Brian Hannan

The Yesterday Machine (1965) ***

Some big-name director, especially these days, would have seen the potential, injected some action and jeopardy, a good dose of awe and maybe more of a hint of a romance. You can’t help but feel this would be exactly the kind of enterprise that might get a more favourable hearing from a contemporary audience that’s sucked up even worse baloney in the multiverse and beyond.

Despite you might thinking concentration camps should not be used for superpower fiction, they were essential to the Magneto narrative in the X-Men Files, a set-up which also involved Captain America and Wolverine. So you can’t really show revulsion at attempts by a low-budget sci-fi B-picture to shoehorn in a concentration camp element. This doesn’t have the budget to “show” and must rely simply on “tell” to get over the essential story element. But we’re also bouncing around the time universe to the extent of the American Civil War and the French Revolution.

When the car of college kids Ellison (Jay Ramsay) and drum majorette Margie (Linda Jenkins) breaks down on a dirt road on the way to a football match, they end up confronting soldiers from the Civil War. The boy is shot and taken to hospital, but the girl disappears, plain vanishing, sniffer dogs finding the trail suddenly stops.

*In the absence of another poster of the movie reviewed I’ve opted for something with the word “machine.”* *This at least concerns time travel.*

Journalist Jim (James Britton), investigating, discovers the Civil War link because Ellison has been shot by a bullet from that war and the uniform of the Civil War soldiers couldn’t be mere replicas worn by historical re-enactors because the uniform manufacturer went out of business in 1869. Jim hooks up with Margie’s sister, nightclub singer Sandy (Ann Pellegrino). Soon, thanks to a cop, they are on the trail of a time machine created by Professor Von Hauser (Jack Herman) who experimented on inmates in concentration camps, ageing young people and the reverse.

Jim and Sandy fall into the time machine’s orbit and are teleported to Von Hauser’s lab. The professor, a contemporary of Einstein, aims to go back in time and prevent his hero, Adolf Hitler, from committing suicide. Jim and Sandy are imprisoned until freed by an Egyptian serving girl, also teleported from a couple of millennia back, and the professor’s heinous plan is scuppered.

Occasionally, writer-director Russ Marker (Night Fright, 1967) allows himself a bit of visual leeway, a jackboot appears in the undergrowth to stamp out a cigarette, Jim and Sandy running down a hill vanish only to reappear seconds later in a different time zone, Margie practizing her moves while the car is being fixed.

But mostly, it’s dogged detective work, Jim helped along by people who favor the odd interpretation of events, a doctor who collects Civil War memorabilia, the cop whose outfit liberated the camp with the time machine. There’s enough mystery to keep you hooked and if you imagine the likes of Tom Hanks in Da Vinci Code mode uncovering this bizarre collection of facts you’d be far more inclined to go along with the presentation rather than treating it as the kind of baloney that had “cult” written all over it.

I’m not sure I agree with the “dreary pace” – while progress was stately to say the least, it took that length of time to establish the groundwork – and the second half is enlivened not so much by the professor defending Hitler as the look on his face when Jim delivers a coruscating critique on the Fuhrer. I’m always partial to scientists explaining their barmy notions and jargon – nobody balked at James Cameron’s “unobtainium” in Avatar (2009).

This is what comes of trawling YouTube in an idle moment.

Sure, it really is nothing more than two-star material but I enjoyed it more than I expected, and, these days, worse notions have been served up to unsuspecting audiences.

The Counterfeit Traitor (1962) ***

Cynical and opportunistic Swedish oil executive Eric Erickson (William Holden) blackmailed into World War Two espionage finds redemption after witnessing first-hand the horrors of Nazi Germany. Two extraordinary scenes lift this out of the mainstream biopic league, the first Erickson witnessing an execution, the second a betrayal. While some participants in the espionage game pay a terrible price, others like spy chief Collins (Hugh Griffiths) manage to maintain a champagne lifestyle.

Structurally, this is something of a curiosity. The first section, with over-emphasis on voice-over, concerns Holden’s recruitment and initial attempts at spying on German oil installations on the pretext of building a refinery in Sweden. Although resenting the manner in which he was recruited, Erickson had no qualms about resorting to blackmail himself to enlarge his espionage ring.

