January 2024 – Page 2 – The Magnificent 60s

Counterpoint (1968) ****

Absorbing duel of minds between two autocrats obsessed with their own glory and needs and dealing with dissension in the ranks. That it takes place during the Battle of the Bulge turns out to be less of a dramatic hindrance though you maybe have to suspend disbelief in the notion that any resistance fighters might take time out from trying to sabotage Germans to help rescue a bunch of whining, pampered non-combatants with no strategic value whatsoever.

Once you accept that the U.S.O. would deem a classical orchestra the best way to entertain the troops rather than Betty Grable or Bob Hope then you’re halfway there.

*Poster that misleadingly apes “The Great Escape” and “The Dirty Dozen”. Naturally, no woman would attempt such an escape without giving everyone a glimpse of cleavage.*

Anyway, the Germans launching an offensive in December 1944 by accident capture the classical orchestra led by world-famous conductor Lionel Evans (Charlton Heston). The Germans are under orders to take no prisoners so as not to divert vital troops during this last-stage effort to extend the war, so under the direction of Colonel Arndt (Anton Diffring) the musicians face a firing squad until General Schiller (Maximilian Schell) happens to pop his head out of his window and recognize his hero, Evans.

Death is temporarily averted while Schiller purrs over his captive. But Evans, still high on principle and arrogance, refuses to comply with Schiller’s request to play a concert for him during a delay in the battle as, the Germans, hit by fuel shortage, are unable to continue their campaign and therefore have time on their hands. There ensues the aforesaid duel of minds plus various demonstrations of disloyalty and ruthlessness.

The joy here is the dialog because there’s not much else going on, beyond a half-hearted attempt to escape, and the tension doesn’t rachet up until Evans realizes Schiller is only keeping them alive until the concert, after which they will be turned over to the trigger-happy Arndt, who lacking any subtlety, has already begun to dig a mass grave in full view of the trapped self-proclaimed neutrals.

*Teamed up in Britain with the long-lost “The Pink Jungle”, which, as it happens, I’m reviewing shortly.*

It’s almost a parade of bon mots as each of the leaders tries to top the other’s sentences, and not in merely a clever manner, but with full-blown fascinating argument, in part about the different outlooks of each country, but also about their contradictions, and it’s a rare movie that can hold your attention just through dialog unless it’s set in a courtroom. But, here, Evans isn’t so much arguing for the suspension of a death penalty, for example, but in a remote high-mindedness complaining that, well, there’s no other word for it, that it’s just “unfair” as if the Geneva Convention has a special clause regarding classical musicians.

Maybe it does, given these are Americans, though not in uniform, which might be a point in their favor. But any commander would be correct in assuming they could, through courageous action, perform an act of sabotage or at the very least, as I mentioned, tie up vital resources.

Matters are complicated because Arndt, less self-indulgent than his superior, goes behind Schiller’s back to rat him out to HQ in Berlin while nameless persons within the orchestra are clearly in cahoots with the Germans. And you can’t blame them either. Arndt believes Schiller’s actions could compromise the attack, the orchestra traitors that Evans’ defiance will get them all killed. Evans is quite happy to sacrifice former lover Annabelle (Kathryn Hays) to keep the German commander, who has taken a fancy to her, happy.

Matters are complicated by the presence in the orchestra ranks of two U.S. soldiers in uniform, who feel duty bound to find a way out, so there’s a bit of the kind of action you’d get in a heist movie where an audience listens to classical music while above them a cat burglar is divesting them of their jewels. Here, the two soldiers are clambering up the innards of a church to the roof to scope out the territory and then attempt escape using a home-made rope made up of scarves and nylons etc.

As it becomes obvious that there is no point in Evans playing for time, the tension and turmoil does increase as that unfilled mass grave beckons. Doesn’t play out the way you’d expect, a couple of neat twists keeping cliché at bay.

But, as I said, the primary interest is the verbal battle between two refined minds convinced they are the most important people on the planet. The only standout scenes not involving Evans concern Schiller’s “seduction” of Annabelle and the playing of the American national anthem by one of the soldiers, planted in the orchestra, who Arndt suspects, from his age (too young to be in such august company unless a musical prodigy), doesn’t fit in.

Charlton Heston (Number One, 1969) and Maximilian Schell (Topkapi, 1964) are both superb as flawed characters. There’s a rare movie appearance for Kathryn Hays (Ride Beyond Vengeance, 1966) and another chance to see Leslie Nielsen (Beau Geste, 1966) before he became comedy catnip.

But it’s the script by James Lee (Banning, 1967) and Joel Oliansky (The Todd Killings, 1971), that really delivers, although I’m guessing that the best lines came directly from the source novel, The General by Alan Sillitoe (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning). Directed by Ralph Nelson (Once a Thief, 1965).

Rare to get a movie that relies so much on script and actors on such top form.

Underrated gem.

PREVIOUSLY REVIEWED IN THE BLOG: Charlton Heston in Diamond Head (1962), 55 Days at Peking (1963), Major Dundee (1965), The War Lord (1965), Khartoum (1966), Planet of the Apes (1968), Number One (1969); Maximilian Schell in Judgement at Nuremberg (1961), Topkapi (1964), Fate is the Hunter (1964), Father Goose (1964), Return from the Ashes (1965), The Deadly Affair (1967), Krakatoa -East of Java (1968); Ralph Nelson directed Soldier in the Rain (1963), Once a Thief (1965), Duel at Diablo (1966) and Soldier Blue (1970).

