Brian Hannan

Guns for San Sebastian (1968) ****

Pre-Stagecoach (1939) Hollywood used to differentiate between historical adventure pictures and westerns. Given it’s set in 1746, before there was such a thing as a revolver or repeater rifle, so a complete absence of gunslingers, this falls squarely into the former camp though its format displays western credentials. A tad top-heavy with religious allegory, “miracles,” peasant piety and an Ennio Morricone score mainlining on the celestial, nonetheless it manages to achieve a character-driven narrative and some powerful action sequences.

However, it’s a lengthy set-up. Outlaw Leon (Anthony Quinn), on the run from Mexican troops, takes refuge in a church. As punishment for giving him sanctuary Fr Joseph (Sam Jaffe) is expelled to the abandoned church of San Sebastian in an equally abandoned village. Ringing the bell to attract parishioners only alerts bandits who kill him. Donning his garb, Leon is mistaken for a priest by Yaqui leader Teclo (Charles Bronson) and strung up crucifixion style. But he’s rescued by villagers who almost elevate him to sainthood courtesy of a couple of accidental “miracles.”

Enjoying his newfound status, but still attracted to peasant Kinita (Anjanette Comer), he directs the parishioners to build a dam to flood the fields to assist in corn-growing. Teclo objects to challenges to his authority and burns down the village. The villagers turn against Leon, and although initially intending to vanish, he decides instead to blackmail his mistress, the wife of the local governor (Fernard Gravey) who agrees to supply him with weapons. Leon builds a fortress to withstand the expected attack setting up a very engaging climax in which the dam plays a critical role.

A modern audience might expect a sturdier narrative rather than one that seems to shift at whim, not helped by Leon’s indecision. And it’s too slight a vehicle to carry the political points, the state of Mexico at the time, the settlers vs. original occupants (i.e. Native Indians) scenario, the problems facing half-breeds (Leon and Teclo both), but it’s better at exploring the power of the church, the worship bestowed on any priest who turns up, regardless of how ill-suited he appears. The occasional comic sequence, banter with an architect, negotiation with a Mexican colonel, seems out of place.

On the other hand there is a truly mesmerizing performance from Anthony Quinn (Lost Command, 1966) as a womanizing low-life who happens upon redemption, so deep does his impersonation of a priest go that he can’t bring himself to touch the compliant Kinita, who is aware of his true identity. Switching between shiftiness and godliness at the drop of a hat and deriding villagers for their lack of character his turning point comes when he realizes he has fallen into the same trap. That he emerges as a wily man of conscience is no mean feat.

The other big bonus is to see someone at last recognize Charles Bronson (Once upon a Time in the West, 1969). Here he is given cinematic status, camera pitched up at his face, and allowed to eliminate the growl and monosyllabic delivery that has been his wont in lesser roles. He’s a rather decent villain at the end.

There are a couple of inconsistencies. Teclo wants villagers to take to the hills but on the other hand somehow to spend enough time tending the corn that come harvest time he can steal. And it’s a bit too neat how he falls into the dam trap.

All in all, enjoyable and very under-rated primarily, i suspect, because people come at it expecting a western rather than a historical film in the adventure vein. But it’s elevated by the intriguing narrative, the questionable hero, Quinn’s performance and the introduction to a new-look Bronson.

Frenchman Henri Verneuil (The Sicilian Clan, 1969) does well to probe so many issues for an audience probably expecting something more straightforward. James Webb (Alfred the Great, 1969) wrote the screenplay based on novel by a William Faherty, a Jesuit priest. In the book, the hero was a soldier who became a priest rather than an atheist opportunistic outlaw.

War-Gods of the Deep / City Under the Sea (1965) ***

Hollywood careers rarely end in a blaze of cinematic glory. Sudden death ensured Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe (The Misfits, 1961) and Spencer Tracy (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, 1967) went out with a bang but more likely a career is just going to tail off and end with this kind of whimper. Director Jacques Tourneur, in any case, was long past a heyday that saw him set the horror genre agog with Cat People (1942), I Walked with a Zombie (1943) and The Leopard Man (1943).

If that wasn’t enough to solidify his credentials he dipped into another genre, the nascent film noir, and helmed gems like Experiment Perilous (1944) with Hedy Lamarr and Out of the Past (1947) with Robert Mitchum. Thereafter came swashbucklers The Flame and the Arrow (1950) headlining Burt Lancaster and Anne of the Indies (1951) plus crime drama Appointment in Honduras (1953) with the ever-dependable Glenn Ford and Joel McCrea western Wichita (1955). Then, miraculously, it was back to horror with Night of the Demon (1957) and the late flurry of The Comedy of Terrors (1963).

You can tell where I’m going with all this. War-Gods of the Deep has nothing on any of these pictures. The backstory is much more interesting than the actual film.

Basically, this is one of those pictures where an unlikely pair, American Ben Harris (Tab Harris) and eccentric Brit Harold Tufnell-Jones (David Tomlinson) get themselves into an unlikely situation and have to get themselves out of it.

Set in the smugglers’ paradise of the British Cornish coast around the turn of the last century, on a hotel on top of a cliff, the duo need to track down another American, Jill (Susan Hart), who has disappeared down a plughole, sorry mini-whirlpool. This leads to a legendary underwater city where smugglers led by Sir Hugh (Vincent Price) have found the secret of eternal life, a paradise now endangered by tremors from a nearby volcano.