But it’s only when Marianne Mollendorf (Lili Palmer) enters the frame as his contact in Germany that the movie picks up dramatic heft. As cover for frequent meetings, they pretend to be lovers, that charade soon deepening into the real thing. While abhorring Hitler, she suffers a crisis of conscience after realizing that the information she is passing on to the Allies results in innocent deaths. The final segment involves Erickson’s thrilling escape back home.

The picture is at its best when contrasting the unscrupulous Erickson with the principled Marianne. Virtually every character is trying to hold on to way of life endangered by the war or created by the conflict and there are some interesting observations on the way Erickson manages to harness foreign dignitaries while being held to hostage in his home country. Loyalties are sparing and even families come under internal threat.

Sweden was neutral during the Second World War so in assisting the Allied cause Erickson was effectively betraying his country and once, in order to keep proposed German investors sweet, he begins to spout Nazi propaganda at home finds himself deserted by friends and, eventually, wife.

In some respects, William Holden (The Devil’s Brigade, 1968) plays one his typical flawed personalities, easy on the charm, fluid with convention, but once he learns the true cost of his espionage a much deeper character emerges. The actor’s insistence, for tax reasons, on working abroad – this was filmed on location in Europe – would hamper his box office credibility and although not all his movie choices proved sound this was a welcome diversion. Whether American audiences were that interested in what a Swede did in the war was a moot point, as poor box office testified. And the title might have proved too sophisticated for some audiences, given there was no counterfeiting of money involved.

Lili Palmer (Sebastian, 1968) is excellent as the manipulative Marianne, betraying her country in order to save it from the depredations of Hitler, not above using her body to win favor, but paralyzed by consequence. Hugh Griffith (Exodus, 1960) provides another larger-than-life portrayal, disguising his venal core.

Werner Peters (Istanbul Express, 1968) puts in an appearance and Klaus Kinski (Five Golden Dragons, 1967) has a bit part.

Double Oscar-winner George Seaton (Airport, 1970) makes a bold attempt to embrace a wider coverage of the war than the film requires and could have done with concentrating more on the central Erickson-Mollendorf drama, especially the German woman’s dilemma, but it remains an interesting examination of duplicity in wartime. Written by the director based on the novel by Alexander Klein.

A Working Man (2025) **** – Seen at the Cinema

Audiences have been so let down by high-profile big-budget disasters like Snow White, Captain America, The Joker Folie a Deux, and critical clunkers like Anora, is it any wonder that they queue up to see a movie with a star who generally delivers. Sure, this is a meat-and-potatoes picture and it might well spell a new trend and consign high concept to the trash basket. That’s not to say our star Jason Statham hasn’t had his share of high concept – he doesn’t jump the shark but is inclined to punch it on the nose in the various The Meg iterations and his usual beating up bad guys routine was nearly snarled up in high concept politics in last year’s The Beekeeper.

I saw this at a matinee performance on Monday and the place was packed and as I left I overheard two ladies saying how much they had enjoyed it. Critics have been a bit sniffy about this because the plot is old hat. Who cares? All plots are old hat and those that aren’t are too new hat for audiences to enjoy.

There’s some attempt to repurpose the lonely hero, generally estranged from his family and down on his luck. Here Levon, an ex- (British) soldier, is suffering from PTSD, kept away from his only child by a wealth father-in-law who bankrolls teams of lawyers to ensure visitation rights are kept to a minimum. And Levon blames himself – as does the father-in-law – for being away fighting for Queen and Country when he should have been at home helping his depressed wife and stopping her committing suicide.

It’s piling it on a bit thick though to have him living in his automobile when as a boss on a construction site he must be earning enough to rent even the lowliest bug-ridden apartment, which he eventually does, since “no fixed abode” doesn’t look good on legal papers.

Anyways, we’re soon introduced to his special set of skills when he sets about some gangsters picking on one of his workers. You think the narrative’s going to involve some backlash from the guys he’s beaten up. But it takes a different route. The daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas) of his boss Joe (Michael Pena) is kidnapped to order by a human trafficking operation headed up by Dimi (Maximilian Osinski), disgraced son of Russian Mafia head honcho Wolo (Jason Flemyng).

Posing as a drug dealer, after carrying out a ton of clever reconnaissance, Levon infiltrates the drugs outfit at a very low level and then works his way up, knocking off members of Wolo’s clan and various affiliates. Meanwhile, Jenny proves herself adept at improvising, in the violence arena, you understand – when your hands and feet are tied, remember you’ve still got your teeth.

