Crime/Thriller – Page 12 – The Magnificent 60s

North by Northwest (1959) ***** – Seen at the Cinema in 70mm – Bradford Widescreen Weekend

Only thing better than seeing this on the big screen is seeing it on biggest screen possible, Some clever clog has blown it up to 70mm by scanning the “original 6-perf 35mm Vistavision camera negative in 13k with all restoration work completed in 6.5k. The 70mm film print was created by filming out a new 65mm negative.” I don’t know what it means either – except that extra 5mm is the soundtrack and perfs refers to height – but I’m delighted with the result.

Not only does the crop spraying scene bask in greater glory but the pivotal scrambling on Mount Rushmore where Hitchcock used the wide screen at its widest takes on a vivid clarity that’s just impossible watching a DVD when characters are literally hanging off the furthest edges of the screen.

But setting aside the widest widescreen-ness what seeing it on the big screen more than anything restores is the audience experience and that allows the sly humor to reach its full potential. I hadn’t realized just how funny this darned picture is, not just the eye-rolling mother treating her grown-up son as a michievous scamp, and the zingers of lines but the interplay between the various characters.

And putting to one side Hitchcock’s wizardry it is a tour de force for screenwriter Ernest Lehman. I must have counted at least 20 narrative beats, not just thriller or action twists and turns but changes in our appreciation of the characters, plus the devilishly clever sexual banter. And while hero Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is a hero by accident, heroine Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) is heroine by design, and thanks to her exceptionally callous boss, The Professor (Leo G. Carroll), likely to pay a heavy price for wanting to do something worthwhile in a life that from her looks seems as if aerated, gliding along with nary a care in the world, her beauty ensuring she would always garner easy attention.

There are some exceptionally clever moments that emanate from Lehman rather than Hitch. The elusive villain hiding behind a variety of identities is finally unmasked as Vandamm (James Mason) at an auction when the auctioneer calls out his name as he buys an artefact that contains stolen microfilm. And so a scene that appeared there for a different purpose – the emotional one of Van Dam realizing he has been cuckolded and Kendall realizing she is going to lose the only man she ever truly loved – turns out to play a vital role in the narrative, critical to the ending.

Given Hitch suffered from accusations of misogyny it’s astonishing how often he serves up exceptionally self-confident women who can string men along, in this case two men, Eve using Roger for mere sexual gratification while seducing Van Dam for the more serious business of snaring a traitor and giving her life meaning. And can there have been a more convincing femme fatale? That is, not the obvious kind as in film noir where a male dupe is easy pickings for a clever female and her seduction techniques over-obvious.

Here, the seduction is not only very gentle, and to some extent baffling, and achieving through language and screen dexterity a marvellous intimacy, but her femme fatale-ness only revealed when she secretly sends a note to Van Dam asking what does she do with her victim in the morning.

There are lot of elements more obviously coming to your attention on the big screen. The irony of a cab firm being called “Kind Taxis” especially in New York where their drivers err on the side of the irate. The train porter whose clothes we think Roger has stolen only for a quick cutaway to reveal him counting his bribe. The cleverness of that disguise. How many red-capped porters will you find in a train station?

A lot of the time Cary Grant (Walk, Don’t Walk, 1966) doesn’t have a great deal to do except react sometimes to very little at all. When he’s waiting to be collected at the crop field he makes his feelings known through shifting his gaze and jiggling with his trouser pockets.

There’s even a scene that might have given Sergio Leone the idea for his famous shootout in Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) where, on first meeting, Roger and Van Dam circle each other with the camera taking each’s POV.

This is just overloaded with delights – the drunken Roger telling the cops to call the cops, using his only phone call in jail to call mother, escaping from thugs in an elevator by the “women first” device, the amazing innocence when he encounters locked doors, clearly expecting them still to be left open to facilitate his escape.

Hitchcock – and to a greater degree in The Birds (1963) – ushered in the random action explosion (gas tankers always seem to be convenient) that would become de rigeur in the genre and used with less finesse here when the crop plane crashes into the tanker and car passengers stop to gawk allowing our hero the chance to steal one and escape.

It generally passes unnoticed how Hitch sets up his main character. At the start of films, especially these day when viewers are in on the gimmick, most audience eyes are on spotting the directing putting in his trademark appearance, rather than assessing Roger as a workaholic advertising executive, dragging his secretary out of the office when she should be on her way home so he can dictate a few more lines to her in a taxi, and inadvertently setting himself up as the kind of man who tells lies for living who for once must stick to the truth.

Grant’s acting ability was rarely fully recognized. Here the more urgent question seems to be how many suits he got through in filming (16) rather than the way he holds the picture together. And only Hitch would keep the audience waiting 30 minutes before introducing the female lead and make it hard for the maternally-dominated Thornhill to exude any sexual attraction after being under the thumb of mother for the first section.

This was the British premiere of the 70mm version so look out for it turning up at your local arthouse. Perhaps someone will go the whole hog and accord Hitch the contemporary honor of re-tuning his pictures in Imax.

I am assuming that I saw the 70mm version of the new 4k that’s just being released.

Not to be missed on big screen or small.