*The Italians didn’t fancy the two titles on offer so came up with their own*
*by purloining the Jules Verne classic.*

He sent his enslaved Gill-Men to kidnap Jill in the erroneous belief that she is his dead wife. Bored out of their minds with listening to Sir Hugh prattling on endlessly about how the underwater city came into being and how important he is to the whole affair and what imminent dangers the inhabitants now face, and of course faced with their own imminent demise as sacrificial victims, the pair decide to scoot, having found a willing accomplice.

There’s a chase and whatever, and some undersea adventure, but there’s not much to it.

However, what you do get when you add someone like Tourneur – and to that extent Vincent Price and his ominous tones – to this listless mix is atmosphere. Tourneur can inject eeriness almost just by switching on a camera, despite a very stage-bound picture, and he knows how to add a music score that tremendously aids his enterprise. The opening section by the shore and in the hotel adds the necessary element of mystery to make the whole idea float.

There clearly wasn’t enough of a budget for the Gill-Men to appear as anything but peripheral figures which actually might have helped since, the state of special effects in that time might have made them laughable rather than distantly disturbing.

The best you can say is that Tourneur made the best of a bad job. Vincent Price (Diary of a Madman, 1963) only has to turn up to inject an element of danger. Tab Hunter (Ride the Wild Surf, 1963) and Susan Hart (Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, 1965) needn’t have bothered turning up for all they bring to the party. And David Tomlinson (Bedknobs and Broomsticks, 1971) brings far too much, saddled with a pet comic chicken for no apparent reason except to extract a few laughs.

AIP, having made its name in the horror department by raiding the portfolio of Edgar Allan Poe, turned up this source material deep in that vault. But the only connection to Poe is the original idea – which was not that original, other poets having plumbed those depths prior – and that appears only in occasional desultory recitations of the poem. But, as a marketing tool, hey, Edgar Allan Poe, that’ll scare their socks off!

So, you are warned, but also you can’t help but warm to this final movie by one of the Hollywood greats as he tries to put a sheen on something that in other hands would have sunk like a stone.

The Long and the Short and the Tall / Jungle Fighters (1961) ****

The Brits were onto something in wartime Malaysian jungles in 1942 – sonic warfare. Imagine the franchise possibilities for comic-book or spy villains (The Brides of Fu Manchu, 1966, or Some Girls Do, 1969, anyone?). Fortunately, this ignores such temptations and takes a long hard raw look at the reality of conflict, courage and cowardice, the desire and reality of killing.

Beginning as a fairly stock examination of men in combat, the usual clash of personalities, bullying loudmouths, and it being British elements of class distinction. But it quickly moves on to something much deeper, initially tough guys worrying about what their wives are getting up in their absence back home, but on capturing a Japanese soldier what exactly to do with him once his usefulness is over. Treat him according to the Geneva Convention as a prisoner-of-war and escort him back to base or just get rid of him and save yourself the trouble.

Five main characters make up this squad. Sgt Mitchem (Richard Todd) is the ruthless leader under pressure. He was busted down to corporal for losing a previous patrol, has got his stripe back and wants to prove his worth. But he appears to be from a different generation to his troops, his stiff upper lip only too evident while the others just give lip.

Corporal Johnstone (Richard Harris) likes to remind him of his previous misdemeanor and question his judgement. Racist Private Bamforth (Laurence Harvey) riles everyone, especially picking on Lance Corporal Macleish (Ronald Fraser) who is as likely to reply with his fists. Radio operator Private Whitaker (David McCallum) is over-keen on the spoils of war, kitbag stuffed with enemy mementoes.

After apprehending Jap soldier Tojo (Kenji Takaki) Johnstone is inclined to bayonet him right away (a bullet would attract attention). Others, more squeamish than principled, balk at the deed. At first Bamforth makes fun of the captive, belittling him, but then views him as a human being caught up in a war not of his making, giving him cigarettes, trying to make him more comfortable. When Macleish starts slapping the prisoner around, Bamforth defends him, though it’s obvious Mitchem and Johnstone have no intention of taking him back.

Then the tide turns. They are surrounded by Japs and it’s battle for real with an enemy who can defend itself. Action determines character. Some are revealed as complete cowards, others will abandon colleagues to save their skin, others are instinctively courageous, others yet again with a bit more cunning.

But the firefight when it comes is nothing like any other battle you have seen where Allied forces invariably triumph. There’s none of the clever ruses more typical of the genre.

This is by far the rawest depiction of British soldiers on the battle. The characters and conversation hit home. Tough guys are nothing but vulnerable. Although it appears that way, none of the characters actually change, it’s more that their real personalities emerge.

This is Laurence Harvey’s (The Running Man, 1963) best performance. In other pictures, his clipped delivery hid an edge of malevolence, and especially to retain audience sympathy he restrained an inner nastiness, even when ruthless as in Room at the Top (1958), this aspect more important if the male lead in a romance or essaying a decent character. Here, the real Harvey is let loose in the sense that his delivery is more normal, as if he delights in taking pleasure in using language to gut his victims. Sure, it’s an ideal central role, the guy who starts off one way and ends another, but he really brings it to life.

Richard Harris (This Sporting Life, 1963) was a rising star at this point. And it shows. He’s always trying to steal scenes, an unnecessary gesture, a roll of the eyes, forceful delivery. He turns out to be nastier than everyone else. Richard Todd (Subterfuge, 1968) also plays against type, no longer the heroic figure of The Dam Busters (1955) but fighting not just the enemy and his fellow soldiers but his internal demons.

Ronald Fraser (Fathom, 1967), often condemned to humorous supporting parts, also has a meatier role as does David McCallum (The Spy in the Green Hat, 1967).

