July 2026 – The Magnificent 60s

The Wicked Die Slow (1968) *

Companion piece to Hot Spur. Not excused fitting into same one-star sleaze western category as Hot Spur (1969) even with some elements that appear at odds with the tale, such as playing around with the time signatures. The best bit is the credits, or as they’re dubbed here the “visual effects,” a series of paintings that send a message of a woman clawing her face. Quite why the movie involves so many extreme close-ups and a heck of lot of birds tweeting in the background.

There’s an outrageously clever sequence involving a young woman brushing down her horse and an approaching rider. The way the man sneaks around hidden by trees and foliage makes you think he’s up to no good. The woman certainly thinks so, she whips out a shotgun. Then the fellow produces an apple. So you change your mind. He’s a good guy. He’s going to feed the horse. Except he tosses the apple into bushes some distance away and she shoots at it. He does the same with another apple. She gets off a shot at that, too.

Then he steps out of the trees as most certainly a bad guy. She’s not reloaded her shotgun. She’s out of bullets. As he points out her predicament. While he’s a man with a pistol. Except he means her no harm. Which is just as well because she’s extremely vulnerable – she’s already been raped by her father.

It’s only now we actually get down to some narrative – the visitor, name of Steve (Bart Lenoir) is hunting for his brother Luke aka “The Kid” (Gary Allen) with whom this girl temporarily hooked up with.

Then we’ve got a preacher man, addicted to snuff, who saunters into a town and starts giving it hellfire and brimstone on the back of a wagon. He’s actually a bounty hunter and when he catches up with his prey teaches them – as in repeat after me – how to pray before he puts a bullet through their head.

But after this unusual start it’s quickly down to the lowest common denominator – rapes, nudity, violence, torture – the same elements as dominated Hot Spur. Sexploitation, or as it was known back in the day, apparently, a “roughie.”

*This image comes from the credit sequence.*

So now we’re also ducking around with time. Four Native Americans have raped gunfighter The Kid’s girlfriend (Susannah Campbell) and he wants revenge. He’s not so vengeful that he doesn’t have time to stop off for a bit of consensual sex with a complaint women, cue naked breasts, while he has to avoid, for reasons unknown, some kind of lynch party. Naturally, when he’s not naked, he’s given to wearing a poncho.

This isn’t some torture yarn, as you might expect from the title (that’s a reference to the Biblical Hell) nor, as I expected, a spaghetti western, since Amazon Prime directed me to this as a reward for watching Django (1966). Nobody’s planning on giving the bad guys a lingering death. Just death.

And, given the opening section, that might well have provided sufficient ingredients for a decent revenge western and we’ve had plenty of those where extraneous sexuality has not been called for. But that’s not the case here. The story is just an excuse for rampant nudity and brutality directed at women.

In due course, The Kid teams up with Mexican bandit Armadillo (Jeff Kanew).

Then it really gets nasty in the Hot Spur vein.

There’s another curiosity here. The film is attributed to Cannon, the production outfit most association with Israeli double act Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, but this was made long before the pair got into the Death Wish franchise business or ponying up $15 million to Sylvester Stallone for Over the Top (1987). And in fact, Golan-Globus had nothing to do with The Wicked Die Slow. They didn’t buy Cannon until much later. This was made by Cannon when it was owned by Christopher Dewey and Dennis Friedland while they were in the exploitation business.

Directed by William K. Henniger (See How They Come, 1968) and it’s generally assumed someone else did the first 30 minutes or so. Written by stars Gary Allen and Jeff Kanew.

Nobody comes out of this with any kudos except for Swede artist Maria Nordenson who created the credit sequence and whoever directed the first section.

Hot Spur fans should head for Amazon Prime.

The Devil’s Mouth (2026) **

What you have to remember is that the streamers are stuck with the same problem as the big movie studios back in the day when Hollywood was broken up into majors (MGM, Fox, , Paramount, Columbia etc) and mini-majors (United Artists, Disney, Embassy etc). The bigger the studio the more movies – in the 1950s/1960s, for example – you were expected to churn out. You had to feed the exhibitor system and if you cut back on production, exhibitors would stop favoring your product.

But there was no way every film you made was a big-budget production helmed by a top-name director and headlined by a top male and female star. For a start, there were not enough stars to go round, though certainly far more than the paltry handful who have any marquee attraction today, and studios could not afford to turn out so many films with big budgets.

But at least they were initially fair to exhibitors and the public. The lesser productions were tabbed B-pictures and they didn’t carry the marketing weight of the bigger movies.

And when the B-picture per se disappeared, the movies that came in at the lower end of the budget scale were called “programmers.” They were movies that filled a slot, heading out into distribution as the supporting feature, or going out on a wave of advertising in the knowledge that they would not last more than one week anywhere, once word-of-mouth came out.

So the problem for the streamers is that they can’t differentiate. They don’t own up to the fact that there’s just no way they can produce a substantial number of original content features a year so that subscribers feel they’re getting a good deal. So every new film is given the same big-push treatment.