This is the kind of film where you’re going to lose count of the number of violent deaths but all you’re interested in is Levon cutting through the wheat and chaff and getting to the top so he can save the girl. Luckily, it doesn’t try to build up a mythical gangster backstory in the manner of John Wick, but there are some interesting scenes where Wolo, initially introduced as sitting at the high table, is put in his place by someone higher up the rankings, and a great scene just at the end where Wolo, by now bereft of his sons, is told by the big boss to accept his losses and get on with the job of selling drugs and leave Levon alone, at which point he lets out the kind of wail that, had he been a bereft hero, would have had him in contention for an Oscar.

There’s no romance either to get in the way so it’s very strictly meat-and-potatoes. In an era when MCU and DC are flailing, Hollywood could do worse than resorting to a more basic kind of hero. Let’s call him, since all superheroes need titles, Workingman Man.

Directed with a zest for pace and tension by David Ayer (The Beekeeper). Interesting to see Sylvester Stallone’s name attached as co-screenwriter and a producer, so I wonder if this had been originally touted as starring him.

Does what it says on the tin.

Murder Inc (1960) ***

A gangster trend hit the mean streets of Hollywood at the start of the 1960s. But in the absence of big box office hitters like James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson, these were all B films with unknowns or low-ranked stars in the leading roles. Whereas Little Caesar (1931), Public Enemy (1931), The Roaring Twenties (1939) and White Heat (1949) were fictionalized accounts of hoodlums, the gun-toting movie spree kicked off by Machine Gun Kelly (1958) and Al Capone (1959) was based on the real-life gangsters who had terrorized America’s big cities in the 1920s and 1930s.

By the end of 1960, moviegoers had been served up an informal history of the country’s best-known mobsters from Ma Barker’s Killer Band (1960), Pretty Boy Floyd (1960), The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960) and Murder Inc (1960). The infamy of the criminals was so comparatively recent that moviemakers assumed audiences had a wider knowledge of their exploits and the context of their crimes.

Murder Inc tells how underworld kingpin Lepke Buchalter – Tony Curtis played him in the more straightforward biopic Lepke (1975) – set up a system of killing dissenters in the ranks for the entire American Cosa Nostra (aka The Syndicate) in a way that prevented those ordering the murders being connected to those committing them, the same kind of protective cell operation used by terrorists. He created a separate organization of hitmen.

This quasi-documentary, with occasional voice-over narrative, focuses on three characters – the quiet-spoken Lepke (David J. Stewart), hitman Abe Reles (Peter Falk) and singer Joey Collins (Stuart Whitman) who becomes involved to pay off a gambling debt. Later on, the focus switches to Brooklyn assistant district attorney Burton Turkus (Henry Morgan), against a backdrop of massive police corruption, investigating the murder epidemic this deadly enterprise created. The films jumps around too much to be totally engrossing but it is certainly an interesting watch.

The two main villains could not be more different, Lepke representing the new school, a businessman, ordering killings but never participating, and for such a tough character tormented by a delicate stomach. Reles is old school, relishing opportunities to murder, and raping Collins’ honest wife Eadie (May Britt) in part because she treats him as scum. It’s hard to muster much sympathy for Joey especially as his wife takes the brunt of the violence.

In an Oscar-nominated performance Peter Falk (Castle Keep, 1969) steals the show as the chilling, venomous killer, the kind of nonentity who rises to prominence only through his penchant for homicide. Swedish star May Britt (The Blue Angel, 1959) isn’t far behind with a portrayal of a strong woman saddled with a weak husband. David J. Stewart (The Young Savages, 1961) only made three movies in the 1960s and his milk-drinking hood was as scary in his pitilessness as his more overtly violent underling.

Stuart Whitman (The Commancheros, 1961) is almost acting against type for he was later known for rugged roles. Henry Morgan (It Happened to Jane, 1959) gave his portrayal of Turkus similar characteristics to Lepke, appearing as a quiet individual, concerned with details, except that he was incorruptible.

Simon Oakland (Bullitt, 1968) is an honest cop, Vincent Gardenia (Mad Dog Coll, 1961) is a lawyer, comedian Morey Amsterdam (The Dick Van Dyke Show, 1961-1964) plays a hotel manager, Sylvia Miles (Oscar-nominated for Midnight Cowboy, 1969) has a bit part and singer Sarah Vaughan is a singer.