Apart from a heavy dose of rain and some stock shots of animals, it betrays its stage roots, based on a play by Willis Hall, but that hardly matters when the dialog is so sharp, the characters so well-drawn and the drama so intense.

Leslie Norman (Dunkirk, 1958) does an excellent job of focusing on character and making the action believable. Wolf Mankowitz (The Day the Earth Caught Fire, 1961) was credited with the screenplay.

High-quality stuff.

Mr Hobbs Takes A Vacation (1963) ***

Audiences reared on the actor’s westerns and Hitchcock thrillers of the 1950s might have been somewhat taken aback to see the hard-hitting star turning up in a comedy. Setting aside Bell, Book and Candle (1958), he hadn’t been seen in anything that would resemble a Hollywood confection since a couple of lack-luster Post-War comedies – Magic Town (1947), Jackpot (1950) – when he was trying to regain the marquee status he had lost by going off to fight. Of course, having gone heavyweight with Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Two Rode Together (1961) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) he might have thought he was due some movie R’n’R.

Whether this contemporary equivalent of a beachside air bnb gone wrong was the ideal choice is a moot point. But he would certainly be playing against type. After all those tough guys, principled leaders and occasional dodgy characters, you wouldn’t have to go far to find people who might enjoy seeing him taken down a peg or two.

Harassed banker Roger (James Stewart) wants a quiet getaway with wife Peggy (Maureen O’Hara). But she has different ideas and he finds himself bunked down with a brood too many, his own family, in-laws and unexpected guests. Naturally some of these unexpected guests included rats, happily infesting this shambling house that could have been second-choice for Bates Motel, and there are plenty running gags about what doesn’t work or falls off and a shared telephone line.

If there was such a sub-genre as the mature coming-of-age picture, this would be it, Roger realizing he has a lot of catching up to do in the emotional relationship department.

Mostly, it’s one episode after another. The cook quits, his daughter and son-in-law have eschewed the traditional approach to child-rearing, son Danny wants to be left alone to play his computer games, sorry watch television, teenage daughter Katey (Lauri Peters) is turning into a wallflower, rather well-endowed neighbors catch his eye. To show willing, he’s the yachtsman who gets lost and bored bird-watcher.

But if audiences have learned one thing from a decade of Stewart-watching, it’s that he’s generally far from hapless and although it’s not his fault he’s trapped in the shower room with a naked woman (Marie Wilson), he’s not so much a do-gooder as a do-er, setting out to repair as much as possible the fractured relationships, not above a bit of bribery or cutting a few corners.

This is amiable enough stuff, a few good laughs, and much merriment to be had from the mere sight of the banker, lord of his domain at work cast adrift outside it, and having to adapt to different perspectives. There’s a harder edge than you might expect and some of the scenes of relationships under pressure don’t make easy viewing.

These days, everything wouldn’t work out so well, but in the 1960s I guess the tension was derived from working out exactly how it would work out. And waiting for teen heartthrob Fabian (North to Alaska, 1960) to sing. It seems a contradiction in terms that a pop star trying to prove himself as an actor has to fall back on singing. But them’s the breaks.

A mixture of situational comedy and sharp repartee, it never falls apart at the seams, enough in the tank to keep everything on an even keel.

James Stewart moves from coldness at finding himself in awkward situations to warmth as he finds ways to retrieve the best elements out of them. Stewart doesn’t have to adapt his screen persona that much, he was always a tad grouchy, and he’s packed a briefcase full of sarcastic remarks. But the scene where he reconnects with his son is very touching, Stewart at his heartfelt best.

Maureen O’Hara (The Battle of the Villa Fiorita, 1965) who also has a few icy veins sets those aside to mother all and sundry. Stewart and O’Hara prove an excellent screen partnership and they would be paired again in The Rare Breed (1966), where he was on more solid ground.

John Saxon (The Appaloosa, 1966) gets a chance to show what he can do besides being tough and John McGiver (My Six Loves, 1963) adds another interesting character to his portfolio of offbeat roles.

Veteran Henry Koster (Harvey, 1950) knows how to handle any amount of handfuls and when to pick out the comedy or head straight for the drama. Nunnally Johnson (The Dirty Dozen, 1967) based the screenplay on the bestseller by Edward Streeter, an expert in domestic upsets, previously penning Father of the Bride.

One of Our Spies Is Missing (1966) ***

Sometimes completing the circle just turns the wrong way and the idea that the search for eternal youth can be viewed as a bad thing seems a tad out of touch with today’s mentality. It’s also open to question whether it was ever seen as having much of a downside in the 1960s when there must have been anti-ageing creams although not the availability of cosmetic surgery to ostensibly turn back the clock.

Trust the men from U.N.C.L.E. to uncover the only genius not intent of monetizing his discovery to the tune of gazillions but intent on using it for dire political purpose. This time out Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) and Ilya Kuryakin (David MacCallum) are on apparently different missions in Britain and France which eventually coalesce. Ilya is cat-hunting in London’s Soho. Not pet-hunting which might be a harmless occupation and give us an insight into his carefully-concealed personal life, but chasing down cats which look different from what they did before, mature cats, for example, that turn into kittens. (Probably a fortune to be made from that, too, the eternal pet, putting pet cemeteries out of business).

So is Solo’s investigation of the disappearance of renowned 83-year-old biologist Benjamin Lancer which takes him into the orbit of Parisian couturier Madame de Sala (Vera Miles) where Lancer’s daughter Lorelei (Dolores Faith) is a model. Anyone with any experience of Solo would have warned Lorelei off since he seems too closely associated with danger. As it happens, Lorelei doesn’t get the chance to make his acquaintance as she is bumped off by models Olga (Monica Keating) and Do Do (Ahna Capri).