This is just a programmer and misses the shark mark by a big margin. Not only is there no attempt to beef up the narrative – if not Paris, find a way for sharks to invade New York or London, why doncha – it’s nearly half the picture before the marauder appears and unlike others in the mini-genre nobody’s taken the trouble to come up with some scientific mumbo-jumbo to explain its unlikely presence in the a bunch freshwater Thailand caves.

And none of the characters are remotely interesting or jar with each other in an interesting fashion. There’s so much whooping of delight going on that it’s about as loud as the later screams.

And I’m not sure that the cheesecake/beefcake element can sustain the picture for 100 minutes, not when the buffed bodies are, with one exception, so empty-headed. You’re waiting for the shark – c’mon already – to start whittling down their number because they’re just so annoying.

The best scene has nothing to do with sharks. Sara (Kathryn Newton) – the only character of any interest – is attacked by a swarm of jellyfish and when the camera pulls back to reveal that she’s not just being stung by one of the creatures but has swum into a whole nest of them, that strikes a sharp note. Of course, one minute she’s wailing for her life, twisting this way and that, and the next she’s safe on the boat.

You might be tempted to keep going because you want to see easily the most annoying character, the big-mouth know-it-all Max (Lana Condor), get hers. But no such luck, because she’s whining all the way to the end. When their guide does a runner, there should be tension as they have to find a way out from the maze of caves but unfortunately, they don’t appear to have a single brain cell between them. Scooby Doo would have had a better chance of solving the puzzle.

And the shark ain’t much to write home about either although he’s pretty good on the threshing front and inclined, for reasons that are soon revealed as narrative necessity, to batter his head off the cave walls. This picture is so lacking in common sense that even though one of the group has a knife they don’t think to rip out the creature’s eyes when it’s trapped in a hole in the cave.

This started life as an acclaimed screenplay called Apex so who knows what happened to it along the way. It’s perfectly possibly that one of the trapped quintet could make it big in the movie business in the future and can look and laugh at this turkey and laugh.

Kathryn Newton (Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, 2026) can’t hold this together and director Jeff Wadlow (Imaginary, 2024) should have known better than to try. Debut screenwriting gig for Aja Gabel (Five Star Weekend series, 2026) and Myung Joh Wesner (Skeleton Crew series, 2024).

You know how big a fan I am of shark movies, so I don’t need much to whet my appetite. This doesn’t come close

Another dud from Amazon Prime.

Django (1966) ****

You’re not going to get a more iconic opening than a cowboy dragging a coffin up a muddy hill. But just in case you think director Sergio Corbucci is trying to make some high-falutin’ statement, the next few minutes contain nine deaths and a woman whipped and then threatened with being burned to death. What followed resulted in deserved cult status, helped along by a ban from the British censor. Outside Sergio Leone 1960s western quartet, this is generally considered to be the best spaghetti western of the period.

You’ll be familiar with the story, because basically it’s a rehash of A Fistful of Dollars, which in itself was an uncredited rehash of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961).

On the Mexican-U.S. border, two groups vie for control of a tiny town (population: six – one bartender and five whores), one led by ex-Confederate Major Jackson (Eduardo Fajardo) who would be dressed in the red shirts of revolutionaries except that the opposing bunch led by General Rodriguez’s (Jose Badalo) has chosen that color.

Django (Franco Nero) arrives in the town accompanied by the whipped woman Maria (Loredana Nusciak) and the coffin, which contains a machine gun. Django wants revenge on Jackson who killed his lover. But that’s as much a MacGuffin as you need because, really, slaughter is the name of the game, not to mention a gold heist, then a heist of the stolen gold, which is stashed safely in Django’s coffin until it ends up in the quicksand.

This being a spaghetti western naturally there’s mutilation, Django’s hands crushed for the audacity of his theft, someone else forced to eat his own ear, and there’s attempted rape. Mostly, there’s massacre. A humungous heap of bodies provide the entertainment. Jackson and the General are equally intent on killing as many people as possible, Rodriguez having the moral edge because he’s the legitimate revolutionary but it’s a close run thing.

But the good guys are always a hefty massacre away from safety.

For reasons known only to mythmakers, the final shoot-out takes place in a cemetery in Tombstone, which is a heck of a long way (a mere 500 miles) from the Mexican border, but never mind. But there’s a clever ending, especially when you consider how difficult it is to shoot a revolver with a mangled hand.

This zips along with a ton of brio. Franco Nero (Camelot, 1967) resists the temptation to play up those baby blues. He’s virtually deadpan thoughout, quite an achievement in a movie where everyone else overacts. His character is even more down’n’dirty than The Man with No Name and comes across more as a man of the soil than a gunslinger. For such a violent movie, there’s an acknowledgement of politics that’s akin to the skewered morality of The Wild Bunch (1969). The plot takes us all over the place, but it’s so much fun who the heck cares.

The bloodshed (“excessive and nauseating” was the view of the British censor) was way ahead of its time, representing the reality of war and rebellion far more than the cartoonish killing of Leone’s spaghetti trilogy.