The Light at the Edge of the World (1971) ***

Had me at pirates! Unfortunately, I feel suckered. These scumbags, even with a dandified Yul Brynner (The Double Man, 1967) at the helm, give the traditional swashbuckler a bad name. That said, it’s a decent Rambo-esque adventure, derived from a Jules Verne novel, that sees Kirk Douglas (A Lovely Way To Die, 1968) single-handedly take on the venomous pirate crew, with Samantha Eggar (The Collector, 1963) thrown in as lure.

Ex-gold-miner Denton (Kirk Douglas) runs the southernmost lighthouse off the perilous coast of Argentina leading to the dreaded Cape Horn passage, the only route round South America prior to the opening of the Panama Canal. Helping him out are veteran seaman Capt Mortiz (Fernando Rey), who constantly upbraids Denton for his lack of naval lore, and young lad Virgilio (Jean Claude Drouot) and his pet monkey. When a ship hoves into view and anchors off-shore, Mortiz and Virgilio head up the welcome party only to be ruthlessly – and gleefully – cut down as they climb on board.

Pirate chief Kongre (Yul Brynner) has come up with a neat scam. Switch off the whale-oil-fuelled lights in the lighthouse, wait for unsuspecting ships to be wrecked and pocket the proceeds. After being tormented and humiliated, Denton manages to escape and hide out in the caves, but only for as long as Kongre, bored with idleness, decides to hunt him down astride his white horse armed with a unicorn-like sword, the lighthouse keeper only avoiding capture by diving into the sea, where he is presumed drowned.

But when the first victim of Kongre’s scheme breaks asunder, Denton rescues Montefiore (Renato Salvatore) from the ensuing sadistic massacre. The only other person saved, at Kongre’s behest, is the beautiful Arabella (Samantha Eggar), for whom the captain goes through an almost courtly charade before, espying photographs in the lighthouse cottage, deciding that since his captive bears some resemblance to Denton’s former lover he could inflict further torment to Denton by parading the woman, hoping to use her as lure to bring his enemy out from his hiding place.

While Denton has escaped capture and is carrying out guerrilla warfare against the invaders he’s not particularly successful, given he lacks any decent weaponry, is heavily outnumbered and Kongre is pretty cunning. Denton’s innate decency sees him attempting to rescue the girl only, in a stunning twist, to be knocked back as he has little to offer except hiding out in caves and the captain has been treating her royally. Unfortunately for her, when his ruse fails, Kongre tosses her to the sharks in the shape of the lusty crew who proceed to commit mass rape. Meanwhile, Montefiore has been captured, strung up in the rigging and is being flayed alive, slices of skin torn from his body to the delight of his captors.

As it happens, the pirates, to reinforce defence of the island should they themselves come under attack from the British or Argentinian Navy, have brought their ship’s cannons ashore. As it happens, not only are they trained on the ship, but Denton, despite no experience at all, proves an ace artillery commander. As the ship burns and sinks, he turns his attention to Kongre, conveniently swanning around in the lighthouse rather than the cottage, and in a piece of savage irony sets fire to the building with whale oil.

Could do with shaving 20 minutes off the running time, and certainly have to suspend disbelief at other points, but otherwise it’s a pretty early edition of the Rambo-style revenge, the one-man army that can wipe out a superior force. Despite my desire for a decent swashbuckler, the pirates are probably more realistic than anything served up by Errol Flynn or Johnny Depp, and their cruelty seems consistent with their profession. The scenes with Denton being pursued relentlessly by the mounted Kongre are especially effective as is the rejection of Denton by the snooty girl.

Kevin Billington (Interlude, 1968) directed from a screenplay by wife Rachel and Tom Rowe (The Green Slime, 1968).

Long-lost film that deserves an audience.

A Lovely Way To Go / A Lovely Way To Die (1968) ****

Woefully neglected detective thriller with a sparkling script and sexy leading stars exuding screen charisma. Like the celebrated William Goldman-scripted opening to Paul Newman private eye picture Harper (1966), the credit sequence here is at least as innovative in that it appears to be little short of a trailer, a highlights reel showing the audience what lies in store.

Schuyler (Kirk Douglas) is a womanizing cop too handy with his fists, half his arrests making an unexpected detour to hospital. Rena (Sylva Koscina) is the bored young wife of an older millionaire whose idea of fun is to chuck an expensive scarf out of a speeding car forcing her husband to pull up and go back and fetch. When her husband is shot, suspicion falls on Rena, inclined to dress in revealing outfits for the media, and her playboy boyfriend.

At the behest of attorney Fredericks (Eli Wallach) sporting a rich Southern accent and a with knack for speaking in parables, Schuyler, having resigned from the force one step ahead of being fired, is sent in to provide security and find out whether her alibi stacks up. He soon finds out it doesn’t but by this time he has fallen under her spell. Witnesses disappear, intruders are dealt with, attempts are made on the detective’s life, and the twists come thick and fast. Rena is the arch femme fatale who is a past master in the twisting department – twisting every male within a 50-mile radius round her little finger.

Harper was a throwback to The Maltese Falcon/The Big Sleep but A Lovely Way To Die knocks that shamus tradition on the head. For a start, Schuyler is a high-living high-rolling character who doesn’t take prisoners. The second time we meet him he has dumped the girl he took to the races for someone he has met when picking up his winnings. Seducing gorgeous women and dumping them is second nature. This is Douglas as a glorious charmer, a part of his screen persona lost after a glut of more serious pictures like Seven Days in May (1964) and Cast a Giant Shadow (1966). Yugoslavian actress Koscina, often little more than eye candy for most of the decade, had vaulted into the higher echelons after a turn as Paul Newman’s squeeze in The Secret War of Harry Frigg (1968).