The Notorious Landlady (1962) **

Botched job. Not an all-out stinker. Something that should easily have worked – and didn’t. Thanks to the principals involved. Biggest finger of blame points at Jack Lemmon (How To Murder Your Wife, 1965), who jitters and jabbers, arms waving, eyeballs swivelling, classic example of over-mugging the pudding.

But Kim Novak (Strangers When We Meet, 1960) is as bad for the opposite reason. She’s completely insipid. Sure, she’s meant to be playing someone frightened out of her wits but she could as easily be worrying about how to lay the table for all the energy we get.

Director Richard Quine (Strangers When We Meet) hardly gets off scot-free for allowing this to happen as well as quite bizarre shifts in tone from a fog-wreathed London straight out of Sherlock Holmes, to a denouement with Novak naked in the bath – Lemmon averts his eyes but the camera and hence the audience doesn’t – and a climax straight out of the Keystone Cops. I know Quine had a fling with Novak but it looks like he’s trying to share her physical charms with all and sundry, scarcely a scene goes by where’s she’s not in her underwear, night-time apparel, soaking wet one way or another or wearing revealing outfits. The “Notorious Cleavage” might have been a better title.

As I say, this should have worked. The story is straightforward enough, a mystery, red herrings aplenty, mysterious lurking figures, enough twists to give it edge.

Diplomat William Gridley (Jack Lemmon), newly arrived from the States, comes to view an apartment to rent in Mayfair only to find landlady Mrs Hardwicke (Kim Novak) most unwelcoming. Unfortunately for her, it’s love at first sight for him, so she can do no wrong. Which is unfortunate for him, for she is suspected of murdering her husband. That doesn’t sit well with Gridley’s boss Ambruster (Fred Astaire) who feels staff should be completely above board and not risk the good name of the U.S. by consorting with film noir style damsels.

Ambruster is already in cahoots with Inspector Oliphant (Lionel Jeffries) and it’s not long before Gridley is enrolled to act in an undercover capacity, sneaking into her bedroom, finding a gun in a drawer and overhearing suspicious phone calls all the while continuing to romance her. Meanwhile, he’s woken up in the middle of the night with her playing an organ. He’s such a clumsy clot he manages to set fire to a garage, which attracts front page headlines and puts his career in jeopardy.

Anyway, various red herrings later and Ambruster somewhat mollified after falling for Hardwicke’s charms himself, we discover that her husband isn’t missing after all, but when he turns up, she shoots him dead and so ends up in court charged with his murder. His death, while convenient, is treated as accidental.

But the fun’s only just beginning. What could have been a shade close to film noir or the kind of romantic thriller Hitchcock turned out in his sleep, now takes a quite bizarre turn. It transpires that her husband, a thief, has hidden stolen jewels in a candelabra which, because she’s short of cash, she has sold to a pawnshop. This emerges in the aforementioned bathtub contretemps. But Hardwicke is being blackmailed by the witness whose evidence cleared her. Said witness has made off with the jewels and now plans to kill off the real witness. So they all end up at a retirement village in, where else, Penzance. Gridley has to save the real witness from being run off the edge of a cliff in a wheelchair while Hardwicke and the fake witness would have had a real old catfight if either of them could have managed to land a punch, instead of hitting the ground or falling backwards into bushes, so the entire climax suddenly takes a distinct comedic turn.

There’s not even a decent performance from Fred Astaire (The Midas Run, 1969) or Lionel Jeffries (First Men in the Moon, 1964) to lift proceedings. In fact, the best performance comes from villain Miles Hardwicke (Maxwell Reed) who rejoices in lines like, “ I like you better when you’re frightened.”

Written by Larry Gelbart (The Wrong Box, 1966) and Blake Edwards (The Great Race, 1965), which would make you think comedy, and that this was a spoof in the wrong directorial hands, except that Edwards was responsible for Experiment in Terror / Grip of Fear (1962) so knew how to extract thrills.

Coulda been, shoulda been – wasn’t.

One on Top of the Other / Perversion Story (1969) ****

No idea how they thought they’d market this one. Neither of these titles would recommend it to first run, more likely sending it down the exploitation route. Which would be a pity because, although there is enough nudity and sex to satisfy those patrons, it is, almost to the very end, clever noir, femme fatales to the fore, and the kind of male patsy who would later decorate the likes of Body Heat (1981). And if it played out as all instinct – except that of a happy ending – told you, it would have been an absolute cracker. As it is, it’s more Hitchcock than giallo, director Lucio Fulci’s, known at that time for comedies, first dabble in crime, and with excellent cinematography and plot twists.

As it is, said sucker has a hell of a time, turned inside, beset by paranoia and trickery until he’s all set for the electric chair and it boasts a classy cast. It’s set in San Francisco, though I found those hilly streets a distraction as any minute I expected to see Bullitt racing over the top or Sean Connery demolishing a streetcar before heading to The Rock.

Asthmatic sickly wife Susan of top surgeon George (Jean Sorel) dies from accidental overdose in the first few minutes. The good doctor isn’t so upset, he’s having an affair with fashion photographer Jane (Elsa Martinelli) and is astonished to discover he’s about to inherit a couple of million from her insurance. That’ll come in handy because his business is going down the tubes.

