July 2025 – Page 3 – The Magnificent 60s

A Child Is Waiting (1963) ****

While once the main interest in this piece would have come from fans of Judy Garland, lapping up her penultimate movie appearance, the prevalence of mental illness these days especially among the young, in part due to Covid and the scourge of social media, should switch audience attention – especially among contemporary viewers – back to the subject matter.

Garland’s stock had risen somewhat after her performance in Judgement at Nuremberg (1961), her first movie in seven years, but, given the travails of her private life, would most likely have been sympathetic to anything that cast a light on mental illness. The bulk of movies covering this ground tended towards the lurid, as exemplified by Shock Corridor (1963) and Shock Treatment, (1964) rather than the more tragic Lilith (1962). Whatever the approach, they focused on adult conditions. Here it’s the treatment of children.

Appreciation of the social conscience of star Burt Lancaster has largely gone unnoticed but this was the era when his movies touched upon crooked evangelism (Elmer Gantry, 1960), teenage gangs (The Young Savages, 1961), the Holocaust (Judgement at Nuremberg, 1961) and the effects of long-term imprisonment (The Birdman of Alcatraz, 1962). He was even an animal rights protester in The List of Adrian Messenger (1963).

Parental attitude to offspring with mental conditions is encapsulated in the opening sequence. Outside a hospital a young boy is tempted out of an automobile. Once out, the driver (the father) races off so fast the car door is still swinging open. Mentally or emotionally disturbed children were dumped, ostracized or abandoned by society, sometimes shut up in institutions along with adults, with treatment belonging to the Dark Ages.

Drawing on the ground-breaking approach of Vineland Training School in New Jersey and the Pacific Hospital in Pomona, California (pupils from the latter played the students in the film), the movie attempts to cast a light on the forgotten and to show that, with proper care and education, they need not be such victims of their circumstances.

The movie focuses on Dr Clark (Burt Lancaster), head of the Crawthorne State Training School, whose pioneering work combines tender encouragement with firm application, and the new music teacher Jean (Judy Garland) who challenges his approach. Instigating this crisis is 12-year-old Reuben, the child we see offloaded at the start, for whom Jean develops an unhealthy bond. She thinks Dr Clark is too strict and that his methods don’t work with someone as vulnerable as Reuben. Clark’s aim is to make the children so self-sufficient they are not condemned to a life in an adult institution.

Jean’s intervention creates a crisis in the child’s life but also brings home the unwelcome truth of the difficulties parents have of dealing with their children.

And while the tale is essentially confected to make the necessary points and Dr Clark and Jean epitomize opposite attitudes to handling the treatment of children, the story is really a documentary in disguise, bringing to light advances in care, and with the children not played by actors, brings a greater reality to the work.

Burt Lancaster, as ever, is good value and Judy Garland steps up to the plate. Gena Rowlands (Machine Gun McCain, 1969) and John Marley (Istanbul Express, 1968) also feature.

While this fits neatly into Lancaster’s portfolio, it stands out for the wrong reasons in the pantheon of critically-acclaimed actor-turned-director John Cassavetes (Faces, 1968). In fact, what he produced went against what producer Stanley Kramer (better known as a director – Judgment at Nuremberg, for example) wanted and the version we see is the one Kramer recut. Written by Abby Mann (Judgment at Nuremberg) from his original teleplay.

You might expect this to be awash with sentimentality but that’s far from the case.

From Noon Till Three (1976) *****

Charles Bronson in a feelgood movie? Charles Bronson the romantic comedy lead? Charles Bronson’s character impotent? The hell you say!

Certainly, Bronson’s boldest role, and if the original concept had played out the way audiences might have expected, the star’s career might have taken the kind of pivot afforded Arnold Schwarzenegger when he took on Twins (1988). But a third act which probably baffled audiences half a century ago plays straight into the hands of the contemporary filmgoer and spins such a twist – almost a horror version of “print the legend” – that nobody has ever invented a better one.

This isn’t just Bronson as you’ve never seen him before but it’s also Jill Ireland in the role of her life, proving not just that she can act but putting on a brilliant performance.

So, this isn’t like any Charles Bronson character you’ve ever seen, light years away from the monosyllabic justified or unjustified killers he had hitherto portrayed for most of the decade. He’s not even the leader of the gang of outlaws and has a decidedly cowardly streak. And this isn’t Jill Ireland, his wife, either, in some punched-up supporting role. Here she essays her inner Katharine Hepburn or prissy Maggie Smith and engages in the kind of male-female verbal duel that hasn’t been seen since The African Queen (1952).

When his horse pulls up lame Graham Dorsey (Charles Bronson) decides not to accompany his four outlaw buddies on a bank robbing expedition and despite the prospect of “borrowing” a horse from rich widow Amanda Starbuck (Jill Ireland) he goes along with her pretense that no such beast exists because he’s had a presentiment that the heist will go awry. The gang agree to pick him up on their return at a tension-sodden three o’clock – hence the title, a mild play on High Noon (1952).

Amanda is more than capable of dealing with his kind despite him spinning her a tale of having lost a similar mansion to her grand three-storey affair after the Civil War and being widowed for seven years and so depressed at his impotency he’s contemplating suicide.