Director Sergio Corbucci (The Great Silence, 1968) isn’t trying to sell us a traditional western with sweeping vistas and terrific camerawork. This falls into the nihilistic vein. The huge tranches of mud at the outset set the tone, the land is barren and bleak, a desert of mud. There’s nothing opportunistic or greedy about Django. He’s not intent on playing off two sides for profit. His motive is personal. Where The Man With No Name was fleshed out with a certain amount of charm, there’s no recourse to that here. In a pitiless world, there’s no use for charm. Written by Sergio Corbucci and his brother Bruno.

This spawned as many rip-offs as the Leone versions.

Crossplot (1969) ***

Roger Moore – in his first movie in seven years – almost auditioning for James Bond with his lothario instinct, light touch for dialog, a nice side-line in double takes, and enough action to show that even in his early 40s he was still nimble enough. Not in the Charade (1963) or Arabesque (1966) league and over-reliant on the Swinging Sixties and other “Tourist Britain” clichés and a plot that takes far too long to get going, it takes all the actor’s charm to make it watchable.

After one of his staff Warren (Dudley Sutton) switches the photo of a model in his portfolio, ad-man Gary (Roger Moore) finds himself on the trail of Marla (Claudia Lange), a sometime fugitive hiding out on a houseboat. Meet-cute is prompted when she pushes him into the Thames. On leaving he is knocked out and framed on a dope charge and once he manages to get her into the photographic studio Warren attempts to throw her off the roof, the would-be killer himself eliminated by his boss Ruddock (Francis Matthews) who in a marvelous piece of quick-thinking throws his gun to Gary who instinctively catches it, further implicating himself.

After going all round the houses (including a stately home), evading pursuit via an antique car race and a wedding, Gary finally gets to the bottom of why Marla is in such danger – she overheard a conversation between her aunt Joe (Martha Hyer) and Ruddock. Only problem is – she can’t remember it. And it takes even more time for Gary to figure it out, (not realizing, how could he, that the clue is in the title, in fact two clues in a crossword puzzle). You can imagine how it goes from then.

*This poster takes the easy route by trying to sell the picture on the back of “The Saint.”*

On the plus side is mostly Roger Moore. “I come from a long line of hippopotamuses,” isn’t the sort of line you can deliver without some skill. But Moore’s performance lifts what is for the most part a shaggy dog story, and he’s game enough to do all the running and fighting required, even the heavy lifting (of his eyebrows), to keep the story moving. It’s far from as funny as it thinks and not as funny as it needs to be, but there are still some good stabs at humor, a pistol held to Gary’s head discovered to be a toy gun, Gary turning the tables in a shower on Marla, telling the bride that her groom is a bigamist, and a running joke about the Marla being perennially hungry.

The politics barely touches on the conspiracy aspects that Hollywood would have pounced upon and made a better fist of, although the idea that Britain could be undermined by civil strife was not far off the mark for the times. It needed some smarter thinking, though, for that element to work.

*A much better attempt at selling a thriller with scenes from the film,*
*including the toy pistol pointed at Roger Moore’s head.*

The rest of the cast are game enough. Claudie Lang (The Gatling Gun, 1968) is no Sophia Loren or Audrey Hepburn but nobody is pretending she is and she just about gets away with the dumb model approach. Martha Hyer (The Chase, 1966) delivers a glamorous villain and the suave Francis Matthews (Rasputin: The Mad Monk, 1966) her ideal match.

There’s quite a supporting cast: Veronica Carlsen (Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, 1968), Gabrielle Drake (Suburban Wives, 1972), Dave Prowse (Star Wars, 1977), Bernard Lee (You Only Live Twice, 1967), Alexis Tanner (The Ernie Game, 1967), Ursula Howells (BBC’s The Forsyte Saga, 1967) and Dudley Sutton (Rotten to the Core, 1965).

If Alvin Rakoff (The Comedy Man, 1964) is in charge of the material he doesn’t have enough material to work with. He does enough to keep it on course but would have benefitted from a a tighter screenplay from Leigh Vance (The Frightened City, 1961). Both had done better in the past, but it is easy to be seduced by the romantic thriller format, almost a mini-genre in itself, assuming it is easier to pull off than it looks. The likes of Alfred Hitchcock (North by Northwest, 1959) and Stanley Donen (Charade) made it look easy but they had the advantage of big stars in Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn who possessed the ability to make the lightest confection work.

The Swarm (1978) *

I’m delighted to inform you that there was only disappointment this time around, no provisos to save the day, no reassessment to make me change my original views. This truly is a terrible picture. Possibly the worst to involve Michael Caine, who was no slouch when it came to making inadvisable choices. Just as with The Island (1980) which on paper appeared a slam-dunk hit coming as it did in the wake of Jaws (1975) and The Deep (1977), based on Peter Benchley bestsellers, this looked like a no-brainer, another Irwin Allen disaster picture following on from mega-hits The Towering Inferno (1974) and Earthquake (1975).

It’s tempting to blame it on the bees. The special effects creating the sky-borne swarm makes them look like nothing more than a strange smudge on the screen. And the bodies or cars or helicopters smothered in millions of static bees score pretty low, actually, on the scare-o-meter, nothing like a giant shark on the loose. Anyone caught in the swarm has to go into some kind of slow-motion dance that fails to shake them off.