But an anonymous tip sends him into a topless bar where the star performer and sometime sex worker Monica (Marisa Mell) bears a startling resemblance to his wife, blonde where she was brunette, brown eyes rather than green, but otherwise almost a dead ringer. But he’s seen his wife’s stone-cold corpse so he gets the doppelganger heebie-jeebies. Still, it’s not long before he’s testing out his theory and in the most intimate fashion.

But there’s an insurance agent on his tail, taking note of the philandering, and his concerns force the cops to re-open the case and discover Susan was poisoned and with George the obvious beneficiary that makes him the obvious suspect. Meanwhile, Jane’s trying to find out what’s Monica’s game, to the extent of giving her a fashion gig that goes a few steps beyond the Blow-Up playbook.

Top cop (John Ireland) isn’t slow to put two and two together and reckon Monica and George are in it together and bumped off Susan. He finds evidence of Monica perfecting Susan’s signature. But while Monica skedaddles, George is on the hook and eliminating all that annoying courtroom guilty/not guilty objection sustained palaver, the movie cuts to the chase and the surgeon is lined up for an appointment with the chair, knowing full well he’s innocent.

In a terrific twist I didn’t see coming turns out his brother Henry (Alberto de Mendoza), partner in the business, has been having an affair for years with Susan who – yep – is Monica after all, and takes delight in telling George what a sucker he’s been. Henry will inherit the dosh and take up where he left off with Monica/Susan. George hasn’t exactly elicited audience sympathy, although he’s occasionally staring moodily in the camera as his brain can’t compute what’s going on, and he’s a two-timing swine – no, make that three-timing – no, two-timing if Monica actually is his wife. Anyway, he doesn’t cover himself in glory whereas Monica is a class act, not just sexy as all-get-out but playing him beautifully, so you kind of want her to get away with it especially as you didn’t see the brother angle coming, and you just marvel at how cleverly George has been duped.

George is saved and the picture unaccountably suffers at the last minute when out of the blue a jealous client Benjamin (Riccardo Cucciolla) turns on the getting-away-with-it pair and blasts them to high heaven.

George is an unusual character, dominated by both women. When we first encounter Jane she’s on the point of dumping him, after a bout of sex first of course, and he’s the one who chases after her. But Susan clearly enjoys stringing George along, taking control in their lovemaking in a manner she clearly didn’t when being Susan, as if her new-found has freed her from her inhibitions.

My guess is this was heavily cut for U.S. and U.K. release and also that the moviegoers coming along expecting sexploitation might have been somewhat surprised to find themselves watching a Hitchcockian homage, but with the bad girl as the heroine.

A few plot flaws don’t hole this beneath the waterline. Great acting all round, Marisa Mell (Danger: Diabolik, 1968) the pick, but Elsa Martinelli (Hatari!, 1962) every bit as calculating and seductive. You feel sorry for Jean Sorel (Belle de Jour, 1967) caught between the two.

Lucio Fulci (A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, 1971) makes the most of the locations and ensures the women, rather than the man, take center stage.

Take away the exploitation elements and you’ve still got a great thriller that turns on its head all expectations.

The Trygon Factor (1967) ****

Sublime climax but you need persistence to get through the fog of red herrings. Genre mash-up that flits precariously between whodunit and horror as we slip from a convent of nefarious nuns living in a vast stately home, where half-naked girls pose for photo sessions, and secret messages are smuggled out, to a pre-giallo masked killer with a drowning obsession liable to jump out. Luckily, there’s an equally impressive grand hotel nearby, thankfully minus nuns, but where killers still roam.

I had mistakenly assumed horror because “Trygon” is close to “Tygon,” the British horror outfit taking a more outré approach to the genre than staid old Hammer, and because of the random killings, and a man, Luke (James Culliford), son of the mansion owner Livia Emberday (Cathleen Nesbitt), in the habit of dressing up in weird garb and chopping the heads off flowers with a sword and inclined, in a fit of pique, to smash precious china heirlooms. And because there’s a fair bit of business with a coffin, this being the kind of movie where mourners lean into the casket and kiss the corpse.

If it is, indeed, a corpse. Zombies, anyone? I wouldn’t have been surprised. This is jam-packed with sumptuous misleading incident. Especially, as, for most of the proceedings, it seems like we’re stuck in a detective tale with an inspector who’s clearly never lived a minute in Britain judging from his glowing tan. He’s investigating a missing colleague (Allan Cuthbertson) seen in the opening sequence snooping around the mansion before being passed furtive notes through the gates by a young nun, later rigorously stripped of her habit.

The tan’s probably the giveaway since the immaculately turned-out Supt Cooper-Smith (Stewart Granger) fancies himself as a ladies’ man, first with French receptionist Sophie (Sophie Hardy) who expects a bit of coaxing seduction, and then with Livia’s daughter Trudy (Susan Hampshire), the photographer, who doesn’t, keener on a speedier route into a man’s affections.

By the time the dust begins to settle, and the top cop harbors suspicions about a dockside warehouse owned by swivel-eyed Hubert (Robert Morley) – although Cooper-Smith’s investigation technique revolves around plying young women with brandy – we’re drifting between the notion of some mad cult operating in the convent and Luke as the most likely serial killer given his determination to “play” with young women.