In the way of opposites attracting, one thing leads to another and soon they are waltzing, dressed up to the nines, in her elaborate rooms and taking a dip au natural in a lake. When word comes back that the robbers have been caught and are all set to hang, much against his natural inclination not to jeopardize his newfound love, he agrees, at her behest, to go save them. Although he intends doing nothing of the sort and simply lying low, he is pursued by a posse and only evades capture by swapping clothes with a dentist he captures.

And then the tale deftly switches. The posse kills the real dentist. Seeing only his blood-drenched clothes at a distance, Amanda believes it’s Graham. Meanwhile, he’s locked up after being convicted of the dentist’s crimes. She’s so enthralled by the unlikely romance that she writes a book about it that turns into the kind of publishing phenomenon that triggers tours of Graham’s grave and the house where it all happened.

When Graham is released, you expect the sting in the tale will be that she’ll have gone off and married someone else. But she hasn’t. Except she doesn’t recognize him. Because in the writing she transformed him into a much taller more handsome figure and her imagination can’t deal with reality. Any time he reminds her of an intimate moment, she cries out “it’s in the book.” Finally, somewhat rudely, he does convince her but then, afraid of letting down the millions of fans captivated by the legend, rather than reviving their romance, she kills herself so the story cannot be challenged.

Worse, nobody believes Graham and he is accused of being a fraud and ends up in a lunatic asylum. Charles Bronson the madman, you didn’t see that coming I bet.

As you can tell from the posters, United Artists had no idea how to sell it and it lacked the single immediately visually-appealing gag of Twins, so it was a rare flop at this point in Bronson’s career. But a third act that was viewed as somewhat deranged satire has, in the half century since, now come into its own when questions about identity and point of view and “your own truth” and “recollections may vary” and imposter narrative and reality reinvention and fake news are endemic. In this case “print the legend” comes to haunt Graham.

But what was a flop in 1976 deserves reassessment and should be welcomed by a contemporary audience more able to deal with the sudden shift in tone. It might also put to rest the notions that neither Charles Bronson (Once Upon a Time in the West, 1969) nor Jill Ireland (Rider on the Rain, 1970) could act. This is a wonderfully spirited double act and had the movie been remotely successful might have set them up as a latter-day Tracy-Hepburn. I should note in passing a wonderful tune, “The Trouble With Hello Is Goodbye,” lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman and music by Elmer Bernstein. Had the movie not been so quickly dismissed, that had all the making of a torch song.

Writer-director Frank D. Gilroy (Desperate Characters, 1971) has produced some scintillating dialog as well as bringing out the best in the couple. As clever on the spoofery front as Blazing Saddles (1974) and Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) but with a harder satirical edge.

I chuckled all the way through. It was a delight to see Bronson and Ireland playing such refreshing characters and the rom-com element worked out really well. So two bangs for your buck – a reinvented Bronson in the kind of role you never thought he could manage, and the kind of satire that hits home today.

Put aside all thoughts about what Charles Bronson and for that matter Jill Ireland can do or should do and sit back and enjoy this unexpected gem.

You can catch it on Amazon Prime.

Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025) ** – Seen at the Cinema

Director Gareth Edwards (The Creator, 2023) and screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park, 1993) have gone so far back to basics that they’ve skipped some fundamentals. It doesn’t matter how big your monsters are or how fearsome, the audience needs to care about those put in jeopardy and that has to amount to a lot more than a licorice-munching cute kid with a penchant for collecting cute baby dinosaurs.

Audiences are not likely to have forgotten the wealth of characterizations served up as the series kicked off – jovial misguided philanthropist Richard Attenborough, child-hating scientist Sam Neill who grows to like kids, annoying scientist Jeff Goldblum who chats up Sam Neill’s squeeze, annoying smartass child Joseph Mazzello, even cheapskate thief Wayne Knight.

Come the reboot we had a latter-day Indiana Jones bad boy in Chris Pratt trying to get on the good side of careerist Bryce Dallas Howard who was stumbling around on high heels and a kicker of a final line where they decide to stick together “for survival.”

The most interesting person in the latest reboot is way down the billing, the pot-smoking laid-back Xavier (David Iacono). Setting Scarlett Johansson up as a rooting-tooting mercenary with a soft heart (boohoo she didn’t make it to her mother’s funeral because presumably she was rooting-tooting for cold hard cash) who decides to set aside her $20 million payday comes across like one of the old-school Miss World contenders determined to help achieve “world peace.” Everyone else has been rounded up from Dullsville and apart from a few pontificating woke speeches nobody else has much to do except duck and dive to escape monsters.

For narrative purposes various rooting-tooting guns-for-hire have to locate a waterosauraus, a flyingosaurus and a walkingosaurus at the same time as trying to avoid a new version of the hybrid beastie that turned up in Jurassic World (2015).

Not only are there no characters to root for, but the movie is mighty low on tension, no attempt to create the Spielbergian trembling water cup or the cracking glass or the motorbike chase and runaway pterodactyls from Jurassic World though there is the standard hiding under a car routine.

There are some groundbreaking effects but they’re not what you think. They’re aural rather than visual. We’ve got a scene when Dr Loomis crunches very loudly on some kind of mint. That’s the soundtrack – Dr Loomis crunching excessively loudly on a mint. Good job they didn’t utilize Imax for this one or it would have blown your eardrums off. Candies/sweets hog a good part of the center stage. Apart from the ear-blasting mints and the cute kid feeding strips of licorice to the cute dinosaur, the Maguffin comes in the unlikely shape of a wrapper from a bar of Snickers which somehow manages to fuse an entire laboratory and cause it to be completely abandoned (17 years before the present time I should add).

