donnell included a clause in his will stating that no one will ever be allowed to do another Modesty Blaise adaptation. Even though Modesty Blaise is a fictional character, Peter O’Donnell literally went to his grave making sure that Harvey Weinstein never laid a hand on her again.
“My Name is Modesty: A Modesty Blaise Adventure” is available to rent or buy.
