Brian Hannan

Behind the Scenes: “Harper / The Moving Target” (1966)

Only in Hollywood could you come off three straight flops and be offered for your next picture your biggest-ever salary. But producer Elliott Kastner in his attempt to break into the big time was following the game plan of United Artists when they had set out the previous decade to woo the biggest stars with big deals – and the same format that Cannon followed two decades later to sign up the likes of Sylvester Stallone.

Paul Newman received $750,000 – matching the fees of John Wayne – plus 10% of the profits for his role in Archer. The original title was the surname of the private eye in Ross MacDonald’s The Moving Target. The novel’s title was in play for some time before being superseded by Harper (though it remained The Moving Target in the UK) on the basis that characters whose name began with “H” – namely Hud (1963)and The Hustler (1961) – had done well for the actor in the past.

Harper was the first project in a five-picture deal between Elliott Kastner (along with producing partner Jerry Gershwin) and Warner Brothers. This was to be followed by heist thriller Kaleidoscope (1966) starring Warren Beatty, Peter Sellers comedy The Bobo (1966), drama Sweet November (1969) and Harper sequel The Chill, reprising Newman.

The actor had thrown away the box office cachet he had achieved earlier in the decade with such pictures as Exodus (1960), The Hustler (1961) and Hud (1963) on a trio of losers – What a Way to Go (1964), western The Outrage (1965) and Lady L (1965). But that didn’t deter former talent agent Kastner.

Although Kastner only had one picture to his name, Bus Riley’s Back in Town (1965), top-billing Ann-Margret, it wasn’t for lack of trying. He had first made a splash in 1962 when he and screenwriter Abby Mann bought William Faulkner’s Light in August for $150,000. But that failed to get past the starting gate, as did The Crows of Edwina Hill based on the novel by Allan Bosworth, The Children of Sanchez to be directed by Vittorio De Sica, Honeybear, I Love You to star Warren Beatty – an original screenplay by Charles Eastman (Little Fauss and Big Halsy, 1970) – and an adaptation of William Goldman’s bestseller Boys and Girls Together.

When Kastner set up in business with Jerry Gershwin in 1965, he had ten projects on the go, having spent $538,000 buying the rights to three plays and five novels plus commissioning two original screenplays.

It was amazing that the movie was made at Warner Brothers because several years earlier studio and star had a major falling-out, the actor suing to be released from his long-term contract, eventually buying his way out for a considerable sum.

As Kastner couldn’t afford the rights to any of the books published by his idols Raymond Chandler or Dashiel Hammett he plumped for the “lesser known” Ross MacDonald “who had the same rhythm.” Since MacDonald’s agent Harold Swanson didn’t want to sell the rights to the character, Kastner agreed to switch the name from Archer to Harper. And as Kastner “couldn’t afford a real screenwriter,” he hired William Goldman, who had authored three books the producer admired. He paid Goldman $80,000 to write “a movie with balls” based on the first novel in the Lew Archer series, requiring some updating since it was published in 1949.

Private eyes were now the preserve of television, which was rife with them, so it was going against the grain to try to reinvent the genre. Frank Sinatra, coming off the hit Von Ryan’s Express (1965), expressed interest in the project.

“I always knew that if you wanted to get money for a big studio picture you needed Gregory Peck, Burt Lancaster or Paul Newman,” Kastner wrote in his memoirs. He decided Newman was the best choice and travelled to Scarborough, a holiday resort on the north east coast of England, where Newman was shooting Lady L with Sophia Loren. “With no proper sleep or proper food,” Kastner found out the movie’s location and “wasted no time going up to Newman’s trailer and knocking on the door.” He had never met Newman, so was “a bit scared.” For a moment it looked like he was going to get the brush-off, but when he mentioned the actor playing a private eye that caught Newman’s attention. He read the script in a day and agreed to do it.

