Crime/Thriller – Page 16 – The Magnificent 60s

Johnny Cool (1963) ****

The one-man-wrecking-crew activities of the likes of John Wick or your friendly neighborhood beekeeper not to mention that Point Blank (1968) has a similar downbeat ending and the flurry of interest in retro noir should have set the reassessment alarm bells ringing. Audiences and critics have been frankly dismissive, not even wondering how a mere television director managed to hook the likes of Rat Pack dudes Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford and get an exceptionally dramatic performance from eternally cute Disneyesque Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery.

Perhaps it’s because star Henry Silva (The Secret Invasion, 1964) never broke out of a cycle of B-films or small supporting role in bigger pictures or that director William Asher threw away any kudos he might have earned here by turning to Muscle Beach Party (1964) and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965) and the like. Or perhaps that the makers of the aforementioned John Wick and The Beekeeper learned to leaven the innate violence of the character and render him more audience-friendly by giving him sentimental attachment to pet dogs and old ladies or some old guy robbed of his pension.

Johnny Cool (Henry Silva) has better reason than either to get mad with the world, given that as a child during World War Two he saved his mother from rape from one German soldier only to witness her killed by another. Orphaned, he was taken in by the local Resistance which later reverted back to its Mafia origins. He’s got the murder cojones, for sure, interrupting a wedding to kill off the groom.

Anyway, he’s hired by Mafia bigwig Johnny Colini (Marc Lawrence) to embark on a transatlantic sojourn and wipe out the main men of the U.S. Syndicate. Along the way, he dallies with non-combatant Dare (Elizabeth Montgomery) who later becomes complicit and then, as if this was a 1940s gangster picture seeking to avoid the wrath of the Production code, suffused by guilt turns him in.

Meanwhile, he’s on the slaughter trail. In part the gangsters are easy pickings, because they have all grown fat and in turning legitimate are out of reach of the law and in part because, just like Point Blank, nobody saw him coming or guessed anyone would have such audacity. He’s not in the do-not-disturb category of John Wick or The Beekeeper.

But he does cross a particular line that audience and critics back in the day were generally averse to. His violence is indiscriminate. He kills cops and would have inadvertently killed kids, too, if they had got in the way. There was no shortage of corrupt cops in Hollywood policiers in the 60s and 70s, but generally they weren’t executed.

He’s one step ahead of everyone and even without a standard weapon is a dab hand at improvisation. Colini has preyed upon his lack of parentage, suggesting that Cool will become a surrogate son once he has completed his mission. When that ploy is exposed and Cool realizes he is the worst kind of patsy, the movie takes a sharp right turn into the modern idiom by allowing him not to turn back and get revenge on the Italian godfather but to continue the killing spree to satisfy his own honor.

Few bad guys were as cool or charming as Johnny Cool. While his face can turn rigid and his personality entombed by inner demons, he is an adept ladies man and has the kind of easy-going manner that on the surface ensures access to dangerous area. Most tough guys, who found ways of justifying their killing, or had a soft spot for some dame, couldn’t manage the pretence for long and away from a sympathetic female so completely conceal their true identities.

Henry Silva is just terrific. This is the hit man with more style than redeeming features. And director Willam Asher plays the noir game, clever use of shadows, and a surprising quotient of aerial shots. And the ending is classic. So I won’t spoil that for you, but maybe the best twist ever in a crime picture.

Given contemporary audience and critical antipathy for Elizabeth Montgomery, this should have buried her career, but, as luck would have it, she fell in love with Asher and he handed her the leading role in his next television show – I should have mentioned he was something of a TV whizz-kid – Bewitched (1964-1972). Although she might never have met Asher at all if her first prospective female leading role had come off – she was the replacement for Debbie Reynolds in the $3.5m version of Alistair MacLean’s Night without End directed by George Seaton and a Paramount release. It was scheduled for release in 1962 but was never made.

