September 2026 – The Magnificent 60s

Heart of the Beast (2026) **** – Seen at the Cinema

To be honest, I hadn’t been too keen on this one. I’ve moaned before about having to spend an interminable amount of time focusing on just one actor on the screen and much as I admire Brad Pitt – and F1: The Movie (2025) has become an all-time fave – I didn’t want to be guy that watched him not pulling it off. Plus, haven’t we been here before with Channing Taum and Dog (2022) and Leonardo DiCaprio out in the wilderness in The Revenant (2015). Plus plus, had Pitt never heard of old Hollywood adage of note working with animals and children.

And that adage proved correct because Odin the dog playing Odin the dog is immense. Not much to boast about in the cute department, but boy, isn’t he useful to have around in a tussle with wolves and any dog who can stare down an angry bear would go up a notch in anyone’s estimation. Plus, he has soulful eyes and it takes a good deal of strength for director David Ayer to resist the temptation just to quietly ease Pitt out of the picture altogether so charismatic is the canine.

But then Pitt hasn’t got where he is without having charisma of his own and I have to confess that he belongs to a very small group of actors – Matt Damon, DiCaprio, Timothy Chalamet, De Niro – who you can’t keep your eyes off when onscreen. That quiet intensity that draws you in then says, aw shucks, I’m just a laid-back dude, just stick with me and I’ll see you through.

This ain’t the kind the kind of territory it says on the tin, nothing like the freezing wilderness facing DiCaprio, but if you’ve got a heart condition, a broken arm and ultimately a ton of other crippling wounds, even walking from a remote point through Alaska 60 miles from anywhere (and that anywhere is just an invisible dot on the map, not a town or hamlet or anything, just a flatter, easier, terrain) on a peaceful summer’s day would be a stretch.

There’s no suggestion that ex-soldier James Belmont (Brad Pitt) is looking for a peaceful spot to die, but, for a survival expert he’s pretty damn dumb when it comes to medical supplies for dealing with a dodgy heart, a mouthful of aspirin ain’t going to do the trick. But otherwise, in survival terms, he’s on the ball, and part of the movie’s appeal is watching a survival expert at work, you could be sitting there taking notes he’s so good.

And you would be doing just that if there wasn’t a massive emotional tug that grips you from the start, the relationship between dog and man is just terrific, a buddy movie if you accept one is a canine. There’s nothing particularly novel about the action sequences – plane crash, walking over a ravine using a dodgy log, riding the rapids on your back, battling wolves and bears – but each is meticulously worked out and compellingg, especially the wolf attack.

The scene that sticks most in my mind, however, is the one the director makes not attempt to highlight. Belmont is sitting on an escarpment while his blood pools in holes in the rock.

Both dog and man suffer from PTSD and maybe being away from everyone is a way of dealing with it, and Belmont makes sure he’s packed enough beer to while away the evenings. The dog can give him lessons in survival, can pluck a salmon out of the river with his bear teeth, ignores Belmont’s command to avert his eyes from the bear, just flat-out stares the monster down.

Nobody’s going to be pushing Pitt for an Oscar, not while there are a bucket of more showy performances out there this year, but he should be a good outside bet, especially as he delivers on the most important front, keeping the audience hooked. This has started well enough at the box office but I’ve got a sneaky feeling it’s going to be a word-of-mouth hit driven by people like me who had their minimal expectations overturned.

That old crusty fella you saw in the trailer turns out to be J.K. Simmons (The Accountant 2, 2025), but he’s hardly in it. David Ayer (The Beekeeper, 2024) knows how to mine a great actor. Debut screenplay from music video director Cameron Alexander.

Riveting.

The Phantom Planet (1961) ***

A cross between Stanley Kubrick and Ed Wood. The intelligence of the former and the special effects deficiencies of the latter. But at least a sci fi where some attempt is made to render the science logical and believable and with a bit better acting would have left an emotional lump in the throat at the end.

The science in most successful sci fi – Interstellar (2015), The Martian (2015) or Project Hail Mary (2026) – is so complex that you really have to trust the imaginations of those involved and go with the flow. So I quite appreciate it when the science is more intelligible. So let’s start there.

The Phantom Planet is actually an asteroid and can whizz around and disappear from time to time because the inhabitants have found a way to control gravity thanks to the high density of the planet. The air they breathe means the inhabitants are tiny and because the planet is barren food is chemically produced.

Despite its level of scientific advancement, the inhabitants have opted for a primitive lifestyle of toil to avoid becoming dependent on labor-saving devices. To resolve dangerous disputes, they resort to duels where the loser is disintegrated by gravity. They’ve also managed to use a high magnetic field to lock molecules so closely together it creates an invisible impenetrable wall, ideal for containing dangerous prisoners, in this case their deadly enemy, a Solarite monster (Richard Kiel).