For some reason, this movie starred a number of actors in leading roles who made few screen appearances. This was the only movie of the decade for May Britt, David J. Stewart made only three movies during the same period, and Henry Morgan only made three pictures in his entire career, this being the last.

The movie boasted two directors. Stuart Rosenberg (Cool Hand Luke, 1967) was replaced by Burt Balaban (Mad Dog Coll, 1961) when the threat of strike action by actors and writers in 1960 forced the 18-day shoot to be cut by 10 days so it’s hard to say who was responsible for which scenes, although the film does boast some unusual aerial shots. Written by Irve Tunick (High Hell, 1958) and Mel Goldberg (Hang ‘Em High, 1968) from the book by Burton Turkus and Sid Field.

Killers are loose – and how!

The House in Marsh Road (1960) ***

Well-structured thriller – especially given the short running time – that allows time for the story to blossom and, given the supernatural tinge, in a somewhat unusual fashion. Worth noting, too, the gender fallibility in keeping with the time, the wife who will support her husband come what may, through his heavy drinking, philandering and deceit. The only truth is that somehow or other her husband is going to get hold of her money.

Wife Jean (Patricia Dainton) is initially complicit in her husband David’s (Tony Wright) small-time fraudulent activity, willing to scamper from short-term let to short-term let, vanishing without paying the bills, because she believes in his grandiose ambitions of rising above his lowly status as a book reviewer to become a novelist.

When she inherits a house from an aunt, he wants to sell it and use the £6,000 to fund his ambition, though once he meets sexy secretary Valerie (Sandra Dorne) his plans change to using the dosh to set up a new life with Valerie. Of course, that would mean eliminating his wife and inheriting the property himself. A first attempt, to push her down a life shaft, fails and he moves on to sleeping pills.

Jean is so in thrall with him that even when she catches him out in lying, theft and an affair, she still is apt to stand by him after giving him a frosty reception and a good ticking-off. It’s only when she suspects worse that she seeks help.

Unbeknownst to her she has an invisible ally, a poltergeist named Patrick, who has the habit of rearranging furniture, sighing, setting off the alarm, and, for people to whom he takes an aversion – such as David and Valerie – smashing mirrors and disrupting their desk. Given the budget and the period, the paranormal aspects are kept to the minimum, noise the most obvious evidence, while other actions occur when the camera is not present.

You sometimes wish these kind of British B-pictures would add another 30-40 minutes to explore consequence in true film noir style. There’s no doubt that Valerie would soon find a way to rook David of his inheritance and dump him, easiest way being to lead the police to him.

While Jean finds an attorney willing to take note of her suspicions, you can’t but help noting that mention of a poltergeist is not helping her case, and in the normal course of events she would be committed, leaving David free to cash in on the house and indulge his mistress.

It doesn’t get to the obvious ending, of her being disbelieved, and forced to return to the house and spend her time going mad wondering how her husband is going to bump her off. Instead, Patrick comes to her aid, starting a fire which engulfs the house in her absence. Husband and lover die in the blaze.

As ever, no great acting. Patricia Dainton (The Third Alibi, 1961) might be accused of not putting enough terror in her characterization but that would be to overlook the fact that in those days handsome husbands were implicitly trusted. Tony Wright (Faces in the Dark, 1960) is smug enough but Sandra Dorne (Devil Doll, 1964) only requires a touch of smouldering to steal the show.

Based on a story by Laurence Meynall, inventively written by Maurice J. Wilson (Fog for a Killer, 1962), especially for the undercurrent of malevolence and manipulation. Ably directed by Montgomery Tully (The Terrornauts, 1967).

The Poppy Is Also A Flower / Danger Grows Wild (1966) ***

Audiences were likely disgruntled to discover that out of a heavyweight cast boasting the likes of Omar Sharif (Doctor Zhivago, 1965), Yul Brynner (The Magnificent Seven, 1960), Rita Hayworth (Circus World/The Magnificent Showman, 1964), Senta Berger (Cast a Giant Shadow, 1966) and Stephen Boyd (Genghis Khan, 1965), that the heavy lifting was done by a couple of supporting actors in Trevor Howard (Von Ryan’s Express, 1965) and E.G. Marshall (The Chase, 1966).