Solo and Kuryakin soon realize there are a lot of malevolent women on the loose including obstreperous nurse Joanna Sweet (Ann Elder), full-time carer to aged statesman Sir Norman Swickert (Maurice Evans), to whom de Sala is devoted.

Judging from the number of characters mentioned so far you can guess how complicated this one gets, so to cut to the chase, yes, the cats-turned-kittens are linked to attempts to rejuvenate Swickert, the power to do so eventually controlled by T.H.R.U.S.H. (you were wondering when they would turn up, weren’t you?).

As in The Spy with the Green Hat (1967), Solo spends most of the time being ineffectual, tripped or trapped, here at least in the novel situation of being crushed in a wine press, an odd item to find in England but never mind, movies always have creative latitude. Things come to a fine pass when Alexander Waverley (Leo G. Carroll), normally recumbent in New York, is parachuted in to save the day.

As usual, the actions zips along, but due to the way the original two-part episode from which this was culled has been oddly edited some of the zipping goes zap straight into a cul de sac of confusion. That said, there is a very tender scene when De Sala pours out her heart to the infirm Swickert and Ms Sweet is similarly defensive of her charge, a strict ration of emotion in the otherwise action-swirling picture. Solo manages some deft comedy outwitting the man mountain guarding a mansion.

This is a bit harder to follow than the others, and no expense has been spared in sticking to the MGM backlot in attempting to emulate British locations, Soho especially quaint as if imagined by a tidy-up campaign, and, as I mentioned, the wine press (??).

This was drawn from the second season two-parter The Bridge of Lions Affair, broadcast in February 1966, the concept of the bridge and the lions it connects too dumb to bother explaining. But one of the beauties of this series is you never quite know what you’re getting, Vaughn and MacCallum pretty much stick to the knitting of their screen personas, and it’s left to the guests stars to take advantage of the opportunity to do something different, Vera Miles (Hellfighters, 1968) in this case the opportunist.

Bit parts in spy pictures were seen as a boost for young actresses, but that wasn’t always the case. Ann Elder (Don’t Make Waves, 1967) was making her movie debut, Dolores Faith (Mutiny in Outer Space, 1965) was coming to the end of her short career, but Anha Capri (Kisses For My President, 1964) lasted another decade.

Screenwriter Howard Rodman was the pick here, going on to write Madigan (1968) and Coogan’s Bluff (1968). E. Darrell Hallenbeck didn’t received another movie director credit until as a contributor to The Green Hornet (1974) when it surfaced as a re-edited version of several episodes of the television series.

U.N.C.L.E. pictures regularly crop up on streaming services and mainstream television but if you can’t wait and fancy splurging on the entire series, check this out.

When Raquel Ruled The Reissue

Despite being sold to television within a few years of initial release, as was standard at the time, One Million Years B.C. enjoyed an exceptionally long big-screen life, still available in reissue over a decade after premiere. Although a highly successful reissue double bill with She (1965) in the British home market in 1969, that revival did not strike gold in the U.S. One Million Years B.C. had enjoyed a surprisingly successful launch in the U.S., beating the Thunderball record at the New Amsterdam theatre in New York and going on to hoist $2.5 million in rentals putting it ahead in the annual box office race of A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and Point Blank.

Factors in its unexpected longevity included: proving a natural stablemate for movies set in the distant past or distant future, as double bill material for other Welch product, and supporting other Fox new releases. It was a studio workhorse. In 1967, it supported western Hombre, gangster picture The St Valentine’s Day Massacre, comedy Caprice, war epic The Blue Max and a revival of Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. The following year it backed Frank Sinatra in Tony Rome, Walter Matthau comedy Guide for the Married Man, Steve McQueen big-budgeter The Sand Pebbles, Sinatra again in The Detective, The Bible and hoping-to-be-hip The Sweet Ride. Roll on to 1969 it was the support to westerns Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Undefeated.

And that should have been the end of its big screen career. By then it had been shown on television, on ABC, the second best program of the week. So, in theory at least, that should have been the end of exhibitor interest.

But it wasn’t. Come 1970 and it turned up in a triple bill of Butch Cassidy and The Boston Strangler, was geared up as support to Mash and Patton, and another triple bill, Butch again, with The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Butch Cassidy was its partner again in 1971.

Outside of the Twentieth Century Fox connection, there were sorties with She and its sequel The Vengeance of She, and The Lost Continent, a triple bill with Hammer stablemates The Viking Queen and Prehistoric Women, and in 1970 with She and Goliath and the Seven Vampires plus the following year a quadruple bill featuring The Viking Queen, The Vengeance of She and Five Million Miles to Earth.

The following year it turned up as support to When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (“from the creators of One Million Years BC”), The Creatures The World Forgot, and the original King Kong (1933). In future years there were triple bills with Tarzana the Wild Girl and Prehistoric Women and with The Valley of Gwangi and Earth vs Flying Saucers.

With striking regularity it was teamed up with Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and Battle for the Planet of the Apes.

Elected to form a Welch double bill with One Million Years B.C. were Fantastic Voyage (various bookings over 1967-1969), Fathom (1967-1968), The Biggest Bundle of Them All, 100 Rifles, Bandolero and The Three Musketeers (1974) while a Welch triple bill in 1973 augmented the dinosaur picture with Fantastic Voyage and Lady in Cement.