Sure we’ve got a runaway train coming off the tracks and sliding down a hill, but the action quotient is surprisingly pretty low. The opportunity, a la The Birds (1963), to lay low a town is ignored and after a few peremptory shots of bees causing havoc we’re stuck with TV reports. Even giant bees, caused by hallucination, might cause an audience to vaguely squirm but it doesn’t replicate the gut-wrenching terror of a killer shark or the tension of a burning skyscraper.

The cast spend most of their time in exposition mode, or arguing with each other as to whose exposition is better. We know a heck of a lot more about the bees, and why they’re on the rampage, some nonsense about alarm horns replicating the sound of bees mating, than we do about any of the characters.

There’s a smidgeon of romance between Dr Bradford Crane (Michael Caine) and Capt Dr Helena Anderson (Katharine Ross) but it doesn’t get beyond the teenage (“am I walking too fast for you?). And there’s a truly terrible attempt at romantic comedy as old codgers Felix (Ben Johnson) and Clarence (Fred MacMurray) fight over school marm Maureen (Olivia De Havilland) who looks as if she’d like to crack their heads together.

A young boy is caught up in the melee and a pregnant woman, and I was looking out for the statutory nun, a strange omission is a disaster narrative.

The only effective bit of the movie is the opening when a squad of soldiers all Hazchem-med up descend on a deserted missile base and find the entire garrison – apart from a half-dozen – lying dead on the floor. That Dr Crane happens to be passing by leads to a stupid subplot where Major General Slater (Richard Widmark) and sidekick Major Baker (Bradford Dillman) take the suspicion option and look for an excuse to bang up the academic.

This initially went on general release in a curtailed version running just short of two hours rather than the original 155-minute cut which you can now catch, as I did, on YouTube.

You can’t blame Michael Caine (The Island, 1980) for this mess and he would have acquitted himself well if there had been any actual acting to be done outside of the exposition and arguing with the major general. His best scene is when he gently carries crippled mentor Dr Krim (Henry Fonda) into his wheelchair. Katharine Ross (Hellfighters, 1968) has such a restrained screen persona half the time you think she’s going to burst into tears.

Uber-producer Irwin Allen (The Towering Inferno) had decided by this point that he could dispense with a name director and take on that chore himself. But I doubt if anyone could have made a better job given they were stuck with bees and a terrible script by Stirling Silliphant (In the Heat of the Night, 1967).

A true stinker.

The Island (1980) ***

By common consent one of Michael Caine’s worst films – on a par with The Swarm (1978), The Hand (1981), Jaws, The Revenge (1987), and, for sheer embarrassment, Blame It On Rio (1984) – so naturally I had steered clear of it for four decades. But in the grip of reassessment fever and given how big a fan I am of pirate films, I wondered if I might come to a different conclusion after another vewing.

This was being touted as another blockbuster from the author of Jaws (1975) and The Deep (1977) so it’s entirely possible the actor was not necessarily its biggest drawing card.

The odd thing is that – terrible though it is – it has some aspects very much in its favor. And if it had the courage of its convictions would have taken The Wicker Man route and not permitted journalist Blair Maynard (Michael Caine) to escape from the titular island where he is being held captive by a primitive tribe of pirates. Once he had fulfilled his purpose, which was to impregnate a female pirate, he could as easily have had his throat cut.

There is also some power reversal. He’s raped by said female, Beth (Angela Punch McGregor), and she keeps him chained by the neck, dragging him along behind her like a pet. And there’s an exploration of the gun-love fantasy, expressed by Blair’s 12-year-old son Justin (Jeffrey Frank), given the chance to wield a pistol like his hero Dirty Harry, enjoy the feeling of pulling the trigger, and in an extreme version of early teenage revolt, embracing the opportunity to put one over on his father.

And you might also go for the islanders, untouched and therefore uncorrupted by civilization, who still negotiate the seas in small sailing craft, and, except for their murderous instincts, could easily come across as innocents, living the same life – the “good life” in the eyes of many these days – as they would have done 300 years ago.

What counts against the movie is, for a start, the set-up. Had Blair been just on a sailing trip with his son and been captured by pirates that would have been fine. Instead, he’s a journalist managing to convince his editor to send him to investigate that hoary old chestnut, the Bermuda Triangle.

While the pirates are a gift to anthropological studies, sometimes they speak in perfect English, sometimes they speak pidgin English, sometimes they’re speaking in some form of Olde English complete with naff ritual and rules. Although they’re desperate to find a way of prolonging their species – which is where Blair comes in – they tend to kill any other males or females who could help them achieve this aim.

And although they steal plenty of modern supplies in the way of food and clothing from the ships they pirate, they still wear scraps and live off scraps.

