September 2025 – Page 2 – The Magnificent 60s

Duet for Cannibals (1969) ****

Terrific twist-a-minute thriller. Forget its arthouse origins. The gap of half a century since its initial appearance has worked in its favor and you can now view it as exceptionally gripping entertainment. The Swedish setting doesn’t mean it’s drenched in angst and repression, and instead pivots on that other Swedish contribution to cinema of that decade of sex and nudity. Though power games these days tend to belong to the horror vernacular where innocents stray into the wrong location – Barbarian (2022), Heretic (2024) – outwith such business-set items as Working Girl (1988) and The Devil Wears Prada (2006), this belongs to an earlier version of the cycle which relies on sexual undertones.

This will most likely be touted as worth a look because it was one of the very few – less than a dozen – movies directed by women in the 1960s. While Swedish actress Mai Zetterling was the jointly the most prolific with four films beginning with Loving Couples (1964) and Frenchwoman Agnes Varda, also with four, the most acclaimed following Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962), American Susan Sontag’s debut – she also wrote the piece – was the most highly awaited. Through her writings she was something of an outspoken icon and an intellectual powerhouse.

*You can tell it’s arthouse because the poster is only altered minimally.*
*Instead of holding four figures in her hand the woman now holds on.*

Made in Sweden with a Swedish cast and while originally seen as Bergmanesque or perhaps Pinteresque, a contemporary audience is more likely to ignore the other influences and settle for the innocents walking willingly into a trap. Tomas (Gosta Ekman) goes to work for enigmatic political exile Dr Bauer (Lars Ekborg). His duties mostly involve curating the revolutionary’s life’s work, transcribing diaries and such, but occasionally he is called upon to do what appear to be simple acts of espionage, nothing dangerous just delivering a mysterious parcel.

Dr Bauer is pumped up with his own importance and expects employees at his beck and call – Tomas has to sleep there, in a made-up bed in the library – and enjoys the power surge of bawling people out when minor mishaps occur. But he also enjoys – if that’s the word – a peculiar marriage to younger Italian wife Francesca (Adrianna Asti) who while doe-eyed is far from docile. On her first encounter with Tomas, Francesca breaks a window and it’s not long until she exerts a sexual lure.

Tomas dreams of making love to her and would watch her making love to her husband in a car in the garage except Francesca obscures the windscreen with shaving foam. That scene in itself is one of the most intriguing. She has thrown an almighty sulk, locked herself in the car, ignoring her husband until she starts the engine and nearly mows him down at which point the tempo dramatically changes triggering for a bout of heavy sex.

*Nothing so common as a noveliization for Sontag. She gets the full screenplay treatment.*
*This appeared in 1970.*

Theoretically, Dr Bauer is dying from a mysterious illness. You get the sense he’s auditioning Tomas as someone to look after his wife when he’s gone, but all of that could just be part of the game.

There’s a marvelous scene where Tomas is encouraged to continue eating at the dinner table to the soundtrack of Dr Bauer throwing up in the toilet. When the doctor returns, he heaps food on his plate and continues eating.

Dr Bauer isn’t just paranoid – the cook’s poisoning him, his phone’s tapped, Tomas is a spy, his wife’s planning to kill him – but he’s also a narcissist, studying his face in the mirror, improving his appearance with wigs and a painted-on aesthetic beard. He encourages potential intimacy by having Tomas read poetry to his wife.

She’s the dominant one in her fantasy, rescuing Tomas from an enchanted castle, standing above him on a stool, bandaging his face so that as a mummy he can terrorize her in sexual fashion. She puts her husband’s perennial sunglasses on his eyes. Sometimes her husband’s head is bandaged.

Braun plans to kill his wife because “there’s no point keeping her alive.” Equally, she, apparently is intent on returning the compliment though she wants Tomas to do the dirty deed. Or it could be a murder-suicide pact.

She locks her husband in her bedroom closet so she can make love to Tomas while he listens but he also has key to the door and could let himself out at any time. When Tomas’s girlfriend Ingrid (Agneta Ekmanner) enters the equation Tomas is forced to watch her making love to Dr Bauer. And it’s not long before Tomas is chucked out and Ingrid sucked in. In one of the most erotic scenes you’ll ever witness husband and wife feverishly feed Ingrid with their hands and before you know it she’s sharing their bed.

Even within the confines and the mathematical possibilities of the power play, you still never know which way this is going to turn. You might quibble at the voice-over which attempts to play much of the goings-on through Tomas’s POV and the flirtations with left wing politics, but those are easy to ignore as you are carried along on the twists and turns. It keeps twisting till the very end when the stings in the tail come fast.

These days it would be played at a higher tempo, the melodramatic elements ramped up, but actually the lack of emotional heft works to its advantage. Terrific debut from Susan Sontag. The slinky Adriana Asti (Love Circle, 1969) steals the show.

Rare find.

Catch it on Netflix (great print) or YouTube.

Should you be interested YouTube has an interview with both Sontag and Varda.

Hot Enough for June / Agent 8 3/4 (1964) ***

Thanks to his language skills unemployed wannabe writer Nicholas (Dirk Bogarde) is recruited as a trainee executive on a too-good-to-be-true job visiting a Czech glass factory only to discover that while engaged on what appears a harmless piece of industrial espionage is in fact considerably more serious. Complications arise when he falls in love with his chauffeur Vlasta (Sylva Koscina) whose father, Simenova (Leo McKern), is head of the Czech secret police.