Asher did move in Rat Pack circles, hence the involvement of Peter Lawford, in a production capacity, and Joey Bishop and Sammy Davis Jr. in small roles, with the latter lending his tonsils to the title tune. Look out for Brad Dexter (The Magnificent Seven, 1960), Richard Anderson (Seconds, 1966), Telly Savalas (The Scalphunters, 1968) and Wanda Hendrix (The Prince of Foxes, 1949).

The pitiless avenger being in such contemporary vogue, this is worth a look.

A Touch of Larceny (1960) ****

Magically fits into the “lost” film category that I’ve been banging on about recently, films, for a variety of reasons, denied cinematic release. Or at least that’s according to Rotten Tomatoes which declares “there are no featured reviews…because the movie has not (been) released yet” despite the fact that it was a big hit in cinemas over six decades ago.

Happening upon this nugget of information in a casual trawl of RT I thought I’d see if this “lost” movie was as good as The Appointment (1969) perhaps or Fade In (1969) or whether it should never be seen.

Imagine my surprise to find a highly entertaining picture best described as a one-man caper that takes aim at the Establishment and the Media, wrapped in a very witty rom-com, and helped along by the kind of Whitehall characters making a meal out of doing nothing as lampooned in BBC TV series Yes, Minister.

The central conceit sounds so lame from the outset that you think this confection is going to collapse the minute it is put into practice, but, in fact, a good few twists inflate the idea until it floats along quite merrily towards a happy conclusion. And if you only remember James Mason from dour turns in The Deadly Affair (1967) or as the smarmy villain in North by Northwest (1959), you’re in for a treat.

For this is the actor at his most winning, so charming he almost edges into the adorable class, and this while playing a rake, the seducer’s seducer, but with the quickest of quick wits to get him out of any scrape. We begin and end with a demonstration of such speedy thinking.

Surprised by the return of his latest conquest’s husband, Commander Max “Rammer” (the nickname nothing to do with sexual prowess) Easton simply dons his naval uniform, whisks up the woman’s dog, his presence explained as delivering a poor creature lost in the street. As easy as pie.

His life is one of ease. When he says he works at the Admiralty, “working” might be a stretch, although “lolling about” would hardly be in the job description, the sole purpose of his desk somewhere to lay his feet, and has an airy dismissal at hand for any Whitehall buffoon inclined to pepper their language with Civil Service gobbledegook.

Bumping into an old war chum Sir Charles Holland (George Sanders), now an ambassador, they were submarine commanders in World War Two, allows him brief acquaintance with American widow Virgina (Vera Miles). Naturally, he snaffles one of her gloves so as to have an excuse to return it. Realizing his game, she bats him back with effortless repartee, saving for the last the fact that she is engaged to be married to Sir Charles.

Given he is so practised at this game, he manages to inveigle his way into her life – Sir Charles away on urgent business – determines that her fiance’s main attraction is his dosh, and comes up with a barmy scheme to put himself in the wealthy category. His notion is to pretend to be a spy, drop a top secret document down behind a filing cabinet, vanish to a remote Scottish island, wait for his colleagues to raise the alarm, someone discover the document is missing, and the newspapers to brand him a traitor, at which point he will pop back up and sue the media for libel, and become rich enough to suit Virginia.

Yep, it seems a crazy notion, especially as Virginia, though clearly enjoying his company, has kept him at a decided arm’s length. Unfortunately, once the hue-and-cry is raised, Virginia makes the mistake of telling her husband it’s all a big con. But that puts Sir Charles in a bind, because to fess up might put his fiancé, and by extension himself, in a difficult position.

So they do nothing. Meanwhile, on his deserted tiny island off the coast of Scotland, Easton is living it up, dining off his ample supplies, occasionally catching a fish or a lobster, certainly enough booze to keep up his spirits, tuning into the radio to keep up with the news, waving half-heartedly at any passing ship, rehearsing his lines for when he is rescued. He’s even brought along a canister of petrol so he will have no trouble lighting damp driftwood and seaweed to make the bonfire he will require to attract attention.