Newman’s agents Freddie Fields, David Begelman and John Foreman (who, all, coincidentally, later became producers) were unhappy that Kastner had, to all intents and purposes, gone behind their back. However, Newman had confirmed he wanted to make the picture so all that was left for his agents was to negotiate the fee and points. Being agents, and wanting a share of anything else that was going, they recommended another client, Elliott Silverstein, hot after Cat Ballou (1965) as director. Silverstein apparently loved the script although Kastner discovered that Newman had once turned Silverstein down for a job.

Over dinner with Newman and the director in London, Kastner found out Silverstein actually hated the script. He badmouthed the screenplay. “All he wanted to do was spit in Paul Newman’s face.” Next day, Kastner had to pick Newman up from the proverbial floor and regain his trust. The actor was partly mollified by the fact that Kastner had signed up a stronger-than-usual supporting cast in the likes of Julie Harris and Lauren Bacall. “To his everlasting credit, he agreed.”

Now Kastner had to find a studio to back the project. Which he reckoned would not be hard. “If you had Gregory Peck or Paul Newman all you needed was the Burbank telephone directory to make the deal. Despite the “disastrous” end of Newman’s relationship with Warner Brothers, Kastner found no opposition from studio chief Jack Warner, whom he knew from his agent days. “He kinda liked me, so I went to see him first.” Prior to the meeting, he had sent screenplay, book, budget, cross plot and schedule. Ben Kamelson took the meeting with Jack Warner and Elliott Kastner. “He (Jack) was overly friendly and warm and kept on telling Kamelson that I was his boy and that he was so happy to have Paul Newman back on the lot.”

His attitude changed at the mention of Kastner’s fee – $500,000 and half share of the profits. “He went apoplectic. The going rate for producers at WB was $35,000, even a top producer like Sam Spiegel would not, in Jack’s eyes, merit more than $125,000.”

It was a deal buster. But just as Warner was about to kick him out of the office, Kastner rallied. He told the head honcho, “I paid for the acquisition of the book. I paid the writer for the screenplay. I paid for all the expenses back and forth to Europe, twice with a director as well. You say you are happy with the screenplay – it reminds you of The Maltese Falcon. You are sanguine about the overall budget, so why do you begrudge what you are paying to me since I never asked for a dime in the high risk area of development and not only that I capture a genuine movie star. Now listen to me I am gonna go across the hill to Fox and you know what Zanuck’s gonna do? He is gonna lock the door and not let me out until I sign the agreement. I came to you first because I like you so much.”

Warner quickly reconsidered and greenlit the picture.

For director, Kastner went for Jack Smight, “a knowledgeable mechanic and a skilful director” who liked the script. The star asked for changes to the script, including swapping the character’s original beat-up Ford for a snazzy Porsche. Newman “simply shouldered the script and rammed it home” assisted by the fact that he “didn’t have to do a lot of work” since in real-life he resembled the character. Despite her proven acting qualities, there was no doubt that the name of Lauren Bacall in the cast, who had made her name on The Big Sleep (1946) opposite Humphrey Bogart whom she later married, helped generate awareness.

The movie was budgeted at $3 million including Newman’s fee and $500,000 for the producer.

It wasn’t all plain sailing. WB Head of Production Walter Macqueit objected to using Conrad Hall as director of photography on the grounds of his inexperience with color. Kastner held his ground. The bulk of the rest of the crew came from the Warner lot. Kastner worked with Smight on the “meticulous casting.”

The movie was filmed entirely in Los Angeles with exteriors in Burbank and interiors at the WB studio. During production, Kastner was also planning his next move, which was to quit Hollywood and set up a production shingle in London with Jerry Gershwin.

The only niggle at the end of a very successful project was that after Kastner introduced William Goldman to Paul Newman when the writer came up with a spec script for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) he didn’t pass it on to the producer who had given him his big break.