Eventually, it dawns on Nicholas that he is in the employ of the British secret service headed by Colonel Cunliffe (Robert Morley). Soon he is on the run. Adopting a variety of disguises including waiter, Bavarian villager and milkman, he evades capture and makes a pact with Vlasta that neither of them will participate in espionage activities.

A chunk of the comedy arises from misunderstandings, Iron Curtain paranoia, the destruction of indestructible glass, password complications, Nicholas’s contact turning out to be a washroom attendant, and from the essentially indolent Nicholas being forced into uncharacteristic action. Soon he is adopting the kind of ruses a secret agent would invent to outwit the opposition, including burning the hand of a man with his cigarette and stealing a milk cart.

The romance is believable enough and Vlasta has the cunning to shake off the secret agent shadowing her, although the ending is unbelievable and might have been stolen from a completely different soppy picture. Although Nicholas is clearly in harm’s way several times that is somewhat undercut by the espionage at a higher level being presented as a gentleman’s game.

There are unnecessary nods to 007 and the kind of gadgets essential to Bond films, although none come Nicholas’s way. But these attempts to modernise what is otherwise an old-fashioned comedy largely fail. Taking a middle ground in comedy rarely works. You have to go for laughs rather than plod around hoping they will miraculously appear. And in fact the comedy is redundant in a plot – innocent caught up in nefarious world – that has sufficient story and interesting enough characters to work.

That the movie is in any way a success owes everything to the casting. Dirk Bogarde, though well into his 40s, still can carry off a character more than a decade younger. He can turn on the diffidence with the flicker of an eyelash. And yet can call on inner strength if required. He is the ideal foil for light comedy, having made his bones in Doctor in the House (1954), reprising the character for Doctor in Distress (1963) and dipped in and out of serious drama such as Victim (1961) and the acclaimed The Servant (1964), released just before this.

In some respects it seems as if two different pictures are passing each other in the night. The Bogarde section, excepting some comedy of misfortune, is played for real while in the background is a bit of a spoof on the espionage drama.

Sylva Koscina (The Secret War of Harry Frigg, 1968) is excellent as the beauty who betrays her country for love. Robert Morley (Topkapi, 1964) and Leo McKern (Assignment K, 1968), although in on the joke, are nonetheless convincing as the secret service bosses. Look out for a host of lesser names in bit parts including Roger Delgado (The Running Man, 1963), Noel Harrison (The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. 1966-1967), Richard Pasco (The Gorgon, 1964) and stars of long-running British television comedies John Le Mesurier, Derek Fowlds and Derek Nimmo.

This was the eighth partnership between director Ralph Thomas and Dirk Bogarde, four in the Doctor series but also three serious dramas in Campbell’s Kingdom (1957), A Tale of Two Cities (1958) and The Wind Cannot Read (1958). In themselves the comedies and the dramas were successful, but mixing the two, as here, less so. Written by Lukas Heller (Flight of the Phoenix, 1965) from the bestseller by Lionel Davidson.

American distributors were less keen on this picture and it was heavily cut for U.S. release and retitled Agent 8¾ presumably in an effort to cash in on the James Bond phenomenon. I’ve no idea what was lost – or perhaps what was gained – by the editing.

The end result of the original version is a pleasant enough diversion but not enough of the one and not enough of the other to really stick in the mind.

Should you be interested in how the book was translated into the film, there’s another article here covering that. Link below.

https://themagnificent60s.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=6300&action=edit

It Takes a Thief / The Challenge (1960) ****

Extremely dark-edged thriller at least a decade ahead of its time. Absolute corker of a sting in the tail. Instead of being the gangster’s moll, Jayne Mansfield – following on from another British-made thriller Playgirl After Dark / Too Hot to Handle (1960) – turns the genre on its head by playing the smart leader of a gang of bank robbers constantly evading detection by the police. Anthony Quayle (East of Sudan, 1964) drops his good guy stiff upper lip screen persona in favor of a villain.

Most heist movies either fall into the category of mostly heist (Topkapi, 1964) and half-heist and half-aftermath. Here the heist is dealt with pretty quickly and then we’re into a complicated aftermath with double cross the order of the day. Even the supposed good guys – a cop and a union leader – have a distinctly mean streak. And on top of that we have a whole load of car chases. Just one would be unusual at the time for this budget category, but here we have three, complete with crashes and cars totaled off the road. And on top of that there’s an exceptionally creepy attempt at getting an inconvenient young child to commit suicide by playing chicken on a railway line.

Widowed lorry driver Jim (Anthony Quayle), who has dreams of owning a farm, is seduced into acting as the driver for the latest bank heist organized by Billy (Jayne Mansfield). While his van loaded with the loot tootles off unimpeded, she acts as bait in another car to snooker the cops into pursuing the rest of the gang. As proof of her love for him, she entrusts him with burying the loot in a place of his choosing.

He doesn’t get the chance to dig it up again because someone’s snitched on him, most likely Billy’s ex Kristy (Carl Mohner). And since he can’t snitch on the gang to save his own skin he ends up doing a five-year stretch. When he comes out, he finds the cops shadowing his every move, and Kristy taking his place in Billy’s bed. Det Sgt Gittens (Edward Judd) decides to play dirty by suggesting that Jim is intent on double-crossing her.