Given the build-up which I accept as an essential part of promoting the reboot, this lands with a thud and the title, unfortunately, lends itself to all sorts of puns. As you know I’m a sucker for monster movies, but this just seems to be a very careless endeavor, like they are trying to squeeze the last juices. Regardless of how dumb the ideas the first Jurassic World trilogy ultimately became, the narrative was underpinned by unlikely romance and likeable characters. Unless, as I suspect, Scarlett Johanssen and Dr Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), the best of the bad guys, are going to embark on a more interesting sequel and develop some personality this could as aptly be called Jurassic World RIP.

The Evil Eye / The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) ***

Don’t be taken in by claims that, since it was directed by Mario Bava, it kicked off the giallo sub-genre. More of the tropes come from mainstream horror – windows banging shut, locked doors, disembodied voices, stalkers, gaslighting, mysterious phone calls, premonition, retrocognition. And just for good measure, striking compositions that wouldn’t be out of place in an arthouse picture. But essentially it’s neo-noir – a woman can’t prove she’s witnessed a murder.

The Evil Eye was the American title, which makes little sense, although eye-popping eyes were in fashion from movies like Village of the Damned (1960), but in fact the original title of The Girl Who Knew Too Much is much more appropriate. This film is about a female character and what she discovers that threatens her life. The American version was chopped about by the distributor but, apparently, copies of that have gone astray so if locate a copy of the picture what you are likely to see if the Italian original.

American tourist Nora (Leticia Roman) is knocked out by a robber in Rome. On waking up she sees a murderer sticking a knife into a woman’s back. Only problem is – there’s no corpse to be found. But, strangely, a murder was committed on that spot a decade ago. So she might be having a vision of the past. But the murderer Straccianeve was caught.

The victim was the sister of Laura (Valentina Cortese), a new friend, whose apartment Nora temporarily occupies. There, Laura discovers newspaper clippings relating to the “alphabet killer”, a serial murderer whose victims’ surnames began with A, B, and C. Once Nora begins her investigations, it looks like she’ll be next on the list since her surname begins with “D”. Meanwhile, she has struck a romantic vibe with Dr Marcello Bassi (John Saxon). But, of course, he might be not what he seems, sneaking off for assignations with strange women, following her.

Much of this is played out on deserted streets where the tourist sites acquire a dangerous veneer.

The finger points at journalist Landini (Dante DiPaulo), who has been following her. But he is as much a basket case as a potential murderer. He was instrumental in collecting the evidence that trapped the murderer but now believes Straccianeve was innocent.

In due course, after some more deaths, Nora traps the murderer, who comes out of left field, one of those where you think the writer has decided to pin the blame on the least likely suspect and come up with a spurious reason for the murders, so the twists pile up in helter skelter fashion at the end, including one which suggests Nora might well have the gift of seeing into the future.

Leticia Roman, in her debut, is mostly called upon to look baffled or frightened, there’s rather too much of the pop-eyes, and John Saxon (The Appaloosa, 1966) has the rare opportunity to play a hero. Valentina Cortese (Barabbas, 1961) drifts in and out of the tale. Written by future director Sergio Corbucci (Django, 1966), Oscar-winner Ennio De Concini (Divorce, Italian Style, 1963) and Eliana De Sabato (Marco Polo, 1962).

If it hadn’t been directed – and occasionally so stylishly – by Mario Bava (The Whip and the Body, 1963), it would have attracted considerably less contemporary attention. One of this main themes – the conflict between illusion and reality – is given a good airing. You can well believe that Nora is going mad. But it’s atmospheric enough and the director makes unusual use of the standard Rome tourist traps and this picture gives notice that he will move onto greater movies.

Tiger by the Tail (1968) ***

Back to those ingénues – or whatever-happened-to-Tippi Hedren. Christopher George’s villainous turn in El Dorado (1967) brought him as much immediate attention as James Caan and though he quickly achieved leading man status he never parlayed it beyond the likes of low-budget numbers such as The Thousand Plane Raid (1969).

But there was a more interesting ingénue on show here. Tippi Hedren had made the instant stardom type splash as Alfred Hitchcock’s go-to leading lady in The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964). She reckoned she could do better without Hitchcock’s patronage, the director reckoned she was more trouble than she was worth, so there was a relatively amicable parting of the way.

Hedren didn’t find other directors queuing up for her services. Two small screen appearances and a supporting role in A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) were all she had to show for her stand of independence or hubris. Whereas in other circumstances signing up for this picture would have been seen as slumming it, this turned into more of an audition for a steady place in the B-movie division.

In the end she isn’t the stand-out any more than Christopher George is. The movie is too humdrum for that. But it’s the kind of narrative with murder, revenge, robbery, double-dealing and a sadistic villain that in the hands of bigger names with established screen charisma – say George Peppard and Jill St John – might have sparked more substantial interest.

There are three villainous schemes afoot. Vietnam war hero Steve (Christopher George) returns to his home town where his brother runs a race track. No sooner has Steve checked in than the brother is murdered during a million-dollar robbery. The murderers are then bumped off in an airplane explosion by heist mastermind Polk (Dean Jagger), the inside man.