An inherent part of the attraction of this picture is how deftly Rena keeps Schuyler at bay. Scriptwriter A. J. Russell (Stiletto, 1969) and director David Lowell Rich (Madame X, 1966) deliver the goods in maintaining the tension in their relationship. There is a wonderful scene where the expectant Schuyler follows her up the stairs of her fabulous mansion and three times he ignores the import of her unmistakable “Goodnight,” his uber-confidence taking him to her door – which she shuts in his face.

Sure, in some ways it is slick, but it is also taut and realistic, Schuyler does not win all his fights and he eats with the rest of the help at the mansion. And he does some terrific detection so it doesn’t fall short in that department. He is definitely helped by some choice lines – “police methods are sometimes difficult for an amateur to understand” he tells Rena after he brutally deals with an intruder.

Koscina is in her element as the sexy, wealthy suspect, and especially in her banter with Douglas – her main aim to disarm his cockiness. Eli Wallach (The Moon-Spinners, 1964) is also superb, given just enough ham to hang himself, but matching Douglas in arrogance and outgunning the D.A. with his courtroom gymnastics. A couple of the subsidiary characters are well-drawn, a housekeeper who plays the markets.

For some reason this sank like a stone on its initial outing, audiences perhaps being more attuned to the Bogart-style sleuth, but I found it highly enjoyable and this could be seen as a taster for anyone familiar with the antics of the star’s son Michael Douglas who found himself in similar territory in Basic Instinct (1992).

Complex tale high on intrigue and sex, well worth a watch.

REVIEWED PREVIOUSLY IN THE BLOG: Kirk Douglas in Strangers When We Meet (1960), Lonely Are the Brave (1962), Two Weeks in Another Town (1962), For Love or Money (1963), Seven Days in May (1964), In Harm’s Way (1965), The Heroes of Telemark (1965), Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), Is Paris Burning? (1966), The Way West (1967), The Brotherhood (1968), The Arrangement (1969); Sylva Koscina in Jessica (1962), Hot Enough for June (1963), Deadlier than the Male (1967), The Secret War of Harry Frigg (1968); Eli Wallach in Seven Thieves (1960), The Misfits (1961), Act One (1963), The Moon-spinners (1964), Kisses for My President (1965), Lord Jim (1965), Genghis Khan (1965), How to Steal a Million (1966).

Eagles over London (1969) ***

Presumably intended to capitalize on/rip-off the same year’s big-budget roadshow The Battle of Britain manages to cram in a pack of action beginning with a tank ambush in Normandy, the Dunkirk evacuation, the Battle of Britain, rooftop shoot-outs, ending up with an audacious attack of RAF High Command by a team of German saboteurs. As notable for technical achievement, split screen – sometimes split diagonally or quartered – in the manner of The Boston Strangler (1968) and The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), shots through various tiny holes, scenes filmed overhead, and a dazzling swirling camera sequence that would normally presage intimacy but here means death.

Somehow manages to squeeze a surprising number of dramatic moments focusing on relationships, a brief nod to homosexuality, and emulating Fraulein Doktor (1969) in giving the Germans credit for astute and effective espionage. Obvious use of stock footage for the air fight sequences, but you wonder what else has been cobbled out of the vaults given the preponderance of scenes requiring massive numbers of extras. Throw in Hollywood veteran Van Johnson (Divorce American Style, 1967) and a particularly good Cockney sergeant (Renzo Palmer) and it hardly lets up.

So, Captain Stevens (Frederick Stafford) heads up a unit delaying the German blitzkrieg in France in 1940. The Germans, led by Donovan (Francisco Rabal), meanwhile, are in disguise, assuming the identities of dead British soldiers with the intention of infiltrating Britain and destroying its radar installations. Inadvertently, Stevens saves Donovan’s life, thus giving the German accepted entry into British high command. Equally inadvertently Stevens allows the German access to his girlfriend Meg (Evelyn Stewart) who needs a shoulder to cry on. Donovan has his own girlfriend, Sheila (Teresa Gimpera) on tap, an undercover agent working as a barmaid, well-trained at collecting loose talk and seduction.

Elements of giallo keep popping up as the Germans need to embark on a murderous rampage to continue to acquire new identities to keep ahead of the pursuing investigation, one strangulation taking place in a gay sauna. Every now and then we pop into RAF High Command where Air Vice Marshal Taylor (Van Johnson) is helping thwart the German aerial attacks and in the end, since more bodies are required, elects to go into battle himself.

The small screen allows laughable moments – model airplanes crashing into the sea, cardboard radar installations toppling – to pass almost unnoticed since most of the rest of the action is well rendered, the rooftop scene especially, and the other various shoot-outs where – shock to the system – the British are constantly outwitted and outgunned.

Mostly, you’ll note how stylish a concoction this is given the low budget. Excellent sex scene against the background of exploding bombs, the duping of our hero by the enemy, and one terrific scene where Sheila is deemed surplus to requirements, calmly accepting her fate on condition that it’s her lover who pulls the trigger.

This would have been solid support material in English-speaking countries but most likely a main feature in its Italian homeland. Might have even done better if distributors waited until Afred Hitchcock’s Topaz (1969) appeared since he recruited Frederick Stafford as his leading man. Stafford was always under-rated but he keeps this afloat, though the Germans have the more interesting roles, especially Francisco Rabal and Teresa Gimpel. Evelyn Stewart (The Whip and the Body, 1964) has a smaller part.

Not content with introducing far more style and, shall we say, flamboyance, than the material might suggest director Enzo G. Castellari (Any Gun Can Play, 1967) has the audacity to end by using Winston Churchill’s “the few” speech to halt the traffic so the British lovers can catch up with each other.

