This is a low-budget gem, an exploration of the psychological consequences of grooming. You can probably guess from the outset where it is headed but simmering tension has rarely been handled so stylistically.
With the exception of Patricia Neal, an unexpected Best Actress Oscar-winner for her previous film Hud (1963), there were no stars in the cast. Curd Jurgens was only beginning to play characters for whom a German accent was not essential, Samantha Eggar one movie shy of her breakout picture The Collector (1965), Ian Bannen, essentially a character actor, building on his success in Station Six Sahara (1963).
Blinded after an unexplained psychological trauma, Allison (Patricia Neal) welcomes back, over the objections of husband Eric (Curd Jurgens), her much younger sister Robin (Samantha Eggar) to the family home. Family friend Paul (Ian Bannen) cares (possibly overmuch) for Allison while hankering after Robin. The screenplay by veteran Julian Zimet (Saigon, 1947, with Alan Ladd) is taut as a drum, every line a threat, suppressed emotion or piece of exposition that could bring the whole house of cards tumbling down.
The blindness is exceptionally well handled, Allison’s need for physical contact with her husband sensual in its expression. Though she can a ride a horse, her vulnerability is implicit; as she is led across a beach you wonder what would happen were she to be abandoned. What she cannot see becomes central to the movie. That Robin – vivacious but damaged – clearly has some hold over Eric is demonstrated in a tete-a-tete between them but as tensions mount such scenes cannot be kept secret. When Eric grabs Robin’s hair and she retaliates by jabbing him with scissors, neither party emits a sound, leaving Allison oblivious to it all.
Robin takes delight in exposing what has lain on the surface for too long. When Paul begins to fall for Robin, the younger woman astutely remarks to her sister: “Am I taking him away from you?” Allison, however, is self-aware, convinced she could see if she wanted to, if she was prepared to lift the psychological barrier that keeps the past safely hidden. “I’m afraid to see,” says Allison, “there’s something I’m scared to look at.”
Given the period when it was made there was a lot that could not said – or shown – and even so the film was censored prior to release, but it is the direction by Alexander Singer (A Cold Wind in August, 1961) that lifts the picture up. An acolyte of Stanley Kubrick, the movie teems with imagination, close-ups and extreme close-ups are balanced by long two-shots, a conversation in a car between Eric and Paul mostly direct to camera a prime example.
Emotion is captured at every turn and Singer avoids the cardinal sin of treating Allison like an invalid or focusing on her reaction to what she cannot possibly see, her eyes hidden behind dark glasses for much of the time. Levity is provided by Mrs Crawford (Beatrix Lehmann), Eric’s sci-fi-reading horoscope-obsessed mother and by a couple of excitable children.
The grooming is in the past but the after-effects are very real. In a film like this it is tempting to consider that certain attitudes are dated, but it is clear from this film that nothing has changed, that men believe they can take what they want regardless of the impact on their victims.
Shaggy dog story wrapped up in paranoia thriller. A shade overlong, with too many characters and too much plot but such flaws should not detract from that rare cinematic animal, a truly original movie. Brilliant screenplay, believable characters and superb acting prove an irresistible combination.
Though you can see why this sank like a stone at the box office, the all-star cast generally acting against type, idiosyncratic director given vast sums to play with, a tale that goes in too many directions at once, and the unconstitutional events of January 6, 2021, bringing this too close to home for fractured American audiences.
You don’t get this kind of writing much anymore. When individuals come together on a project – to save the world the most likely reason these days – their individuality is usually subsumed to the plot. Here, instead, the reactions of the characters remain distinct and no matter what is going on there is always time for individuality. And some of the invention is just deliciously insane, the nonsense songs for example.
Touching on the World War One aftermath of recovering from mental and physical wounds plus profiteering glee, a sense of a country racked by the Depression on the brink, mind-inducing experimentation of the political and pharmaceutical kind. A trio of war veterans, soldiers Burt (Christian Bale) and Harold (John Davidson Washington) and nurse Valerie (Margot Robbie) investigate a mysterious death, an illegal autopsy uncovering poison, only to find themselves framed for murder.
Burt is not a prime-time player according to wife Beatrice (Andrea Riseborough), and her wealthy family had dispatched him to the war in the hope he would return with bankable glory, but generally treat him as an unwanted black sheep. Valerie now makes art out of war debris, bullet shells and shrapnel, her charming brother Tom (Rami Malek) and his wife Libby (Anya Taylor-Joy) embedded in malevolence. Harold is a lawyer, for whom racism is a constant.
American and British secret service operatives, Norcross (Michael Shannon) and Canterbury (Mike Myers), float in and out. The moneyed business elite, despising White House incumbent Roosevelt, cast envious eyes at the dictatorial economic miracle of Mussolini in Italy.
On everyone’s dance card is General Dillenbeck (Robert De Niro), sought out by our intrepid trio and a mysterious cabal. All he has to do is make a speech at a veteran’s dinner. Make the right kind of speech and the trio are vindicated. Make the wrong kind and he could be assassinated.
Like Chinatown (1974), Amsterdam is representative, a state of mind, but of freedom rather than endemic corruption. This is an intricate piece and a bit slow for today’s fast-paced generation and with more dialog than might sit well with a modern audience and flights of fancy that are far more original than anything you would find in the MCU. But it’s a hell of an intelligent thriller driven by a bunch of deadbeats.