While Fox had first call on its services, at a certain point the studio relinquished exclusivity and exhibitors were free to book it whenever they wanted, Fox content to make a few extra bucks every time. So it went out with Paramount westerns El Dorado with John Wayne and Robert Mitchum and Five Card Stud with Robert Mitchum and Dean Martin, Disney animated feature The Jungle Book and its revival of In Search of the Castaways, UA war picture The Devil’s Brigade, comedy Inspector Clouseau and football drama Number One, MGM comedy The Maltese Bippy, big-budget war spectacular Where Eagles Dare with Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton and the reissue of Ben-Hur, NGC comedy How Sweet It Is, Columbia’s space drama Marooned, French political thriller Z, Harry Alan Tower’s jungle adventure Eve and the British sex drama All Neat in Black Stockings. The last sighting I made of it was with sci-fi Futureworld in 1976.

Add One Million Years B.C to Ben-Hur and you’re talking a near-five-hour program, four hours for Where Eagles Dare. You can see from the indiscriminate double bills that nobody was trying to find the ideal match. Exhibitors didn’t have to, Raquel Welch and her fur bikini had something everyone wanted, a picture that moviegoers were happy to see again and again.

Where were you when you first saw One Million Years B.C.? And what age? And what gender? Did you see it on the small screen or the big, on original release or a reissue?

SOURCES: Brian Hannan, Coming Back to a Theater Near You, A History of Hollywood Reissues 1914-2014 (McFarland, 2016), p208-210; “Georgy, Flint in ABC Film Line-Up,” Variety, April 30, 1969, p35. Box office figures Variety: August 2, 1967, p 11; August 16, 1967, p10; Jul 21, 1971, p8. Listings in Newspapers: Argus, Fremont; Evening Standard, Uniontown; Valley News, Van Nuys; Independent, Long Beach; Kingsport Times; Standard-Examiner, Ogden; Des Moines Register; Tucson Daily Citizen; Abilene Reporter News; Kansas City Times; Wellsville Daily Reporter; Morning Herald, Uniontown; San Antonio Express; Aniston Star; Manhattan Mercury, Kansas; Gastonia Gazette; El Dorado Times; Fresno Bee; Gallup Independent; Post-Standard, Syracuse; Arizona Republic; Daily Times, Salisbury, Maryland; News Journal, Mansfield, Ohio; Corpus Christi Caller; Naples Daily News, Florida; Journal News, Hamilton, Ohio; Statesville Record and Landmark, North Carolina; Hamburg Reporter; Beckley Post-Herald; Brownsville Herald; Nashua Telegraph; Portsmouth Herald; Delta Democrat-Times; South Illinoisian; Terre Haute Tribune; Pasadena Independent; Xenia Daily Gazette; El Paso Herald-Post; Cumberland News, Maryland; Delaware County Times; and Northwest Arkansas Times, Fayetteville.

Raquel Before She Ruled

Raquel Welch did not exactly come out of nowhere. Potential audiences had probably seen her image without necessarily knowing her name. In retrospect, she had one of the cleverest build-ups of any new star. Of course, it wasn’t unknown for glamor pictures to pave the way for a new sex-queen, Marilyn Monroe had posed for plenty cheesecake pictures before she hit the screen.

But those kind of pictures did not break out of the confines of cheesecake magazines. Raquel Welch was different. Although she had taken the usual route of an ingenue, bit part in movies and television programs, there was no obvious sign that she was made for bigger things.

*Not what you’d expect when you see the term “cover girl.”*
*And hardly the magazine men were going to buy.*

Blink and you’ll miss her debut as a call-girl in A House Is Not a Home (1964). You wouldn’t have seen much more of her in Roustabout (1964) or Do Not Disturb (1965). When she won a role on television, she wasn’t credited much more than as saloon girl (The Virginian, 1964), stewardess (Bewitched, 1964), beauty queen (The Rogues, 1964) or the billboard girl in three episodes of Hollywood Palace (1964-1965).

There might have been an inkling of something in A Swingin’ Summer (1965). Reviews said she “shows promise” and “it’s hard to look away when she’s in view” but this was a low-budget beach movie with little chance of becoming a breakout. (Though by the time it reached Britain in October 1966, she was miraculously the denoted star.)

*Amateur photogrpahers of course lived the dream.*

And although Welch would later claim all the fuss over One Million Years B.C. took her by surprise, that she was just an ordinary mother of two, that was far from the case, as she was actively involved in trying to expand her movie career, whether with the help of studios like Fox and MGM, or as an independent producer. I mentioned in a previous article that the company she ran with her husband Patrick Curtis – Curt-Wel Productions – was attempting to put together starring vehicles for her. Long before Twentieth Century Fox entered the equation Curt-Wel announced that production would start in fall 1965 of The Other Side of the Fence, an original musical comedy.

Yet, even as her best efforts to improve her career prospects faltered, somehow she seemed to get far more coverage than other young women in her position. You were as likely to find her photo in a newspaper with Salvador Dali (involved with Fantastic Voyage) or Groucho Marx. But while her face adorned the covers of ordinary magazines in the U.S. – Real Story, Intimate Story, U.S. Camera & Travel and she modelled for adverts for Wate-On, it was a different story abroad. Magazines in Europe could not get enough of her, either adorning their covers, or given a full-page feature inside, parading in a bikini or skimpy clothing. No photographic editor on a European magazine turned down the opportunity of a spread featuring Raquel Welch.