No idea if any of this science makes sense but it worked enough for me.

Astronaut Chapman (Dean Fredericks) is stranded on the planet where he is automatically miniaturized. He’s only a prisoner in that he can’t escape the planet and comes in handy to help leader Sessom (Francis X. Bushman) deter other space travellers. He’s even being romantically set up – given the choice between Sessom’s daughter Liara (Colleen Gray) or the mute Zetha (Dolores Faith), both, as you might expect, beauties dressed in alluring gowns.

Unfortunately, he’s got a love rival in Herron (Anthony Dexter) and that leads to a duel to the death although the inhabitants screaming for blood like in a Roman amphitheater are astonished when Chapman spares Herron’s life. Although initially more attracted to Liara, Chapman finds her too cold-blooded and becomes more inclined towards the mute girl.

The Solarites, whose planet is being sucked by gravity towards their sun, plan an invasion and while that is deflected it does free the imprisoned monster. Which is lucky in the narrative sense because first of all Zetha regains her voice through screaming in fear and secondly in tackling the monster creates a bond between Herron and Chapman, resulting in the former helping the latter to escape the planet.

Chapman’s torn between staying with Zetha and leaving and if the screenwriter had spent more time building this up and the director hired a better actor we would have had that rare event – a sci-fi tearjerker.

While the special effects look as if they’ve come out of a cereal packet or they’ve pre-empted Space Invaders, the miniaturization scene is exceptionally well done.

There’s maybe a moral in here somewhere, of how the mighty are fallen, in that Francis X. Bushman was one of the biggest stars of the silent era, having the titular role in Biblical spectacular Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925). And there’s a sense of pre-empting the Bond Girl phenomenon with a clutch of beauties in the background, presumably hoping a bigger director or someone from the casting department of a major studio might take notice.

As far as the talent contest went, this came too late in Dean Fredericks’ (Savage Sam, 1963) career to do him much good. Coleen Gray (P.J./ A New Face in Hell, 1967) didn’t make another film for four years. Anthony Dexter (Thoroughly Modern Millie, 1967) made only three more films, Dolores Faith (Wild Harvest, 1962) another six. Almost by default, Richard Kiel (Moonraker, 1979) was in effect the pick.

The final directorial effort – out of just three movies – from William Marshall. Screenplay by William Telaak in his only movie, Fred De Gorter (Dayton’s Devils, 1968) and Fred Gebhardt (12 to the Moon, 1960).

You can see this in the original black-and-white or in a colorized version.

Easy viewing and you won’t be annoyed by screenwriting laziness.

The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968) ***

Don Knotts (The Incredible Mr Limpet, 1964) was an acquired taste, relying overmuch on permafrozen goggle eyes and physical comedy. Despite the best efforts of The Great Race (1965) and It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) and the reissues of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy classics – perhaps because of this surfeit of slapstick – it would take a very special comedian to make as big an impression.

Bob Hope had gone down the cowardly cowboy route before in The Paleface (1948) and Son of Paleface (1952) and in fact this is pretty much a remake of The Paleface, substituting newcomer Barbara Rhoades (Don’t Just Stand There, 1968) in her sophomore outing as “Bad Penny” Penelope instead of Jane Russell as the more famous Calamity Jane. So it’s not a comparison a comedian would generally welcome – to be matched up against Bob Hope.

What distinguished Hope’s coward was that he always believed he was catnip to the ladies. Don Knotts was under no such illusions.

The story just reruns The Paleface – mild-mannered dentist Jesse Heywood (Don Knotts) is teamed up with sharpshooting criminal Penelope (Barbara Rhoades) to winkle out villains smuggling guns to Native Americans. The twist is that as part of the woman’s cover she’s been married off to the hapless dentist – for the simple reason that wagons trains won’t accept single women. Needless to say, their expectations of marriage differ.

While she manages to avoid intimacy, Jesse becomes acclaimed as a hero during a Native American attack, oblivious to the fact that it’s his wife who’s been doing all the shooting. That singles out Jesse as the undercover agent but he’s again saved by Penelope.

Eventually, he learns the truth but not in time to save Penelope who’s been kidnapped by the Rev Zachary Gant (Don “Red” Barry) and his sidekick Matthew Basch (Jackie Coogan) who have been smuggling weapons inside boxes of Bibles. When Jesse goes to the rescue it’s on the assumption Penelope’s marksmanship will save the day. However, she’s whisked out of the way and Jesse is forced to do his own gunfighting.

Even so, it’s not his skills with a gun that retrieve the situation, rather his dentistry, as he fixes the teeth of the Native American chief.

This relies far more on set pieces than the Bob Hope effort. Hope was able to draw the cinema audience towards him, a skill which Knotts lacks, so the humor results from the more obvious. However, there are a few scenes that don’t rely on Knotts. In one it’s the background character of a railway porter laden down with bags who snags the laffs.