It never goes down the obvious route. Instead of a love triangle – Valerie and Harold a pair – it’s an evocation of friendship. You don’t need umpteen clues to find the villains, they’re upfront, and they don’t think they are baddies, but cleverer people coming to the aid of the dumb masses putting too much blind faith in democracy. While this is based on a true story, in reality it’s based on the constant of the rich trying to get richer and the wealthy believing they are the best, even if unelected, candidates to run the world.
All that political stuff could have been a big turn-off if it had gone down the preachy route, but it doesn’t, instead it’s almost a miracle that it arrives at any conclusion given in whose hands the narrative has been placed. The Three Stooges would have done a better job of getting there quicker, but then you wouldn’t have had so much fun.
Not only are all the stars on their A-game but acting-wise it delivers some career-reviving turns not least from Christian Bale (Ford v Ferrari, 2019), devoid of a lifetime’s acquisition of irritating tics, John David Washington (Tenet, 2020) called upon to develop a character rather than an action-driven hero. I had to check the end credits to find out it was Mike Myers (Bohemian Rhapsody, 2018) playing the understated Canterbury and hogging the screen with none of the acting pyrotechnics that dogged previous attempts at mainstream work. Ditto Robert De Niro (The Irishman, 2019) and Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody), no grandstanding this time round – don’t worry I recognized both from the off – and Anya Taylor-Joy finally delivering on the promise of The Queen’s Gambit (2020).
Margot Robbie (The Suicide Squad, 2021) is already on the rise and this will add to her growing portfolio of fascinating characters. And if you’re fed up watching any of these stars in brilliant form, there are other distractions in the form of Chris Rock (Spiral, 2021), Taylor Swift (Cats, 2019), Andrea Riseborough (The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, 2021) and Alessandro Nivolo (The Many Saints of Newark, 2021).
You often hear the term “visionary director” thrown about with indiscriminate regard, but this is the right kind of visionary, director David O. Russell (Joy, 2015) with his own way of seeing the world, and delivering it in distinctive fashion, with less of an eye on camera movement and more on dialog and motivation and staying true to a coterie of original individuals.
I guess the money was spent on atmosphere, this is 1930s USA regurgitated in enormous detail. But you’ll forget the background, the costumes and sets, and be dazzled instead by the script and the acting, and the enveloping tale of friendship.
Might be a stretch to imagine A Swingin’ Summer has anything of note to add to the momentous cinematic history of the decade except for it falling into a booming phenomenon – the actor-producer. John Wayne (The Alamo, 1960), Paul Newman (Rachel, Rachel, 1968), Jack Lemmon (Cool Hand Luke, 1967) and Kirk Douglas (Lonely Are the Brave, 1962) led the way in actors taking complete control of their careers and putting together the movies they wanted to make rather than pitching up as hired hands.
Dale Robertson was an unexpected entrant into the hyphenate business, never having achieved the marquee clout of others, best known for string of B-westerns and the television series Tales of Wells Fargo (1957-1962). Television could be lucrative, especially if you were the star of a long-running show, but the longer you worked on the small screen the more you jeopardised the continuation of a big screen career. Law of the Lawless (1964) was his first movie for six years.
Advert in “Variety” heralding the arrival of Dale Robertson’s new business.
But Dale took an unusual approach to the production business, planning even more control than his predecessors, by setting up a distribution company, United Screen Arts (“USA” a useful acronym”). He had a simple credo, the “clean family film” seen as niche market worth exploiting at a time when only Disney paid it any continuous attention and when Hollywood stood accused of eroding family values with salacious product.
He had teamed up with Earl Collins, intending to release a dozen pictures a year, claiming their operation would be “the salvation of the independent producer.” On top of that, they spent $200,000 acquiring for U.S. television syndication rights to 39 foreign films starring the likes of Elke Sommer and Bebe Loncar. There was talk of The Redeemer, a low-budget rival to The Greatest Story Ever Told, of handling British film The Quare Fellow and Tom Laughlin’s debut The Young Sinner which had been languishing in distribution limbo for four years.
But the company’s first move was, as trumpeted, into the family market, straight into the lion’s den with The Man from Button Willow (1965), an animated feature, Robertson lending his voice to the main character. And while the family market could offer substantial returns as Mary Poppins (1964) had proved, there was an even more attractive subgenre awaiting exploitation: the teen market.
Your face looks familiar – Dale Robertson with “billboard girl” Raquel Welch in tv show “Hollywood Palace.”
It was estimated that U.S. teenagers had $11 billion in pocket money to spend on records, clothes and movies. Teenagers assumed to have outgrown the Disney animated features were too young to be permitted entrance to more racy fare. But the Britpop explosion, headlined by The Beatles, had emphasised this market’s buying power.
From just a handful of pictures targeting the older young, there were now close on 20 features heading its way, split almost evenly between beach movies and those featuring pop stars – The Dave Clark Five, The Mersey Beats among other British exports along with Elvis Presley – or movies with little attempt at narrative, no more than a “filmed variety show with little variety.”
These movies exhibited acceptable anomalies, one of which was that the pop stars playing the lead roles retained their own first names in order “to speed up and simplify teener identification with their roles.” Remove parents and the threat of a morals clause, and it was a fresh approach to sexuality, and with nudity never an option well within the Production Code definitions of harmless fun.
