Hammer helped define the gothic vampire genre, for which we should be thankful, but they also found need to dabble in other fields with mixed results. Shatter did not have the most inspired mixture and doesn't stand the test of time very well. Perpetually grouchy killer for hire Stuart Whitman fails goes to Hong Kong where he fails to collect from disreputable banker Anton Diffring. Corrupt government official Peter Cushing has his men beat the pulp out of Whitman, who stumbles off to a massage parlor where kung fu master Lung Ti treats him to a freebie from adorable Li-Li Li (whose name sounds like the refrain to a doo-wop song). Whitman finds his apartment blown up so he takes refuge at his new friends' dojo. He slips underground for a while but gets attacked at a martial arts invitational won by understated Ti. Without questioning the moral validity of his instincts, they help him in his quest to extort a mil from Diffring. International affairs gets somewhat sticky from here, and the bullets fly freely until the predictable climax. Carreras tries his best to present Whitman as a then-prevalent philosopher killer, but the weak introspective sequences that show Whitman roaming around his apartment fail to do the trick. The apparently sensitive regret he feels for his victims comes off as a brooding doom with little real emotion backing it up. Shatter's intolerance for international culture makes a few unexpected peeps from its veneer of acceptance. Snooty references to eating snakes evidence a discomfort with the behavior of a foreign country. The background story sets this attitude in stone: Whitman's being tracked down for getting involved with political affairs in Badawi, a corrupt puppet country in Africa in which brothers contentedly murder brothers for money and power. Such situations may perhaps at time truly occur, but the same can be found in Shakespeare with less disapproval asked of the audience. The degree of acceptance present can be seen as a sense of tragedy, completely disconnected with the random slaying of evil black or Asian characters. I don't mean to push the point, but I found it odd that both major black characters were played no-name Yemi Ajibade in an otherwise internationally well-known cast. Cult director Monte Hellman apparently assisted Carreras, far more experienced as a producer, but did not receive credit. Writer Don Houghton produced the other Shaw/Hammer co-production, The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires and also takes credit for the awful but amusing Dracula AD 1972. Scenes allegedly shot in Badawi, a country that does not exist, were probably done in Hong Kong.
Review of Shatter