So far, so barmy. But now the first twist. He chucks into the sea all evidence of his high living. He slips on a rock, falls into the water and the precious fuel sinks to the bottom. Now, he is a genuine castaway, soaked, starving, freezing. Second twist, the passengers on the boat that turns up to rescue him greet him by name.

So now we’re in for a devilish third act, the cops tipped the nod without getting the full story, Virginia the obvious culprit, Easton, back to the wall, requiring some fiendish ingenuity to get himself out of the mess. After a bundle of twists coming quick and fast, the romantic entanglement is disentangled, Easton still set to be rich by selling his tale (“the real true story” i.e. fictional hogwash) to the media who no doubt toss in a sweetener in gratitude for not being sued.

Not only is it delivered in effortless style by director Guy Hamilton (The Battle of Britain, 1969), and Mason at the top of his game, matched by Vera Miles (Psycho, 1960), but it is very short, clocking in at just over 90 minutes. Roger MacDougall (The Man in the White Suit, 1951), Ivan Foxwell (Tiara Tahiti, 1962) and the director concocted the screenplay from the novel by Paul Somers.

Great fun, the repartee and the final third an absolute treat while poking gentle fun at the Establishment.

Rather than belonging to the “lost” category, it sits comfortably in the “they don’t make ‘em like that anymore” section.

Marnie (1964) *****

Arguably Alfred Hitchcock’s most difficult film and with some attitudes that will not sit well with today’s audiences nonetheless this is an assured work and the completion of an unofficial trilogy that tries to explain the unexplainable. The director had not been making what might be termed traditional Hitchcock pictures for well over half a decade if you take North by Northwest (1959) as the anomaly in a sequence that began with the obsessive Vertigo (1958). You could argue that Hitchcock had turned a bit “north by northwest” himself, the “hero” of Psycho (1960) a mother-obsessed serial killer, the “bad guys” in The Birds (1963) the titular rapacious creatures who besiege the leading characters and set the world on an apocalyptical course.

Attempts are made in both Psycho and The Birds to explain the actions of the predators, but such explanations are external, remote, and with Marnie Hitchcock takes the bold step of attempting to explain what makes such a devious, compulsive, frigid liar tick. Hitchcock called the movie a “sex mystery” but it was unclear whether he was just once again trying to tantalize his audience or whether he believed it was film about the mystery of sex, what causes attraction between two people while others steadfastly refuse to consider the concept. To embellish his thesis he chose one of the world’s most beautiful actresses (Tippi Hedren) and the actor (Sean Connery) who could easily lay claim to being the world’s sexiest man (as he was later anointed in various polls).

It seemed almost an indecent proposal to deny the bed-hopper-par-excellence – as viewed from the James Bond perspective. And it certainly took all the charm Connery could muster to prevent audiences baulking at the almost perverse scientific aspects of his character, an amateur zoologist who welcomed a known criminal into his world for the chance to examine her at close quarters. The audience is constantly kept at one remove. In the first section we watch enthralled as Hedren carries out her bold thefts, as if she is capable of wrapping the entire male population around her little finger by the simple device of adjusting her skirt.

But in the middle section, it is Connery who is in control and the trapped Hedren who is twisting and turning searching for an escape route. In the final section, when it is clear that is the lover, not the scientist, in Connery that tries to find a way round the problem, the tension is at its height because we have no idea whether she will run true to form and manage to steal and lie her way out or whether Connery’s patience will snap and he will throw her to the wolves who are certainly by this point circling.

The central device on which Hitchcock hooked an audience was the moviegoer demand for a happy ending. He duped cinemagoers in Psycho, slaughtering the heroine halfway through. In The Birds Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren underwent a harrowing physical assault and while clearly romantically involved by the end Hedren was a wreck. Here, the assaults are mental. There is none of the romantic banter that defines the greatest of his traditional works. Hedren and Connery are together because he has forced the issue and loving though his blackmail is it is still an unequal relationship and one from which she will seek to escape at every opportunity. Hedren’s compulsive character is a mystery that appears insoluble as she resists every attempt to break down the wall she has erected to protect herself from her past.