Most of the all-star cast barely last a few minutes, Stephen Boyd’s character killed in the opening sequence, Senta Berger and Rita Hayworth putting in fleeting appearances as junkies. Like many of the gangster pictures of the decade, it’s set up as a docu-drama, giving the down’n’dirty, courtesy of United Nations which funded the picture, on the international drugs trade.

Benson (Stephen Boyd) heads up an infiltration operation targeting drug suppliers in Iran, where poppies “grow wild as weeds.” Though quickly bumped off, and the goods he’s purchased stolen, he’s replaced by Col Salem (Yul Brynner) who has the Bond-esque notion of enriching the opium with radiation and then tracing it using Geiger counters.

When that scheme fails, it’s down to agents Sam Lincoln (Trevor Howard) and Coley Jones (E.G. Marshall) to hunt down the drugs. Considering themselves unlikely lotharios, they compete over women and play a neat game of stone-scissors-paper to decide who is assigned which task, varying from chatting up Linda (Angie Dickinson), the gorgeous widow of Benson, or searching her room. Linda isn’t all she seems, not least she may not be a widow, carries a gun, and turns up in too many unsavory dives to be on the side of the angels.

Given drug-dealing was not the rampant business it later became, audiences might not be so shocked to discover that opium was transported by cargo ship and refined in Naples before being shipped all over the world. Possibly as interesting is the use of ancetic anhydride in the refining process. As Sam and Coley trudge across half of Europe, from Naples to Geneva to Nice, the audience is filled in on the details of the drug business and they latch on to a Mr Big, Serge Marko (Gilbert Roland).

There’s a hard realism about the project – though not to the levels of The French Connection (1971) -: nightclub dancer needing make-up to hide the tracks on her arms; Marko’s wife (Rita Hayward) stoned out of her skull; director Terence Young (Dr No, 1962) pulling a fast one Hitchcock-style in killing off Sam; and, despite a climax which sees Coley collar Marko, it ends with a pessimistic air – “someone else to take his place.” There’s a good fistfight on a train, and you’ll have guessed what Linda is up to. But there’s an odd softer centre, the movie taking a couple of breaks to highlight the singing of Trini Lopez and female wrestlers.

Before virtue-signalling was invented this was a do-gooder movie, the cameo players signing up for a buck, Grace Kelly on hand for the introduction. These days it stands as an almighty alarm that was scarcely heeded, not as the drug-fuelled counter-culture was about to burst onto the world, and with middle-class drop-outs championing the illicit there was little chance of the warning being heeded.

More like The Longest Day (1962) than Lawrence of Arabia (1962) in its use of the all-star cast. Still manages to make its points with the least amount of lecturing and hectoring.

Terence Young comes into his own in the action highpoints. Written by Jo Eiseinger (Oscar Wilde, 1960) and Jack Davies (Gambit, 1966) from an idea by Ian Fleming.

The Prestige (2006) ****

Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer, 2023) revels in sleight-of-hand, if only by mixing up time frames, but even he isn’t intellectually smart enough to overcome the deficiency that ensured this picture failed to emulate the commercial success of all his other movies. And it revolves not around what you do to dupe an audience. An audience wants to be duped and isn’t so concerned if how the duping is achieved is never revealed, which is, of course, core to the business of the stage magician. Part of the success of this picture is that Nolan gives away stage secrets, even, if you were playing close enough attention, giving away the main reveal of one of the two dueling stage magicians.

But one of these revelations cuts so close to the bone the audience loses its sympathy for both the main characters, Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) and Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman). By the time we understand just how ruthless this pair are to the extent of risking marriage/romantic attachment for the sake of either getting one over on the opponent or maintaining the central deceit of their act, we have already become too squeamish to care overmuch. And the twists which come with increasing regularity which are supposed to take our breath away are defused by the ticking time bomb.

And the miscalculation pivots on who you can kill in a movie. Henry Fonda cold-bloodedly slaughtering an innocent child in Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) set a new high/low for onscreen barbarity, but that was excused because it demonstrated just what a villain this character was. Since then a virtual industry has grown up over inventing more creative ways in which people can be killed.

One of the standard ploys of the stage magician is to make a canary in a cage disappear in front of your very eyes only for said canary, minus cage, to reappear moments later to thunderous applause. Turns out the cage is collapsible and it vanishes into a space hidden in a table. The canary? It is squashed to death in the cage. It’s a different canary that magically reappears.

So all through the picture canaries are squashed, sometimes we see the cages being emptied of dead canaries, and workrooms filled with canaries waiting to be squashed.