Paul Newman quickly dropped out of the sequel and the project shifted from Warner Brothers to the newly-formed Commonwealth United with Sam Peckinpah set to direct. But The Chill, a more recent book in the series, published in 1964, never came together though later Newman signed up for The Drowning Pool, the second in the Archer series

SOURCES: Elliott Kastner’s Unpublished Memoirs, courtesy of Dillon Kastner; Daniel O’Brien, Paul Newman, (Faber and Faber, 2004), p115-118; “Kastner-Mann Shoot Faulkner’s August,” Variety, May 2, 1962, p5; “Elliott Kastner on Honeybear,” Variety, January 23, 1963, p4; “Elliott Kastner Will Helm Crows,” Variety, May 1, 1963, p21; “WB Partner and Star of Goldman Tale, Variety, March 31, 1965, p7; “Radical Kastner-Gershwin Policy,” Variety, May 19, 1965, p19; “Gershwin-Kastner,” Variety, November 30, 1966, p11; Gershwin-Kastner Set Chill of CU,” Variety, October 15, 1969, p7.

Harper / The Moving Target (1966) ****

Inventive screenplay by William Goldman (Masquerade, 1965), the ideal combination of witty lines and others that strike to the heart, and Paul Newman’s most naturalistic performance, and a family at each other’s throats, create a genuine addition to the private eye genre. Punch-ups are limited, generally the sleuth comes out worse, his skull an easy target apparently for any villain wanting to give him a good biff.

Most people remember the celebrated credit sequence. But, in fact, most people do not. They remember that this is a guy who will reuse old coffee grinds, which is as good a character definition as you’re going to get. But the opening sequence says much more – he sleeps in a pull-out couch, he falls asleep with the television on, dunking his face in ice suggests a hangover, and – the killer – he sleeps in his office. You won’t forget the ending either, the freeze frame, as fed-up Harper (Paul Newman) just gives up on the stupidity of mankind. And just before that there’s a delicious moment when crippled mother Elaine Sampson (Lauren Bacall) trills to the daughter she loathes Miranda (Pamela Tiffin) in a voice that would denote happiness but is anything but, “I’ve got some news for you,” as she looks forward to informing the child that the father she adores and that Elaine equally loathes is dead.

Not surprisingly, Harper’s on the verge of divorce from wife Susan (Janet Leigh), but he still hankers after being a knight in shining armor, those few days every year when he puts the world to rights rather than chasing down errant husbands in seedy hotel rooms.

The tale is a tad convoluted, involving initially tracking down Elaine’s estranged missing millionaire husband that turns into kidnapping and then murder with a side order of a fake cult headed by Claude (Strother Martin) that’s a front for an illegal immigrant operation, and going through the gears, character-wise, with malicious wife, an extremely flirtatious Miranda who gets her come-uppance when she tangles with Harper, faded alcoholic star Fay Estabrook (Shelley Winters) and junkie Betty (Julie Harris) sometime lover of lothario pilot Allan Taggert (Robert Wagner).

Two distinctive thugs Dwight Troy (Robert Webber) – Fay’s husband – and Puddler (Roy Jenson) offset the dumbest of dumb cops led by Sheriff Spanner (Harold Gould) and lovesick attorney Albert Graves (Arthur Hill), Harper’s longtime buddy, who pines for Miranda.

Torture comes in two guises – the junkie gets the treatment from Dwight and Harper is put through the wringer listening to the endless whining of Fay as he tries to pump her for information. Harper avoids beatings and takes beatings and various characters bounce through doors with a gun – both Taggert and Graves save Harper from being shot.

Harper’s got a slick way about him, but mostly his charm is used to weasel information. He hasn’t got enough of it left to work on his wife.

When Harper’s not racing his sports car along twisting mountain roads, the action shifts to a cult temple, the docks and an abandoned oil tanker. Even when Harper works out who’s in on the kidnapping, it turns out he’s now got a murder to solve since someone’s bumped off the kidnappee.

Despite the endless complications, this whizzes along, helped enormously by Paul Newman’s (Cool Hand Luke, 1967) winning characterization. He’s brought a new trick to his acting arsenal, mastering a method of not listening to a conversation by tilting his head away from the speaker, and there’s a number of novel gestures. The scene where he rejects Miranda is a cracker. Tough guy running short of a soft center, he makes a very believable human being. And he’s got his work cut out because Lauren Bacall (Shock Treatment, 1964) is on scene-stealing duties. As is Pamela Tiffin (The Pleasure Seekers, 1964) though she can hardly match the older woman for arch delivery.