The gang, determined on recovering the loot as soon as possible, have their own arsenal of dirty tricks, beating up Jim’s mother and kidnapping his son. You’d think that with his mum black and blue and his son in the hands of the crooks that Jim would give up the loot. But, as I said, he’s not a good guy and is willing to risk all he supposedly holds dearly to get his hands on the dosh.

There’s a twist that Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) later down the line exploit. Instead of someone building a school over the hiding place as with the Clint Eastwood picture, here it is hidden under dozens of barrels of high explosive encased in barbed wire. With the deadline approaching for killing his son, Jim attempts to enlist a bunch of local laborers only to be stopped in his tracks by the bureaucracy of a union shop steward.

Meanwhile, the couple, and despite all the motherliness of the childless wife (Barbara Mullen), forced to hide the child aren’t making the slightest attempt to help him escape. Instead, we watch with incredulity as one of the hoods, stumbling upon an easy way to get rid of a body, tempts the child into playing the aforementioned game of chicken.

Tension remains at a peak all the way through, in part because audiences are expecting Anthony Quayle to rouse himself from the depths of criminality and do the right thing, but mostly, in the template that Christopher Nolan would follow, three sets of narrative constantly come together.

There are two stings in the tail. Firstly, the burial site is obliterated when the barrels of high explosive shoot sky high. Secondly, with decided relish, Sgt Gittens informs Billy that the cops recovered the loot years before, so he’d risked mother and son for nothing. You can’t get blacker irony than that.

Jayne Mansfield was a much bigger attraction than Anthony Quayle and she puts in a superb performance as the mastermind and the practical woman, not willing to put career or love life on hold while Jim does his time. And while she’s slinky enough and occasionally brazen, she’s also decidedly human, but no more inclined than Jim to allow anybody to get in the way of the rewards of crime.

Like the crime pictures Britain showed a distinct aptitude for in the 1970s – Get Carter (1971), Villain (1971) and Sitting Target (1972) – this stays resolutely on the wrong side of the fence with not a single redeemable character.

Written and directed by John Gilling before he shifted into horror (The Reptile, 1966), this is a more than able piece, pulling no punches and resisting the temptation to sneak in any sentimentality.

Minor gem.

Catch it on Talking Pictures TV.

The Long Good Friday (1980) *****

Got two predictions correct – that the conversion of London Docklands into upmarket housing was a potential goldmine and that London would become the beating financial heart of Europe. Though I would have thought everyone, even as arrogant a character as gangster Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins), would have known not to tangle with the IRA. Of course, he hasn’t done this deliberately, that’s just the sting in the tail, unravelling the complex mystery of who’s got it in for him.

This would be a fitting addition to the 1970s trilogy of British gangster pictures par excellence – Get Carter (1971), Villain (1971) and Sitting Target (1972) – except you could argue it’s better than the lot. Here we’re on The Godfather Part II territory, the big-time hood who’s gone legit. Harold already owns a casino, upmarket restaurant and pubs, and swans around in a luxury yacht but he’s got his eye on bigger game, investment in the Docklands, an ideal money-laundering concept, and he’s hooked a potential partner in American Mafia chief Charlie (Eddie Constantine).

Much as Harold would like to show off his svelte businessman side, his attempts to ooze class disappear at the first sign of trouble and soon he is working those teeth so hard he could be auditioning for Jaws. We’ve got an inkling of what’s going on but it takes a good while for everything to add up and even then Harold is convinced someone’s got their sums wrong since he’s ruled the London underworld for a decade and nobody with any sense would take him on.

The businessman façade falls away when his close aide and longtime buddy Colin (Paul Freeman) is murdered and his Rolls Royce and a pub are blown up. And it takes virtually the whole picture for Harold to discover just why a woman on her way to a funeral stopped the car long enough to spit in the face of one of Harold’s top henchmen, Jeff (Derek Thompson).

So mostly what we’ve got is Harold reverting to old-style violence, presumably using the methods that got him to the top in the first place, as he tortures and terrifies everyone in sight. Some of the brutality is inventive stuff as movie torture goes, one fellow having his naked backside sliced open by a machete, the rest of the top gang leaders rounded up in an abattoir as if they were sides of beef awaiting slaughter.

Meanwhile, wife Victoria (Helen Mirren), a version of what used to be known as “posh totty”, tries to keep the deal active by charming the pants off every male who comes within a sniff of her, some so driven by temptation they declare they “want to lick every inch of her.”

So, on the one hand, it’s big business and all the jiggery-pokery that goes in the legitimate world even among illegal contenders, and on the other hand it’s all the jiggery-pokery that goes on in the illegal world among all the illegal contenders.

*Incredible score by Francis Monkman. Why he wrote so few is a mystery.*

While there are many standout moments – and you’d be hard put to beat the climactic scene of Harold in the back of a taxi facing his demise – and director John MacKenzie wields his camera with considerable verve, his ace in the hole is always the expressive face of Harold. Whether he’s practising his bonhomie, or stiffening at the latest outrage, or letting loose physically and verbally it’s a fabulous acting tour de force as if James Cagney had met Al Pacino. And like Oliver Reed in Sitting Target, simmering rage is smoothed over by feminine companionship, the close bond between Harold and Victoria one of the key ingredients.