Fear is a Knotts trope. During a stagecoach robbery he literally goes stiff with fear and has to be carried stiff as a piece of wood back into the stagecoach. Absent-minded, goofy, way out of his depth and not just with women, is the comedian’s schtick. Even when he develops a swagger following his deluded belief that he’s a six-gun ace, it’s the dumbest swagger ever.

Luckily, nobody’s trying to steal the scenes. The rest of the cast is drawn from more serious timber. You might be more pleased to see veteran Jackie Coogan (A Fine Madness, 1966), one-time child star, and B-western icon Don “Red” Barry (Alvarez Kelly, 1966) in more than their usual bit parts and to catch Pat Morita (The Karate Kid, 1984) in his sophomore venture.

Unfortunately, neither Knotts not Barbara Rhoades can come close to their predecessors.

Directed by Alan Rafkin – who had directed Knotts in The Ghost and Mr Chicken (1965) – from a screenplay by the team of Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum (The Ghost and Mr Chicken) based on The Paleface written by Frank Tashlin (Caprice, 1967) and Edward Hartmann (The Sword of Ali Baba, 1965).

I’d been very much aware of Don Knotts as I moseyed around 1960s cinema but, fearing disappointment, had steered clear. This will suffice, I think.

Easy on the eye as long as you keep your comparisons to yourself.

How the West Was Won (1962) **** *

I’ve got Alfred Newman’s toe-tapping theme music in my head. In fact, every time I think of this music I get an earworm full of it. Not that I’m complaining. The score – almost a greatest hits of spiritual and traditional songs – is one of the best things about it. But then you’re struggling to find anything that isn’t good about it. For some reason, this western never seems to be given its due among the very best westerns.

Not only is it a rip-roaring picture feature the all-star cast to end all-star casts it’s a very satisfying drama to boot and it follows an arc that goes from enterprise to consequence, pretty much the definition of all exploration.

Given it covers virtually a half-century – 1839-1889 – and could easily have been a sprawling mess dotted by cameos, it is an astonishingly clever in knowing when to drop characters and when to take them up again, and there’s very little of the maudlin. For every pioneer there’s a predator or hustler whether river pirates, gamblers or outlaws and even a country as big as the United States can’t get any peace with itself, the Civil War coming plumb in the middle of the narrative.

Some enterprising character has built the Erie Canal, making it much easier for families to head west by river. Mountain man fur trader Linus Rawlings (James Stewart) on meeting prospective pioneers the Prescotts has a hankering after the young Eve (Carroll Baker) but as self-confessed sinner and valuing his freedom has no intention of settling down. But he is bushwhacked by river pirates headed by Jeb Hawkins (Walter Brennan) and left for dead, but after saving the Prescotts from the gang changes his mind about settling down and they set up a homesteading.

We have already been introduced to Eve’s sister Lilith (Debbie Reynolds) who has attracted the attention of huckster Cleve Van Valen (Gregory Peck) and they meet again in St Louis where she is a music hall turn and widow. Her physical attraction pales in comparison with the fact she has inherited a gold mine. He follows her in a wagon train which survives attack by Cheyenne, but still she resists him, not falling for him until a third meeting on a riverboat.

Zeb Rawlings (George Peppard) wants to follow his father to fight in the Civil War. Linus dies there, but there’s no great drama about it, he’s just another casualty, and the death is in the passing. In probably the only section that feels squeezed in, after the Battle of Shiloh a disillusioned Zeb saves General Sherman (John Wayne) and Ulysses S. Grant (Harry Morgan) from an assassin.

*The space at the top of this ad was for cinemas to stick in their own name.*

Returning home to find Eve dead, Zeb hands over his share of the farm to his brother and heads west to join the U.S. Cavalry at a time when the Army is required to keep the peace with Native Americans enraged by railroad expansion. Zeb links up with buffalo hunter Jethro Stuart (Henry Fonda), who appeared at the beginning as a friend of his father.

Eve, a widow again, meets up in Arizona with family man and lawman Zeb who uncovers a plot by outlaw Charlie Gant (Eli Wallach) to hijack a train. Zeb turns rancher once again, looking after her farm.

But the drama is peppered throughout by the kind of vivid action required of the Cinerama format, all such sections filmed from the audience point-of-view. So the Prescotts are caught in thundering rapids, there’s a wagon train attack and buffalo stampede, and a speeding train heading to spectacular wreck. There’s plenty other conflict and not so many winsome moments.

Interestingly, in the first half it’s the women who drive the narrative, Eve taming Linus, Lilith constantly fending off Cleve. And there’s no shortage of exposing the weaknesses and greed of the explorers, the railroad barons and buffalo hunters and outlaws, and few of the characters are aloof from some version of that greed, whether it be to own land or a gold mine or even in an incipient version of the rampaging buffalo hunters to pick off enough to make a healthy living.

