Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2011 January 19 • Wednesday

The two-part Mission: Impossible episode "The Council" was shown in Europe and Asia as a feature film in the late 1960s. It was called Mission: Impossible vs. The Mob, a wonderfully careless title.

I treated myself to a Japanese movie poster for it.

Once it was hanging on the wall, I decided to sit down and watch "The Council" again. (I'd like to see the exported feature film one of these days. I presume it was edited to play as a movie and not two episodes of a TV show.)

It's not one of my favorite episodes but it gave me an appreciation for the art of the poster. Whoever designed it had a clear vision of what it should like and worked to realize that vision. For instance, the hands holding that camera belong to Martin Landau, not to Peter Graves.

And see the burning car at the bottom, with the dead guy in front of it and the other guy running to the left? Well neither of them is seen in front of the burning car—and they're the same person! Cut from two different scenes and pasted into a third.

Great poster. Jerry Fielding wrote some of the music for "The Council". Lalo Schifrin of course wrote the Mission: Impossible theme, and I think some of the other cues you hear in "The Council" are his also.

Eduardo Ciannelli, who played Waldo in Johnny Staccato, shows up near the end.