It’s a top-notch cast all the way down. Fans of Strother Martin (Cool Hand Luke) will enjoy his fake healer, Arthur Hill (Moment to Moment, 1966) is engaging, Robert Wagner (Banning, 1967) adds another notch to his rising star bow while Robert Webber (Don’t Make Waves, 1967) emanates menace with his “old stick” routine. Shelley Winters (The Scalphunters, 1968) is a great lush, Julie Harris (The Split, 1968) a junkie trying to pretend she’s not and Janet Leigh (Psycho, 1960), having kicked her husband out, still hoping he might come back in more acceptable form.

Jack Smight (The Third Day, 1965) directs with some zap. This should have had everyone singing the praises of crime writer Ross MacDonald, who in inventing the character (Lew Archer in the original) had inherited the Raymond Chandler mantle, but instead they came away whistling Dixie for screenwriter William Goldman.

Class act.

Behind the Scenes: Selling Judy Garland – “A Child Is Waiting” (1963) Pressbook

This proved the impossible sell. And Judy Garland was no help. The star was well past her best and if she wasn’t singing it was difficult to attract audience interest. So beyond her name above the title, United Artists did very ittle to use her presence as a distinct marketing tool.

Just like I Thank a Fool the previous year, the subject matter of A Child is Waiting did not lend itself to cross promotion. That did not prevent marketeers doing their level best. However, it was a rather bold suggestion to assume banks would be a natural port of call even under the guise that every child was waiting for their parents to start a savings account to see them through college.

The title seemed to incite temporary madness in the marketing department. How about this for a tie-in approach to a toy department? “A child is waiting for the most exciting game ever devised – Monopoly.”

Groups most likely to respond were identified as psychiatrists, teachers and PTA members but cinemas were warned to avoid giving the “impression that the film is a clinical or documentary one.”

By far the easiest avenue for promotion was a book tie-in. Popular Library had issued a paperback novelization by Abby Mann of his original screenplay with stars Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland on the cover and at the very least that would receive window displays in bookstores and on the carousels of drugstores.

Also limited were the number of taglines on a poster. In those days a movie could be advertised with as many as a dozen different taglines appealing to different market sectors. United Artists stuck to three main taglines with two subsidiary ones. Sometimes both subsidiaries were on the same poster, other times only one.

“Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland ignite a motion picture that gives so much…goes so far…looks so deep into the feelings of man and woman.” This alternated with “Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland take an untouched theme – and make it touching and unforgettable” and “Only Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland could take this untold story…and make your heart tell it over and over again.”

The subsidiary taglines ran to: “If this were flesh of your flesh – would you hold it close…Protect it…Love it…Or would you turn your back and run” and “A child can be so many things, warmth…love…laughter…and sometimes a child can be heartbreak!”

Mainly what marketeers were asking of Lancaster and Garland was a miracle, as if their names alone could drag audiences into theaters.

Even though the Pressbook was relatively small – eight pages A3 – two-thirds of the space was allocated to repeating the adverts, just in different sizes.

The section normally aimed at getting editors to carry snippets of news about the movie provided scant material. There was little to catch the journalistic eye, nothing new about either of the stars, just a rehash of careers. Usually, cinema managers would scour this section looking for a titbit to offer to a reporter, an unusual hobby, something odd that occurred during filming, details about the location or an element that went wrong during shooting.

If you were relying on this Pressbook to fuel demand from exhibitors, you would be sorely disappointed.

A Child Is Waiting (1963) ****

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can catch it on Amazon Prime.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tiger by the Tail (1968) ***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Waterfront (2025) ***** – Netflix

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two episodes in and I’m hooked.

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

Catch it on Netflix.

Behind the Scenes: Senta Berger Speaks

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

The interview is repeated verbatim.

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

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

I asked her how her career had began.

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

So you went to Germany.

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

What did you do in Europe?

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

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

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

How about your co-star Tognazzi?

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

What do you think of sexy films?

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

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

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

Your husband is a director?

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

Have you made any more films with your husband?

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

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

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

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

Television?

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

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

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