AIP had successfully segued from its Edgar Allan Poe line of horror movies to beach pictures. Beach Party (1963), with over 10,000 bookings so far, had kick-started the mini-genre, and another half-dozen AIP offerings had entered the movie food chain. Along the way it made stars of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello who acted as a junior version of Doris Day and Rock Hudson, bedroom shenanigans reimagined as more innocent beach shenanigans, and instead of being dressed to kill the main characters were as undressed as much as possible, bikinis and shorts the order of the day.
Dale Robertson set out to tap into this market, A Swinging Summer “custom-tailored for the vast teenage audience.” USA lacked the $500,000-$700,000 budget of AIP which permitted the presence of older stars like Dorothy Malone, Vincent Price and Peter Lorre. USA’s aim was, effectively, a C-picture with sunshine and music. Record companies were happy for screen exposure for their artists, so guest spots, which might otherwise have stopped the narrative dead in its tracks, turned into highlights.
With a no-name cast – Robertson knew Raquel Welch from television variety show Hollywood Palace – and a simple location at Lake Arrowhead in California, the movie was quickly filmed in summer 1964 but held back a year. USA managed tie-ups with Suzuki and Yamaha motorbikes, the former promising a free ride to anyone brandishing a ticket stub, and with record company Moonglow, which offered prizes of the latest album by The Righteous Brothers. A press conference and screening was held for 300 high school newspaper editors and Robertson managed to put together a nationwide tour with some of the participants, although its biggest piece of publicity came from a woman who got her finger stuck in the spoke of a steering wheel during a drive-in screening in Milwaukee.
A few years before or a few years after, A Swingin’ Summer would have been support material, speedily in and out of theaters. But riding a short-lived zeitgeist and taking advantage of the unexpected rise in popularity of Raquel Welch it did much better.
There was a saturation release in 71 houses in North Carolina, “impressive grosses” at the Pacific Drive-In circuit, topped by a record-breaking opening in the Crest Theater in Bakersfield, a good $7,500 at the Twin Drive-In in Cincinnati, a very healthy $28,000 in a New Orleans break, and $26,500 from five cinemas in Kansas City. First-run proved hard to come by but it still snapped up $7,500 at the 2,432-seat Fox in Denver. Supporting features included Major Dundee and Wild in the Country.
There were sightings through 1967, no doubt on account of Raquel Welch’s growing popularity. And if it wasn’t a shoo-in for big city center palaces, it found a hearty welcome in smaller operations in small towns. “The best beach picture ever played,” was the opinion of the Fayette Theater in Fayetteville while at the New Theater in Arkansas it was considered “one of the smaller pictures” that outgrossed bigger-budgeted efforts.
But this was a short-lived phenomenon, and within a few years a beach picture would be a rawer affair like The Sweet Ride (1968) and music would have segued from pop into drugs and rock’n’roll.
Dale Robertson’s foray into production was equally short-lived, moving back into television and developing a night club act. The beach genre generated not one long-term talent outside of Raquel Welch.
SOURCES: “Swingin’ Summer Release To United Screen Arts,” Box Office, February 22, 1965, p10; “Advert,” Variety, February 24, 1965, p21; “Teenagers And Their Pocket Money, A Film Market Unto Themselves,” Variety, March 10, 1965, p4; “Kansas City,” Box Office, May 31, 1965, pC4; “Dale Robertson’s Distribution Credo,” Variety, June 16, 1965, p11; “A Swingin’ Film,” Box Office, June 27, 1965, pNC2; “USA’s Summer Starts Strong in Bakersfield,” Box Office, June 27, 1965, pW5; “Swingin’ Summer Set for Pacific Drive-ins,” Box Office, August 9, 1965, pW5; “Honolulu,” Box Office, September 13, 1965, pW4; “USA’s Swingin’ Summer Opens in 71 NC Dates,” Box Office, September 20, 1965, pSE4; “USA Sets Record Tie-Up for Swingin’ Summer,” Box Office, September 20, 1965, pB1; “USA, KFWB Host Schools To Promote Summer,” Box Office, November 1, 1965, pA3; “The Exhibitor Has His Say,” Box Office, October 24, 1965, pB4; “The Exhibitor Has His Say,” Box Office, September 11, 1967, pA4. Variety box office figures: June 9, 1965, p9; August 4, 1965, p9; September 22, 1965, p9.
I admit it: spotting this on YouTube I couldn’t resist. After all, someone has to report on the first proper Raquel Welch picture. Plus, I had never seen a beach movie, such a staple of the decade. Plus, depending on your point of view, Raquel gets to sing.
But why waste any brainpower coming up with a new idea when you can recycle an old one – let’s put the show on in the barn. Or a version of it.
Raquel Welch – distinctive in any language.
When their summer plans are dashed, students Mickey (James Stacey) and Rick (William Wellman Jr.) decide to promote a series of beach concerts. That doesn’t sit too well with lifeguard Turk (Martin West) who takes an unwelcome shine to Mickey’s neglected girlfriend Cindy (Quinn O’Hara). Rick, meanwhile, is intrigued by nerdy Jeri (Raquel Welch) but a bit put off to discover she’s more interested in a meeting of minds than anything more obvious, and possibly by her independent, proto-feminist streak, in that she selected him for her “summer romance.”
Just in case you thought there wasn’t much else to do but wait till the wannabe promoters got their act together and people fell in and out of love, there’s a hefty amount of subplot: a fistfight, a robbery and a water-ski version of “chicken.” Plus if there was any chance of you getting bored, house band Gary and the Playboys and a variety of other acts, including as the climax The Righteous Brothers, hit the stage and, in the interests of gender equality, the platoon of good-looking women hanging around are matched by a squad of good-looking men.