What happens after this somehow pales into insignificance. Here we have a business that requires murdering God knows how many canaries every night of the year. It doesn’t take much intelligence among the easily duped moviegoer to work out how many canaries both magicians have ruthlessly despatched.

So when they get around to killing each other’s loved ones, or shooting off each other’s fingers or ruining each other’s acts, your stomach has already been turned and although the darkest of dark narratives has long been a theme of the movies, this, and not fitting into the exploitation B-picture genre where it would more comfortable reside, sucks the sympathy out from under the director’s feet and all his later sleight-of-hand, as ingenious as it is, counts for very little.

There’s certainly tragedy here and of the kind that only Shakespeare could conjure. In order to safeguard the integrity of his act – the secrecy paramount to its success – loving husband Borden is forced to pretend to his loving wife Sarah (Rebecca Hall) that he has a mistress, resulting in distraught wife killing herself. Though discreetly done, scarcely glimpsed in the final sequence, Angier has embarked on the murderous spree essential to concealing the mechanics of his famous trick, The Transported Man.

That it works at all, and splendidly to a large extent, is down to Nolan’s traditional time-shift sleight-of-hand and installing in the middle of this brouhaha the wise Cutter (Michael Caine) whose tempered diction brings the movie unexpected gravitas. When he speaks you tend to believe. The minute the other pair open their mouths you are suspect.

Just for his calmness Michael Caine (Interstellar, 2014) steals the picture from Christian Bale (Ford v Ferrari / Le Mans ’66, 2019) and Hugh Jackman (Deadpool and Wolverine, 2024). Rebecca Hall (Godzilla v Kong: The New Empire, 2024)and Scarlett Johansson (Fly Me to the Moon, 2024) are at opposite ends of the feminine divide, the former unable to cope with deceit, the latter manipulating it to her own ends. The director and brother Jonathan adapted the Christopher Priest award-winning novel.

Setting aside the canaries and the difficulties of presenting all-consuming obsession, this remains an intriguing work, possibly the darkest area into which the director ever ventured.

Beyond the Curtain (1960) ***

Richard Greene had been a childhood idol as that dashing hero Robin Hood in long-running British television series (The Adventures of Robin Hood, 1955-1960) and movie Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960) so I was rather at a loss to discover that his career appeared to stumble thereafter. Only one movie in seven years and then a short stint as the hero in The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968) and The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969). What I hadn’t realized given his eternal youthful demeanor was that he was already approaching 40 when he first donned the tights for Robin Hood and that he was coming to the end of a reasonable stint as a leading man in both Hollywood and domestically.

So I shouldn’t really have been surprised that he turned up in this Cold War B-picture. Precisely because he was the star the movie didn’t make the inroads it should have done, given the subject matter and the sensitive playing of Hungarian female lead Eva Bartok (Blood and Black Lace, 1964) whose career was equally foundering after a promising start as Burt Lancaster’s squeeze in The Crimson Pirate (1951).

Audiences were probably baffled by the technicality on which the story pivots. As the Cold War begins – the titular Curtain is The Iron Curtain – air space was as important a national border as land and venturing into foreign air space was construed as deliberate provocation.

East German stewardess Karin (Eva Bartok), a refugee in Britain from her home country, is arrested when her airplane touches down in East Germany after losing its way in a storm. Pilot fiancé Capt Jim Kyle (Richard Greene), who is let go by the Soviet-influenced authorities, returns to East Germany to try to rescue her.

This resonates more than it did at the time when the Berlin Wall was not yet in existence and the Cold War consisted more of saber-rattling than anything as perilous as the Cuban Missile Crisis. And there’s a definite Kafkaesque tone. Karin is treated as a traitor for attempting to flee her native land and is equally used as bait by her captors to attempt to draw out of hiding her dissident brother Pieter (George Mikell). Outside of Kyle, there’s a sense of romantic revenge, old friend Hans (Marius Goring) now leading the forces hoping to entrap her brother.

There’s plenty of the usual escape ploys, and the atmosphere has noir-antecedents with lighting that exploits shadow and night. And while the thriller aspects work well enough, especially the exciting climax in a tunnel, they carry less impact than the emotions. Karin is terrified of not just being held against her will and interrogated by the fierce secret police, but the prospect of repatriation – or more likely imprisonment – in a country she now despises and had managed to escape is proof that you can’t go home again.