The story is straightforward with few of the twists of other pictures. We meet Hedren as she escapes with nearly $10,000 stolen from her employers. We learn quickly that she is a master of disguise, has several social security cards up her sleeve, can turn from brunette to blonde, and is so practiced in her deception that she can convince an employer to take her on without references. As the employer is spelling out his predicament to the police, an amused Sean Connery, a customer of her employer, appears. Hedren runs off to a bolt-hole, an upmarket hotel, close to the stables where she keeps a horse, Forio.

Shifting back to Hedren we find her visiting her mother in a tawdry street near the docks. The artifice of confidence is shredded away. She is jealous of the attention her mother gives a little girl whom she looks after. She wants love that her mother is unable to give. When she lays her head on her mother’s lap waiting for the soothing stroke of a hand all she receives is rebuke for leaning too heavily on her mother’s sore leg. The mother in North by Northwest was played for comedy, in Psycho an occasion for murder, and here a means of control. Here, too, we witness the color red sparking an inexplicable and frightening experience.

When Hedren applies for a new job it is at Connery’s firm, where he is the coming man. He watches amused as she is interviewed, intervenes to ensure she is hired. They have in common that they are widowed. Hedren is already planning her next big score, discovering that the combination to the safe is kept in a drawer to which her employer’s secretary has the key.

But he is ready for her and it seems almost perverse that he does not let her know he is aware of her true identity. Instead, under the guise of asking her to work overtime, he gives her an academic paper to type. The subject is predators, “the criminals of the animal world” in which females feature. His gentle pressure is almost sadistic and she is saved by a sudden storm which triggers another bad subconscious reaction.

Her theft of money from the office is a classic Hitchcock scene. It begins in complete silence. The screen is divided in two, the office and the corridor. Seeing a cleaner appear, Hedren removes her shoes to make her getaway. Almost as she reaches the safety of the stairs, a shoe falls out of her pocket and clatters on the floor. The cleaner does not look up. She is very hard of hearing.

But Connery is again prepared and when she disappears tracks her to her bolt-hole, confronts her, questioning her again and again until he thinks he is close to the truth. He can’t turn her in because he has fallen in love. The choice is stark – him or the police. Soon they are married. But the honeymoon, despite his patience, is a disaster, she cannot “bear to be handled” and they return home further apart than ever.

Meanwhile, figures from her past begin to appear. Lil (Diane Baker) who lusts after Connery brings peril to their door. Connery persists with trying to get Hedren to open up.

Eventually, there is a break in her compulsive syndrome, brought on by love, and we head back to her mother’s to get to the root of the problem. Even when the problem is solved her mother remains distant, still won’t stroke her hair. If there is a happy ending it is like that of The Birds, an immediate problem solved but who knows when or if the crows will return, and there is a similar resolution here, Hedren learns the source of her nightmares but it would be a very blind person who did not see terrible ramifications for the future.

There are certainly a few jarring moments, Hitchcock’s insistence on back projection for a start, but then you didn’t really think in North by Northwest that the director was allowed to film in front of the United Nations. Rather than a technical flaw, the back projection seems to fit another purpose, a device to make the audience stop and examine what is going on for much of it occurs when Hedren is in her fantasy world. And you would have to take exception to Coonery’s actions in the bedroom on honeymoon, no matter how gentle his caresses at other times. And certainly, the psychological assumptions ring hollow given our current knowledge of such conditions, but despite that make for tense viewing.

But the meat of the movie is self-deception. Hedren is convinced she can get away with a series of thefts. Connery is convinced her can cure her. His constant interrogation is what passes for lovers’ banter. In aligning himself as her moral guardian and perhaps her savior, “dying to play doctor,” Connery has entered a nightmare of his own making. Only an arrogant man would believe all women would fall at his feet and Hitchcock clearly makes a connection with Connery’s ongoing incarnation as James Bond where that is exactly the case. Connery is every bit as flawed, as obsessive, as Scottie in Vertigo, determined to shape a woman into perfect form, and that, yes, expecting to eradicate the imperfect past.