Following on from that, the other four stockholders of the race course plan to ease out Steve, who’s inherited the majority stake from his brother, and buy the racetrack on the cheap, circumstances and the company’s own rules tilting the odds heavily in their favor. Sheriff Jones (John Dehner) also figures Steve for the murder of his brother, so he’s first of all got to prove his own innocence before going after the guilty.

He does a fair bit of running around, aided by barmaid-cum-singer Carlita (Charo) trying to put the jigsaw in place. He’s got some cute ideas how to winkle out the potential bad guys, one of which fingers stockholder Ware (Lloyd Bochner) who gets taken out before he can spill the beans.

Former girlfriend Rita (Tippi Hedren), one of the stockholders, runs hot and cold. Initially discouraging, she eventually warms to her old flame, then turns down the heat when she realizes he considers her a suspect in the robbery. Steve takes a good thrashing every now and then, but proves assiduous and occasionally spot-on in his deductions, though most of his investigation relies on fishing expeditions. Some of the finger-pointing is obvious but the denouement is not.

There was another ingénue here. Commonwealth United intended going down the “mini-major” or “instant major” route as exemplified by United Artists and Avco Embassy, where a new production outfit set up a hefty portfolio of movies, aiming for a release strategy of 6-12 a year, sufficient to be recognized by cinema owners desperate for product as a potential player. Established by real estate supremo Milton T. Raynor, it kicked off in 1968 with Tiger by the Tail and A Black Veil for Lisa starring John Mills and Luciana Paluzzi, followed by a heftier slate of seven pictures the following year.

Big-budget items packed with marquee names such as Battle of Neretva with Yul Brynner and Sylva Koscina, The Magic Christian headlined by Peter Sellers and Raquel Welch, and Oscar-winner Sandy Dennis in Robert Altman’s That Cold Day in the Park were mixed in with low-budget thrillers Paranoia starring Carroll Baker, Tippi Hedren comeback The Girl Who Knew Too Much and It Takes All Kinds with Vera Miles plus a pair of Jess Franco exploitationers, 99 Women and Venus in Furs. The project foundered almost immediately and by 1971 was $80 million in debt.

Whether Tippi Hedren ever acknowledged her debt to Hitchcock, it’s pretty clear here that she owed a ton to the way he presented her, not just the glossy façade, but bringing out the best of her acting. Her trademark fragility is little in evidence here without anything notable taking its place. Away from center stage, she doesn’t light up the movie.

Final picture of R.G. Springsteen (Operation Eichmann, 1961) from a screenplay by Charles A. Wallace (The Money Jungle, 1965).

Run-of-the-mill crime picture or whatever-happened-to Tippi Hedren.

The Waterfront (2025) ***** – Netflix

I’m no casting director but in the absence of anyone with any degree of actual menace (in the De Niro/Pacino/Willis vein) stepping up to the plate, you could do worse than Holt McCallany, star of this engrossing number. You might remember him from the short-lived Mindhunter (2017-2019) series and as head of the wrestling clan in The Iron Claw (2023). But mostly he’s second (often third and fourth) banana or wasted in a series of supporting roles – he turned up in The Amateur (2025) and Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning (2025).

He doesn’t always get to exude menace, but to my mind that is his forte. He’s got a helluva mean stare and he’s built like a pro football player. Plenty actors around bristle with six-packs and muscle but very few look as though in real life they could actually hurt you. Holt sure does.

*Creator Kevin Williamson has come a long way from the slasher genre.*

While there are a bunch of twists here, most of the spade work is emotional, characters engaging in activities you might not expect and the set up is a lulu. Harlan Buckley (Holt McCallany) runs a fishing empire in North Carolina. His dad was a gangster but went legit and Harlan has kept away from crime. Except he’s run the business into the ground, what with his drinking and womanizing.

So wife Belle (Maria Bello) and son Cane (Jake Weary) have started a side hustle in drug running, acting as seaborne mules. But Cane is double-crossed and now owes some Mr Big $10 million. So no matter how much he tried to keep himself out, Harlan is drawn back in, and proves to have a natural aptitude for the business.

Meanwhile, Cane’s sister, recovering addict Bree (Melissa Benoist) is acting as an informant for DEA agent Marcus (Gerardo Celasco), also a recovering addict, with whom she is having an affair. She’s a piece of work, not only in the past burning her house down but estranged from her son (she sees him only under supervision) and also having such a beef against her brother that she’s intending to hang him out to dry for the DEA.

Belle has a second side hustle, trying to sell off for development a piece of land that holds such enormous sentimental value for her husband that he has resisted overtures to sell it. And besides, she’s snookered by the seduction technique of real estate agent Wes (Dave Annable).

*Melissa Benoist has come a long way from caped crusader activity.*

Adding further complication is the reappearance of Cane’s high school squeeze Jenna (Humberly Gonzalez), supposedly happily married as for that matter is Cane (to Peyton). The final piece of the jigsaw is a new bartender Shawn (Rafael L. Silva) acting so weird Belle suspects he’s a DEA plant.

But the soap opera setup is driven by character, the various twists usually by someone acting out of character or haunted by the past. There’s plenty confrontation and punchups for your buck and Harlan shows that he’s inherited a fair chunk of his old man’s criminal smarts, though he does sometimes thinks with his fists.