If you remember the scene in Doctor Zhivago (1965) of Omar Sharif after the war returning to his palatial apartment and finding it filled up with other occupants and his family relegated to a very small space, this is its precedent. Karin’s family home is ruled by a sinister landlady-cum-busybody-cum-informant and her suicidal mother (Lucie Mannheim) lives in the attic and suffers delusions. The despair of living in a totalitarian regime comes across very well.

While reminiscent of elements of The Third Man (1949) and thoroughly overtaken in the espionage genre by the likes of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) and The Quiller Memorandum (1966), this makes it mark by concentrating on entrapment and lack of freedom.

Richard Greene is in his element as the dashing hero, but he’s outshone by Eva Bartok who has much more to lose.

Final feature of British stalwart Compton Bennett (King Solomon’s Mines, 1950) who injects occasional style into proceedings. Written by the director and John Cresswell (Spare the Rod, 1961) from the bestseller by Charles F Blair and A.J. Wallis.

More thought-provoking than you might expect.

Vendetta for the Saint (1969) ***

This big-screen version of a small-screen hero is as pleasant a diversion as you can get. Nostalgia pretty much gives it a free pass and in any case the action, which punctuates the drama at regular intervals, was always going to be budget-restricted. Despite being in almost constant danger the insouciance of gentleman thief Simon Templar dictates that the pace is no more than languid.

As the title suggests, we’re in Mafia country, Templar (Roger Moore) drawn into a Cosa Nostra succession scenario as the result of a casual encounter with former bank clerk Houston (Fulton Mackay), later found dead. Houston has cast doubts on the real identity of Mafia Don Destiamo (Ian Hendry), one of several contenders to become the next Mafia overlord. Templar sneaks into Destiamo’s world by pursuing his niece Gina (Rosemary Dexter). Although outwardly respectable, Destiamo a bit too fond of using his cigar as a weapon of disfigurement, threatening his blonde English moll Lily (Aimi MacDonald) in this fashion.

Part of Templar’s attraction is that, although he has a nefarious side, he is happy to walk those mean streets and has a strict moral code. And he moves in such elevated circles that he has a nodding acquaintance with dying Mafia chieftain Don Pasquale (Finlay Currie) who has yet to pick his successor.

The other part of his attraction is that he’s played with such suaveness by Roger Moore. For a good chunk of the time someone is trying to knife him, shoot him, blow him up, capture him, jab him with a truth serum, and generally trying to stop him. In fending off such attacks, or out-smarting the villains, there’s rarely a hair out of place. It’s not so much devil-may-care as devil-is-wasting-his-time with such an imperturbable fellow.

Although the action is pretty straightforward, Templar is not above a clever ruse – jamming a bus in a gateway preventing his pursuers continuing the chase – nor an old one such as tying sheets together to climb out of a window. While Malta stands in for Italy, the locations still look authentic enough, ancient stone buildings, the occasional horse pulling a cart. When the action/drama eases up, there’s always pleasant scenery.

Following MGM’s success in stitching together into a movie two episodes of The Man From U.N.C/L.E. television series (which of course had pinched the idea from Walt Disney’s cinematic re-presentation of Davy Crockett episodes) it was no surprise that ATV, then under the control of future movie mogul Sir Lew Grade (Raise the Titanic, 1980), decided to adopt the same idea. Although The Saint had been showing on British television since 1962, by the end of its run in 1969 it had stepped up to bigger budgets, 35mm and colour. Given each episode lasted around 50 minutes, it was relatively simple to devise a two-part programme shown over consecutive weeks on ITV in Britain and then release it throughout the rest of the world as a feature film. The first such project was The Fiction Makers (1968) followed by Vendetta for the Saint.

Roger Moore’s movie career had been in limbo since Romulus and the Sabines (1961) and there’s no doubt that his performance as Simon Templar and later in another glossier British television series The Persuaders (1971-1972) made him a candidate for James Bond. While his interpretation of Templar, especially the wry delivery, does bear some similarities to his incarnation as 007, that only holds true as long as you set aside the year’s supply of Brylcreem dumped on his hair, the shoulder-padded shoulders and the fact that he had not yet perfected his trademark move, the raising of the single eyebrow.