Turned Bob Hoskins (Zulu Dawn, 1979) into a star and had the British end of the industry been in better shape he had might made a smoother transition to the top echelons instead of waiting for Mona Lisa (1986) to polish his credentials.

Although we Brits like to think the acting of “national treasure” Helen Mirren was always being recognized on the domestic front, long before she achieved unquestionable credibility from pocketing an Oscar for The Queen (2006), in truth by this point her movie career was in limbo. Hardly any screen work since her breakthrough in Age of Consent (1969) and three of her last four pictures – Caligula (1979), S.O.S. Titanic (1979) and The Fiendish Plot of Fu Manchu (1980) – counting as calamities. This was a fresh take on an actress who, too often for her own good, had been seen as better naked than clothed.

It was almost a homage to cult to employ Eddie Constantine (S.O.S. Pacific, 1960) but it was surprising how many of the supporting cast came good including future James Bond Pierce Brosnan as a gay killer, Paul Freeman (Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981), Derek Thompson (nearly 40 years on BBC series Casualty), and future director Dexter Fletcher (Rocketman, 2019).

Original screenplay by Barrie Keefe on his debut.

Still stands up as a gangster great.

Sitting Target (1972) ****

Forms a neat trilogy with British Noir New Wave gangster pictures Get Carter (1971) and Villain (1971) both with topline stars attached in the form of Michael Caine and Richard Burton. Laden with atmosphere and intrigue, this carries hefty emotional power as a very tough guy struggles to show his gentler side. The moral of the story is that brains always trump brawn. And it’s one of these movies where the truth only unravels when you hit the twist at the end and every character is shown in quite a different light.

Like Get Carter, this is a revenge picture. Discovering girlfriend Pat (Jill St John) is pregnant by another guy, imprisoned bankrobber Harry (Oliver Reed), serving a 15-year stretch for murder, is turned into a “lethal weapon” by the very thought and determines to break out and kill her. And at the same time collect the loot from his last bank robbery.

His escape, masterminded by the gentlemanly MacNeil (Freddie Jones) and accompanied by long-time buddy Birdy (Ian MacShane), is a tense, exciting sequence. First stop outside is to strongarm another gangster into supplying a Mauser that can be turned, a la Day of the Jackal, into a long-range rifle.

And while the movie brings into play the standard trope of villains seeking their share of the loot, it also hangs on another standard wheeze of the 1960s B-picture of the woman as bait. Anticipating that Harry will make a beeline for his loved one, but unaware of his nefarious intent, Inspector Milton (Edward Woodward) has her under police guard. But the likes of Harry always finds a way to sneak in, which triggers police pursuit, in the course of which Harry commits the unpardonable crime of shooting a cop – the villain world only too aware of the severe repercussions.

There’s a stop-off at the apartment of the moll (Jill Townsend) of Mr Big, Marty (Frank Finlay). That doesn’t go as planned, but still they manage to uncover a hidden sack of cash leaving Harry to knock off, sharpshooter style, the unfaithful girlfriend.

And then the pair make a getaway….Not quite. Birdy turns out to be greedy and wants all the robbery cash for himself and attempts to shoot Harry. That would be enough of a twist to be getting on with but there are a few stingers to come. Pat’s not dead – Harry (too far away to identify her face) just shot a policewoman on protection duty standing in her window. Pat’s not pregnant either, just stuffed a cushion down her jumper to complete the pretense. And she and Birdy are an item. And it’s clear that Birdy simply purloined Harry’s rage to get him to do the dirty work involved in the escape and dealing with the other gangsters.

Except in the case of being willing to knock off his longtime business partner, Birdy, you see has always been averse to violence, cowardly not to put too fine a point on it, though quite capable of pouring a bowl of urine down a captured guard’s throat, or rape.

Villains are as conflicted as anyone else, otherwise how to explain that Harry climbs into the burning car containing his dead girlfriend, gives Pat a gentle kiss and waits for the car to explode and take him to a fiery grave. We’ve seen the softer side of Harry in flashes. He turns down the chance to bed a sex worker in the getaway lorry, doesn’t take advantage of the moll, and buries his face in the moll’s fur coat. The furthest he gets to expressing his feelings is to explain to Birdy that he was very happy with Pat. He’s almost – perish the thought – got a feminist side. And presumably it takes a lot for a tough gangster like him to open up to a woman, which explains why he takes her betrayal so badly.

The fact that he still kills her is somehow beside the point. As I said, gangsters are complex, witness the gay Richard Burton in Villain.

This is Ian MacShane (The Wild and the Willing, 1962) still in matinee idol mode, minus the gravitas and husky tones of John Wick (2014). Once the twists kick in, you look back and realize he’s stolen the film, a weaselly charmer, able to bend Harry (not that hard, mind you) to his will, which was to help him escape, lead him to the money and send him off to live happily ever after with Pat. Where Harry clearly believes in true love, Birdy has no moral scruples. Even with a beauty like Pat waiting for him, he’s happy to indulge in sex with the sex worker and help himself to the helpless moll. (MacShane was equally dubious in Villain).

Oliver Reed’s Thug we’ve seen countless times before, Oliver Reed’s Softie less so. Jill St John (Tony Rome, 1967) manages a British accent and proves herself capable of a better role than usual. Actors often say they build up a character from their walk. Watch Edward Woodward (The Wicker Man, 1973) for a classic example of it.

