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[Station T]

Any of you heard of a 1980 film edited (or perhaps even directed) by Terence Young depicting a young Saddam as a Bond-style adventurer?

From time.com (see below); interesting bits follow.

>>The film that could be the most hilarious, surely the most revealing, screen incarnation of Saddam Hussein is, alas, unavailable, except possibly in the CIA screening room. It's "Al-Ayyam al-tawila," or "The Long Days," a 1980 biopic of Saddam, based on his autobiography and made with his blessing the year after he assumed power in Iraq. Hussein's cousin Saddam Kamal, who reputedly looked like the new dictator, played the lead. According to sleuths on the MI6 website, "The film was a crucial part of the personal mythology Saddam constructed around his early life, particularly his involvement in a 1959 assassination attempt on the life of Abd-al-Karim Qassim, the brigadier who led the 1958 coup. Saddam was injured in the gunfight and fled, dressing as a bedouin and escaping Baghdad on horseback. According to the film he rode north for four days towards his home town of Tikrit and almost drowned swimming across the cold waters of the Tigris to freedom. He later relied upon his heroic account of the escape to build up the folklore that fuelled his strongman image."

Recall that the new Iraqi boss was, and would for some time remain, a devilish darling of the West. Saddam was seen shaking hands with Muhammad Ali, and was photographed in amiable conversation with several members of the current Bush II war party. (The Reagan Administration supplied Iraq with many of the weapons that the U.N. sent its inspectors to hunt for.) He was just another despot whose enemy, Iran, was our enemy. So it wasn't totally odd that a film craftsman from the West should agree to assemble of Saddam's vanity production. This was Terence Young, director of three of the first four James Bond pictures. Young, who had just helmed "Sidney Sheldon's Bloodline," was tapped to edit the epic, which finally ran either 2hr.30min. or six hours. (Maybe the longer running time was the dictator's cut.) Some believe Young may have done more than edit the film. MI6: "A few people who claim to have seen the film say that the direction and style of the film bears a striking resemblance to

[kevrichardson]

www.mi6.co.uk has a full article on Terance Young 's working for Saddam Hussein . It's entitled "The Dictator's Director".

[B007GLE]

I saw a very short clip from this film on PBS a few weeks ago, right before the war started. It's strange because the actor playing Saddam looks like aoung Pedro Armendariz (Kerim Bey). The quick scene (Saddam and a death squad trying to assasinate a general) looked like something out of From Russia With Love.

[Doubleshot]

I'm not sure what the point of MI6's article was. Is this supposed to be some interesting bit of trivia? Is this supposed to make us look at Young in new light?

[Station T]

And here I thought the "MI6 website" quoted in the TIME column was the real MI6's website (since the TIME writer had stated the film had only been seen in the West by spies).

As for what all this means to Young's reputation--Young burned through his money like crazy, and never took "points" in his Bond films, so he probably needed to work for a big check no matter how unconventional the employer. The U.S. Government did a lot of business with Saddam in the 1980s, too!

It is an interesting footnote in Young's biography in light of current events, certainly.

[General Koskov]

Is this like the Bond girls' curse? All Bond directors end up working for dictators?

Do you think he ever gave Hussien some tips:

YOUNG: Say, Saddam, I was thinking about your problem with those Kurds the other day and it dawned on me--you've seen Goldfinger?

HUSSEIN: Yes.

YOUNG: Well, remember at the end how Goldfinger uses common crop-dusting equipment to gas the entire city of Fort Knox? You could do that too.

HUSSEIN: Actually, I was going to hold them ransom for $100 000 000 and then obliterate them with a diamond-powered space laser, but what the hell, I like your style, Young!


And that's how he used the German's crop-dusting eqipment. To this day, Baghdad has a mosquito problem.