And here’s the kicker. Virtually the entire all-star cast play against type. John Wayne (Circus World, 1964) reveals tremendous insecurity, Gregory Peck (Mirage, 1965) is an unscrupulous though charming renegade, the otherwise sassy Debbie Reynolds (My Six Loves, 1963) is as dumb as they come to fall for him, and for all the glimpses of the aw-shucks persona James Stewart (Shenandoah, 1965) plays a much meaner hard-drinking hard-whoring version of his mean cowboy. Carroll Baker (Station Six Sahara, 1963) is an innocent not her usual temptress while George Peppard (The Blue Max, 1966) who usually depends on charm gets no opportunity to use it. .

Also worth mentioning: Henry Fonda (Madigan, 1968), Lee J. Cobb (Coogan’s Bluff, 1968), Carolyn Jones (Morticia in The Addams Family, 1964-1966), Eli Wallach (The Moon-Spinners, 1964), Richard Widmark (Madigan), Karl Malden (Nevada Smith, 1966) and Robert Preston (The Music Man, 1962).

Though John Ford (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 1962) had a hand (the short Civil War episode) in directing the picture, it was a small part, and virtually all the credit belongs to Henry Hathaway (Circus World) who helmed three of the five sections with George Marshall (The Sheepman, 1958) taking up the slack for the railroad section.

And though you might balk at the idea of trying to cover such a lengthy period, there’s no doubting the skill of screenwriter James R. Webb (Alfred the Great, 1969) to mesh together so many strands, bring so many characters alive and write such good dialog.

I’m still tapping my toe as I write this and I was tapping my toe big-style to be able to see this courtesy of the Bradford Widescreen Weekend on the giant Cinerama screen with an old print where the vertical lines occasionally showed up.

The Pursuers (1961) ***

I tell you now there’s nothing particularly great or particularly awful about this tidy British programmer, made to take advantage of the Eady Levy and suitable only for the bottom half of a double bill, and yet it still has quite a bit to offer. It’s a chase picture, a hunt, but the emphasis, despite the title, is not on the hunters but on the hunted.

Who in this case turns out to be one of those evil people hiding out under the guise of the normal. Before emigrating to Britain, Luther (Cyril Shaps) was a Nazi commandment of a concentration camp. David (Francis Mathews), member of secret group operating out of Paris (cue an establishing shot of the Eiffel Tower), has been despatched not to out him but to kill him.

Luther runs a respectable business in London, and what makes this so interesting is that all the people he turns to for help are all in respectable businesses, yet all have war crimes to hide and appear to have done so successfully. So if you are a famous film director, the British movie industry will welcome you with open arms and scarcely a trace of suspicion about your past.

Since British food was generally in the 1960s regarded as the worst in the western world, then any German who can add a bit of culinary class to a restaurant is also more than welcome. And so it goes on. It’s like these people have managed to disappear into a witness protection program. Although the Mossad hunted down war criminals and had recently located Eichmann in South America and brought him back for a show trial in Israel, it’s clear there was no coordinated worldwide hunt for Nazi war criminals.

When his old buddies don’t want to disturb their carefully constructed facades by helping him out, Luther turns to the underworld. At first, it looks like he’ll get away. He plans to take the next flight out. He’s got plenty dough stashed away.

But what has prompted his fear of discovery is that his apartment’s been burgled and the burglar has daubed a swastika on a mirror. But nothing else has been taken and the police refuse to post a guard outside his house. Except something has been taken – the most important page in his passport has been cut out so that escape route is, temporarily, blocked.

Nightclub owner and gangster Rico (Sheldon Lawrence) fingers him for being someone who can easily and subtly be relieved of his cash, so he sends over sex worker Jenny (Susan Denny) to chat him up.

Ostensibly taking pity on him, Jenny, who escaped the concentration camps, agrees to hide him away in her apartment, presumably able to show sympathy while at the same time finding a way to rob him. She believes his tale of being a good German, a soldier forced to fight.

Unfortunately, this is too loosely constructed for the movie to take advantage of this situation. Though, technically, he is forced to confront one of his victims, in reality her tale washes over him and there’s no sign of remorse. You might not expect that, of course, mass murderers, especially ones who believe what they are doing is right, are unlikely to examine their consciences. But, still, the fact that he shows no reaction at all, makes this just appear a narrative contrivance, since after all, we already know what the Nazis did in the concentration camps.

This came out after Judgement at Nuremberg (1961) which was more specific about the Nazi atrocities, so we wouldn’t have needed any further exposition. That it does work is down to Jenny, sufficiently taken in by this imposter to open up her soul.