Douglas Hickox had essayed delicate romance via his debut Les Bicyclettes des Belsize (1968) and it’s to his credit that he touches on Harry’s sensitivity in such subtle fashion. Otherwise, some terrific standout sequences – Harry’s fist battering through the glass into the prisoner’s visiting room, the escape, the duel with motorcycle cops through a fog of washing strung out on lines, the final car chase.

Written by Alexander Jacobs (Point Blank, 1967) from the bestseller by Lawrence Henderson. Superb score by Stanley Myers.

Not quite in the league of Get Carter or Villain but not far short.

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) ****

The one with the wife-swapping. Like Easy Rider released earlier the same year, a hymn to freedom, only this time of the sexual kind. Responsible thirtysomethings, well-to-do, married with children, jealous of the younger generation’s counter culture, seek guilt-free irresponsibility. They feel they’ve missed out, despite knocking back cocktails in their heyday, probably remained virgins until marriage. Like the recently-reviewed The Battle of the Villa Fiorita (1965), the problems incurred in marriage appear eternal, and decades later this holds up superbly, not just for taking a measure of its times, but for a screenplay setting up a bold series of reversals, character reaction you would never expect, that will have you in stitches even as it dissects universal truths.

Documentary film-maker Bob (Robert Culp) and housewife Carol (Natalie Wood) “find” themselves at a weekend retreat espousing naked yoga, primal screams, group therapy and emotional intimacy. Carol admits she finds her husband controlling. They return in evangelistic mode, desperate to pass on their new-found knowledge to their stuffier friends, Ted (Elliott Gould) and Alice (Dyan Cannon).

*The advertising campaign focused on the tease of wife-swapping.*

The film unfolds in a series of long sequences, each sparked by external incident. Bob confesses to his wife that while away on business he had an affair. To his astonishment she forgives him. Expecting this to be a prelude to some new way of tormenting an unfaithful husband, Bob remains skeptical until Carol convinces him that her world-view has changed following the retreat.

But Ted and Alice find it harder to accept. In a brilliant scene that exposes basic gender differences, he sees the problem as his revelation, she as the act of infidelity itself. High after meeting the other couple, Ted wants sex, but Alice, shocked by what she has heard, cannot contemplate it. He exerts so much pressure that she, deeply insecure, is almost on the verge of giving in. The dialogue not just marvelously encapsulates their marriage but sets out opposing views that, I am sorry to say, would probably be as prevalent today.

But the best scene, a superb reversal, occurs when Bob, spurning another night of illicit passion, returns home from a trip early to find his wife in bed with the tennis coach. Gender equality et al. The sequence turns completely on its head when, according to the couple’s new philosophy, Bob should not only accept and forgive, but help the tennis coach out of his predicament, calming his fears of facing an angry husband, in effect consoling his bedroom rival.

What appears to have been just a Ted fantasy, hooking up with a woman he met on an airplane, turns out to be true, creating a crisis in that marriage and when Alice is pacified, acknowledging a new truth, it is she who calls for an orgy. Now this is a revolution for Alice is by far the most repressed, although attractive almost matronly, and still using a childish word to describe her private parts. Her confessions to a psychiatrist reveal a tormented individual.

It’s a stunning debut from Paul Mazursky (An Unmarried Woman, 1978) who also had a hand in the screenplay with Larry Tucker (I Love You, Alice B. Toklas, 1968). He takes a story of endorsed immorality and stamps it as a morality tale. A movie that depended so much on dialogue concludes with a fabulous series of shots where the look on the faces of the characters tells you all you need to know.

Elliott Gould (The Night They Raided Minsky’s, 1968) and Dyan Cannon (The Murder Game, 1965) are the pick of the actors, both stepping up to the plate after less than stand-out performances previously. Both were Oscar-nominated but more importantly here created screen personas that would define their futures. Natalie Wood (This Property Is Condemned, 1966), in her first picture in three years, revitalized her career after a string of flops. Robert Culp, in a step-up from the I Spy television series (1965-1968), initially takes center stage but cedes ground to the superior acting of the others.

Where a whole bundle of films by new directors flopped that year and the next by targeting the younger generation, this was a success by painting a wry picture of a slightly older generation, not yet tipping into middle age, but terrified they might be missing out on something.

Return of a Stranger (1961) ***

Is going to ring a huge bell with contemporary audiences for its depiction of grooming. Rather a bold approach given those censorious times. But the experience of orphan Pam (Susan Stephen) in welcoming the attentions of the older Homer Trent (Cyril Shaps) – he drives her around, buys her gifts, treats her as someone special – would chime with the vulnerable young women these days so desperate for attention that they overlook male intent.

Homer has been imprisoned for raping her. Now, several years later, he’s free, and still besotted by her. She’s a middle class mother with a young son. Homer’s reign of terror is of the usual clever kind. There’s a distinct lack of evidence to blame him for calls in the middle of the night and there was no restraining orders in those days so he’s free to bump into her in a supermarket and has legitimate reason for passing her house. The police are apt to dismiss her as a hysterical woman.

*A different stranger without question but I’ve run out of other images.*

The tension racks up not just through her, but her American husband John (John Ireland) whose chance of a big promotion at work is jeopardized by the ongoing action. Turns out Homer is planning to not just put the screws on John to wind up his wife, but he’s intending to get rid of him altogether to make the coast clear.