*Nothing could define the differences between current generations and that of the 1960s – unless anorexia was a hidden scourge – than this advert telling women to get bigger.* *A more sexist ad you could not find – “a full figure…is a man’s way of judging a woman.” !!!*

And despite her lack of proven screen product, she was a guest at the world premiere in London of Born Free, was photographed cutting the cake to celebrate the first anniversary of The Sound of Music at the Dominion in London’s West End and was tabbed as “one of the most publicized stars of the year.”

Whereas features might use her name and explain that she was a rising star, perhaps justifying her presence by pointing to her role (sixth- billed) in A Swingin’ Summer (1965), she was usually anonymous on covers, just the gorgeous woman who attracted buyers on the newsstand.

*And if the fur bikini doesn’t attract their attention, thought Hammer, we can always fall back on a more straightforward bikini shot. Tjhis advert appeared in “Variety” – one month*
*after the initial fur bikini advert.*

And while Twentieth Century Fox had her under contract, and could throw out a whole rash of glamour pictures aimed at the glamour market, it was unlikely that more prestigious magazines would come calling. Yet they did. “There is no pinpointing exactly what it is about her,” noted the fawning author of a two-page feature, “Raquel Welch: The Definitive Chickie,” that appeared in the October 1965 issue of Esquire.

But if the journalist didn’t know what she had, Welch certainly did. “I just seem to have glomped on those foreign cats. I’m on every one of their covers,” she explained.

In those more innocent times, an actress might have Playboy sniffing around for a tasteful nude shot, but it was more usual for an actress to only apparently be naked but in reality conceal her entire body either by clever use of her arms or behind a bikini or a skimpy dress. Prior to One Million Years B.C., Welch had often been photographed in a bikini.

*Spoof newspaper produced for the Pressbook.*

But the fur bikini was something else. The image proved iconic.

Hammer knew and Twentieth Century Fox, the company that had built up Marilyn Monroe on the back of her sexuality, knew it. Welch was signed to a one-picture-a-year deal with the studio but it had exercised its option six months early when One Million B.C. – that remained the title as late as November 1965 – came up as part its contract with Hammer.

One Million Years B.C. received its world premiere in London in December 1966 and opened in the U.S. a couple of months later. The movie had gone before the cameras in the Canary Isles on September 19, 1965. In December 1965, 15 months ahead of the U.S. launch Hammer ran the first fur bikini advert in Variety. How prescient, you might think. The studio clearly knew Raquel Welch in a bikini could sell tickets.

It just didn’t know which bikini. It followed up that ad with another one of the actress in an ordinary bikini (if that word could ever be applied to how the star wore that item of clothing) standing on a beach in front of a boat. Eventually, of course, studio, exhibitor and public reaction made the decision for Hammer. Fur bikini won hands done.

The poster sold a million copies.

By the time the movie appeared she was one of the best-known women on the planet. If there had been an Internet in those days, she would have broken it. There hadn’t been an image like it since Monroe stood over grate and let the wind blow up her dress in The Seven Year Itch (1955).

Critics tended to be dismissive in the 1960s of anyone who led with their looks but Welch, like George Peppard for example, soon proved she could act, even if that was routinely ignored.

SOURCES: “Review”, A Swingin’ Summer, Variety, March 3, 1965, p6; “Review”, A Swingin’ Summer, Box Office, March 22, 1965, pA11; Advert, Screen Stories, June 1965; “Other Side of the Fence,” Box Office, July 26, 1965, pW5; “Raquel Welch Will Star in One Million BC,” Box Office, September 6, 1965, pW3; front cover, U.S. Camera & Travel, October 1965; “London Report,” Box Office, November 8, 1965, pE4; advert, Variety, December 1, 1965, p21; Advert, Variety, January 5, 1966, p179; front cover, Intimate Story, February 1966; “London Report,” Box Office, April 4, 1966, pE4; Real Story, 1966; “Review,” A Swingin’ Summer, Kine Weekly, October 20, 1966, p22; “MGM Productions Showcase New Talent,” Box Office, December 5, 1966, p12.

One Million Years B.C. (1966) ****

The three ages of man: child watches this film for the dinosaurs, teenager for Raquel Welch, mature male for the dinosaurs now he knows who Ray Harruhausen is.

Guilty pleasures multiplied. Add the Mario Nascimbene (The Vengeance of She, 1968) score to the delights of Raquel Welch in a fur bikini and Ray Harryhausen’s sensational stop-motion animation. Generally dismissed as high-level hokum, it features an intriguing gender role reversal, and is virtually, not to be too academic about it, a throwback to silent cinema, minus the title cards that helped audiences a century ago work out what was going on. Everything relies on facial expression and gesticulation.

Luckily, there’s not too much in the way of narrative complication. Tumak (John Richardson), the son of the chief of the Rock Tribe, is chucked out into the wilderness for standing up to his father. He probably wouldn’t be crying too much about that, given the strong rule over the weak, old men are left behind to die, and the feeble are last in line for food. Plus, his brother Sakana (Percy Herbert) is prone to stabbing people in the back.

Unusually, the picture went straight out into U.S. wide release (saturation). It was an 80-theater break. Twentieth Centry Fox mounted a huge advertising campaign based on the fur bikini image, but by this point she wasn’t an unknown star, already seen in “Fantastic Voyage.” The New York Times might be wincing now at its “monument to womankind” now.

Reaching a distant shore, Tumak is rescued by Loana (Raquel Welch) of the Shell Tribe who takes an instant fancy to him, helping protect him from a huge marauding creature. But his aggressive temperament doesn’t sit too well among this peace-loving democratic group either, despite him saving some kids from another marauding creature. But when he’s chucked out this time, Loana goes with him.