A classic example of what an interesting director can do with what in other hands would be more mundane material. Not quite sure why it took five screenwriters.

Surprisingly fun watch overloaded with style.

REVIEWED PREVIOUSLY IN THE BLOG: Frederick Stafford in Topaz (1969), Evelyn Stewart in The Whip and the Body (1964), Van Johnson in Divorce American Style (1967).

The Beekeeper (2024) **** – Seen at the Cinema

A franchise is born. John Wick may or may not rise again, Jason Bourne is dead in the water, so the gap exists. True, the new film certainly riffs on elements of that pair, the retired assassin bare mention of whom elicits fearful reaction, who belongs to a secret government elite, and is jolted into action by someone stupidly preying on the sole beloved aspect of his lonely life.

Eqaully true, Jason Statham (Meg 2, 2023) is certainly viewed in many quarters as the poor man’s Bruce Willis, but, like Liam Neeson, he is one of the few action actors who you would not want to meet in person, on a dark night; he looks as though he growls in his sleep.

*Not an obvious candidate for Imax but then neither was “John Wick 4” and that was certainly an experience in the hi-hat format.*

But it touches on themes that will strike a chord – the data mining to which we all involuntarily subscribe and which governments and villains alike will employ for their own purposes; the computer nerd multi-millionaire; the politically powerful with overly entitled offspring; and those in control who discover not every annoying person can be easily swatted away.

And the beekeeping part turns out also to have meaning, not too much gobbledegook about hives, which is just as well because most people we encounter haven’t a clue how honey is made, least of all pay attention to the intricate structure of that insect’s lifestyle, or that there could be a Queenslayer (and this doesn’t originate from Game of Thrones) whose purpose is to remove a dis-functioning head bee. And just when that metaphor looks as though it’s going to run dry, it turns out to have a deeper meaning.

Just as well, too, that we’re not expecting much finesse from re-awakened assassins. Like John Wick, Adam Clay (Jason Statham) takes no prisoners, but whereas the former confined his murderous activities to the underworld, the latter downs anyone who gets in his way, though in fairness, many of the supposed righteous are in the involuntarily thrall of the country’s justice departments. It helps, too, that F.B.I. investigators, Agents Parker (Emmy Raver-Lampman) and Wiley (Bobby Naderi), while not incompetent, are certainly slovenly and bicker like billy-o, and that Parker is inclined to set aside civil liberties.

So, a scammer steals a couple of million from an elderly woman, who has taken a maternal interest in her beekeeping neighbor. Since she is only caretaker of the cash, which belongs to a charity, in shame she commits suicide. Initially, the number one suspect, Clay has dark forces on his side, too, able to access secret information denied both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A.

And he takes route number one to resolving any issues, turning up at the first scammer operation armed with a couple of cans of petrol and proceeding to drench any employee not smart enough to scarper. That’s, of course, after he’s disabled any security guards so low down the pecking order they wouldn’t even be aware of the name that should strike fear in their hearts.

Luckily, we’ve got retired C.I.A. chief Westwyld (Jeremy Irons) to explain enough about the government’s secret beekeeping operation to keep us on our toes. But quite why he’s involved with said nerdy multi-millionaire Danforth (Josh Hutcherson) is cleverly kept from us until the twists begin to mount. But as in the High Table, he can call in top-level assassins to rid him of an irritant.

There’s some clever comedy, too, as Danforth’s equally geeky underlings don’t quite realize exactly what they’re up against, even while, like gameboys ramping up to participate in a computer game, they hire muscle. But, most of it is Clay daringly outwitting everyone in his path until he ends up at a Presidential hideaway and the extent of the corruption becomes clear.

There’s nothing desperately new here, there rarely is, and scarcely an ounce of sophistication (and who cares about that). Remember that even John Wick (before it developed into the High Table malarkey) was a bare-bones riff on Bourne. But who needs anything that original, a believable character is all, because there will always be murk that needs cleaned up, and a hero who can take on all-comers. John Wick One, as I recall, was not such a big initial blockbuster, finding a bigger audience on DVD, and it was only when the makers went back to the well, with a bigger budget and expanded the concept, that it really took off.

I can see the same thing happening here. The big surprise of the weekend was not so much the heavily-promoted Mean Girls doing better than expected, but the scarcely-promoted The Beekeeper doing way better than expected, and when it comes to the foreign markets, the latter will blow the former out of the water, because, overseas, action speaks louder than lyrics.

Not entirely sure why this is so heavily pickled with Brits, but as well as Statham, we have Oscar-winner Jeremy Irons (House of Gucci, 2001) with his silky steely tones, Jemma Redgrave (I’ll Be There, 2003) in her biggest movie role in two decades and Minnie Driver (Chevalier, 2002) as a hard-nosed slinkily-dressed top cat. I can see all three returning as the series develops.

I’ve a sneaky feeling the role of Parker, grieving daughter going all kick ass, was edited down as it became apparent Statham was going to kick all the ass any audience would need, but Emmy Raver-Lampman (graduating from still-running The Umbrella Academy TV series) brings a good dose of authenticity to the part, avoiding the usual glam-potential-rom set-up.

It’s in very capable hands, director David Ayer bringing a Fury (2014) directness to proceedings rather than being swamped all-ways-up by character overload as in The Suicide Squad (2016). Kurt Zimmer (Salt, 2010) has all the correct experience to layer this with more than eternal action beats.

Let’s hear it for the bee-busters.