And when Homer kills the wrong person, suspicion falls on John because the victim is the one who beat him to the promotion. Luckily, John, being a Yank, has a gun in his possession, which comes into its own at the climax, though not quite how you’d expect.

For the most part we are restricted to the back of Homer’s balding head and although he’s far from a hulking brute he’s still capable of generating fear, especially when Pam has to come to terms with her earlier experiences where, though in innocent fashion, she encouraged his attention, while John is exposed to the tough world of business where employees have none of the rights they enjoy today and employers are not required to treat their staff with any sympathy.

Not all Renown productions are as tight as this one, which primarily concentrates on threat, and the underlying fear that having raped her once Homer intends to do it again. The bigger-budgeted Cape Fear the following year would take the similar route of revenge via sexual threat. While there’s some of the usual stuff such as phone lines being disconnected, the sabotage of a lift falls into the unusual category while the boardroom contretemps add another element.

Hard to say whether American John Ireland was slumming it or whether he hoped a transAtlantic crossing and the hook of top-billing would boost his career back in Hollywood. In some respects this was a considerable step up for a supporting actor and a big jump from third billing in a previous British thriller Faces in the Dark (1960).

Susan Stephen (The Court Martial of Major Keller, 1961) is the pick of the actors, treading carefully between the guilt of her past (naturally she blames herself), her present position as a middle-class housewife, and replaying her fears. “You belong to me,” grunts Homer, and although Cyril Shaps (The Kremlin Letter, 1970) in person isn’t so threatening, he’s still more than enough for his victims.

Ably directed by Frenchman Max Varnel (Enter Inspector Duval, 1961) from a script by Brian Clemens (The Corrupt Ones / The Peking Medallion, 1967).

Catch it on Talking Pictures TV.

Warning Shot (1967) ****

So underrated it doesn’t even feature on Wikipedia’s chart of 1960s crime pictures, this tight little gem, with an early reflection on police brutality, dream cast, violence in slow motion (prior to The Wild Bunch, 1969, mind you) and stunning score from Jerry Goldsmith is definitely in need of resurrection. Astonishing to realize that cop pictures had fallen so out of fashion, that this was the first Hollywood cop film of the decade – outside of a drama like The Chase (1966) – the entire previous output focusing on gangsters with a rare private eye (Harper, 1966) thrown in. With none of the vicious snarl of Madigan (1968) or the brutality of Coogan’s Bluff (1968), this was more in keeping with the later In the Heat of the Night (1967) in terms of the mental and physical barrage endured by the cop.

In thick fog on a stakeout for a serial killer at an apartment block Sgt Tom Valens (David Janssen) kills a potential suspect, wealthy Dr Ruston. Valens claims the suspect was reaching for his gun. Only problem – nobody can find the gun. Up on a potential manslaughter charge, Valens is pressured by boss (Ed Begley), lawyer (Walter Pidgeon) and wife (Joan Collins) to take the rap and plead guilty. The public and media rage about police brutality. Putting Valens’ testimony in doubt is a recent shooting incident, which left Valens with a stomach wound, and which may have clouded his judgement.

Although suspended, Valens has no alternative but to investigate, interviewing elderly patient Alice (Lillian Gish) whom the doctor was visiting, patient’s neighbour playboy pilot Walt (George Grizzard), doctor’s assistant Liz (Stefanie Powers), doctor’s wife Doris (Eleanor Parker), doctor’s stockbroker (George Sanders) with nothing to show for his efforts but a savage beating, filmed in slow motion, inflicted by the doctor’s son and pals, and an attempt on his life. He gets into further trouble for attempting to smear the doctor as an abortionist (a crime at the time).

The missing gun remains elusive though the direction at times suggests its existence is fiction. The detection is superb, red herrings aplenty, as Valens, the odds against him cheating conviction lengthening by the day, a trial deadline to beat, everyone turning against him, openly castigated as the killer cop, struggles to uncover the truth. And it’s clear he questions reality himself. He has none of the brittle snap of the standard cop and it’s almost as if he expects to be found guilty, that he has stepped over the line.

Along the way is some brilliant dialogue – the seductive drunk wife, “mourning with martinis” suggesting they “rub two losers together” and complaining she has to “lead him by the hand like every other man.” Cinematography and music combine for a brilliant mournful scene of worn-down cop struggling home with a couple of pints of milk. The after-effects of the stomach injury present him as physically wounded, neither the tough physical specimen of later cop pictures nor the grizzled veteran of previous ones.

David Janssen (King of the Roaring 20s, 1960) had not made a picture in four years, his time consumed by the ultra-successful television show The Fugitive, but his quiet, brooding, internalized style and soft spoken manner is ideal for the tormented cop. This is also Joan Collins (Esther and the King, 1960) first Hollywood outing in half a decade.

Pick of the supporting cast is former Hollywood top star Eleanor Parker (Detective Story, 1951) more recently exposed to the wider public as the Baroness in The Sound of Music (1965) whose slinky demeanor almost turns the cop’s head. The cast is loaded with simialr sterling actors.