But you know that any journey pretty much takes them into the heart of dinosaur heaven, and Tumak makes the mistake of retuning to his own tribe, where Loana is made unwelcome by Nupondi (Martine Beswick), Tumak’s previous squeeze. It’s power politics all over again until marauding creatures and a convenient volcano intervene and matters can be settled.

All eyes are on Loana and her miraculous bikini until a dinosaur appears, which occurs at frequent intervals. Then you can’t take your eyes off Ray Harryhausen’s creativity, at first expecting the match between humans and his wizardry to be so obvious the illusion will be shattered, but once you realize that is not going to be the case you just sit back in wonder.

Harryhausen has made dramatic improvements in his techniques since previous highpoint Jason and the Argonauts (1963). Cleverly, he builds anticipation by matte work to present scenes of live creatures. The first, the warthog, is of normal proportions, and its capture suggests man’s domination over beast. But that proves a false assumption. Anything later is just gigantic – iguana, turtle and tarantula. In normal circumstances only the giant spider might appear a threat but in the distant past it would appear any creature bigger than man looked upon humans as an easy meal.

And that’s before the allosaurus rampages into sight and a pteranodon swoops out of the sky snaring Loana and then has to battle a rhamphorhynchus over its prey, almost as if Harryhausen was determined to animate the most difficult creatures possible in order to prove his innate skill.

Sure, hostility is much easier to telegraph than other emotions and a fair bit of the picture is people getting cross with each other, but meet-cute between Loana and Tumak involves little as significant, glances and eye contact the core of communication. It’s pure cinema. Stripped of any meaningful dialog, the camera captures everything we need to know. It’s a brutal world, dog eat dog, man eat warthog, dinosaur eat woman, every living thing is a snack of one kind or another and when they’re not killing for food they’re battering each other out of power lust, rivalry or jealousy.

And although nobody could have guessed the impact Ms Welch would have on the male pulse, Hammer had previous in the department of introducing a stunning female into a tale, and it may be pure coincidence that both Loana and Ayesha in She (1965) were woman of power, rather than mere playthings of men. Ayesha is introduced in stunning fashion, her presence pre-empted, most of the picture prior to her appearance serving merely to build her up. Obviously, Ursula Andress did not disappoint but she was introduced in majestic fashion rather than catching fish at the seashore. Albeit Loana sported a bikini, so did all the other fisherwomen and director Don Chaffey resisted the temptation to present her in more statuesque fashion, regardless of the image presented on the poster.

Just as it’s hard to underestimate the iconic impact of Raquel Welch in a fur bikini, so, too, is the work of Harryhausen. And I would also add the innovative score of Nascimbene, with sounds Ennio Morricone would have been proud of.

Despite myth to the contrary, it’s rare for an unknown to emerge from a movie a real star, but Raquel Welch certainly did, though her image on a million posters might have had something to do with her sudden success.

As he did with Jason and the Argonauts, Don Chaffey keeps the story spinning along, makes the best of the lunar landscape and raw actors like Welch and John Richardson (She). Michael Carreras (The Lost Continent, 1968) based his screenplay on One Million B.C. (1940).

The problems of creating believable dinosaurs were so evident that nobody really tackled pre-history until Steven Spielberg waded in with Jurassic Park (1993). It’s a measure of how successful this effort is that the director eschews the cute kids that seemed endemic to the later genre and had his characters facing up to the monsters rather than running away like crazy or expecting that somehow man could control them.

Much more entertaining than I expected, high class special effects, strong narrative, and more than enough to wonder at.

You Must Be Joking! (1965) ***

British thriller specialist Michael Winner (Death Wish, 1974) learned all about structure churning out low-budget comedies like this unusually contemporary number. A precursor of the reality television trope of a variety of characters in competition to complete a series of odd tasks, this has a military set-up, aiming to find, oddly enough in an organisation where strict hierarchy dominates, people capable of bending the rules. Initiative, in other words.

Some of the motley crew, of course, have no intention of bending any rules if they can get everyone else to do the work for them, namely upper-class Capt Tabasco (Denholm Elliott) who gets the game rolling by calling in a helicopter as a favor from an old school chum to rescue him from a maze, the first task. He spends most of the time pampered in a hotel suite while dispatching girlfriend Poppy (Tracy Reed) on various expeditions.

Saved by the double bill: Winner’s comedy found a bigger audience
by being booked as the support for hit “Cat Ballou.”

There’s a Yank involved, of course, to target the all-important American market, Lt Tim Morton (Michael Callan) also using assistance in the form of upmarket girlfriend Annabelle (Gabriella Licudi) whose specialty is causing vehicle pile-ups. We’ve got a whisky-drinking Scot, Sgt Major MacGregor (Lionel Jeffries), stiff upper back rather than stiff upper lip with his constant snapping to attention, and two graduates from the Army Hapless Division in Sgt Clegg (Bernard Cribbins) and Staff Sgt Mansfield (Lee Montague). Directing proceedings are Major Foskett (Terry-Thomas) and General Lockwood (Wilfred Hyde-White), at opposite ends of the character arc, the former frantic, the latter laid back.

A couple of the five tasks involve unravelling clues, finding a particular rose, for example, but the whole purpose of the exercise is to have the soldiers constantly getting in each other’s way, trying to outwit one another, falling into bizarre scenarios – a fox hunt the cleverest – and generally getting all muddled up one way or another, so that initiative is the last thing they display.