But the narrative is confident and springs the surprises in regular fashion. You think it’s the son gone a bit wild and trying to earn some extra pocket money running drugs ($100,000 per delivery) until you learn his mother’s in on the deal. You think Bree is just a nutcase mum until you find out she’s hellbent on revenge. The DEA agent as an ex-addict you didn’t see coming though Cane rekindling his affair with Jenna you could spot a mile off.

But each episode ends with major revelation/twist. In the first episode, Harlan has to rescue his son and dip his toes in the waters of criminal enterprise. The second has three stingers – Mr Big is revealed as the local sheriff Clyde (Michael Gaston), the suspicious-acting barman is Harlan’s son and gangsters torch Peyton (Danielle Campbell). That last still has me shaking my head.

Holt McCallany is easily the star turn but Maria Bello (A History of Violence) runs him close. I’m unfamiliar with others in the cast but Melissa Benoist was TV’s Supergirl for six seasons, Jake Weary was in Animal Kingdom for the same length of time and Humberly Gonzalez appeared in Tarot (2024).

Created by Kevin Williamson, inventor of the Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer horror movie franchises, who reverts to his Dawson’s Creek (1998-2003) persona but twists away from straight soap opera by injecting the criminal element.

Two episodes in and I’m hooked.

PS I wrote this review before Topher Grace turned up as a psychopathic gangster and the whole endeavor ratched up a notch. On the basis of the first two episodes I had ranked this as four-star, but now, with all the complications twisted the characters in knots, it’s in the solid five-star category.

Catch it on Netflix.

Behind the Scenes: Senta Berger Speaks

Only a candidate for the position of Emeritus Professor of Senta Berger Studies would spend time chasing up information about the star. So when I came across this interview by Italian film historian and academic Giannalberto Bendazzi (more famous later for his history of cinema animation) I couldn’t wait to share it with you. It was written while she was filming Lonely Heart / Cuoro Solitari (1970) in Italy directed by Franco Giraldi and co-starring Ugo Toganazzi. The interview took place in the foyer of the Manzoni Theatre in Milan after the film’s premiere.

The interview is repeated verbatim.

Bendazzi: I praised her performance and on consideration of her beauty and acting ability questioned her involvement with anything as bad as the last Matt Helm (The Ambushers, 1967).

Senta Berger: It was practically blackmail. I was under contract to an American company and although I had the right to refuse any script I didn’t like, they threatened that if I didn’t make the film I wouldn’t be offered any others. It’s a common enough practice.

I asked her how her career had began.

Senta Berger: I was born in Vienna and as a child had always wanted to either be an actress or a ballet dancer, so I took ballet lessons then went to the Staatsoper school of dancing and acting and on to the Max Reindhardt Academy. I appeared in a lot of theatre until one day an impresario from Berlin suggested I try the cinema.

So you went to Germany.

Senta Berger: Exactly. I made a number of films in a short time. Naturally they weren’t very good but at least I had made a start at being recognized as an actress. From there I went to London to make a film with Richard Widmark (The Secret Ways, 1961) and also that great epic The Victors (1963) which was my first big Anglo-Saxon success and earnt me the Hollywood contract. But I didn’t like California and in 1968 I came back to Europe and decided to stay.

What did you do in Europe?

Senta Berger: I made some films in Italy, Operation San Gennaro and the Casanova film with the long title, Vocation and First Experiences of Casanova in Venice. Then I did a lot of television in Germany when I had my own program, The Senta Berger Show.

Are you pleased with tonight’s film, Lonely Heart?

Senta Berger: I consider it one of my best, second only to The Quiller Memorandum (1966). It’s a film with a twist, beginning as a comedy but leaving its audience examining their conscience. It gives them something to think about. I must say that the rest of the cast made a very pleasant and affable troupe. I had no idea how nice it could be working among friends without all the usual professional difficulties.

How about your co-star Tognazzi?

Senta Berger: He’s marvelous. One of Italy’s greatest actors. So intelligent – so expressive. His every thought can be read in the expression on his face.

What do you think of sexy films?

Senta Berger: There are two kinds of sexy films. Those in which sex is used for expressive reasons, thereby making it sacrosanct. And those which use sex purely to draw an audience. In either case, it’s very simple, if you want to see it you buy a ticket, if not you stay home. The problem isn’t really of sex or morality, but of money. You see, in Germany for example, television is so good that the cinemas are empty, so film producers are forced to offer what television can’t show. The forbidden fruit.

I still wanted to know what the real Setna Berger was like.

Senta Berger: I’m really quite normal. I don’t own a big house with two thousand rooms and I’m not as rich as people think. I would have been rich had I made all the films producers suggested to me but I’ve always preferred to choose for myself. Of course I like money. It gives me the freedom to do what I want – make the films I want to make. My husband and I have already produced a film and we intend to do another.

Your husband is a director?

Senta Berger: Writer and director. He’s Michael Verhoeven, the son of Paul Verhoeven who was a director in the twenties. At one time I could think of nothing more than Michael, all I ever wanted to do was rush home and be by his side. Now, although he is still the most important thing in my life we find we have established a more mature friendship.

Have you made any more films with your husband?

Senta Berger: Up till now I haven’t had the courage, but his next film looks like being a good story, so we’ll see.