In the veteran department are aforementioned famed silent star Lillian Gish (The Birth of a Nation, 1915), veteran Brit George Sanders (The Falcon series in the 1940s), Walter Pidgeon (Mrs Miniver, 1942) also in his first film in four years, Ed Begley in only his second picture since Sweet Bird of Youth (1962) and Keenan Wynn (Stagecoach, 1966). Noted up-and-coming players include Stefanie Powers (also Stagecoach), Sam Wanamaker (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 1965), George Grizzard (Advise and Consent, 1962) and Carroll O’Connor (A Fever in the Blood, 1961). American television star Steve Allen (College Confidential, 1960) plays a hypocritical pundit.

A sophomore movie for noted television director Buzz Kulik (Villa Rides, 1968), this is easily his best picture, concentrating on character with a great eye for mood. Screenwriter Mann Rubin (Brainstorm, 1965) adapted the Whit Masterson novel 711 – Officer Needs Help. The score is one of the best from Jerry Goldsmith (Seconds, 1966).

Has this emanated from France it would have been covered in critical glory, from the overall unfussy direction, from the presentation of the main character and so many memorable performances and from, to bring it up once again, the awesome music.

Hour of the Gun (1967) ****

The second version of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral follows on from the Burt Lancaster-Kirk Douglas 1957 version also directed by John Sturges and precedes Doc (1971) reviewed yesterday. Good chance to compare the differing approaches.

Destroy a legend at your peril. Mythic western hero Wyatt Earp (James Garner) goes down’n’dirty after the death of his brother, spurning law and order to turn bounty hunter, which is legitimate, and then vigilante, which is not, in pursuit of Ike Clanton (Robert Ryan). A revisionist western, then, with director John Sturges substantially reimagining the image of Earp he had been instrumental in creating through Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), a box office smash starring Lancaster as Earp and Douglas as sidekick Doc Holliday.

The first change is to keep Clanton alive, having been a casualty in the previous picture. The opening sequence sets the record straight. But corruption and the law acting in conjunction pull Earp and Holliday (Jason Robards) up on criminal charges though they are found innocent. When corrupt law fails to work, Clanton resorts to ambush, killing Earp’s brother. Clanton organises a posse of twenty men to kill Earp while the lawman sets up his own, smaller, team of bounty hunters.

It soon transpires Earp’s warrants are little more than “hunting licenses” and although marginally he errs on the side of fairness the odds, courtesy of his superior gunplay, remain substantially stacked in his favour and he picks off the villains one by one, pursuing Clanton into Mexico.

This is the story of Wyatt Earp in transition, shifting into lawlessness, at a time – 1881 – when the West itself was undergoing dramatic change, big business from the East forcing greater acceptance of the law (and using it for their own purposes), the growth of the cattle barons and the gradual elimination of the gunslinger, gunfighter and criminal gangs. There’s no room for romance as there was in O.K. Corral and The Magnificent Seven (1960) just pitiless determination to revenge. But there’s little of the all-male camaraderie that informed The Great Escape (1963). Earp and Holliday remain tight but the others in their gang have been somewhat forcefully enlisted.

The poster is very misleading, giving the impression of an all-action
gun-toting movie rather than one of somber reflection.

The best scenes are the result of Earp conniving, revealing a streak Machiavelli would have envied, even duping Holliday, until it’s clear the Earp of legend has been vanquished. Sturges congratulates himself on telling the “truth.” But that’s the problem. The truth involves a lot of background that slows the picture down. And presenting Earp as transitioning is pretty much a blatant lie. Earp was clearly as ruthless killer at the O.K. Corral as he is now and no amount of pointing to corrupt law can eliminate the fact that the lawman prefers to kill villains rather than see them face justice. So there’s really no transition. Earp is a more civilized version of The Man With No Name. But at least he accepts it. There’s no hypocrisy involved.

The two principals are superb, shucking off the mannerisms that previously defined their screen personas. Gone is the trademark James Garner cheeky chap, the grin and even the slicked-back hairstyle. He is your father in a continually bad mood now rather than your favorite uncle full of japes. How much Sturges pinned back Robards’ capacity for over-acting can be seen by comparing this with the actor’s performance in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).

Full marks for Sturges in trying to tell a complex, morally ambivalent, story, and he avoids the more grandiose approach to changes in the West as instanced in Once Upon a Time in the West. The early courtoom scenes slow down the narrative when a couple of lines of dialog could have done the same job. But it is exceptionally true in its depiction of Earp. There is not a bone of redemption in his body. He is going on a killing spree and he doesn’t care who knows it or how it damages his reputation, still high enough before the final episode of the revenge hunt for him to be touted as a future lawman-in-chief for Arizona.

Nor does Doc Holliday offer anything in the way of consolation. This isn’t like The Wild Bunch where a ruthless band of robbers convince themselves they have a code of honor and provide rough camaraderie as a way of filling in the emotional gaps in their lives. Holliday mistakenly sees Earp as man who could not exist outside the law without destroying himself, but that would only concern an Earp who was still interested in rules. Holliday, a self-confessed killer, over 20 deaths to his name, seeks redemption by saving Earp from himself. But in keeping with the raw truth, he is wasting his time. “I’m through with the law,” proclaims Earp, somewhat redundantly, once he dispatches his final victim.