But, in fact, just as we’re being lulled into a sense of false security and the idea that we’ve seen this all before, director Cyril Frankel (On the Fiddle, 1961) springs the first of several audacious twists. The idea that the stately home is a front for a gang of thieves might, on the face of it, appear ludicrous except for the skill with which they carry out the heist and that the criminal mastermind is Livia, assisted by equally cunning daughter.

They have imported – in a coffin – a top French safecracker whose tool of choice is the kind of weapon that Thunderbolt and Lightfoot would have envied, if not a villain of James Bond proportions, and although the armament doesn’t spew out laser beams, it has sufficient firepower to render vulnerable the toughest safe. Naturally, Livia organises the break-in to coincide with nearby building works where the thunder of pneumatic drills will drown out any gun fire.

The thieves turn up outside the appointed bank in what appears an official security van, but from the boxes they carry into the target they produce gas masks and proceed to immobilize anyone inside. They’re after gold bullion because, under the guise of manufacturing large candlestick holders for sale to tourists at the stately home, Livia has set up a gold-smelting operation, pouring liquified gold into the base of the candlestick, trademark Trygon. Having re-disguised the French safecracker as a corpse and placed him in a coffin ready for the surreptitious trip home, ruthless Livia instead dumps him into the Thames to drown.

It’s pure luck that our police lothario happens upon the truth and discovers the smelting basement whereupon – twist number two – the delectable Trudy reveals herself to be the serial killer. She kills for “fun” and relishes the prospect of knocking off an “arrogant” male and one too susceptible to her charms to recognize her femme fatale sensibilities

The giallo-esque killings are highlights, one victim drowned in a baptismal font, another in a bathtub. That female’s kicking and screaming isn’t enough, what with the radio turned up loud, to attract the attention of the nubile Sophie next door luxuriating in a bubble bath. But death by piping hot liquid gold takes some beating. And that’s not the sole reason for the X-certificate since the movie taunts the censor in Blow-Up (1966) – minus the attendant hullabaloo – fashion with a brief glimpse of naked female breast.

The prospective audience might have expected a supernatural outcome given director Frankel’s previous outing The Witches (1966) and had they been alerted to the fact that the source material (uncredited) was written Edgar Wallace might have come prepared for some of the twists.

This is the kind of movie that needs to be viewed backwards because it’s only at the end that you work out what it’s all about and how skilfully the audience has been duped. An object lesson and one that, for example, Zoe Kravitz (Blink Twice, 2024) should have watched to learn how to suck an audience in.

When you consider the movie in reverse, you realize this is really about an exceptionally clever heist and two women who are more than a match for any man. The males here are definitely disposable.

If you wondered why I gave this is a four-star rating rather than the more obvious three stars, it’s because of what’s mostly unsaid, the iceberg of psychology floating beneath the surface, the one that says that British audiences would not tolerate a top-class female criminal gang capable of pulling off a fantastic heist and without compunction killing off any man, including co-workers, who gets in their way. Had it begun from the POV of Lydia and Trudy planning the robbery, and dealt with Cooper-Smith et al as simply hazards of the profession, it might have made a terrific heist picture but then all the fun of the twists and the pulling the wool over audience eyes would be missed.

Susan Hampshire (The Three Lives of Thomasina, 1963) belies her Disney persona with a chilling portrait of an exceptionally smart femme fatale. Stewart Granger (The Last Safari, 1967) looks as if he views the whole boring process of detection as nothing more than the opportunity to try out some chat-up lines.

Cyril Frankel makes no pretence at being a great stylist, but he more than makes up for it by the teasing structure, some of the costumes, the atmosphere and the twists. Derry Quinn (Operation Crossbow, 1965) and Stanley Munro, in his movie debut, devised the screenplay based on a book by Edgar Wallace

Watch – and marvel.

Trap (2024) * – Seen at the Cinema

The nepo is in – resulting in an all-time calamitous vanity project. Not only has director M. Night Shyamalan chosen to devote a good 30 minutes of the running time to showcasing his daughter Saleka’s talents as a singer (and for I know she may be the next big thing) but has also decided that this movie would provide an ideal opportunity for her movie debut. On top of that, star Josh Hartnett has opted for a cartoonish portrayal of his character, all goggle eyes, wiggling eyebrows and over-the-top facial expression.

Having bored us to death for well over an hour, the director then opts to let fly with twist after nonsensical twist. Virtually every law enforcement person has uniform emblazoned with FBI, POLICE, or SWAT, but you might as well have branded them all as DUMBASS for all the sense they show. Despite theoretically having some kind of description of the serial killer known as The Butcher (top marks for originality), the cops proceed to pull out of a concert any number of people who bear no resemblance at all to each other.

The set-up, should you be remotely interested, sees Cooper (Josh Hartnett) taking teenage daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a sold-out concert by latest pop sensation Lady Raven (Saleka Night Shyamalen) only to discover the venue is crawling with cops and FBI hoping to ensnare said killer by the simple device of stopping all of the 3,000 male attendees as they leave unless in one of their random audience selections they happen upon the villain. Cooper is soon alert to the problem and finds clever ways to avoid detection, including convincing Saleka’s uncle (M. Night Shyamalen) whom he couldn’t know from Adam that his daughter has recovered from leukemia, the kind of sob story that will result in Riley being selected to join the singer on stage for one number.