Connery emanated such ease, such amazing grace, on the screen that it backfired. Critics often didn’t believe he was putting much into his acting when in reality he was acting his socks off. This is a tremendously difficult part, walking the tightrope between looking a deluded fool and retaining audience empathy and coming across badly when he pushed a vulnerable woman too hard. This is a very rounded character, a gentle adoring lover in the main, but not one to be crossed. His interrogations are intense and yet still you can see that it will kill him if he is double-crossed. The casual amusement with which he greeted her appearance at his office is replaced by fear at her sudden departure.

Hedren, too, whose acting ability was often called into question, carries on where she left off from in The Birds. By the end of that picture her nerves had been shredded. Here, her emotions, which she cannot as easily control as the rest of her life, too often fly off into a high pitch. Half the time she is the cool collected customer of The Birds, the rest of the time she is demented. Except in The Birds she was self-confident around men. Any self-assurance she has now is skin deep. There was always a fragility about Hedren, hidden behind the glossy exterior and fashionable outfits, and here it is exposed. The touching scenes with her mother, the mouth tightened in jealousy over the little girl, are perfectly played. A little girl lost in wolf’s clothing. And trapped, she is almost snarling at her captor, the submissive dialog concealing the mind hard at work looking for an exit.

The interrogative scenes between Connery and Hedren are extremely difficult to pull off. It would have been easier if Connery was not in love with her, and to some extent pulled his punches. It would be easier for her if he was an out-and-out predator who could be paid in kind to shut up and go away. Instead, they both have to walk a verbal tightrope and only actors of some excellence can pull off that trick without losing the audience.

A Lovely Way To Go / A Lovely Way To Die (1968) ****

Woefully neglected detective thriller with a sparkling script and sexy leading stars exuding screen charisma. Like the celebrated William Goldman-scripted opening to Paul Newman private eye picture Harper (1966), the credit sequence here is at least as innovative in that it appears to be little short of a trailer, a highlights reel showing the audience what lies in store.

Schuyler (Kirk Douglas) is a womanizing cop too handy with his fists, half his arrests making an unexpected detour to hospital. Rena (Sylva Koscina) is the bored young wife of an older millionaire whose idea of fun is to chuck an expensive scarf out of a speeding car forcing her husband to pull up and go back and fetch. When her husband is shot, suspicion falls on Rena, inclined to dress in revealing outfits for the media, and her playboy boyfriend.

At the behest of attorney Fredericks (Eli Wallach) sporting a rich Southern accent and a with knack for speaking in parables, Schuyler, having resigned from the force one step ahead of being fired, is sent in to provide security and find out whether her alibi stacks up. He soon finds out it doesn’t but by this time he has fallen under her spell. Witnesses disappear, intruders are dealt with, attempts are made on the detective’s life, and the twists come thick and fast. Rena is the arch femme fatale who is a past master in the twisting department – twisting every male within a 50-mile radius round her little finger.

Harper was a throwback to The Maltese Falcon/The Big Sleep but A Lovely Way To Die knocks that shamus tradition on the head. For a start, Schuyler is a high-living high-rolling character who doesn’t take prisoners. The second time we meet him he has dumped the girl he took to the races for someone he has met when picking up his winnings. Seducing gorgeous women and dumping them is second nature. This is Douglas as a glorious charmer, a part of his screen persona lost after a glut of more serious pictures like Seven Days in May (1964) and Cast a Giant Shadow (1966). Yugoslavian actress Koscina, often little more than eye candy for most of the decade, had vaulted into the higher echelons after a turn as Paul Newman’s squeeze in The Secret War of Harry Frigg (1968).

An inherent part of the attraction of this picture is how deftly Rena keeps Schuyler at bay. Scriptwriter A. J. Russell (Stiletto, 1969) and director David Lowell Rich (Madame X, 1966) deliver the goods in maintaining the tension in their relationship. There is a wonderful scene where the expectant Schuyler follows her up the stairs of her fabulous mansion and three times he ignores the import of her unmistakable “Goodnight,” his uber-confidence taking him to her door – which she shuts in his face.