There’s even some effort at comedy, a few pratfalls, mostly thanks to the distractions of Jeri, and one gender-switch sight gag which seemed pretty daring for the times, and even a nod in the direction of health food fads. Perhaps, more surprisingly, are the solid characterisations, the principled Mickey who refuses to sponge off Cindy’s rich father. Discovering she bailed him out behind his back, securing the sum required for the project from her father, he accepts the money as a loan but renegotiates the interest rate.
Jeri is way ahead of her time, analysing the men she fancies and with the repartee to keep them in line. It’s pretty even-handed in the beach costume department, for every girl in a bikini or tight top there’s a bare-chested topless hunk, though it still manages to be overtly sexist, girls needing measured by an obliging male in order to enter a beauty contest.
Scottish actress Quinn O’Hara (The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, 1966), a former beauty queen and girlfriend of pop star Fabian (Mr Hobbs Takes a Vacation, 1963), must have thought the prospect of becoming the breakout star pretty high, what with her reimagining of the Lana Turner/Jayne Mansfield tight top. Her only rival was the girl playing the nerd who hooked the male lead’s best friend. Ostensibly, the nerd was not much of a part, spouting psycho-babble most of the time.
A nerd is still a nerd, O’Hara must have assumed. Unless she’s Raquel Welch.
Welch handles the dialog very well, probably longer speeches than anyone else, but even with her horn rim glasses and hair in a bun, and determined to measure potential partners by their brain cells, she stands out as an independent thinker long before she releases her secret weapon, a yellow bikini, and smart enough to work out that if that doesn’t set a man’s pulse racing to head for second base – jumping onto the stage to strut her stuff.
It’s a bit of a stretch to argue that an appearance in a low-budget beach movie ushered her into the Hollywood fast lane, but, hey, timing is everything, especially if you happened to catch the eye of a producer looking for someone to model a fur bikini.
None of the men made much of a splash in the movie business though James Stacy was the male lead opposite Welch in Flareup (1969). Supporting actor Allan Jones was the biggest name in the cast but well past his heyday as a Marx Bros stooge.
Some of the singers were better known than the actors. Topping the bill in that respect were The Righteous Brothers – hot after “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling and “Unchained Melody” – who sang “Justine” (no smash, reaching just No 85 in the U.S. singles chart). Gary Lewis and the Playboys also topped the charts in 1965 with “This Diamond Ring.” But The Rip Chords were coming to the end of their chart life. Raquel’s song “I’m Ready to Groove” did not set the house on fire, it’s fair to say.
Robert Sparr (More Dead Than Alive, 1969) was at the helm. Leigh Chapman (Dirty MaryCrazy Larry, 1974) and Reno Carrell (Winter a-Go-Go, 1965), also the producer, collaborated on the screenplay.
A harmless curio – a neat 80 minutes long – and if you’re intent on watching a beach movie it might as well be this.
The product shortage is nothing new, ask the exhibitors who survived the turbulent 1960s, a decade bookended by studio financial turmoil. Already suffering from a downturn in production thanks to audiences preferring television, the business was hit by the double whammy in 1960 of the Actors Strike and the Writers Strike, which forced an unwanted hiatus on movies already in production, cut short some shooting schedules and removed others not yet in front of the cameras. For exhibitors it rendered the “shortage more acute than before.”
That resulted in the biggest cinemas in the biggest cities holding on to the biggest movies for longer. Smaller cinemas, starved of product, had no such easy fall-back. Since studios were often at war with cinemas anyway, any crisis involving production raised tempers, each blaming the other.
Spans the nation “again” this ad fails to mention.
Exhibitors claimed the shortage would be eased considerably if studios made more prints available of popular movies, rather than rationing their distribution, making cinemas wait longer in order to squeeze more money out of every layer of the food chain. Distributors (i.e. the studios) retaliated that cinemas themselves were to blame for the logjam that stifled the opening of new movies and therefore created a shortage further down the line. By retaining pictures for months, they prevented new movies entering the distribution system. “Theaters aren’t available for top product at a time when film companies are looking for outlets.”
Reissues which might have offered a solution were not considered the guaranteed source of income they would be after the James Bond revival bonanza kicked in mid-decade after Dr No/From Russia with Love. Richard Lederer of Warner Bros blamed cinemas – “refusing to yield additional coin” – for old movies ending up on television in the first place.
Others argued that television screening was incidental. RCIP Corp took a lease on films already shown on television, such as Republic oldies Wake of the Red Witch (1948), Rio Grande (1950), and The Quiet Man (1952) and positioned them to play a role in filling in, tacked on as the support to a new film, presented as matinees or occasionally topping a bill at the start of the week. Using oldies in this fashion allowed cinemas to retain the traditional twice-weekly change, and some cinemas just went the whole hog and put together an entire month’s program of reissues.
Hot box office in its first few weeks of a revival at the Warner in London’s Leicester Square.
Whoever was to blame, it put both sides under greater pressure with exhibitors increasingly turning to foreign product to fill the gap, a move that could in the long term inhibit U.S. production.
In Britain, where the two biggest chains Odeon and ABC controlled the most lucrative cinemas, reissues were a last resort, the former circuit rarely taking that option.