Cooper then manages to nip out the back door by taking Lady Raven hostage. Though, wait for it, it turns out that the FBI have trained her about what to do in the event of such an occurrence, which is some psychobabble about behaving like his mother and telling him to stop being effectively (shades of Life of Brian) such a naughty boy. Turns out, too, his wife Rachel (Alison Pill) has harbored sufficient doubts about her husband that she’s alerted the police that the killer is going to be attending the concert, hence the manhunt, but not done the sensible thing of fully identifying him which, of course, would stop him killing anyone else and save the police the cost of putting a couple of hundred cops on duty at the concert hall (some people!). Nor with a kettle boiling has she the gumption to pour the boiling water over him.

Just when it looks as if clever Lady Raven has outwitted our thug and called on her social media cohort to track down his latest victim, we’re treated to a whole spree of idiotic twists, mostly of the catch-and-escape-catch-and-escape variety.

Mostly, I felt insulted. I’ve been loyal to M. Night Shyamalen over the past quarter of a century, even recently popping back to the cinema to view (and review) his classic The Sixth Sense (1999). After Unbreakable (2000) and Signs (2002), his output became variable, disastrous ventures like The Last Airbender (2010) and After Earth (2013) partly redeemed by Split (2016) and Glass (2019). He’s kept hmself in the game by independent production and low-budgets, his name retaining enough marquee pull to keep his pictures in profit.

But with Trap he’s just showing contempt for his audience. Will Smith I remember going down a similar route, demanding his offspring have major roles in some of his projects, but the whole nepo business is getting out of hand. Sure, you can’t blame kids for being born to parents who are global superstars nor for believing they are entitled tofollow suit. But Hollywood is littered with kids who were showered with praise or given unfair advantage only to find audiences held their efforts in little regard.

This might well have worked if we’d got to the twists quicker, lopped off a good 20 minutes of concert footage and stuck to the narrative. As it was, by the time we get to anything that could remotely be deemed thrilling, the audience has fallen asleep.

Josh Hartnett’s all-time worst performance. M. Night Shyamalan’s worst film. Hopefully, all this effort to build up his daughter’s singing career is worth it because I can’t be the only one who feels duped.

Avoid.

The Thief Who Came to Dinner (1973) ****

Very unusual entry into the cat burglar subgenre since it plays like a bromantic version of The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), investigator and investigated striking up some sort of relationship, though with an elegant dame on the sidelines to take care of the jewel thief’s sexual needs. Might be surprised to see Bud Yorkin – better known at the time for comedy – helming this classy thriller and Walter Hill, not yet known for tough thrillers, relegated to screenplay duties.

Webster (Ryan O’Neal) quits his job as a computer geek to go into the thieving business. He’s pretty business-like about it, too, setting up a deal with fence Deams (Ned Beatty) before he gets started, and none of this no honor among thieves nonsense. The first break-in, to the house of politician Henderling (Charles Cioffi), delivers a handy bonus of uncovering documents relating to corruption so Webster’s able to blackmail the victim into providing him with an entrée into high society where he can scope the jewellery on show at various parties, and where he meets Laura (Jacqueline Bisset) who appears to be in the same line of work, if at a much lower level.

We never see Laura at work and mostly she hovers in the background, there’s no angst in this relationship, she’s the kind of thief who steals because she’s the bored kind of rich gal looking for kicks. Most of the thieving is interesting one way or another. On his first gig, though Webster had invested in one of those devices that hold onto the glass once you’ve nefariously released it from the frame, he’s so inexperienced the glass breaks.

Instead of quieting guard dogs with doped meat, he sends in a bitch to distract them. He has to deal with illicit lovers turning up in the middle of a robbery. And, of course, with an amazing diamond on show, he just has to organize a way of stealing it.

So with Laura not providing any of the tension, not the usual refusal to become entangled with a criminal, not just the normal lovers’ tiffs, it’s left to insurance investigator Dave (Warren Oates) to provide the friction. He’s not the confident, cocky, kind of detective and it’s diligence that leads him to consider Webster his main suspect. And so begins the cat-and-mouse element, the cat often subverted since Webster knows when he’s being tailed and can lead Dave a merry dance. But, mostly, Webster seems to enjoy the battle of minds.

Webster, and a psychiatrist would have a field day here, leaves a calling card at every robbery in the shape of a chess move, guaranteed to get him the headlines he presumably craves of “The Chess Burglar Strikes Again” variety, which only serves to ratchet up the pressure on the supposed incompetence of his pursuers.

Dave has the bright idea of getting a chess expert Zukovsky (Austin Pendleton) to take the thief up on the game, thus introducing a splendid subsidiary character primarily for comic effect, Zukovsky unaware that Webster’s moves are plotted by computer.

Dave and Webster do spend a lot of time together one way or another, Webster even visiting the detective when he’s hospitalized, and an element of mutual respect evolves. Once their relationship is established, Laura has less to do than be an accomplice, arranging ingenious escapes and so forth, so she’s not entirely out of the picture.