When Blair attempts his first escape the presence of a giant jellyfish cuts that short. But, miraculously, the next two times he’s in the water, no jellyfish. Not much of this is discreet, but there is one relationship that gets by with looks. A young island boy, jealous of the attention given to Justin by Nau (David Warner), the pirate chief, appears to be helping Blair escape in a tiny craft until, far out at sea, the journalist notices that the boat has been sabotaged and is sinking fast. Even so, it’s a bit complicated. I couldn’t work out the young fellow’s motives. Getting rid of Blair wouldn’t get rid of his rival for the chief’s affections.

The ending is a complete mess. Luckily, we’ve been informed that Blair fought in the Korean War so when he finds a deck-mounted machine gun on the U.S. Coastguard vessel the pirates have just taken over, he can open fire like Rambo and slaughter near enough the entire contingent of his enemies. The only survivors are his son and Nau, so we can have one last hand-to-hand skirmish, and the boy and father can enjoy a sentimental reunion.

So, yes, this is a hidden civilization, a lost tribe, that might be treasured for living the simple life, but Blair, despite being a journalist, is hardly salivating at the prospect of his scoop. Too much time is spent on trying to establish the pirates’ way of life via their rituals and oddities.

But this was certainly a bold move on Caine’s part, to take on a role that was akin to Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes (1968), to be treated as not just an inferior but only useful for his semen. The reversal of the power balance between himself and Beth, who, as in Planet of the Apes, begins to care for her captive, would certainly chime with the contemporary audience.

There’s very little that’s noble about the savages, all are unkempt and few have a full set of teeth.

But Caine does put in a good acting shift. Angela Punch McGregor (The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, 1978) is the pick of the rest. David Warner (Morgan!/Morgan, A Suitable Case for Treatment, 1966) excels in this kind of oddball part. Jeffrey Frank didn’t make another movie.

Disappointing choice, though, for director Michael Ritchie, who had built up a solid reputation through Downhill Racer (1969), Prime Cut (1972), The Candidate (1972) and Smile (1975). Written by Peter Benchley.

To be honest, I’m a bit disappointed to find so much to admire in what I had expected to be an ideal candidate for the So Bad It’s Good category.

The Jigsaw Man (1983) ***

If you watched Michael Caine movies non-stop for 24 hours a day, it would take you two weeks to complete the haul. That’s how many pictures he made. So it would be no surprise if they were: a) not all top-notch and b) included a good few stinkers. But every now and then he had the habit of pulling out a plum, a critically-acclaimed number and/or a box office hit. His marquee attraction continued long after, by any other standards, his career as a top-billed star was over. And once he accepted that he was no longer the main reason audiences would come to see his pictures, he found himself in huge demand as a supporting actor (two Oscars in that department to his name), often second-billed and in late career some kind of lucky charm for Christopher Nolan who pegged him for distinguished parts.

This isn’t by any means a stinker and it’s somewhat lifted by the very human frailties of those involved. One character is vain about wearing a wig, another is more concerned about recovering his Cup Final tickets than a defector on the lam, there’s a golf-obsessed vicar, predatory males moving in on the wife and daughter the defector left behind, a car chase in a safari-style zoo (elephants looking on in bewilderment) and Laurence Olivier playing the debilitation of age extremely well.

The Russians send defector Philip Kimberley (Michael Caine), former head of the British secret service, back to Blighty with a new face and the plan to recover a secret film that he has stashed away somewhere, presumably as a bargaining tool. Since the microfilm contains the names of all KGB agents including moles in Britain, it sets him up as a target for said double agents fearing discovery. The Burgess-Philby-MacLean defections that sent British espionage into a spin would still have been of huge public interest at the time the movie was made, especially as “The Fourth Man,” Sir Anthony Blunt, who also moved in royal circles, had been denounced in 1979. But for anyone watching with scant knowledge of the espionage scandal, the movie gives a brief reminder using news footage.

However, Kimberley has a different agenda when he lands in Britain, giving his Russian handlers and the Brits the slip and sets out to sell the microfilm to the highest bidder to fund retirement in Switzerland. His wife, with whom current spy chief Admiral Sir Gerald Scath (Laurence Olivier) was in love, is now dead but his daughter Penelope (Susan George), now grown-up, has changed her name to avoid media attention. Her beau Jamie Fraser (Robert Powell) is in reality a secret service agent charged with keeping tabs on her.

Although Kimberley has been trained in the martial arts, he’s long lost his tradecraft skills and though he puts a cop out of action he forgets to dispose of the policeman’s walkie-talkie which gives away his position.

Most of this is a chess game rather than a jigsaw, it’s not that difficult for the espionage experts to put the pieces together, especially after Kimberley is reunited with his daughter, who appears to happily set aside the deaths of two innocents caught up in the affair, blame for which is attributed to her father’s presence or his too heavy-handed karate chop.

Action is limited, a chase on foot, some clambering over rooftops, the aforementioned car chase, a couple of firearm exchanges, but mostly it’s Kimberley putting all the pieces in place until he gets what he wants.

There’s a clever trick at the start when Michael Caine’s voice emanates from clearly another man’s mouth before he goes under the scalpel for the face change.