Ten Little Indians (1965) ***

This is more like it. Classic Agatha Christie mystery told in classic fashion but devoid of either of her major sleuths, Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, and set in the grander equivalent of the country house locale that had become something of a trademark. Here it’s the kind of castle perched atop a mountain, accessible only by cable car unless you have mountaineering skills, that you would need the combined services of Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton to affect a rescue, and as with Where Eagles Dare (1968) the conditions are distinctly wintry.

Ten strangers, including the two servants, have been invited to this retreat by the mysterious Mr Owen. They soon learn they are cut off, telephone lines down, cable car out of commission for a couple of days, nearest village a straight drop 15 miles down a perilous cliff.

All they have in common, as they discover via a taped message delivered by their host, is that they all got away with murder or at the very least a dubious death. There is a private eye on hand, former cop Blore (Stanley Holloway), but he’s lacking in the little grey cells that Poirot put to such clever use in such circumstances. So, like a troupe of actors let down by some stage entrepreneur, they have to get the show on the road themselves, a combined effort to solve the problem.

Not so much why they are gathered here, but why they keep on getting bumped off, and rather in the fashion of the titular song. The movie business wasn’t awash with serial killers though this decade would see nascent interest in this sub-genre, witness Psycho (1960) and The Boston Strangler (1968). But Ms Christie mysteries never really seemed to get going until the death toll had reached multiple figures.

The good element of this kind of movie with a large cast is that each character gets a moment in the sun, here that spotlight largely concerned with what crime they committed for which they were never truly punished. Pop singer Mike (played by pop singer Fabian) gets the ball rolling, explaining that his only punishment for killing someone while driving under the influence was a temporary withdrawal of his license.

And so it goes on, everyone wondering who will be next to be despatched and going from the initial conclusion that Owen is responsible and is hidden somewhere in the house to the obvious one that Owen is one of them. I have to confess I’m easily gulled by the murder mystery and I hadn’t reached that conclusion myself.

The movie’s not necessarily filled with that kind of twist – although there certainly are a good few, some people not as guilty as they might appear, not quite who they appear to be – more you glancing at the cast list and wondering, by dint of billing or box office pull, who will be next for the chop and unless the director has got the Hitchcock vibe it’s not going to be one of the leads.

So it’s a choice of Hugh Lombard (Hugh O’Brian), secretary Ann Clyde (Shirley Eaton), actress Ilona Bergen (Daliah Lavi), General Mandrake (Leo Genn), Judge Cannon (Wilfrid Hyde White), Dr Armstrong (Dennis Price) and the aforementioned Blore plus servants the Grohmanns (Marianne Hoppe and Mario Adorf). And this isn’t your standard serial killer either with a constant modus operandi that will eventually, through standard detection, trap him or her. Instead, variety is the key. Death by fatal injection, knife, poison, slashed rope.

As the numbers whittle down, and you even feel sorry for the actions of some, the actress, for example, whose husband committed suicide when she left him, the tension mounts. You won’t be on the edge of your seat because there are just too many characters involved for you to become overly concerned with their plight but it’s still has you on the hook. You do want to know whodunit and why and you can be sure Ms Christie, as was her wont, will have some clever final twist.

At least, unlike the later variations on the genre, nobody’s been bumped off because they are too fond of sex, and the violence itself is restrained, almost dignified, and there’s no sign of gender favoritism.

All in all, entertaining stuff, though since by now this kind of murder mystery, given we’ve been through various iterations of Poirot – Albert Finney, Peter Ustinov, Kenneth Branagh et al, not to mention numerous Miss Marples – a lot of this feels like cliché (though that’s a bit like a contemporary audience considering John Ford’s Stagecoach old hat, not realizing this was where many of those western tropes were invented or polished to a high level). And I had to say I had a sneaky hankering for some of the out of left field goings-on of The Alphabet Murders (1965).

Sad to see Hollywood not taking advantage of Daliah Lavi’s acting skills, under-estimated in my opinion after her terrific work in The Demon (1963) and The Whip and the Body (1963). But then this wasn’t Hollywood calling but our old friend producer Harry Alan Towers (Five Golden Dragons, 1967) who specialized in dropping a biggish American name into a B-list all-star-cast.

George Pollock, who helmed this decade’s four Miss Marple movies, enjoys keeping the mystery alive without resorting to a central know-it-all. Everyone cast does what they’re expected to do. Towers wrote the screenplay with his usual partner Peter Yeldham.

Worth considering alongside The Alphabet Murders, but stands up well on its own.

PREVIOUSLY REVIEWED IN THE BLOG: Hugh O’Brian in In Harm’s Way (1965), Texas: Africa Style (1967); Daliah Lavi in The Demon (1963), The Whip and the Body (1964), Lord Jim (1965), The High Commissioner (1968), Some Girls Do (1969).

The Alphabet Murders (1965) ***

Just about the barmiest idea ever. Just about works. Tony Randall (Bang! Bang! You’re Dead / Our Man in Marrakesh, 1966), a cross between David Niven’s younger brother and a distant relation of Inspector Clouseau, would be nobody’s notion of a perfect Hercule Poirot. But back in the day, Agatha Christie’s famed detective was not a hallowed concept.

In fact, in movie terms he was pretty much a nobody, not a single big screen appearance in three decades, the forgotten man of cinema sleuths, not a patch on Sherlock Holmes or Maigret who had enjoyed umpteen iterations. So that character, if you like, was there for the taking, up for grabs, not one so sacrosanct it was imprinted on audience minds.

You could do what you liked as long as he had a moustache, spoke with an exaggerated foreign accent and every now and then pointed to his head and mumbled something about little grey cells.

MGM had had some fun and box office success with Christie’s other famous criminal creation Miss Marple in a quartet of low-budget pictures in the light comedy vein starring Margaret Rutherford beginning with Murder, She Said (1961) and clearly believed the same recipe would work wonders with a character generally considered too stiff to work at all.