Anyways our Luther is a clever clogs and working out that, since his pursuers know both that he lacks a passport and that he’s already been turned away at the airport, he reckons the last thing they’ll expect him to do is try to use that escape route again.

There’s more shootout than you’d expect from what appeared initially as a straightforward drama. But it poses more interesting questions rather than being a rewarding thriller.

As far as I can make out this proved the only top-billed role in the career of Cyril Shaps (Return of a Stranger, 1961) but he enjoyed a very healthy run as a supporting actor. Susan Denny (Too Hot to Handle, 1960) only made one more film. Francis Mathews (Crossplot, 1969) made more of an impact on television as Paul Temple (1969-1971) and as the voice of Captain Scarlet in Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967-1968).

Directed by Geoffrey Grayson (The Lamp in Assassin Mews, 1962) from a script by Brian Clemens (The Corrupt Ones / The Peking Medallion) and David Nicholl in his debut.

For such an undemanding piece, asks interesting questions.

Jaws 2 (1978) ***

When your movie is best remembered for its tagline “just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water” – you know it’s in trouble. And although this is the best of the sequels, that’s a low bar. Possibly, studio Universal couldn’t have care less, given its performance at the box office, setting the weekend record and topping the annual box office league, with more receipts due when it was paired with the original in a reissue double bill.

The main problem isn’t that wunderkind Steven Spielberg avoided the project and deprived the movie of visual class. Or that original director John Hancock (Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, 1971) was axed in favor of Jeannot Swarc (Bug, 1975). But that the screenwriters took their eye off a very interesting ball and placed the emphasis on the kind of really annoying screaming teenagers you were begging for the shark to gobble up.

We already knew that Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) couldn’t swim but it turns out he’s next to useless in handling a boat and has never learned the most basic navigational skills. In some sense not surprising given his last voyage was unadulterated terror. But you might have thought he’d try better to acclimatize himself to the island’s ways and take a basic seamanship course.

Already, the movie sets the tone of him shifting towards the demented as, obsessed with the arrival of another great sea beast, he scares the hell out of beachgoers by blazing his six-shooter at a harmless tuna, this setting him firmly at odds with the community hierarchy who are involved in some money-making construction project.

We’ve leaned in pretty much to his emotions, the fear of a repetition of the previous incident, and the dissolution of his character as he falls apart under the pressure. So what better than to strand him in the middle of the ocean, barely able to master a boat, and completely lost and having to go mano a mano against a great white in a downscale version of The Old Man and the Sea.

Instead, having not bothered to flesh out the characters of any of the boating youngsters beyond that they were in the main cast for their physical attributes and for passing with flying colors the scream test, we are stuck with them for too long. Of course, you can make the argument that all the audience wants to see is a lot of chomping and a bunch of teenagers fits the bill as abundant prey, but that’s to deny the impact of just threat rather than gore that Spielberg achieved with his masterpiece.

It’s obvious why composer John Williams steered clear of his iconic Jaws theme because there just wasn’t sufficient threat to pin it on. Of course, we don’t need a know-it-all shark expert because the audience already received as much education on that score as was required via the previous iteration. But we sure do miss an old seadog like Quint.

Half the way in, I thought – not having seen it since it came out and my memory of that restricted to the tag line – this has all the makings of a very decent sequel with the emphasis at that point on Brody’s disintegrating character. Heap it on, I was almost yelling at the screen, put him through more angst and terror, get him out there alone with the shark and figure out a way to survive.

Quite how Brody would have killed off the beast without a deux ex machina in the shape of a seabed electricity cable that somehow the shark with a whole lunch and dinner of helpless teenagers sitting in his immediate line of sight instead heads for said cable because the Chief is able to attract him by beating out a tune on the cable is anybody’s guess. If your screenwriters had exhausted every other notion of how to kill the shark, then for sure, a cable comes in handy, but again that’s a very low bar.

Roy Scheider (Jaws, 1975) gets to be even more swivel-eyed and anxious than before but nobody else makes a mark and even Murray Hamilton, reprising his role as the sleazy mayor, isn’t on screen long enough. I would have stuck him out in the boat with the Chief and let him go through some rite of passage so that he turns into a good guy.

Clearly, Universal was depending on lightning striking twice with neophyte director Jeannot Swarc but he only shows what he lacks compared to Spielberg stuck with a lame screenplay by Carl Gottlieb (Jaws) and Howard Sackler (Gray Lady Down, 1978) which is connected in name only to the Peter Benchley bestseller.

Good up to a point then abruptly capsizes.

I Saw What You Did (1965) ***

You can see why producer-director William Castle (The Night Walker, 1964) employed Joan Crawford (Berserk, 1967) in what is effectively a bait-and-switch ruse because the story, even for those times, takes a very disturbing tone. These days audiences might well shy away from what is effectively a tale of an innocent teenager becoming enamored of a much older man and imitating, by telephone and without adult encouragement, the seductive tones of a much older girl.