Michael Caine (The Ipcress File, 1965), essentially plays three roles – the original surly alcoholic Englishman in Moscow, liable to embarrassing displays in public, the Russian character he adopts for the purposes of appearing an ordinary defector before anyone susses out his real identity, and the better-behaved Englishman trying to woo back his daughter and con the likes of the Admiral. You’ll guess one of the twists at the end but not the other.

Laurence Olivier (Khartoum, 1966) steals the show as the ageing bureaucrat. I know he was ill at the time of filming but, still, his decision to play his part without the normal Olivier vocal tics and sense of immediate screen authority, and play up his physical weakness and waning powers,ensures you keep your eyes on him during any scene he’s in.

Charles Gray (The Devil Rides Out, 1968) provides another of his languid effete portrayals characters with a steely interior. Susan George (The Straw Dogs, 1971) and Robert Powell (The 39 Steps, 1978) bring up the rear.

Director Terence Young (Mayerling, 1968), in his second last movie, shows some classy touches. Written by Jo Eisenger (They Came to Rob Las Vegas, 1968) from the bestseller by Dorothea Bennett.

This is as good an example as any of Michael Caine’s wayward career. This fell into the flop category. His previous film Beyond the Limit/The Honorary Consul (1983) had also been a financial dud, though his acting won favor with Bafta (a nomination for Best Actor). But the one before that, Educating Rita (1983), had not only been a commercial success but won Caine an Oscar nomination. Deathtrap (1982) had been a so-so performer. But while Escape to Victory/Victory (1981) and The Hand (1981) had been clinkers, Dressed to Kill (1980) had been a huge success.

After The Jigsaw Man came three more duds before a return to form – and an Oscar win – for Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Mona Lisa (1986).

You can catch this on British streamer Talking Pictures TV.

Standard spy fare lifted by the acting

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) ***

The funniest thing that happened on the way to turning this hit Broadway musical into a Hollywood movie was that composer Stephen Sondheim (Sweeney Todd, 2007), now denoted a legend, was considered such a poor marquee attraction that the producers cut half the songs of the original production, turning the result into more of a comedy with intermittent songs rather than a full-blown musical in the Rodgers and Hammerstein tradition.

Sondheim had an unusual theatrical development, starting out purely as a writer of lyrics – for West Side Story (filmed 1961) and Gypsy (filmed in 1964). He took on the dual roles of composer and lyricist for this one, which made its Broadway debut in 1962 and ran for three years.

You wouldn’t have Zero Mostel, a year before The Producers (1967), down as much of a marquee name either – he hadn’t appeared in a movie in 15 years, and then in only a bit part. But Broadway has its own method of producing stars and he had become a stage headline act and really there were few contenders for the role of a fat middle-aged Roman hustler.

Contemporary audiences will appreciate the actor breaking the fourth wall and talking directly to the audience, but while it was highly unusual at the time, it had the effect of putting the audience on his side. You might not associate Richard Lester (Petulia, 1968) with musicals but that would only be if you excluded A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965) from his portfolio, though admittedly those would hardly be classed as traditional song-and-dance efforts.

The picture was larded with other top comedic names, Phil Silvers of Sgt Bilko TV fame and legendary silent comic Buster Keaton. It didn’t hinder the movie’s prospects that with the phalanxes of nubile young women on show it might have been considered an audition for actresses aiming no higher than the sobriquet of Bond Babe.

What’s perhaps most unusual of all is that this is a sex farce, not a medium at which Hollywood was renowned. Screwball romantic comedy, yes, farce set in a brothel, no. Luckily, it delivers on all fronts. If you want a hint of what Sondheim could bring to the party, there are seven songs to choose from. If you reckon Zero Mostel provides a distinct brand of comedy you would be proved correct. If you were here for the cheesecake it was in abundance. And if you went looking for laffs there was no shortage, pratfalls included.

The story is slight, if complicated. Slave Pseudolus (Zero Mostel) wants his freedom, young swain Hero (Michael Crawford) wants to win the heart of Philia (Annette Andre). All sorts of obstacles get in the way. Since Philia, a virgin slave, has already been sold to a great warrior Gloriosus (Leon Greene), Pseudolus must convince him that the girl has been exposed to a deadly plague and must be hidden away. He is eventually distracted by an orgy and persuaded that the girl is dead. However, when Gloriosus determines to cut out her dead heart, she is suddenly very much alive.

In the tradition of Shakespearean comedy, there are oodles of mistaken identity and the while the narrative twists itself into various contortions to accommodate the sub-plots, naturally, it all ends happily, Philia turns out to be not a slave at all, and Pseudolus walks off with his freedom and Amazonian temptress Gymnasia (Inga Neilsen) to boot.

It’s all very good-natured fun, bordering on the licentious, but steering well clear of the meretricious and anything so off-putting as nudity or sex.

Having conquered Broadway, Zero Mostel now conquers Hollywood, doubling down on his fame next year with Mel Brook’s The Producers. Unlike The Devils (1971), any sign of campness is tamped down, helped along by serious players like Michael Hordern (Where Eagles Dare, 1968) taking their roles seriously. Phil Silvers and Buster Keaton keep the show on the road. Future British television and Broadway musical star Michael Crawford (The Jokers, 1967) shows his promise. In small parts you might spot Ingrid Pitt (Countess Dracula, 1971) and Jon Pertwee, the third Doctor Who.