This is a chucklesome broth, some astute detective work mixed up with all sorts of sight gags. Frank Tashlin (The Glass Bottom Boat, 1966) is at the helm and the writing team of Jack Seddon and David Pursall who reimagined Miss Marple adapt the mystery.

It kicks off with the very contemporary trope of talking to the camera as real-life actor Tony Randall walks off an MGM set and transforms himself into Poirot. Hastings (Robert Morley), who in the novels is more an amiable companion, a kind of Dr Watson, is here portrayed as somebody high up in the British Secret Service trying to whisk Poirot out of the country. Mostly, he acts as a comedy foil.

After being attacked by a beautiful masseuse, Poirot finds himself on the trail of a serial killer who conveniently leaves an ABC London Guide at the scene of the crime and kills in alphabetical order (with a bent for alliteration) which would make the attempt on the detective’s life a bit of an aberration (that even Poirot doesn’t apparently notice). Anyway, the first victim is an Aquabatic, the second Betty Barnard (Grazine Frame). Poirot is on the case by the time the third likely victim Sir Carmichael Clarke (Cyril Luckham) hoves into view.

As luck would have it, a fourth contender Duncan Doncaster (Guy Rolfe) is both psychiatrist to chief suspect Amanda Beatrice Cross (Anita Ekberg) and lover of Clarke’s wife Diane (Sheila Allen). Inspector Japp (Maurice Denham) of Scotland Yard and Poirot are invariably at cross purposes.

The detective has a special set of skills, including cooking to restaurant standard, being able to vanish in a trice, horse-riding, and knocking down two sets of ten-pin bowling pins at the same time.

That the comedy works is mostly thanks to the likes of Airplane (1980) which has accustomed contemporary audiences to barmy, almost literal sight, gags, faces elongated via shaving mirrors, while a cop elucidates a clever plan we are only shown the back of the map he’s pointing to, a conversation takes place over the sleeping body of a snoring wife, a business card tossed nonchalantly onto a desk ends up in a coffee cup, Hastings is trapped in the trunk of a car with a comely wench

You still get your London tourist features – the docks, bus stops, military parade, horse riding in Hyde Park – but these are invariably set-ups for sight gags. A naked Hastings invades the parade, fog shrouds the docks, Poirot’s horse leaps over (wait for it!) a park bench.

This version of Poirot might be heresy to some, and too jaunty by half, but there’s too much serious detection – and some classic Poirot intuition – to dismiss it as entirely a spoof, and I spent too much time chortling to dismiss it as a waste, so it lands in an odd halfway house, but I suspect that’s very much where Tashlin intended it to land.

Worth a look if only to suspend your disbelief.

PREVIOUSLY REVIEWED IN THE BLOG: Frank Tashlin’s The Glass Bottom Boat (1966); Tony Randall in Let’s Make Love (1960), Lover Come Back (1961), Send Me No Flowers (1964), Bang! Bang! You’re Dead (1966); Anita Ekberg in 4 for Texas (1963); Robert Morley in Oscar Wilde (1960), Nine Hours to Rama (1963), Hot Enough for June (1964), Of Human Bondage (1964), Topkapi (1964), Genghis Khan (1965), The Loved One (1965), A Study in Terror (1965), Some Girls Do (1969).

The Corrupt Ones / The Peking Medallion (1967) ****

Non-stop action as spy Cliff Wilder (Robert Stack) battles a variety of crooks in Macao on the Chinese border as they seek to recover the legendary Peking medallion. Wilder hails from the James Bond school of espionage, duty bound to kiss every girl he meets. He might wonder at their compliance until he realizes they are only after his knowledge of the missing medallion.

The violence is criminally brutal – punch-ups, gunfights, samurai swordfights, murder and torture by blowtorch and acid and being dragged behind a motorboat. The string of sexy women is matched by handsome men, Brandon (Christian Marquand) and Danny (Maurizio Arena) in addition to Stack. The thriller pitches helter-skelter through nightclubs, casinos, caves, temples and palatial mansions, the pace only slowing down for, naturally, a scene in a stately rickshaw.

As well as Wilder who briefly – and unknowingly – has the medallion in his hands, others in the hunt include Lilly Mancini (Elke Sommer), wife of Danny who had passed it to Wilder before being killed. Mancini is on the wrong side of the femme fatale equation. Once Wilder is wise to her seductive charm,s he quips, “Maybe you’re telling the truth but I can’t trust you.”

Also in hot pursuit are gangster Brandon and a Chinese mob headed by Tina (Nancy Kwan) That’s on top of a corrupt cop (“I have never feared death, only poverty” is his mantra) who doesn’t care who wins the prize as long as he gets his share. Double cross is the order of the day, alliances forged then broken. The action never stops long enough for one of those tension-building scenes of which Alfred Hitchcock or imitators like Stanley Donen (Charade, 1963, and Arabesque, 1966) were so fond.

Wilder faces danger with a quip, a kiss or gritted teeth, an old-fashioned tough guy without the James Bond self-awareness. He carries out his manly duties until his brain kicks in and he realizes this isn’t a spy picture after all but a genuine treasure hunt with clues that have to be deciphered. After that, the pictures sidetracks down another route. For a moment, the movie seems to have lost the plot. But then all hell breaks loose and we are back on the safe ground of fistfights, double-crossing and shooting.

Fans of improbable storylines, exotic settings, action, interesting bad guys and twists and turns will love this. How can you fail to love a movie with a samurai vs camera tripod swordfight?