(Senta Berger produced but did not star in Verhoeven’s first picture Paarungen, 1967. She was credited as producer on another film and television productions including her husband’s pictures The White Rose, 1982, and the Oscar-nominated The Nasty Girl, 1990).

Do you feel more an actress of the cinema or the theater?

Senta Berger: The cinema, certainly. Even though I am one of the few people who find it harder to act in front of the movie camera than on the stage. But I think the most important medium of the future will be television.

Television?

Senta Berger: Yes, I know that up till now programs haven’t been that good but it’s a lot harder to present art on television than it is for the cinema. Only ten years ago programs were infinitely more rudimental than now so given another ten years or so, you’ll see.

(Senta Berger’s last film, in which she was top-billed, was Weist du Noch in 2023. She’s still alive at the time of writing).

SOURCE: Cinema X, Vol 2 No 6, p23-32.

Kali-Yug Part II: The Mystery of the Indian Temple (1963) ***

Earnest students of the Senta Berger Syllabus may be somewhat disappointed, I’m afraid. This turns out to be an epic movie – in two parts – but even with a three-hour running time there’s hardly any space for the second-billed Ms Berger. Instead it’s the second female lead Claudine Auger who leads the way.

And as if it’s forerunner of the contemporary serial there’s a (longish) recap of part one, though this time recounted as if it’s nightmare into which our hero Englishman Dr Simon Palmer (Paul Guers) has unwittingly tumbled. He’s not, as I had imagined from the end of episode one, free. He’s still imprisoned by the Maharajah (Roldano Lupi) along with servant Gopal (I.S. Johar) although he has begun to deduce that all is not what it seems and that an insurrection may be on the cards under the guise of a revival of the cult devoted to the Goddess Kali.

And when exotic dancer (in the old sense, not the contemporary) Amrita (Claudine Auger) fails to convince the Maharajah of Palmer’s innocence she organizes his escape via the old snake in the basket trick. But this is not altogether from altruism. The good doctor is whisked away to treat three children who have caught diphtheria, unaware one of them is the Maharajah’s grandson, kidnapped (in Part One) by the Kali cult of which she is a key participant. However, she is beginning to thaw in her attitude to the Englishman and wonder why the goddess Kali, to whom she is bound by oath, is so determined to kill such a good man.

They end up in the caravanserai of cult leader Siddhu (Klaus Kinski), but Amrita, who’s undergoing a crisis of faith, organizes their escape, along with the boy. She has betrayed her calling – her father was a priest of Kali – in order to save Palmer. They manage to evade the pursuing pack of thugs. When the road back to Hasnabad is blocked, they decide to make for the enemy lair, an abandoned fort in the desert turned into the rebel stronghold, on the basis of hiding in plain sight, nobody expecting them to head in that direction.

Meanwhile, on his way to the fort, the Prince (Sergio Fantoni), now showing his true colors, has kidnapped Catherine Talbot (Senta Berger), planning to trade her for the Maharajah’s grandson who is “absolutely essential” to his plans. Theoretically, there’s nothing her husband can do to save her. According to the Treaty of Delhi, British forces cannot cross state lines. However, Talbot (Ian Hunter) reckons that, as he’s technically a civilian, that rule doesn’t apply to him and Major Ford (Lex Barker) comes up with a similar ploy, explaining that he’s given his soldiers ten days’ leave leave and to his “great surprise” they all decided to spend it in the fort.

Meanwhile, to complicate matters, Amrita decides Palmer is so far from being a bad guy that he’s worth kissing. But that romance is nipped in the bud when Palmer spots Catherine being dragged along in the Prince’s caravanserai and decides to rescue her. Furious at discovering that Catherine takes precedence in Talbot’s romantic scheme, and correctly assuming she’s going to be dumped, she knocks him out and turns him and the boy over to the Prince. While the child is acclaimed as the “sacred prince” and figurehead of the revolution, Palmer is to be sacrificed to the goddess. While waiting for that, he’s chained up next to Catherine.

So now you know we’re going to be perming two from four. This doesn’t feel like it’s heading in the bold direction of everyone coming out of it bitterly disappointed on the romance front.

And so it transpires. Talbot the Resident, more courageous than you might expect, dies in the attack on the fort while Amrita is killed trying to protect Palmer. Although for a time it’s a close run thing, what with the attackers outnumbered and running out of ammunition, luckily they are saved by the arrival of the Maharajah’s army. And with Amrita and the Resident out of the way, the path is clear for the old flames to renew their romance though that’s implied rather than shown.

No tigers or elephants this time round, wildlife limited to a dancing bear and a performing monkey.

Hardly a story that requires such an epic scale and I’m wondering if it was so long they had to edit it into two parts or whether it was filmed in the fashion of The Three Musketeers (1973)/The Four Musketeers (1974) with both sections shot at the same time. I’m not sure how audiences reacted. From what I can gather moviegoers in some parts of the world only saw part one while others were limited to part two, that recap helping make the narrative comprehensible.

Senta Berger (Cast a Giant Shadow, 1966) completists will come away disappointed given how restricted her role is. But she does bring the necessary emotions of remorse and humiliation to the part. Claudine Auger (Thunderball, 1965) has the better role, femme fatale, conspirator, lovestruck, spurned, and at various points leaping into action. Lex Barker (24 Hours to Kill, 1965) looks as though he’s signed up for a role requiring a hero only to be not called upon to act as one. Fans of Klaus Kinski (Five Golden Dragons, 1967) will be similarly disappointed.