Between 1958 and 1963, ABC screened only two revivals – Strangers on a Train (1951) and East of Eden (1955) – whereas during the same period Odeon got through 75. In the 1950s Odeon used revivals as the support to prop up a weaker main feature, but by the 1960s the older pictures were the main attraction. The number of revivals presented as the top draw went from five in 1961 to 13 in 1962 and 11 in 1963 (i.e. 20 per cwent of the annual output), with others pulled in as the supporting feature.
Among the movies accorded a second outing were On the Waterfront (1954), The Jolson Story (1946), The Vikings (1958), Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), Trapeze (1956), Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Red River (1948) and Witness for the Prosecution (1957). Odeon also took advantage of the product gap to bring back relatively recent top performers, Swiss Family Robinson (1961), Sodom and Gomorrah (1962), Psycho (1960) and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) within a year or so of their original release.
Although there was no sharp increase in movie production during the 1960s and to some extent successful double bill revivals and the retention of hit films like The Family Way (1966) and The Dirty Dozen (1967) for an extra week alleviated any shortfalls, by the end of the decade it was the circuits who came down heavy on the studios.
Films that looked as if they would do poorly on their circuit release were unceremoniously yanked off screens at the start of the week (movies at that time ran from Monday to Saturday) and replaced with something else.
Films that failed to cut the box office ice on the circuits included: Billy Wilder’s Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) with Dean Martin and Kim Novak, Disney’s Monkeys Go Home (1967) starring Maurice Chevalier, thriller Games (1967) starring James Caan and Katharine Ross, Maureen O’Hara in romantic Italian-set drama The Battle of the Villa Fiorita (1965), thriller Brainstorm (1965) with Jeffrey Hunter, Rod Taylor in the adaptation of the Arthur Hailey bestseller Hotel (1967) and British television comedian Charlie Drake in Mister Ten Per Cent (1967).
SOURCES: “Strike Worsened Shortage Beef,” Variety, March 16, 1960, p15; “Flood of Dubs If Shortage Worsens,” Variety, March 23, 1960, p14; “Product Shortage Ends Twice-Weekly Changing,” Variety, May 11, 1960, p7; “Product Shortage Prompts Theatermen Renting of TV-Exposed Features,” Variety, May 18, 1960, p17; “Print Shortage Not Product,” Variety, September 7, 1960, p5; “How Come So Resistive To Reissues While Hollering Shortage?” Variety, February 20, 1963, p15; Gene Arneel, “Distribs: Theater Shortage,” Variety, March 6, 1963, p7; Allen Eyles, ABC The First Name in Entertainment (CTA, 1993) p121-125; Allen Eyles, Odeon Cinemas 2 (CTA, 2005) p204-214.
Pre-Stagecoach (1939) Hollywood used to differentiate between historical adventure pictures and westerns. Given it’s set in 1746, before there was such a thing as a revolver or repeater rifle, so a complete absence of gunslingers, this falls squarely into the former camp though its format displays western credentials. A tad top-heavy with religious allegory, “miracles,” peasant piety and an Ennio Morricone score mainlining on the celestial, nonetheless it manages to achieve a character-driven narrative and some powerful action sequences.
However, it’s a lengthy set-up. Outlaw Leon (Anthony Quinn), on the run from Mexican troops, takes refuge in a church. As punishment for giving him sanctuary Fr Joseph (Sam Jaffe) is expelled to the abandoned church of San Sebastian in an equally abandoned village. Ringing the bell to attract parishioners only alerts bandits who kill him. Donning his garb, Leon is mistaken for a priest by Yaqui leader Teclo (Charles Bronson) and strung up crucifixion style. But he’s rescued by villagers who almost elevate him to sainthood courtesy of a couple of accidental “miracles.”
Enjoying his newfound status, but still attracted to peasant Kinita (Anjanette Comer), he directs the parishioners to build a dam to flood the fields to assist in corn-growing. Teclo objects to challenges to his authority and burns down the village. The villagers turn against Leon, and although initially intending to vanish, he decides instead to blackmail his mistress, the wife of the local governor (Fernard Gravey) who agrees to supply him with weapons. Leon builds a fortress to withstand the expected attack setting up a very engaging climax in which the dam plays a critical role.
A modern audience might expect a sturdier narrative rather than one that seems to shift at whim, not helped by Leon’s indecision. And it’s too slight a vehicle to carry the political points, the state of Mexico at the time, the settlers vs. original occupants (i.e. Native Indians) scenario, the problems facing half-breeds (Leon and Teclo both), but it’s better at exploring the power of the church, the worship bestowed on any priest who turns up, regardless of how ill-suited he appears. The occasional comic sequence, banter with an architect, negotiation with a Mexican colonel, seems out of place.
On the other hand there is a truly mesmerizing performance from Anthony Quinn (Lost Command, 1966) as a womanizing low-life who happens upon redemption, so deep does his impersonation of a priest go that he can’t bring himself to touch the compliant Kinita, who is aware of his true identity. Switching between shiftiness and godliness at the drop of a hat and deriding villagers for their lack of character his turning point comes when he realizes he has fallen into the same trap. That he emerges as a wily man of conscience is no mean feat.
The other big bonus is to see someone at last recognize Charles Bronson (Once upon a Time in the West, 1969). Here he is given cinematic status, camera pitched up at his face, and allowed to eliminate the growl and monosyllabic delivery that has been his wont in lesser roles. He’s a rather decent villain at the end.
There are a couple of inconsistencies. Teclo wants villagers to take to the hills but on the other hand somehow to spend enough time tending the corn that come harvest time he can steal. And it’s a bit too neat how he falls into the dam trap.