I didn’t go away humming any of the songs, but they were pleasurable enough and for Sondheim lovers more than enough.

Director Richard Lester proves himself adept at this kind of comedy. Written by Melvin Frank (Buona Sera, Mrs Campbell, 1968) and Michael Pertwee (Make Mine Mink, 1960) from the Broadway production by Sondheim, Burt Shevelove (The Wrong Box, 1966) and Larry Gelbart (The Notorious Landlady, 1962) which took its impetus from the work of Roman writer Plautus.

Good fun.

Make Mine Mink (1960) ****

Jaunty little picture full of gags and visual treats pivoting on amateur crooks finding life tough in professional waters. While Terry-Thomas proves once again that he can spin any movie on its head with his own brand of upper-class buffoonery and those very distinct nasal tones, it’s very much a team effort with every one of the gang making a contribution.

The down-on-their-luck lodgers of impoverished Dame Beatrice (Athene Seyler) turn to crime after successfully returning a stolen mink. In the impenetrable logic of such tales, the quartet decide that if they can with military precision carry out a robbery reversal they would be well placed to actually carry out a robbery. Anal retentive Major Rayne (Terry-Thomas) would be a one-man League of Gentlemen except he has to rely on a motley crew of females, the luckless Dame, etiquette tutor Nanette (Hattie Jacques) and generally neurotic nincompoop Pinkie (Elspeth Duxbury). Getting very much in their way is the Dame’s maid Lily (Billie Whitelaw), an ex-jailbird, who wants nothing to do with illegitimate schemes and is romancing, to boot, Scottish cop Jim (Jack Hedley).

Nanette spends all her time puncturing the major’s pomposity, Pinkie spends all her time requiring liquid courage, and the major spends all his time happily barking orders and maintaining strict military order. Most of the time the incompetent crooks get away with their crimes because their victims are equally dense.

There’s a marvellous daftness to proceedings. Dame Beatrice, whose efforts at parking her car have resulted in continuous prangs and scrapes, is only too delighted to visit the local cop shop with the proviso that she needn’t bring along her license because she hasn’t seen it in a long time. The flat-chested Pinkie’s disguise is an inflated bosom. Trying to get rid of their ill-gotten gains to a fence sends Major into uncomfortable territory where being out of his depth is an invitation to a welter of fabulous comedy.

Naturally, they are not proper crooks since their thievery is all in the aid of charity. For a time, when Lily finds out, they are forced to give up, but then opportunity beckons.

There’s no attempt at either the satire that seemed necessary to seed into comedic ventures at the time if one were to achieve any sort of critical acclaim nor the double entendres, saucy innuendo and sex jokes that appeared to more easily to attract an audience. This is good old-fashioned comedy and I found myself laughing out loud a lot, which, to my mind, is the definition of a good comedy.

Here, the characters seem to mesh so well, and the narrative scarcely troubles the imagination that virtually everything works right off the bat, including a homage to The Third Man and those gags where bombs refuse to work. The major’s misplaced confidence, Nanette’s crunching handshake and the whimpering Pinkie all burst out of the screen. Lily is luminous most of the time except when she has to tell off the gang.

Terry-Thomas is a delight. This proved something of a breakthrough role in Hollywood terms and soon he would be tangling with Tuesday Weld in Bachelor Flat (1961) and challenging Peter Sellers as the country’s best comedic export. Hattie Jacques is relieved of the stern matron roles of the Carry On films and there’s something both impish and innocent in her head girl demeanor to the extent of still wearing her school uniform. Terrific ingénue turn from Billie Whitelaw (Twisted Nerve, 1968) and a knowing veteran’s one from Athene Seyler (I Thank a Fool, 1962) purring along in Margaret Rutherford fashion. Elspeth Duxbury, in movie debut, makes the most of a peach of a role.

Directed by Robert Asher (The Intelligence Men, 1965) from a screenplay by Michael Pertwee (Mouse on the Moon, 1963) based upon the stage play Breath of Spring by Peter Coke.

Having complained about the music in The Invite (2026), I would like to point to Philip Green’s (Masquerade, 1965) music here as exactly the kind of score that helps complement the action and establish the moiod..

Hugely enjoyable eccentricity.

The Odyssey (2026) ***** – Seen at the Cinema, Twice in the One Day

What sets Christopher Nolan aside is not the visual dexterity, imagination or the confidence of his reach, it’s his intelligence. Once you come to the tortuous end, having perhaps shifted time or point of view several times, and wondered at all the amazing stunts or worlds he has opened up, you are left with something utterly human. Emotion that leaves characters bereft. Here, he turns on its head the greatest deception ever practised in war – the Wooden Horse of Troy. Instead of, as since time immemorial everyone has done, praising the trick and Odysseus the ultimate trickster, he chooses another route in his ruthless examination of the artifice. In sneaking the horse into the besieged city, Odysseus has broken the most basic rule of Civilization. A stranger must be given hospitality. And the visitor must leave his weapons at the door. In this picture it’s known as The Code of Zeus, but it’s what held ancient Greek Civilization together, that trust in one another. Strangers were welcomed and once inside a foreign abode they did not seek to carry out violence.