But the most interesting relationship is certainly between thief and ersatz cop. There are some excellent individual scenes, most of the thefts contain some unique element, the confrontations between the two principals play out like a low-key chess game, while the originally cocky Zukovsky, initially relishing the publicity, is reduced to fury at being beaten by an amateur. Webster’s ex-wife (Jill Clayburgh) relishes the change in his personality.

But mostly this is Ryan O’Neal (The Big Bounce, 1969) at the top of his game. No smirking and no screwball comedy. He’s given a well-developed character to play – physically fit, able to hold his own in the boxing gym, capable of cutting a deal with underworld figures – and the screenplay cleverly withholds the one element that all crime movies fall down on, the explanation of why anyone would turn to crime, so Webster weaves a sense of mystery. Jacqueline Bisset (The Detective, 1968) makes an excellent partner. And this is a stripped-down Warren Oates (The Wild Bunch, 1969), eliminating the meanness or exuberance that were his screen trademarks. Jill Clayburgh (An Unmarried Woman, 1978) has a cameo.

Bud Yorkin, who at the time was producer of the top three television comedies on U.S. television, foregoes comedy for tension and thrills. Walter Hill (48 Hrs, 1982) sneaks in some of the elements that would later become trademarks.

Great watch.

Seven Golden Men (1965) ****

Very stylish caper picture that dispenses with the recruitment section, the ingenious hi-tech robbery accounting for the first half, escape and double-cross the second, a slinky Rosanna Podesta an added attraction/distraction. The Professor (Phillippe Leroy), in bowler hat and umbrella, orchestrates the gold bullion theft from an uber-secure bank using hidden microphones and cameras and a host of electronic equipment, the inch-perfect heist organized to mathematical perfection and timed to the second.

His team, disguised as manual workers, dig under the road, don scuba gear to negotiate a sewer, drill up into the gigantic vault and then suck out the gold bars using travelators and hoists. Giorgia (Podesta), sometimes wearing cat-shaped spectacles, a body stocking and other times not very much, causes the necessary diversions and plants a homing device in a safety deposit box adjacent to the vault. Occasionally her attractiveness causes problems, priests in the neighboring block complaining she is putting too much on show.

It’s not all plain sailing. A cop complains about the workmen working during the sacrosanct siesta, a bureaucrat insists on paperwork, a radio ham picks up communication suggesting a robbery in progress, the police appear on the point of sabotaging the plan.

But the whole thing is brilliantly done, the calm professor congratulating himself on his brilliance, Giorgia seduction on legs. The getaway is superbly handled, the loot smuggled out in exemplary fashion, its destination designed to confuse. Then it is double-cross, triple-cross and whatever-cross comes after that, with every reversal no idea what is going to happen next. It is twist after twist after twist. Some of the criminals are slick and some are dumb. As well as the high drama there are moments of exquisite comedy.

Italian writer-director Mario Vicario (The Naked Hours, 1964) handles this European co-production with considerable verve and although, minus the normal recruitment section, we don’t get to know the team very well except for the professor and Giorgia, each is still given some little identity marker and in any case by the time they come to split the proceeds we are already hooked.

Frenchman Phillippe Leroy (Castle of the Living Dead, 1964) is the standout as a mastermind in the British mold, stickler for accuracy, calm under pressure, working with military precision. Podesta (also The Naked Hours) has no problem catching the camera’s attention or playing with the emotions of the gang to fulfill her own agenda. The gang is multi-national – German, French, Italian, Spanish Portuguese, Irish – with only Gabriel Tinti likely to be recognized by modern audiences.

And there is a terrific score by Armando Trovajoli (Marriage Italian Style, 1964) that changes mood instantly scene by scene. One minute it is hip and cool jazz, the next jaunty, and then tense.

Worth a watch.

A Black Veil for Lisa (1968) ***

John Mills ventures back into Tunes of Glory (1960) territory as a top official coming apart at the seams. This time it’s not the British Army but the Italian Police where, as Franz Buloff, he heads up the narcotics squad. And this time he’s not the complacent victim but decides to take action against his tormentor.

Closing in on drugs kingpin Scheurermann, he finds that one witness after another is being silenced by an assassin with a deadly knife. He suspects a leak in his department, unaware the traitor is much closer to home. And despite the usual dissatisfied boss Ostermeyer (Tillio Altamura) breathing down his neck, he would be making more headway if it wasn’t for the fact that his head is constantly filled with images of his wife Lisa making love to another man.

For her part, Lisa seems determined to unhinge her husband, eliciting jealousy at every turn, by never answering the phone at night and always an excuse, when he tracks her down, for not being where was supposed to be. Rather than calming him down, her occasional seduction of her husband only serves to ramp up his fury.

In any case, it’s an odd set-up, he’s much older and the security he offers is not just financial. She was once a suspect herself and being married to a top cop has put a force field between her and suspicion. There’s clearly an unspoken assertion that somehow she has duped the cop, making him fall in love with an apparently innocent woman. They couldn’t be more opposite. “I like danger,” is her mantra.

He breaks open the case after following up a clue dropped at the scene of the crime. After arresting Max (Robert Hoffman), he strikes a deal with the killer. In return for his freedom, the murderer has to take out Lisa. But, of course, it’s not as simple as that. When Buloff realizes the deep water he is treading, he calls off the assassination. But then when he discovers that Max has helped himself to a bonus – beginning an affair with Lisa – he recants and puts the man back on the spot.