All in all, enjoyable and very under-rated primarily, i suspect, because people come at it expecting a western rather than a historical film in the adventure vein. But it’s elevated by the intriguing narrative, the questionable hero, Quinn’s performance and the introduction to a new-look Bronson.
Frenchman Henri Verneuil (The Sicilian Clan, 1969) does well to probe so many issues for an audience probably expecting something more straightforward. James Webb (Alfred the Great, 1969) wrote the screenplay based on novel by a William Faherty, a Jesuit priest. In the book, the hero was a soldier who became a priest rather than an atheist opportunistic outlaw.
Hollywood careers rarely end in a blaze of cinematic glory. Sudden death ensured Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe (The Misfits, 1961) and Spencer Tracy (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, 1967) went out with a bang but more likely a career is just going to tail off and end with this kind of whimper. Director Jacques Tourneur, in any case, was long past a heyday that saw him set the horror genre agog with Cat People (1942), I Walked with a Zombie (1943) and The Leopard Man (1943).
If that wasn’t enough to solidify his credentials he dipped into another genre, the nascent film noir, and helmed gems like Experiment Perilous (1944) with Hedy Lamarr and Out of the Past (1947) with Robert Mitchum. Thereafter came swashbucklers The Flame and the Arrow (1950) headlining Burt Lancaster and Anne of the Indies (1951) plus crime drama Appointment in Honduras (1953) with the ever-dependable Glenn Ford and Joel McCrea western Wichita (1955). Then, miraculously, it was back to horror with Night of the Demon (1957) and the late flurry of The Comedy of Terrors (1963).
You can tell where I’m going with all this. War-Gods of the Deep has nothing on any of these pictures. The backstory is much more interesting than the actual film.
Basically, this is one of those pictures where an unlikely pair, American Ben Harris (Tab Harris) and eccentric Brit Harold Tufnell-Jones (David Tomlinson) get themselves into an unlikely situation and have to get themselves out of it.
Set in the smugglers’ paradise of the British Cornish coast around the turn of the last century, on a hotel on top of a cliff, the duo need to track down another American, Jill (Susan Hart), who has disappeared down a plughole, sorry mini-whirlpool. This leads to a legendary underwater city where smugglers led by Sir Hugh (Vincent Price) have found the secret of eternal life, a paradise now endangered by tremors from a nearby volcano.
The Italians didn’t fancy the two titles on offer so came up with their own by purloining the Jules Verne classic.
He sent his enslaved Gill-Men to kidnap Jill in the erroneous belief that she is his dead wife. Bored out of their minds with listening to Sir Hugh prattling on endlessly about how the underwater city came into being and how important he is to the whole affair and what imminent dangers the inhabitants now face, and of course faced with their own imminent demise as sacrificial victims, the pair decide to scoot, having found a willing accomplice.
There’s a chase and whatever, and some undersea adventure, but there’s not much to it.
However, what you do get when you add someone like Tourneur – and to that extent Vincent Price and his ominous tones – to this listless mix is atmosphere. Tourneur can inject eeriness almost just by switching on a camera, despite a very stage-bound picture, and he knows how to add a music score that tremendously aids his enterprise. The opening section by the shore and in the hotel adds the necessary element of mystery to make the whole idea float.
There clearly wasn’t enough of a budget for the Gill-Men to appear as anything but peripheral figures which actually might have helped since, the state of special effects in that time might have made them laughable rather than distantly disturbing.
The best you can say is that Tourneur made the best of a bad job. Vincent Price (Diary of a Madman, 1963) only has to turn up to inject an element of danger. Tab Hunter (Ride the Wild Surf, 1963) and Susan Hart (Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, 1965) needn’t have bothered turning up for all they bring to the party. And David Tomlinson (Bedknobs and Broomsticks, 1971) brings far too much, saddled with a pet comic chicken for no apparent reason except to extract a few laughs.
AIP, having made its name in the horror department by raiding the portfolio of Edgar Allan Poe, turned up this source material deep in that vault. But the only connection to Poe is the original idea – which was not that original, other poets having plumbed those depths prior – and that appears only in occasional desultory recitations of the poem. But, as a marketing tool, hey, Edgar Allan Poe, that’ll scare their socks off!
So, you are warned, but also you can’t help but warm to this final movie by one of the Hollywood greats as he tries to put a sheen on something that in other hands would have sunk like a stone.
The Brits were onto something in wartime Malaysian jungles in 1942 – sonic warfare. Imagine the franchise possibilities for comic-book or spy villains (The Brides of Fu Manchu, 1966, or Some Girls Do, 1969, anyone?). Fortunately, this ignores such temptations and takes a long hard raw look at the reality of conflict, courage and cowardice, the desire and reality of killing.
Beginning as a fairly stock examination of men in combat, the usual clash of personalities, bullying loudmouths, and it being British elements of class distinction. But it quickly moves on to something much deeper, initially tough guys worrying about what their wives are getting up in their absence back home, but on capturing a Japanese soldier what exactly to do with him once his usefulness is over. Treat him according to the Geneva Convention as a prisoner-of-war and escort him back to base or just get rid of him and save yourself the trouble.
Five main characters make up this squad. Sgt Mitchem (Richard Todd) is the ruthless leader under pressure. He was busted down to corporal for losing a previous patrol, has got his stripe back and wants to prove his worth. But he appears to be from a different generation to his troops, his stiff upper lip only too evident while the others just give lip.