It wasn’t so unusual for young girls to come into harm’s way at that period. Hayley Mills, in a kind of Nancy Drew fashion, gets herself into trouble in The Moon-Spinners (1964). But what makes this piece so distasteful is the sexual undertone. Modern audiences might also recoil from parents leaving their kids alone overnight so they can go to a dinner party. And what was termed a “prank phone call” would take on a more unsavory element these days.

Otherwise, it is well done, especially the bait-and-switch.

While her parents are away teenager Libby (Andi Garrett) and her pal Kit (Sarah Lane) start phoning round numbers they find in the phone book. Initially, Libby pretends to be a girl friend of the man (it’s the male name in the book) she’s phoning, putting on a silky voice and hoping to upset an unsuspecting wife.

However, mostly people don’t fall for that line. So then, silky voice intact, she starts going with the line, “I saw what you did and I know who you are.” Unbeknownst to her, one of her victims, Steve (John Ireland), has just done away with his wife Psycho-style in the shower and buried her body in a narrow grave.

He’s been having an affair with his neighbor Amy (Joan Crawford) who is initially happy to fall for the line that his wife’s left him. Amy is so besotted with him that when he seems less keen on marrying her she, finding blood in the bathroom and the murder weapon, resorts to blackmail. This does her no good and in a straight rip-off/homage to Psycho the director is killing off his top-billed star halfway through the picture.

That leaves us with the foolish Libby, so determined to meet up with the alluring (in her mind) mystery man that she drives up to see him (addresses were listed in phone books back in the day). Instead of some strictly romantic assignation, he not only frightens the life out of her but gets hold of her driving license/registration and so has her address. Convinced that she is indeed a witness, off he heads to off her and, presumably, her baby sister.

By this point it’s only Libby and the child in the house, Kit having been collected by her more responsible father. The anxious mother, unable to reach Libby by phone, asks the local police to check on the kids, which is promptly done, prior to Steve reaching the house.

Now we follow the traditional scary bits, but without the jump shocks that are part-and-parcel of today’s horror picture. There’s only one really tense moment, when Libby thinks she’s going to escape in her car, only for an arm to creep over from the back seat.

This looks like it was a box office success which shows you how much audiences back in the day were worried about child safety. I’m not sure given the film’s treatment that it would be so acceptable to a modern audience.

But I’m being fair to the rest of it. While Joan Crawford is her usually immaculate-dressed and -coiffed self, she plays more of a victim than a predator, overwhelmed by love for Steve that she’s willing to marry a murderer. John Ireland (The Ceremony, 1963) has the chance, for once, to shine and, except when wielding the knife, manages to keep a lid on his inner beast.

It’s hard to recommend for the reasons outlined but it might appeal to Joan Crawford and William Castle completists.

The Mad Room (1969) ***

Tight little thriller lifted by excellent performances from Stella Stevens and Shelley Winters focusing on murders a dozen years apart. Mandy (Barbara Sammeth) and older brother George (Michael Burns), incarcerated in a mental institution after the murder of their parents, the twist being nobody can discover which child was responsible, are released into the custody of big sister Ellen (Stella Stevens), secretary to wealthy widow Mrs Armstrong (Shelley Winters) and betrothed to her son Sam (Skip Ward).

While concealing the children’s past, Ellen persuades Mrs Armstrong to offer them lodgings, that arrangement coming unstuck when the kids demand a room where they can go “to work things out.” Armstrong is a bit barmy, engaged on building beside her home a museum to her husband, hence contractors and construction workers on site, and a horde of “ladies who lunch” involved in fundraising. She has also appropriated masseur Armand (Lou Kane), husband of alcoholic Mrs Racine (Beverly Garland), to fulfil her sexual needs.

*Don’t worry – the poster doesn’t give the game away.*
*The blood comes from Stella Stevens discovering the corpse.*

When Mrs Armstrong threatens to chuck the kids out, she comes to a sticky end, and the question is raised again of whether Mandy or George are responsible. Mandy is the more highly-strung, stubborn and likely to challenge authority. George appears predatory, stalking the maid. Both are convinced the other is guilty.

Meanwhile, Ellen undertakes to remove the body and pretend Armstrong met her death by accident at a beauty spot, no mean feat given the palaver caused by the builders outside and the constant need for construction decisions and the unexpected arrival of a posse of ladies including the alcoholic Mrs Racine intent on raising merry hell.