What the movie does have in abundance is imagination, otherwise how to explain the involvement of a seductive housewife, pop star, television show, tunnelling, Lloyd’s of London, Rolls Royce and a greyhound racetrack. On the other hand this might be a smaller-scale precursor to If It’s Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium (1969) in shovelling together all sorts of British institutions and tourist attractions. And certainly Capt Tabasco with his love of the finer things of life demonstrates just how much fun it can be to be British if you’re upper class, wealthy, went to the right school and are not above a bit of blackmail.

As you might expect, the pace is hectic, which is just as well, because if you stopped to think about what was going on you might well throw in the towel. That’s not to say it’s not enjoyable in a riotous sort of way, running jokes almost in a separate competition of their own, and if you always hankered to see Michael Callan’s dance moves this is for you – suffice to say he’s not in the Fred Astaire class. But everyone here is there to be made a fool of, except Capt Tabasco, who rises above it all in classy fashion and when he’s out for the count appears blessedly delighted.

Denholm Elliott (Station Six Sahara, 1963) comes off best, testing out his lazy scoundrel, but the top-billed Michael Callan (The Interns, 1962) might never have signed up if he’d known the consequence was being relegated to television for seven years. However, given we are well accustomed to the shtick of the likes of Bernard Cribbins (The Railway Children, 1970), Lionel Jeffries (First Men in the Moon, 1964), Terry-Thomas (Bang! Bang! You’re Dead! 1966) and Wilfred Hyde-White (The Liquidator, 1965), he does at least have the advantage of standing out, if only as a novelty.

And just in case the goings-on don’t hold your attention, Winner has recruited a platoon of top British stars in bit parts including Leslie Phillips (Maroc 7, 1967) and James Robertson Justice (Guns of Darkness, 1962) and rising stars such as Tracy Reed (Hammerhead, 1968), Gabriella Licudi (The Liquidator) and Gwendolyn Watts (The Wrong Box, 1966) and future British television treasures Clive Dunn (Dad’s Army, 1968-1977), Richard Wattis (Copper’s End, 1971) and Peter Barkworth (Telford’s Change, 1979). So if you get fed up trying to work out what’s what you can play who’s who.

Alan Hackney (Sword of Sherwood Forest, 1960) wrote the screenplay based on a story by director Winner.

Not non-stop hilarity but definitely non-stop something with a good few chuckles thrown in.

Lonely Are the Brave (1962) ***

Wannabe blood brother to The Misfits (1961) but more like a distant cousin, cowboy out-of-time yarn too pre-emptive for its own good. Freedom-loving, don’t-fence-me-in Jack Burns (Kirk Douglas) falls foul of the law by escaping prison and is pursued into the hills by competent and sympathetic Sheriff Morey Johnson (Walter Matthau) who is saddled with an incompetent law enforcement team out of their depth up against a true man of the west. You can see the end coming a mile off, a truck that interrupts the narrative for no particular reason.

The only problem for me are certain inconsistencies. A man who refused to be tamed tames a wild horse, his freedom coming at the expense of a captive animal, hobbled overnight to prevent escape. And instead of leading a frightened beast across a busy highway rides him in clear danger.

And I don’t get this voluntary incarceration malarkey, highly principled though it appears, breaking into jail in order to break out a friend Paul (Michael Kane) who just wants to serve out his relatively short sentence instead of being faced with a longer one as an escapee.

Jack won a Purple Heart in Korea but although he was 22 when World War Two broke out there’s no mention of that war record. And it seems a bit of an unlikely cliché that you can still break out of prison in the 1960s with just small hacksaw.

David (Hammerhead, 1968) Miller’s film tries too hard to make a very obvious point, forgetting that it was cowboys like Jack who turned the West into the antithesis of freedom. There are some unexpected touches. Jack, wanting to start a brawl as a means of being arrested, finds himself with a tougher customer than he envisaged, a World War Two veteran who doesn’t take prisoners. There’s a nod towards immigrants swarming into America. Paul, knowing he has crossed a line in the contemporary world, just wants to pay his debt and move on, rather than trying to disappear into a fantasy life. Cops, with all the modern accoutrements, find themselves undone by a man with old world skills.

*R.F.D. stands for Rank Film Distributors, patting itself on the head for getting*
*the picture off to a good start in the London West End.*

Once the movie heads into the hills, which is what all this lengthy preamble is for, it becomes more interesting, if only because in what is intended to be a game of cat-and-mouse, the cop cats are revealed as the mice.

But Kirk Douglas, having lit a fire for freedom in Spartacus (1961), seems more intent on going down a similar route than creating a proper character. And, as usual, given he is top-billed, reveals acting insecurity, or arrogance, trying to steal every scene, tipping back his hat just one of his many bits of business to ensure the audience eye follows him.

On the plus side is some notable playing by Walter Matthau (Mirage, 1965), encumbered with a bunch of lazy cops who spend more time eating and sleeping than doing their job and easily outgunned in the wilderness by a cowboy for whom it spells home. Gena Rowlands (Machine Gun McCain, 1969) is impressive as Paul’s worn-down wife with a soft spot for Jack though she finds it hard to stand by a dumb man. George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke, 1967) makes a mean sadistic cop. And there’s an early role for Carroll O’Connor (The Devil’s Brigade, 1968). If you’re talent-spotting Bill Bixby (television’s The Incredible Hulk, 1977-1982) is a helicopter pilot.

Kirk Douglas and business partner Edward Lewis were the producers and hired the former blacklisted Dalton Trumbo (Spartacus) to script Edward Abbey’s novel Brave Cowboy.

I thought the title was a bit of misnomer: Lonely Are the Foolhardy might be more accurate.