Corporal Johnstone (Richard Harris) likes to remind him of his previous misdemeanor and question his judgement. Racist Private Bamforth (Laurence Harvey) riles everyone, especially picking on Lance Corporal Macleish (Ronald Fraser) who is as likely to reply with his fists. Radio operator Private Whitaker (David McCallum) is over-keen on the spoils of war, kitbag stuffed with enemy mementoes.
After apprehending Jap soldier Tojo (Kenji Takaki) Johnstone is inclined to bayonet him right away (a bullet would attract attention). Others, more squeamish than principled, balk at the deed. At first Bamforth makes fun of the captive, belittling him, but then views him as a human being caught up in a war not of his making, giving him cigarettes, trying to make him more comfortable. When Macleish starts slapping the prisoner around, Bamforth defends him, though it’s obvious Mitchem and Johnstone have no intention of taking him back.
Then the tide turns. They are surrounded by Japs and it’s battle for real with an enemy who can defend itself. Action determines character. Some are revealed as complete cowards, others will abandon colleagues to save their skin, others are instinctively courageous, others yet again with a bit more cunning.
But the firefight when it comes is nothing like any other battle you have seen where Allied forces invariably triumph. There’s none of the clever ruses more typical of the genre.
This is by far the rawest depiction of British soldiers on the battle. The characters and conversation hit home. Tough guys are nothing but vulnerable. Although it appears that way, none of the characters actually change, it’s more that their real personalities emerge.
This is Laurence Harvey’s (The Running Man, 1963) best performance. In other pictures, his clipped delivery hid an edge of malevolence, and especially to retain audience sympathy he restrained an inner nastiness, even when ruthless as in Room at the Top (1958), this aspect more important if the male lead in a romance or essaying a decent character. Here, the real Harvey is let loose in the sense that his delivery is more normal, as if he delights in taking pleasure in using language to gut his victims. Sure, it’s an ideal central role, the guy who starts off one way and ends another, but he really brings it to life.
Richard Harris (This Sporting Life, 1963) was a rising star at this point. And it shows. He’s always trying to steal scenes, an unnecessary gesture, a roll of the eyes, forceful delivery. He turns out to be nastier than everyone else. Richard Todd (Subterfuge, 1968) also plays against type, no longer the heroic figure of The Dam Busters (1955) but fighting not just the enemy and his fellow soldiers but his internal demons.
Ronald Fraser (Fathom, 1967), often condemned to humorous supporting parts, also has a meatier role as does David McCallum (The Spy in the Green Hat, 1967).
Apart from a heavy dose of rain and some stock shots of animals, it betrays its stage roots, based on a play by Willis Hall, but that hardly matters when the dialog is so sharp, the characters so well-drawn and the drama so intense.
Leslie Norman (Dunkirk, 1958) does an excellent job of focusing on character and making the action believable. Wolf Mankowitz (The Day the Earth Caught Fire, 1961) was credited with the screenplay.
Audiences reared on the actor’s westerns and Hitchcock thrillers of the 1950s might have been somewhat taken aback to see the hard-hitting star turning up in a comedy. Setting aside Bell, Book and Candle (1958), he hadn’t been seen in anything that would resemble a Hollywood confection since a couple of lack-luster Post-War comedies – Magic Town (1947), Jackpot (1950) – when he was trying to regain the marquee status he had lost by going off to fight. Of course, having gone heavyweight with Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Two Rode Together (1961) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) he might have thought he was due some movie R’n’R.
Whether this contemporary equivalent of a beachside air bnb gone wrong was the ideal choice is a moot point. But he would certainly be playing against type. After all those tough guys, principled leaders and occasional dodgy characters, you wouldn’t have to go far to find people who might enjoy seeing him taken down a peg or two.
Harassed banker Roger (James Stewart) wants a quiet getaway with wife Peggy (Maureen O’Hara). But she has different ideas and he finds himself bunked down with a brood too many, his own family, in-laws and unexpected guests. Naturally some of these unexpected guests included rats, happily infesting this shambling house that could have been second-choice for Bates Motel, and there are plenty running gags about what doesn’t work or falls off and a shared telephone line.
If there was such a sub-genre as the mature coming-of-age picture, this would be it, Roger realizing he has a lot of catching up to do in the emotional relationship department.
Mostly, it’s one episode after another. The cook quits, his daughter and son-in-law have eschewed the traditional approach to child-rearing, son Danny wants to be left alone to play his computer games, sorry watch television, teenage daughter Katey (Lauri Peters) is turning into a wallflower, rather well-endowed neighbors catch his eye. To show willing, he’s the yachtsman who gets lost and bored bird-watcher.
But if audiences have learned one thing from a decade of Stewart-watching, it’s that he’s generally far from hapless and although it’s not his fault he’s trapped in the shower room with a naked woman (Marie Wilson), he’s not so much a do-gooder as a do-er, setting out to repair as much as possible the fractured relationships, not above a bit of bribery or cutting a few corners.
This is amiable enough stuff, a few good laughs, and much merriment to be had from the mere sight of the banker, lord of his domain at work cast adrift outside it, and having to adapt to different perspectives. There’s a harder edge than you might expect and some of the scenes of relationships under pressure don’t make easy viewing.
These days, everything wouldn’t work out so well, but in the 1960s I guess the tension was derived from working out exactly how it would work out. And waiting for teen heartthrob Fabian (North to Alaska, 1960) to sing. It seems a contradiction in terms that a pop star trying to prove himself as an actor has to fall back on singing. But them’s the breaks.