It was a different kind of western at a time when in mainstream Hollywood there was no such thing. Although elegiac in tone, it cuts to the mean. And it was the forerunner of other, more critically acclaimed, westerns like Will Penny (1968), The Wild Bunch (1969) and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) and in a sense it was precursor to Dirty Harry (1971) where in order to obtain justice Harry Callahan has to throw away his badge.

Many reasons have been advanced for the film’s commercial failure, most erroneously assuming that the genre had fallen into disrepair and was not revived until the glory year of 1969, but as I point out in my book The Gunslingers of ’69, that was far from the case. The same year as Hour of the Gun, John Wayne had ridden high on the box office hog with The War Wagon to follow the previous year’s El Dorado and Paul Newman as Hombre had been a big hit. The first two spaghetti westerns, only released in the U.S. in 1967, were also given as instrumental in the failure of Hour of the Gun, but neither was a massive box office hit. Revisionism had not quite hit the target with the public either as witness Cheyenne Autumn (1964).

The most likely reason was the fact that Sturges set out to dispel a myth that the public were happy with, that the movie was slow moving, and the characters essentially unlikeable. John Ford averred that when the legend became fact you printed the legend, but the opposite was patently not true here. Edward Anhalt (The Satan Bug, 1965) wrote the screenplay based on the straight-shooting biography Tombstone’s Epitaph by Douglas D. Martin. who had previously written about the Earps.

It might be cold, and at times meandering, but it offers up a fascinating character study and although Earp’s transition could be construed as tragedy, the destruction of a good man, Sturges takes no refuge in such an idea. This is Sturges boldest, most courageous, picture and he does nothing to soften the killing. Where The Magnificent Seven, another bunch of killers, ride into Mexico on the back of a bombastic theme tune, this is a much leaner effort, and all the richer for it.

Doc (1971) ***

The revisionist western was often a get-out-of-jail-free card to cover various random exercises that purported to present the West as down’n’dirty, held to account white murderers and rapists and tilted the narrative balance in favour of the Native American. Other times, interpretation of the idea was more liberal. You make up whatever story you liked and hope to pass it off as closer to the truth than what went before.

Here, while Doc Holliday (Stacy Keach) is realistically portrayed as an alcoholic (though whisky was prescribed for medicinal purposes) and suffering severely from the tuberculosis that would bring him to a premature end, the narrative is buried in the realms of the unlikely. Notwithstanding that this is the third rendition in 14 years (and only four years after Hour of the Gun) of the famous Gunfight at the OK Corral, whose origins are probably best left to myth, this tries to undercut upholding of the law with corruption, and expects us to fall for a complicated tale that makes no sense. A version of Billy the Kid (Denver John Collins) enters the equation and Doc’s squeeze Kate (Faye Dunaway) veers uneasily between feisty sex worker and adoring partner.

Columnist Pete Hamill (Badge 373, 1973), in his screenwriting debut, ties himself in knots trying to explain how the famous gunfight occurred in the first place. It could as easily have been the consequence of Doc stealing one of the Clanton Brothers’ fiancée, Kate. But although that’s the opening sequence, little is made of it. Instead, we have Wyatt Earp (Harris Yulin) intending to make commercial hay in Tombstone. He’s already deputy marshal but that carries no jurisdiction in Tombstone where there’s money to be made by a corrupt lawman.

Earp is aiming to get elected sheriff and set up buddy Doc in a gambling operation which I guess would have to be illicit in some manner for them to profit. To win favor with the locals, he plans to bring to justice Johnny Ringo, a Clanton associate, who has robbed the stagecoach of $80,000. He bribes Ike Clanton (Michael Witney) with the $20,000 reward money to hand over Ringo. But when that deal goes south for reasons that are unclear the four Earp Brothers plus Doc go head-to-head with the seven-strong Clanton bunch in the corral.

The problem with the OK Corral scenario is that basically you are just filling in time before the shootout. So Doc uses this teaching the Kid to shoot properly, an action that has unforeseen consequences, and setting up house with Kate while coughing up blood and knocking back the whisky. Earp spends most of his time in one conspiracy or another. He tends to cut confrontation short with a quick punch or pistol whipping. But when he is bested in a fistfight with Ike his revenge is suggested as the trigger for the all-out confrontation.

The Clantons don’t know how to fight the Chicago way. They take pistols to the shoot-out whereas the opposition come armed with shotguns. Forgive me if I’m a bit short on weaponry intelligence but I’d always been told (from westerns, to be sure) that a shotgun was only effective over a short distance and here I would question their efficiency. And while I’m chucking spanners into the works I’m surprised that whoever’s stage got robbed left recovery of the stolen money ($2.5 million in today’s equivalent) and apprehending the crook to a deputy marshal.

So a bit of a hodge-podge and not a convincing one at that. I’m sure neither Earp nor Doc were knights in shining armor but neither were they as idiotic as they appear here.

Stacy Keach and Harris Yulin had been paired in The End of the Road (1970) and both were being touted as rising stars though ultimately only the former made the marquee leap. Both are dour and stoic more than anything else and it’s left to Faye Dunaway (The Happening, 1967) to bring some spark to the picture. Being the sassy one, she’s given the best lines, such as explaining to a religious-minded individual that the only time she would be getting on her knees would be for another purpose entirely.

Frank Perry (Lilith, 1962) directs with an eye towards the elegiac but all the artistic sepia-toned cleverness can’t conceal a movie sorely lacking in decent story.