Sure, in some ways it is slick, but it is also taut and realistic, Schuyler does not win all his fights and he eats with the rest of the help at the mansion. And he does some terrific detection so it doesn’t fall short in that department. He is definitely helped by some choice lines – “police methods are sometimes difficult for an amateur to understand” he tells Rena after he brutally deals with an intruder.

Koscina is in her element as the sexy, wealthy suspect, and especially in her banter with Douglas – her main aim to disarm his cockiness. Eli Wallach (The Moon-Spinners, 1964) is also superb, given just enough ham to hang himself, but matching Douglas in arrogance and outgunning the D.A. with his courtroom gymnastics. A couple of the subsidiary characters are well-drawn, a housekeeper who plays the markets.

For some reason this sank like a stone on its initial outing, audiences perhaps being more attuned to the Bogart-style sleuth, but I found it highly enjoyable and this could be seen as a taster for anyone familiar with the antics of the star’s son Michael Douglas who found himself in similar territory in Basic Instinct (1992).

Complex tale high on intrigue and sex, well worth a watch.

REVIEWED PREVIOUSLY IN THE BLOG: Kirk Douglas in Strangers When We Meet (1960), Lonely Are the Brave (1962), Two Weeks in Another Town (1962), For Love or Money (1963), Seven Days in May (1964), In Harm’s Way (1965), The Heroes of Telemark (1965), Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), Is Paris Burning? (1966), The Way West (1967), The Brotherhood (1968), The Arrangement (1969); Sylva Koscina in Jessica (1962), Hot Enough for June (1963), Deadlier than the Male (1967), The Secret War of Harry Frigg (1968); Eli Wallach in Seven Thieves (1960), The Misfits (1961), Act One (1963), The Moon-spinners (1964), Kisses for My President (1965), Lord Jim (1965), Genghis Khan (1965), How to Steal a Million (1966).

The Beekeeper (2024) **** – Seen at the Cinema

A franchise is born. John Wick may or may not rise again, Jason Bourne is dead in the water, so the gap exists. True, the new film certainly riffs on elements of that pair, the retired assassin bare mention of whom elicits fearful reaction, who belongs to a secret government elite, and is jolted into action by someone stupidly preying on the sole beloved aspect of his lonely life.

Eqaully true, Jason Statham (Meg 2, 2023) is certainly viewed in many quarters as the poor man’s Bruce Willis, but, like Liam Neeson, he is one of the few action actors who you would not want to meet in person, on a dark night; he looks as though he growls in his sleep.

*Not an obvious candidate for Imax but then neither was “John Wick 4” and that was certainly an experience in the hi-hat format.*

But it touches on themes that will strike a chord – the data mining to which we all involuntarily subscribe and which governments and villains alike will employ for their own purposes; the computer nerd multi-millionaire; the politically powerful with overly entitled offspring; and those in control who discover not every annoying person can be easily swatted away.

And the beekeeping part turns out also to have meaning, not too much gobbledegook about hives, which is just as well because most people we encounter haven’t a clue how honey is made, least of all pay attention to the intricate structure of that insect’s lifestyle, or that there could be a Queenslayer (and this doesn’t originate from Game of Thrones) whose purpose is to remove a dis-functioning head bee. And just when that metaphor looks as though it’s going to run dry, it turns out to have a deeper meaning.

Just as well, too, that we’re not expecting much finesse from re-awakened assassins. Like John Wick, Adam Clay (Jason Statham) takes no prisoners, but whereas the former confined his murderous activities to the underworld, the latter downs anyone who gets in his way, though in fairness, many of the supposed righteous are in the involuntarily thrall of the country’s justice departments. It helps, too, that F.B.I. investigators, Agents Parker (Emmy Raver-Lampman) and Wiley (Bobby Naderi), while not incompetent, are certainly slovenly and bicker like billy-o, and that Parker is inclined to set aside civil liberties.