A mixture of situational comedy and sharp repartee, it never falls apart at the seams, enough in the tank to keep everything on an even keel.
James Stewart moves from coldness at finding himself in awkward situations to warmth as he finds ways to retrieve the best elements out of them. Stewart doesn’t have to adapt his screen persona that much, he was always a tad grouchy, and he’s packed a briefcase full of sarcastic remarks. But the scene where he reconnects with his son is very touching, Stewart at his heartfelt best.
Maureen O’Hara (The Battle of the Villa Fiorita, 1965) who also has a few icy veins sets those aside to mother all and sundry. Stewart and O’Hara prove an excellent screen partnership and they would be paired again in The Rare Breed (1966), where he was on more solid ground.
John Saxon (The Appaloosa, 1966) gets a chance to show what he can do besides being tough and John McGiver (My Six Loves, 1963) adds another interesting character to his portfolio of offbeat roles.
Veteran Henry Koster (Harvey, 1950) knows how to handle any amount of handfuls and when to pick out the comedy or head straight for the drama. Nunnally Johnson (The Dirty Dozen, 1967) based the screenplay on the bestseller by Edward Streeter, an expert in domestic upsets, previously penning Father of the Bride.
Sometimes completing the circle just turns the wrong way and the idea that the search for eternal youth can be viewed as a bad thing seems a tad out of touch with today’s mentality. It’s also open to question whether it was ever seen as having much of a downside in the 1960s when there must have been anti-ageing creams although not the availability of cosmetic surgery to ostensibly turn back the clock.
Trust the men from U.N.C.L.E. to uncover the only genius not intent of monetizing his discovery to the tune of gazillions but intent on using it for dire political purpose. This time out Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) and Ilya Kuryakin (David MacCallum) are on apparently different missions in Britain and France which eventually coalesce. Ilya is cat-hunting in London’s Soho. Not pet-hunting which might be a harmless occupation and give us an insight into his carefully-concealed personal life, but chasing down cats which look different from what they did before, mature cats, for example, that turn into kittens. (Probably a fortune to be made from that, too, the eternal pet, putting pet cemeteries out of business).
So is Solo’s investigation of the disappearance of renowned 83-year-old biologist Benjamin Lancer which takes him into the orbit of Parisian couturier Madame de Sala (Vera Miles) where Lancer’s daughter Lorelei (Dolores Faith) is a model. Anyone with any experience of Solo would have warned Lorelei off since he seems too closely associated with danger. As it happens, Lorelei doesn’t get the chance to make his acquaintance as she is bumped off by models Olga (Monica Keating) and Do Do (Ahna Capri).
Solo and Kuryakin soon realize there are a lot of malevolent women on the loose including obstreperous nurse Joanna Sweet (Ann Elder), full-time carer to aged statesman Sir Norman Swickert (Maurice Evans), to whom de Sala is devoted.
Judging from the number of characters mentioned so far you can guess how complicated this one gets, so to cut to the chase, yes, the cats-turned-kittens are linked to attempts to rejuvenate Swickert, the power to do so eventually controlled by T.H.R.U.S.H. (you were wondering when they would turn up, weren’t you?).
As in The Spy with the Green Hat (1967), Solo spends most of the time being ineffectual, tripped or trapped, here at least in the novel situation of being crushed in a wine press, an odd item to find in England but never mind, movies always have creative latitude. Things come to a fine pass when Alexander Waverley (Leo G. Carroll), normally recumbent in New York, is parachuted in to save the day.
As usual, the actions zips along, but due to the way the original two-part episode from which this was culled has been oddly edited some of the zipping goes zap straight into a cul de sac of confusion. That said, there is a very tender scene when De Sala pours out her heart to the infirm Swickert and Ms Sweet is similarly defensive of her charge, a strict ration of emotion in the otherwise action-swirling picture. Solo manages some deft comedy outwitting the man mountain guarding a mansion.
This is a bit harder to follow than the others, and no expense has been spared in sticking to the MGM backlot in attempting to emulate British locations, Soho especially quaint as if imagined by a tidy-up campaign, and, as I mentioned, the wine press (??).
This was drawn from the second season two-parter The Bridge of Lions Affair, broadcast in February 1966, the concept of the bridge and the lions it connects too dumb to bother explaining. But one of the beauties of this series is you never quite know what you’re getting, Vaughn and MacCallum pretty much stick to the knitting of their screen personas, and it’s left to the guests stars to take advantage of the opportunity to do something different, Vera Miles (Hellfighters, 1968) in this case the opportunist.
Bit parts in spy pictures were seen as a boost for young actresses, but that wasn’t always the case. Ann Elder (Don’t Make Waves, 1967) was making her movie debut, Dolores Faith (Mutiny in Outer Space, 1965) was coming to the end of her short career, but Anha Capri (Kisses For My President, 1964) lasted another decade.
Screenwriter Howard Rodman was the pick here, going on to write Madigan (1968) and Coogan’s Bluff (1968). E. Darrell Hallenbeck didn’t received another movie director credit until as a contributor to The Green Hornet (1974) when it surfaced as a re-edited version of several episodes of the television series.
U.N.C.L.E. pictures regularly crop up on streaming services and mainstream television but if you can’t wait and fancy splurging on the entire series, check this out.
The Magnificent 60s 