An exemplary cast for this kind of malarkey, a French-Italian-German co-production with English as the mother tongue. Scarcely creditable that Robert Stack, in his biggest picture since The Untouchables tv series (1959-1963), was once Oscar-nominated given subtlety is never required. Nancy Kwan (The World of Suzie Wong, 1960) steals the show as the villainess but she’s run close by Elke Sommer (The Prize, 1963). In supporting roles are Werner Peters (Istanbul Express, 1968) and Christian Marquand (The Flight of the Phoenix, 1965).

Might seem a considerable change of pace for director James Hill after Born Free (1966) but that’s only if you ignore his work on the equally complicated A Study in Terror (1965). Screenplay punched out by Englishman Brian Clemens (And Soon the Darkness, 1970), Hungarian Ladislas Fodor (best know for the Dr Mabuse series) and Harald Bloom, his only known credit.

Great fun.

PREVIOUSLY REVIEWED IN THE BLOG: Robert Stack in Is Paris Burning? (1966); Elke Sommer in The Prize (1963), The Art of Love (1965), The Money Trap (1965), The Oscar (1966), The Venetian Affair (1966), Deadlier than the Male (1967), They Came to Rob Las Vegas (1968) and The Swiss Conspiracy (1976); and James Hill’s A Study in Terror (1965); Nancy Kwan in Tamahine (963), Fate Is the Hunter (1964), The Wild Affair (1965).

Shock Corridor (1963) *****

Sam Fuller’s (The Naked Kiss, 1964) masterpiece, targeting every conceivable taboo subject – incest, sexual abuse, racism, the atomic bomb – under the guise, as with the later Shock Treatment (1964), of a sane man entering a mental asylum with the aim of uncovering criminality. In this case, uber-ambitious journalist Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck), with his eyes on a Pulitzer Prize, undergoes training from psychiatrist Dr Fong (Philip Ahn) to pass himself off as insane in a bid to find the killer of an inmate called Sloane.

Apparently, in those days in the U.S., incest, while viewed as sexual deviation, was also considered a mental illness. So when Barrett’s girlfriend, stripper Cathy (Constance Towers), turns up at a police station masquerading as his sister and complaining of sexual molestation, he is packed off to the nearest asylum. That he passes muster is not only down to his acting (or over-acting) but to the release of his own inner demons.

Tormented by jealousy and insecurity, he imagines Cathy, dancing as a demonic miniature in his dreams, her mouth a “lush tunnel,” will abandon him for another man or just play the field, no shortage of unsuitable suitors in her line of work. For her part, Cathy finds it hard to maintain the pretence, and clearly starts to crumble under the pressure, almost giving the game away, and soon enough almost compelled to do so after seeing the impact of incarceration – and its various treatments including electric shock therapy – upon her lover.

But what a difference a director with an agenda and a knack for stunning imagery makes. While Denis Sanders with Shock Treatment (1964) and George Englund in Signpost to Murder (1964) take the melodramatic tack to mental illness, which robs the subject matter of some of its power, Sam Fuller takes a two-fisted approach. Sure, there are shades of noir in the lighting, and the internal corruption of personality, but this is a world twisted upside down, filled with intentional and accidental malevolence, often from people who don’t know the difference.

The simmering violence can explode from a minor tiff over vitamin pills, or from the wrong man entering the female quarters at the wrong time, or from deep-seated hatred, while torture is visited upon inmates from the best of intentions as psychiatrists attempt to subdue or quell the worst instincts. Best of all is the depiction of obsession. People are only committed to an asylum because they are a danger to themselves or others, in other words when what is going on in their minds has got out of control and they can think of little else but the thoughts that consume them and are condemned to play out again and again perverse versions of reality.

So we have the patient constantly singing opera who likes to stab inmates with his hands and stuff their mouths full of chewing gum, another obsessed with hide-and-seek, a third with the Civil War, yet another who steals pillowcases in order to turn them into Ku Klux Klan masks. Mental warping renders some relatively harmless and others lethal. But there are also those with nothing left on the surface, reduced to catatonic state, arms stretched out, bodies draped over a bed or a chair, and you can guess that those who still act out will eventually end up silent, helpless and rigidly comatose.

Soon you realize, as Barrett clearly does not, the futility of attempting to carry out an investigation under these circumstances. He has three witnesses to pursue, none of whom a prosecutor would ever consider putting into the witness box in a court, and eventually of course Barrett does find the murderer – the victim killed for threatening to expose an attendant preying on female patients – but by that point his mind is so jumbled up by a combination of treatment and his own psychiatric problems that he either can’t locate the name in his memory or finds himself struck dumb and hallucinating.

When he is mauled by a pack of predatory females he can just about retain his dignity, but once he visualises water pouring in from the ceiling and almost drowns in the subsequent flood, and struck by imaginary lightning to boot, he has only a few shreds of his personality left.

This is brutal stuff and even now an incredible shock to the cinematic system so you wonder how it ever managed to get released. In retrospect, not so much an expose of the treatment methods in asylums as an insight into the power of mental illness once it exerts control on hapless humans.

You won’t forget the long corridor either empty or filled with individuals bent out of shape, or Barrett battered by torrential downpour or buried under a mob of savage women, or the African American white supremacist hunting for a victim or the agony of the outsider Cathy forced into playing this terrible game.

One of those films that creates its own visual grammar. I remember the rediscovery of Sam Fuller by the cognoscenti, a director whose work stood so far outside the accepted masters of cinema like John Ford or Sergei Eisenstein or Howard Hawks that he was the very definition of cult. Critics (Phil Hardy in 1970 and Nicholas Garnham in 1972) even had the temerity to write books about him as if he was fitting company for directors who produced acknowledged masterpieces and he was lionised, in the words of Peter Cowie, “by a posse of film commandos at the Edinburgh Films Society” who hailed him as a cinematic god.