Paul Guers (The Magnificent Cuckold, 1964) looks thoroughly puzzled throughout although he gives plenty lectures on general fairness while Sergio Fantoni (Esther and the King, 1960) concentrates on how unfair the British – considered the exponents of fair play – actually are.

Given it was made outside the British studio system, the producers are free to be quite critical of the British in India and there are pointed remarks about “dirty little Hindus” and about how the British treat even the Indian elite with obvious contempt. In order to retain autonomy, the Maharajah has been forced into becoming a merchant to save his people from starvation thanks to the amount he is taxed. And the story pivots on the lack of medication supplied by the British to natives. The Resident hasn’t even bothered to reply to Palmer’s letters begging for medicine.

The picture is even-handed in its depiction of British rule. Film makers were always in a dichotomy about rebels. Sometimes they were the good guys rising up against despicable authority, sometimes they were the bad guys disrupting a just system. Here, since the rebels belong to a vicious cult that would kill regardless of cause, they come off as the villains of the piece.

Mario Camerini (Ulysses, 1954) directs without the budget to make the most of the story, the battles or the location. Along with writing partners Leonardo Benvenuti and Piero De Bernardi (Marriage Italian Style, 1964) and Guy Elmes (Submarine X-1, 1968), he had a hand in the script adapted from the Robert Westerby novel.

Not complex enough to be an epic, and not enough of Senta Berger to satisfy your reviewer, still interesting enough if you are thinking of seeking it out. Good prints of both parts are on YouTube.

Kali-Yug Goddess of Vengeance (1963) ***

You can’t aspire to being Emeritus Professor of Senta Berger Studies unless you are willing to track down this early effort. Your curiosity can now be sated without much effort since it’s currently playing on YouTube. You’ll notice a preponderance of brownface (Klaus Kinski, Sergio Fantoni, Claudine Auger and eventually, though in legitimate disguise, Paul Guers) among a multicultural cast comprising actors from Germany, Poland, Switzerland, France, Italy, Austria, South Africa, the USA and Britain.

To avoid confusion, the title of this German-made Indian adventure requires some explanation and once again I have undertaken the necessary research. As long as you make the distinction between “Kali-Yug” and “Kali Yuga” you will be on safe ground. The former refers to a cult while the latter refers to Hindu cosmology and the final age of the yuga cycle – the one predominant at the time – defined as an age of darkness, of moral and spiritual decline.

Even with that out of the way it takes quite a while to get your bearings here. This is India in the 1880s, four years after Queen Victoria has been declared Empress of India, at the height of British rule.

We begin in rather traditional style with the kind of tale that would provide an Englishman with good reason to be in an impoverished Indian village. Dr Simon Palmer (Paul Guers) is fighting an epidemic of smallpox. Running out of medicine, he despatches a servant with a small convoy to the capital of Madanpur to secure further supplies to combat the disease. On its return this group is ambushed, so Palmer takes it upon himself to personally plead with local Governor (known here as The Resident) Talbot (Ian Hunter) of Madanpur..

It’s worth pointing out that, as this is relevant to the later narrative, a Resident has been appointed in those states such as Madanpur which the British took by force. Other states, which gave in to the British without a fight, such as the neighboring state of Hasnabad continue to enjoy autonomous rule by a Maharajah or Prince, but only in return for paying massive tributes to their conquerors.

After a satisfactory meeting with the Resident, Palmer encounters drunken British officer Capt Walsh (Michael Medwin) and retaliates when insulted. He also meets old flame Catherine Talbot (Senta Berger) who married the Resident. She’s not a gold-digger in the standard sense. Palmer had met her in Calcutta but when he went off to London to complete his medical studies her father died, leaving her impoverished, so in his continued absence she married the older man for security.

Capt Walsh is murdered and after their previous altercation blame falls on Palmer. He should get off scot-free. He has an alibi. At the time of the murder he was dallying with Mrs Talbot. But that wouldn’t go down well in British society. There would be a scandal. A good deal would be read into a moonlit assignation with a man other than her husband. And Palmer, in traditional stiff upper lip fashion, wouldn’t like to get her into trouble.

So Palmer contacts elite dancer Amrita (Claudine Auger) because he thinks she knows who killed Walsh. Although promising to help, Amrita, it turns out, apart from charming the pants off (possibly quite literally) everyone in sight, is secretly in league with the characters, led by Siddhu (Klaus Kinski), responsible for the robbery and murder. So while Palmer is ambushed yet again, she is sent to Hasnabad where she will undertake her “next mission.”

Which appears to be to dance for the Maharajah (Roldano Lupi) as entertainment for visiting merchants. Helped by servant Gopal (I.S. Johar), Palmer goes on the run and manages to fake his own death. In this regard, an entire corpse is not required as proof, just a torn limb, stolen from the local vultures, and a torn jacket. (Thus far the highlight of the show with white hunters and Mrs Talbot swaying in baskets atop elephants). To keep him safe, Gopal provides Palmer with brownface disguise. They witness a Kali ritual and follow Siddhu’s gang as they break into the palace to prevent the kidnap of his Maharajah’s grandson.