It’s part whodunit, part nutcases-on-the-loose, part film noir, part slasher picture, and part grand guignol. Hands are severed and blood is used to daub flowers on the walls. It’s tense enough even before Armstrong’s demise. She’s not only a loony, but untrustworthy, selfish, capricious and demanding, and it’s as much as Ellen can stand to constantly iron out all the loose ends in her employer’s life. But she sounds believable, an earnest do-gooder even while conspiring against what she sees as Ellen’s gold-digging.

Ellen, life thrown into turmoil after the death of her overbearing impoverished parents and only now building a new identity removed from the shadow of the children, faces the prospect of losing her ideal future. While it would have suited her for the children never to be released, she exhibits surprisingly a strong emotional attachment to her siblings, willing to both shelter and protect them, and conceal again their crimes.

Initial tension revolves around a chase, savage dogs, a shifty maid and Ellen dealing with the manipulative Mrs Armstrong, holding her own long enough until she is safely married, while further pressure builds with the necessity to cover up the murder, explain Mrs Armstrong’s absence, cope with the sudden influx of people and ascertain who has the murderous tendencies. There are some excellent scenes and twisty payoffs, and quite a bit of misdirection – the chase, rabid dogs, a childish song – and some inspired drama such as Mrs Racine letting rip, and Mrs Armstrong’s growing puzzlement.

Stella Stevens (Sol Madrid, 1968), normally eye candy or in a supporting role, is a revelation as Ellen, creating a grounded personality, with several changes of emotion and except for being a little pop-eyed on occasion carries off the part tremendously well and not falling prey to the temptation of grandstanding. Shelley Winters (A House Is Not a Home, 1964), who knows all about playing larger-than-life characters, tones it down here, even the obvious nuttiness reined in.

Michael Burns (That Cold Day in the Park, 1969) is the better of the two younger actors, while Barbara Sammeth’s (Foul Play, 1978) stiffness could be put down to inexperience – this was her debut. Otherwise former horror queen Beverly Garland (Stark Fear, 1962) is the pick.

The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1964) ***

The feckless in movies usually have charm to see them through. The titular Ginger (Robert Shaw) is remarkably deficient on that front. He’s the wishful-thinker par excellence though his wishes are off the scale and he seems to be also deficient on the thinking front. After 14 years in the Army in Ireland, he’s emigrated with wife Vera (Mary Ure) and daughter Paulie (Libby McLintock) to Canada where he has notably failed the make the grade.

He’s eminently employable, just not at the type of job to which he thinks he is entitled, if not directly in the managerial line then something where promotion is guaranteed. He’s always got an excuse for quitting a job after a few weeks.

This would fall into the “kitchen sink drama” sub-genre except that Ginger is not exactly on the breadline and if poverty threatens it’s through his own self-destructive and selfish tendencies. His wife has given up so Ginger has to lie to her about having already bought the boat tickets home.

He’s so unsympathetic, self-deluded and dishonest that you are virtually shouting hurrah for Vera when she takes up with another man, Joe (Tom Harvey), a journalist and ostensibly Ginger’s best friend. That shocks him out of his malaise, and he takes up a job delivering diapers. Even getting in at the bottom of the newspaper business, working as a proofreader, isn’t enough for his inflated ambition. But he’s been kicked out his apartment, sleeping now at the YMCA. Further humiliations ensue, sufficient for him to accept his shortcomings and try to change.

While he’s confident in his own potential, nobody else is and the movie basically trudges along with him until he comes to his senses. This isn’t an emigrant’s tale in the normal cinematic sense because he’s not ostracized because of his nationality, not barred from jobs, in fact there’s a whole system set up by the Government to help him find a job.

It takes his wife quite a while to cotton on to his constant deception

Quite why such a downbeat picture ever got made is a mystery. The novel by Brian Moore, on which it was based was certainly a literary and commercial success, and it was funded by Frank Crawley, possibly the biggest of the Canadian independents, on a $500,000 budget. It ended up on arthouse release in the UK.

Richard Harris was originally nailed-on for the part but he swapped it for Sam Peckinpah’s Major Dundee (1965). Harris would have brought more immediate physical energy and a sense of danger to the role, rather than the sense of an oaf just bumbling along.

Possibly the best thing about it is the realism. Yes, it’s really the star crossing icy roads, just avoiding oncoming traffic in scenes that were clearly set on Montreal roads and not on the safety of a sound stage.

Shaw and Ure were married, so were both tagged as rising stars, the husband coming off From Russia with Love (1963), but there was argument to put that she was already the bigger marquee name after Look Back in Anger (1959), Sons and Lovers (1960) and female lead in The Mind Benders (1963).

This really had not much going for it other than worthiness, the chance for a decent film with some reasonable names to come out of Canada, and to give another rising star, director Irvin Kershner (A Fine Madness, 1966), a chance. Written by Moore (Torn Curtain, 1966).

Well-made but too dour for me.