All that acclaim, driven by the French New Wave, was hard to accept because his movies were impossible to find outside of a festival retrospective, unlikely to be screened on television and in the days before VHS and DVD just nowhere to be seen. But eventually, as the books and critical articles accumulated and the films became more readily available, the attraction was obvious.

Without much in the way of Stuart Whitman’s sensitivity in Shock Treatment, Peter Breck (The Glory Guys, 1965) delivers a stunning performance, perhaps all the more so because he is blatantly on the make at the start. There’s nobody to equal Lauren Bacall for ice-cold heart in the later film, but Constance Towers (The Naked Kiss, 1964) quivering with vulnerability runs her close. Special mention in the acting stakes for Hari Rhodes (Mirage, 1965) as Trent.

Ever the multi-hyphenate, Fuller dreamed up the whole thing.

A must see.

PREVOUSLY REVIEWED IN THE BLOG: Sam Fuller’s Underworld USA (1961) and The Naked Kiss (1964); and Constance Towers in The Naked Kiss.

Shock Treatment (1964) ***

The Stuart Whitman (The Mark, 1961) retrospective sees another great performance as an inmate in a mental institution but perhaps put in the shade by Roddy McDowall (5 Card Stud, 1968) as a murderous gardener and Lauren Bacall, in her first movie in five years, as a psychiatrist in the Nurse Ratchet mold.

Though killing his wealthy boss earns Martin (Roddy MacDowall) a return to the mental asylum, the dead woman’s executor Harley Manning (Judson Laire) believes the gardener is faking it and has hidden a million dollars he says he burned. So Manning hires actor Dale (Stuart Whitman) to fake insanity, thus gaining entrance to the institution and finding out whether Martin is pretending.

Dale is pretty good at the mad act and appears initially to fool resident psychiatrist Dr Beighley (Lauren Bacall). On the other hand, he is sane enough to develop a relationship with another inmate Cynthia (Carol Lynley) whose rejection of men is equally an act.

Turns out Beighley is not fooled by either Martin or Dale. The former she takes under her wing, hoping to discover for herself the missing million bucks, the latter she had sussed out from the start, pointing to the obvious flaws in his role playing. She has a bunch of nasty medicines up her sleeve and when that doesn’t pipe Dale down she has the recourse of sending him in for electric shock treatment.

That doesn’t seem to go so far as the lobotomy in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) but it renders our hero helpless, or put him out of the picture long enough for her to engage in her unscrupulous scheme of hypnotising Martin to get to the truth.

In reality, this isn’t so much an expose of the goings-on in mental hospitals so much as portrait of femme fatale going overboard. You might think Beighley would be better off getting treatment herself rather than dishing it out so deluded is she in convincing herself that Martin is sane. And there’s an absolutely fabulous pay-off in that department.

For the rest of it, she is the antithesis of the liberal psychiatrists we have mostly seen during this decade, the ones that try to find the good in their patients, helping them along to sanity, or at the very least getting them to understand the depth of their problems. That Beighley and Dr Fleming in Signpost of Murder (1964) conspire to give psychiatrists a bad name is an anomaly when mostly, as with The Mark (1961), they are of an encouraging rather than venal disposition.

Perhaps it was the very nature of the gentle psychiatrist as depicted in Hollywood that gave vent to movies that showed the darker side of the mental institutions where inmates are not only robbed of their freedom but are powerless to prevent being treated either as guinea pigs or being drugged to just shut them up or lobotomised to rid society of their unnerving instincts.

That said, seeing the patients strapped down in gurneys or incapacitated in other ways while the psychiatrist plays God is pretty strong stuff, even viewing it now nearly sixty years later. Some of the other inmates are cliché material, but by concentrating on the three characters with charisma, the enigmatic gardener, the actor attempting to put on the performance of his life and the charming duplicitous psychiatrist there’s enough meat for an entertaining drama with a powerful twist.

Of course, one of the tropes of any prison drama is that someone is innocent of their perceived guilt, and here only Dale really fits that bill, but equally since the rules relating to incarceration in this facility differ entirely from those of a prison, there is every chance that someone sane could be locked up for ever, especially if a powerful psychiatrist deems it so.

Stuart Whitman certainly plays around with his screen persona, the dandified actor entrancing a courtroom and police station with his performance, but fooling them proves easier work than duping the psychiatrist so there’s a couple of great scenes where he realizes this could be a trap of his own making – and there’s a twist in his tale, too. You might well accuse Roddy McDowall hamming it up, but actually, although he appears extrovert in fact he is introverted, concerned only with his flowers and plants, his violent side only emerging when that existence is threatened.

But Lauren Bacall (Harper, 1966) steals the show, cleverly concealing her true nature behind a convincing professional front and undone by greed.

Denis Sanders (One Man’s Way, 1964) directs from a screenplay by Sidney Boehm (Rough Night in Jericho, 1967) based on the bestseller by Winifred von Atta.

Riveting performances drive this one more than the expose elements.

PREVIOUSLY REVIEWED IN THE BLOG: Stuart Whitman in Murder Inc (1960), The Mark (1961), Rio Conchos (1964), Signpost to Murder (1964) and Sands of the Kalahari (1965); Joanne Woodward in From the Terrace (1960) and A Fine Madness (1966); and Carol Lynley in The Cardinal (1963), The Pleasure Seekers (1964), Harlow (1965) Bunny Lake is Missing (1965); Danger Route (1967) and The Maltese Bippy (1969).