So, now, it’s Max who faces the quandary of having to kill his lover. And that puts up square in cat-and-mouse territory.

This isn’t quite giallo, the genre was still in the process of being born, in part because there’s no mystery about the killer, in part because the murders aren’t bloody enough, and in part because the dead aren’t sexy young women. So it’s more a series of character studies, each driven to an edge by an action that otherwise would be out of character.

A top cop like Buloff should have been a better judge of character than to fall for Lisa’s wiles in the first place. Lisa, too, should have recognized her penchant for the seedier side of life rather than being as she puts it “too young to be buried alive” in a stifling marriage to a jealous husband. But, she, too, is a poor judge of character, expecting to win back the favor of the drug overlord after she had so openly crossed the tracks to the other side of the law.

And Max, one of the first of a series of killers in movies who wanted out (see The Brotherhood, 1968, and Stiletto, 1969), is trapped into more killing because nowhere is safe. Getting rid of Buloff was never in his plans, as that would draw even more unwelcome attention. But then neither was falling in love with the cop’s wife. There’s still a few twists to go not least when Lisa discovers that the husband she felt she had under control had broken free and was intending to have her killed.

John Mills, a surprising addition to the Brits heading for Italy, is excellent especially as the big flaw in Tunes of Glory was his inability to find the cunning to strike back at his chief tormentor. Here, he might have second thoughts about dispatching his wife, but revenge is always the best weapon.

Luciana Paluzzi (Chuka, 1967, which, incidentally, also featured Mills) gets her teeth into a decent role rather than been saddled in lightweight fare since swanning around in swimwear in Thunderball (1965). Austrian Robert Hoffman (Assignment K, 1968) is given a surprising range of emotions to deal with.

Massimo Dallamano (Venus in Furs, 1969) handles the material well and gets the best out of his cast without taking the bloodier route of the later giallo. He was one of four writers contributing to the screenplay. This was one of the feature films made by new American mini-major Commonwealth United, one of the stack of “instant majors” popping up around this time.

John Mills is always watchable and the twists make this one play.

Sisters / Blood Sisters (1973) ****

Trust Brian De Palma to invent a gameshow called “Peeping Toms.” And give Hollywood an insight into the delicious malevolence to come later in his career. Often compared to Hitchcock, this is Hitchcock diced and sliced, awash with style. Not simply inspired use of split screen but an ending Edgar Allan Poe would have been proud of. De Palma plays with and confounds audience expectation and has mastered enough of the Hitchcock approach to make the villainess more attractive than the heroine. If you’re in the mood for Hitchcock homage, this is a good place to start.

Both main characters are strictly low end, sometime model Danielle (Margot Kidder) gameshow fodder, journalist Grace (Jennifer Salt) handed run-of-the-mill reporting jobs instead of, as she would prefer, investigating police corruption. Grace also has to contend with a mother (Mary Davenport), in typical non-feminist fashion, determined to marry her off.

While the Siamese twin notion is straight out of the B-movie playbook and right up the street of exploitation maestros AIP, De Palma takes this idea and hits a home run. But you’ll have to be very nimble to keep up with the narrative.

Danielle meets Philip (Lisle Wilson) at the gameshow and after dinner she invites him to her apartment for sex. In the morning, he buys a surprise birthday cake for Danielle and her twin Dominique. On his return, he is murdered, an act witnessed by Grace, a neighbor across the street. She calls the police but before they can arrive Danielle’s ex-husband Emil (William Finley) – introduced to the audience, incidentally, as a creepy stalker – cleans up the mess and hides the corpse in the fold-up bed-couch.

Fans of the forensic may have trouble with this section as these days blood is more difficult to hide, but that’s evened up by the notion that a pushy journo would be allowed to sit in on the investigation. But heigh-ho, this was back in the day, so anything goes, and in any case, a la Hitchcock, it’s the woman who enters harm’s way. The cops, annoyed to hell by Grace, give up on the case and the reporter, having found the cake carrying the names of both twins, manages to destroy the evidence.

*Great set of reviews that only served to confuse the public.*
*An audience searching for schlock doesn’t want art.*

Grace isn’t the kind of reporter easily thwarted so she hires private eye Larch (Charles Durning) who burgles the apartment and finds proof Danielle has been separated from her Siamese twin, who died during the operation. Grace follows Emil and Danielle to a mental hospital where, in a brilliant twist, mistaken for a patient, she is sedated and becomes an inmate. Later, hypnotised by Emil, she is convinced there has been no murder.

You’re going to struggle with the sharp turn exposition takes, but, heigh-ho, how else are we going to uncover the truth. Effectively, we learn that sex releases murderous thoughts in Danielle. The detail is a good bit creepier than that, but I wouldn’t want to spoil too much.

In many places it was seen as the lower part of a schlock double bill. A reviewer in the trades was correct when he predicted it was “certain to be an underground fave for some time” (i.e.limited to cult appeal) since well-reviewed horror pictures didn’t attract an initial audience.