But Palmer is blamed for that too and condemned to death. That involves being buried up to your neck in the sand while an elephant stomps on your head. But he is released because the Maharajah doesn’t want trouble with the English. Meanwhile Catherine has fessed up to her husband which, as expected, does not go down at all well.

The End.

So you can imagine my puzzlement. YouTube promotes Klaus Kinski (Grand Slam, 1967) as the reason to watch this, but so far, he’s only appeared briefly, though clearly wielding significant power as chief thug. But we’ve seen as little of third-billed Lex Barker (Old Shatterhand, 1964) as Major Ford. His contribution is to prevent Capt Walsh get even drunker and, as a member of the shooting party, pick up Mrs Talbot when she faints at the thought of Palmer being dead. Sightings of fourth-billed Sergio Fantoni (Hornets’ Nest, 1970) have been as fleeting, his main role as Prince Ram Chand to try and score points off The Resident by arguing about the unfairness of British rule and to partner Catherine briefly on the dance floor.

So this is beginning to look as though it’s a small-scale version of those big-budget pictures featuring an “all-star cast” which consists either of marquee names long past their best or various foreign stars recruited to cover all the bases for the international release rollout.

The ending is so sudden and with so much unresolved, I also began to think it was one of those elaborate foreign jobs with stars who meant so little to British and American moviegoers that it was drastically edited to fit domestic distribution patterns.

On further research (the bane of any Emeritus Professor’s life) I got to the bottom of the problem.

This was only Part One. It wasn’t the end after all.

Luckily, I’ve found Part Two and will review that (as no doubt you’re delighted to hear) tomorrow.

28 Years Later (2025) ** – Seen at the Cinema

The most expensive trailer ever made. Setting up in the very last scene the character of Jimmy (Jack O’Connell), straight out of Peaky Blinders, and his gang, who, presumably, are the main characters of the sequel. And, for sure, they are a big improvement on the iodine-doused philosophy-spouting Dr Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) who has built the skull pillar used in all the advertising.

This is the kind of horror film that doesn’t just want to be another zombie picture. You can argue that the “infected” once killed do stay dead but they don’t appear to be aware that most of the time they rampage around just like zombies, so it’s a fairly moot point. Meanwhile, the director makes umpteen points about conservation in a Fisherman’s Friend type of village where the one thing, judging from the party scene, they are never going to run out of is home-made booze. Despite the conservation message, the survivors are happy to desecrate the forests for fuel.

You could have the written the plot on a pinhead. Young lad Spike (Alfie Williams) makes his bones killing an infected. Not that hard since it’s the size of a giant slug and can hardly move. The conservation message seems lost on young Spike since he burns some essential house to the ground to create a diversion, something so essential it’s going to make the guards guarding the causeway abandon their posts while he escapes the village.

And although, nearly three decades on from the original adventures in this saga, the world has changed – would you believe it, there’s such a thing as mobile phones and cosmetic surgery (information drop courtesy of a wandering shipwrecked Swedish sailor) – it seems that breast cancer was also unknown back in the day and Jamie’s addled mother Isla (Jodie Comer) is so addled that even in her moments of clarity hasn’t realized that those strange lumps all over her body are cancer.

Anyways, luckily, she’s an obliging soul and rather than put her son through the agony of watching her dying, she elects for assisted dying, courtesy of the good doctor. And boy that kid is some kid, and in the barmiest scene in the whole movie, goes along with the barmy notion that he let the doc chop off his mum’s head and boil up her skull so he (Spike, that is) can stick it atop the skull pyramid.

Did I mention there was a baby? My guess is Jodie Comer took the part on the basis of the scene where she bonds with the pregnant infected woman, helping her through her incredibly speedy labor, presumably speedy birth being an unknown side effect of infection.

Another side effect is that infected babies don’t cry, which is heck of a useful when you are trying to hide in the woods or the wilderness from the scavenging monsters, including the aptly-named Samson, who can tear heads (and attached spinal column) off with his bare hands and since he is permitted to survive my guess is he’s turn up again in the sequel.

The baby might even be some nod to virgin birth for all I know, the only child born uninfected. I only mention that because as well as the cod philosophy there’s a dose of cod spirituality, the Angel of the North statue brought into the equation for no apparent reason.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson, at one point a contender for the vacant James Bond slot, does very little except roister and upset his son by indulging in a bit of adultery. It’s all very Robin Hood what with the emphasis on bow-and-arrow as the weapon of choice, and just to show how effective they are in case we’re not paying attention and seeing how easily they kill off the infected punters, every now and then director Danny Boyle chucks in a clip from I guess Henry V which shows how effective a hail of arrows can be, though anyone paying attention to any Ridley Scott historical picture would be aware of this.

There’s a note on immigration as well. Britain is quarantined, so no Brits can emigrate abroad, European patrol boats operating in the North Sea and presumably the English Channel to deter anyone setting off in a dinghy, the opposite of the current situation.

Waste of an otherwise talented cast – Jodie Comer (The Last Duel, 2021), Aaron Taylor- Johnson (Kraven the Hunter, 2024) and Alfie Williams in his big role debut.

Directed by Danny Boyle (Yesterday, 2019) and written by Alex Garland (Civil War, 2024) too determined to make points at the expense of going to the trouble of creating an involving story.

Complete absence of thrills, I’m afraid, and too much preaching.