While no match for the quips prevalent in James Bond, Canadian screenwriter Harry W. Junkin – best known for his television work, his only other movies being a similar melding of television episodes of The Persuaders – and John Kruse (Hell Drivers, 1957) – had some neat one-liners. Despite the obvious limitations, director Jim O’Connelly (Berserk, 1967) does a decent enough job.

But Moore carries the show. Ian Hendry makes a passable villain but not a passable Italian. In general, not surprisingly since most characters were played by British actors, the accents are all over the place though Moore, courtesy of squiring Luisa Mattioli (later his wife) manages to deliver his Italian lines in an acceptable accent. Otherwise, the only one who comes close is Rosemary Dexter (The Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968) and that’s because she was Italian. Worth checking out in the supporting cast are Finlay Currie (Ben Hur, 1959) and Fulton Mackay (BBC series Porridge, 1974-1977).

You can find a lot wrong with this without looking very hard but if you switch off your over-critical faculties you will be pleasantly surprised.

The Alto Knights (2025) *** – Seen at the Cinema

There’s a fabulous story buried inside this box office disaster. A Mafia boss rats out his colleagues so he can enjoy retirement. Instead of dwelling on this and the dramatic opportunities it opens up, instead we are given an info-dump. The betrayal meant that the United States woke up to the fact that the Mafia was a nationwide organization and not, as proposed by J Edgar Hoover, merely a localized east coast outfit.

I wasn’t particularly bothered by the gimmick – though it’s surely “enough already” for fly-by-night technical tricks – of Robert De Niro playing two gangster rivals, Frank Costello who runs the empire handed on a plate to him by Vito Genovese while the latter was in exile. Two simple pieces of prosthetics, false nose for Frank, false chin for Vito, plus the more rudimentary disguise of hat and spectacles for Vito makes this notion work without any need to call it into question. The fake chin stiffens the actor’s lips and once he dispenses with the arm-waving that is key to the De Niro screen persona, the characters are portrayed with measurable differences.

What needs called into question is the ramshackle construction. Voice-over for me is lazy. You can’t fit information into the story in dramatic fashion? Then too bad, drop it. You can’t just shoehorn it in and hope for the best. And all this shifting about with timelines, WTF? It’s crazy to try and condense a history of the Mafia up till the late 1950s when the movie would work much better dumping the historical malarkey and concentrating on the main story.

Vito returns to New York after a long absence and wants to reclaim his kingdom. Frank is naturally reluctant to give up an empire he has expanded and controlled for so long. Frank is more temperate, Vito distinctly temperamental. The fact they were boyhood buddies and made their bones together should have merited a single line of dialog rather than drawn-out montages and a bucket of voice-over.

Frank is happily married to Bobbie (Debra Messing) with no kids. Vito marries Anna (Kathrine Narducci) then bumps off his wife’s ex-husband for the kind of slight a paranoid is prone to. Majoring in violence, Vito rebuilds his empire and for the last piece of the jigsaw organizes a hit on Frank. The hitman misses. That should have cued all-out warfare. Instead, Frank tries to keep the peace. His solution when all else fails and planned retirement is jeopardized is to tip the nod to the New York cops that representatives of every nationwide family is going to assemble in a particular place all at the same time. Cue the cops solving Frank’s problem by imprisoning Vito and tons of his (relatively-speaking, of course) innocent compadres.

But instead of sticking to the bones of what’s an interesting (and ironic if irony is your thing) narrative – insane hunger for power and revenge – the story bounces around like it’s been chucked inside a lottery drum only for bits and pieces of a longer and more complicated but less interesting story to fly out at different times.

The movie does make the point that without battalions of crooked cops and politicians on the take the Mafia would never have mushroomed. There are a couple of outstanding sequences, the cocky Frank volunteering to testify rather than, like all the other gangsters, taking the Fifth at a Senatorial Inquiry and a marvellous scene about the golden Bible of the Mormons that stands alongside the “You Talkin’ to Me?” and “You think I’m funny?” scenes from previous gangster classics.

De Niro gets one thing wrong in his impersonation of the gangsters. It’s virtually impossible for an 81-year-old actor to carry off the physicality of the 66-year-old Frank and the 60-year-old Vito. At least there’s no attempt to portray gangsters as mythical characters.

Not the swansong director Barry Levinson (Rain Man, 1988) was hoping for. Nicholas Pileggi (Goodfellas, 1990) wrote the script.

Nobody’s going to bet $45 million on Robert De Niro again, no matter how many roles he plays.