But the ending is a corker. Grace is a prisoner. There’s another twist after that, but the notion of the investigator driven mad and ending up a prisoner of their own delusions, true Hitchcock territory, is honed to perfection here.

De Palma uses the split screen in the same way as Hitchcock employed the cutaway shot to increase the tension of potential discovery. Several sequences are rendered very effectively through this device. Oddly enough, Grace doesn’t fit the Hitchcock mold of classy heroines. She’s way too feisty and independent and there’s almost a feeling that she gets what she deserved for tramping uninvited around a vulnerable person’s life. Here, Danielle is the victim, taken advantage of by the medical profession and her creepy husband, separation from twin ravaging her intellect.

Margot Kidder (Gaily, Gaily, 1969) and Jennifer Salt (Midnight Cowboy, 1969) are both excellent in difficult roles. Charles Durning (Stiletto, 1969) makes a splash in the kind of role that made his name. As a bonus, there’s a great score from Bernard Herrmann (Psycho, 1960).

But this is De Palma’s picture, serving notice to Hollywood that here was a talent of Hitchcockian proportions.

Twisted Nerve (1968) ***

Another rich kid with mental health issues though without Orson Welles to offer expiation. The cause of this character’s illness is undetermined but it’s easy enough to spot the trigger to violence. The lad’s father is dead and his mother’s new husband, a wealthy banker, wants him out of the way, or at least out of the house, or at least, given he’s twenty-one, out working rather than mooning about the house all day.

And this was certainly the year for the movies exploring split personality – if such shallow treatment could be deemed investigation – what with Tony Curtis and Rod Steiger in serial murderous form in, respectively, The Boston Strangler (1968) and No Way to Treat a Lady (1968). And for movie fans it was an unexpecteldy speedy reteaming for Hayley Mills and Hywel Bennett after the humungous success of The Family Way (1967) in which the actress shed her child-star persona in no uncertain manner and the British film industry was, apparently, suddenly blessed with a duo with marquee appeal.

*A poster that gives the game away.* *And an apostrophe issue.*

This takes the Rod Steiger route of charming killer rather than a Tony Curtis puzzled and horrified by the demands of his ulterior personality. Given the emphasis on mental illness these days, Twisted Nerve is the hardest of the trio to take, since it’s effectively a play on an old gimmmick, deviousness concealed inside appeal.

Martin (Hywel Bennett) faced with expulsion from his house by overbearing substitute father Henry (Frank Finlay) pretends to scoot off to France but instead inveigles himself into the boarding house run by Joan (Billie Whitelaw) after tricking her librarian daughter Susan (Hayley Mills) into extending a sympathetic hand to his alter ego, the childish Georgie, whose behavior falls only a little way short of sucking his thumb and clutching a teddy bear.

Joan’s initial cynicism gives way to maternal feelings when he clambers into her bed in the middle of the night after a supposed nightmare. (And not with sexual intent.)

Occasionally, Martin cannot control his true feelings, despite Susan rebuffing his romantic overtures. Father is the first victim, substitute mother Joan the second and it’s only a matter of time before Susan becomes a target either for his stifled sexuality or his inner venom.

This would probably work just as well minus the schizophrenic element. In fact, there’s too much of tipping the nod to the audience. Eventually, Susan’s suspicions are aroused but director Roy Boulting (The Family Way) is no Alfred Hitchcock able to manipulate an audience. So, mainly, what we are left with is Hywel Bennett’s ability to pull off a double role rather than his victims’ susceptibility to his charms.

Hayley Mills’ character could do with fattening up, otherwise she’s just the dupe, bright, bubbly, self-confident and attractive though she is, although her mother, in passing, is given more depth, a lonely attractive widow prone to sleeping with her attractive guest Gerry (Barry Foster) and, unnerved to some extent by her daughter’s growing independence, wanting a son to mother.

It’s only un-formulaic in the sense that the director is playing with an audience who were not expecting anything like this as a story fit for their two newest adult stars so hats off especially to Bennett for considering a role that could as easily have typecast him for the rest of his career. As I said, setting aside the mental illness elements, Bennett is good fun, as he toys with both aspects of his character, adeptly dealing with those who would patronise him, and like Leopold and Lowe convinced he can get away with the perfect crime, whose planning and attention to detail is noteworthy.

As with the Chicago killers it’s only accident that gives him away, although the policeman here (Timothy West) is less dominant than his American counterpart.

Clearly filmmakers of the 1960s were beginning to grapple with mental illness but either lurching too far towards romance as a way of instigating tragedy as with Lilith (1964) or to the most violent aspects of the condition as with virtually anything else beginning with Psycho (1960).

Worth a look for Hywel Bennett’s chilling performance – template for Edward Norton’s turn in Primal Fear (1996) – and Hayley Mills fans won’t want to miss it. Strong performances by Billie Whitelaw (The Comedy Man, 1964), Barry Foster (Robbery, 1967) and Frank Finlay (The Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968) help enormously. There was quite an input into the screenplay. Along with Boulting, Leo Marks (Sebastian, 1968) doing the heavy lifting adapting work by Roger Marshall (Theatre of Death, 1967) and, in his only movie credit, Jeremy Scott. Great score by Bernard Herrmann.

Well done with misgivings.