Amazon Prime has it. In fact, it was recommended to me on that channel because I had watched Two Gentlemen Sharing.

Heavens Above! (1963) ***

Surprisingly topical – food banks a key element – social satire. And a surprising box office smash – among the top 12 films of the year – in Britain, although the Boulting Brothers (I’m Alright Jack, 1959), often viewed as inheriting the Ealing mantle, had both commercial and critical form.

In a case of mistaken identity, simplistic prison chaplain Rev Smallwood (Peter Sellers) is sent to rich parish Orbiston Parva, virtually endowed by the Delpard family, owners of the Tranquillax business nearby. Smallwood, an advocate of the meek inheriting the earth and making it his mission to ensure the rich can enter the kingdom of Heaven other than through a needle, convinces Lady Delpard (Isabel Jeans) to spread her wealth. This takes the form of the Good Neighbour Fellowship, whereby she sets up a food bank whose popularity soon endangers the town’s retailers and merchants, the public, naturally enough, preferring to do their shopping at the free church outlet than spend money on a butcher or baker (possibly candlestick makers escaped the impact).

Meanwhile, to show he is up to scratch in the poverty ranks, Smallwood invites into his palatial manse the Smith family who are being evicted from their plot of ground to make way for an expansion of the Tranquillax factory. Despite ruffling feathers in the ministry, Smallwood can’t be turfed out, since religious law dictates he effectively owns the manse. However, once shops have to close for lack of trade and factories, for lack of goods being sold, make thousands redundant, Smallwood’s do-gooding backfires.

While Harry Smith (Eric Sykes) is an archetypal welfare swindler (taking home £90 a week) and inclined to siphon off items from the food bank for his own entrepreneurial purposes as well as stealing lead from the church roof, the rest of his enormous brood, led by the redoubtable Rene (Irene Handl) are converted to the joys of Christianity, enough so much so that baptism and marriage (between the couple) beckon.

Most of the humour is gentle, the biggest laughs – Smallwood inadvertently eating dog biscuits, a dog peeing on his leg, choirboy reading a dirty book, the butler initiating a miraculous intervention – are straight out of the Charlie Chaplin joke book. And the timing for many lines appears out of kilter, as though the laughs were not intended.

*British films around this time often received rave reviews from U.S. critics which ensured reasonable business at the arthouses while not striking a box office chord with the general public. there.*

Apart from Smallwood, his assistant Matthew (Brock Peters) and the converted Lady Despard you are hard put to find any Chistians. As one character observes “not enough decent Christians to feed one lion.” And the townspeople are generally shown as scroungers of one kind of another with the Smiths typical sex-obsessed chip-guzzling working class. The business owners, bishops, aristocrats and assorted politicians are similarly pilloried for greed and inefficiency so you could say the Boultings are being fair straight down the line.

The best scene, and the one that makes the most out of a comic situation, is when the real Rev Smallwood (Ian Camrichael) turns up, is treated as an imposter and locked up for displaying psychotic tendencies. And there’s a clever, even more topical ending, involving space exploration, which equally cleverly mimics an earlier scene. Actually, there are two scenes that echo earlier activities, and both are intelligently used.

The satire retains some of its bite. There are even more rich people around now who hold onto their wealth and there are more poor people in clear need of help, assistance that would extend far beyond food banks, a relatively recent phenomenon. You can be sure selfish big business will be as self-interested.

Peter Sellers, complete with regional accent, in pre-Pink Panther mode shows dramatic skills that he would rarely be allowed to exhibit until much later in his career and although I think he should have been permitted more leeway in his lines he doesn’t deliver them as though he is milking a joke which means dramatic intent is not diluted. He is perfectly believable as the quietly-spoken forgiving vicar surrounded by more grasping colleagues who appear to have forgotten the basics of Christianity, his immediate boss, for example, on holiday in Monte Carlo.

British television comedian Eric Sykes (The Liquidator, 1965), barely recognisable after abandoning his trademark stance and voice, is the standout as the conniver-in-chief. Brock Peters (The Pawnbroker, 1964) is effective as the bin lorry driving protégé and Isabel Jeans (A Breath of Scandal, 1960) a delight as Smallwood’s slightly dotty benefactor – her look as she realizes he has scoffed the dog biscuits worth a couple of laughs. The others, good as they are, are called upon to play little more than stock characters: Cecil Parker (The Comedy Man, 1964), Ian Carmichael (The Amorous Mr Prawn, 1962) and Irene Handl (The Wrong Box, 1966). Look out for Roy Kinnear (Lock Up Your Daughters!, 1969), the first Doctor Who William Hartnell and the future Miss Marple Joan Hickson.

Ably directed by Roy and John Boulting who easily hit all their targets, the screenplay is by Frank Harvey (I’m Alright, Jack), John Boulting and critic Malcolm Muggeridge.