On top of that, the hero realizes what a hero actually is. Once the warrior in him is let loose, the havoc is unjustified. That PTSD and war guilt would probably be enough for any contemporary audience, yet the confession of Odysseus turns out to be the re-wooing of his wife Penelope, telling her he is not at all, after two decades apart, the man that he once was.

There are few directors who can genuinely claim to be auteurs. Usually, they are not screenwriters so are stealing someone else’s original invention. While Nolan relies heavily on the writings of the legendary Homer, he not only Nolanesques everything, the screenwriter in him takes care to ensure that the groundwork is quietly laid for what will spark emotional tumult later on.

There are four exceptionally clever examples of this. Odysseus’s old dog is on the point of death. When Odysseus strokes him, in recognition the dog wags his tail. At this point Odysseus is in disguise – two decades separating him from an infant son now grown up – and it’s how his heir Telemachus recognizes him. Emotional beat no 1. The younger Odysseus has been gored in the ankle by a boar. When he returns, still in disguise, his nurse recognizes him from the scar. Emotional beat no 2. Odysseus has a bow that only he is strong enough to use. Once it’s ready, he’s in the habit of pulling on the bowstring so it gives a distinctive twang. It’s that twang that makes wife Penelope, in a state of desperation, realize that her husband has come home. Emotional beat no 3.

But the best is the mystery sewn into the lining of the script. Everyone lives in a state of fear. They are preparing for invasion by the unknown. “People from the sea” are reputed to be on their way, who knows from where, nobody knows who they are. When the solution is found it’s an overriding emotional beat no 4 – Odysseus himself is one of the people from the sea, the Greeks who landed on the shores of Troy and set siege to the city and eventually burned and pillaged it.

For all the monsters and witches and slaughter, there is incredible restraint. There’s no nudity. There’s no rape shown or even visually implied. But when Odysseus speaks of the horror of war, we know to include that element.. While it’s certainly stated on several occasions that women, either killed as innocent bystanders or left behind and prey to any passing male predator, they have ways of defending themselves. The witch Circe can turn men into pigs. The sorceress Calypso uses lotus leaves to keep her lover sedated. Penelope keeps her suitors at bay with a clever ruse. Agammemnon’s wife can’t be bothered with any of that, she simply cuts her husband’s throat on his triumphant return.

I’m not so familiar with the Greek myths. I’ve not read Henry Treece since childhood. So I can’t tell you what Nolan has adapted, eliminated or added. But I can tell you it all adds up. All the legends I expected are here – the one-eyed Cyclops, the whirlpool Scylla, Charybdis, Circe, the lotus eaters, the underworld, Troy. I don’t recall the giant soldiers so they may or may not be figments of the director’s imagination. For heroes, the Odysseus gang do a lot of running away as they head for home. And for all that he is hailed as the cleverest of the Greek generals, Odysseus is a mite dumb at time, incapable of reading the room on the boat, unwisely irritating monsters.

Matt Damon (The Martian, 2025) is terrific as Odysseus, and while redoubtable in action, is tasked with carrying the emotional thrust, the fatigue and guilt of war, the knowledge that his actions could bring down Civilization. Anne Hathaway (The Devil Wears Prada 2, 2026) is surprisingly good as his wife, the totem for the women left to suffer. Of the rest, Robert Pattinson (The Batman, 2022) is easily the pick as the glowering surly cowardly suitor. Samantha Morton (Minority Report, 2022) is gleefully venomous as Circe. I’m not entirely sure what Zendaya (Challengers, 2024), as ghostly goddess Athena, is doing in the mix and Charlize Theron (The Old Guard, 2020) as Calypso is mostly there for the exposition and it sometimes feels as if that’s the sole purpose of Tom Holland (Spiderman: No Way Home, 2021) as Telemachus.

Jon Bernthal (The Accountant 2, 2025) and John Leguizamo (Tin Soldier, 2025) stand out for the wrong reasons. They sound as if they’ve strayed in from a Martin Scorsese gangster picture.

Back in the days before VHS, DVD and streaming, you couldn’t watch a picture over and over. But occasionally, I’d be so taken with a movie that, in the days of continuous performance (you might not know what that is but when you go to the movies these days it’s for a separate performance, everyone kicked out after the showing) I would stay on and watch it again.

First time I did that it was for Terence Malick’s hypnotic Badlands (1973) – Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Erik Satie – when it turned up in the UK as the support to It’s Alive and there have been countless other examples. So, on my weekly Monday outing to the cinema, I decided I’d take in this picture again rather than grumble at whatever The Evil Dead Burns brought to the table.

When you watch a movie a second time, you’re not held in your seat by the narrative. You know what’s going to happen. You can marvel at all the rest, the writing, the camera movement, the special effects, the acting. I’ll probably go back next week.

Truly awesome.