So, a scammer steals a couple of million from an elderly woman, who has taken a maternal interest in her beekeeping neighbor. Since she is only caretaker of the cash, which belongs to a charity, in shame she commits suicide. Initially, the number one suspect, Clay has dark forces on his side, too, able to access secret information denied both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A.

And he takes route number one to resolving any issues, turning up at the first scammer operation armed with a couple of cans of petrol and proceeding to drench any employee not smart enough to scarper. That’s, of course, after he’s disabled any security guards so low down the pecking order they wouldn’t even be aware of the name that should strike fear in their hearts.

Luckily, we’ve got retired C.I.A. chief Westwyld (Jeremy Irons) to explain enough about the government’s secret beekeeping operation to keep us on our toes. But quite why he’s involved with said nerdy multi-millionaire Danforth (Josh Hutcherson) is cleverly kept from us until the twists begin to mount. But as in the High Table, he can call in top-level assassins to rid him of an irritant.

There’s some clever comedy, too, as Danforth’s equally geeky underlings don’t quite realize exactly what they’re up against, even while, like gameboys ramping up to participate in a computer game, they hire muscle. But, most of it is Clay daringly outwitting everyone in his path until he ends up at a Presidential hideaway and the extent of the corruption becomes clear.

There’s nothing desperately new here, there rarely is, and scarcely an ounce of sophistication (and who cares about that). Remember that even John Wick (before it developed into the High Table malarkey) was a bare-bones riff on Bourne. But who needs anything that original, a believable character is all, because there will always be murk that needs cleaned up, and a hero who can take on all-comers. John Wick One, as I recall, was not such a big initial blockbuster, finding a bigger audience on DVD, and it was only when the makers went back to the well, with a bigger budget and expanded the concept, that it really took off.

I can see the same thing happening here. The big surprise of the weekend was not so much the heavily-promoted Mean Girls doing better than expected, but the scarcely-promoted The Beekeeper doing way better than expected, and when it comes to the foreign markets, the latter will blow the former out of the water, because, overseas, action speaks louder than lyrics.

Not entirely sure why this is so heavily pickled with Brits, but as well as Statham, we have Oscar-winner Jeremy Irons (House of Gucci, 2001) with his silky steely tones, Jemma Redgrave (I’ll Be There, 2003) in her biggest movie role in two decades and Minnie Driver (Chevalier, 2002) as a hard-nosed slinkily-dressed top cat. I can see all three returning as the series develops.

I’ve a sneaky feeling the role of Parker, grieving daughter going all kick ass, was edited down as it became apparent Statham was going to kick all the ass any audience would need, but Emmy Raver-Lampman (graduating from still-running The Umbrella Academy TV series) brings a good dose of authenticity to the part, avoiding the usual glam-potential-rom set-up.

It’s in very capable hands, director David Ayer bringing a Fury (2014) directness to proceedings rather than being swamped all-ways-up by character overload as in The Suicide Squad (2016). Kurt Zimmer (Salt, 2010) has all the correct experience to layer this with more than eternal action beats.

Let’s hear it for the bee-busters.

Ten Little Indians (1965) ***

This is more like it. Classic Agatha Christie mystery told in classic fashion but devoid of either of her major sleuths, Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, and set in the grander equivalent of the country house locale that had become something of a trademark. Here it’s the kind of castle perched atop a mountain, accessible only by cable car unless you have mountaineering skills, that you would need the combined services of Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton to affect a rescue, and as with Where Eagles Dare (1968) the conditions are distinctly wintry.

Ten strangers, including the two servants, have been invited to this retreat by the mysterious Mr Owen. They soon learn they are cut off, telephone lines down, cable car out of commission for a couple of days, nearest village a straight drop 15 miles down a perilous cliff.

All they have in common, as they discover via a taped message delivered by their host, is that they all got away with murder or at the very least a dubious death. There is a private eye on hand, former cop Blore (Stanley Holloway), but he’s lacking in the little grey cells that Poirot put to such clever use in such circumstances. So, like a troupe of actors let down by some stage entrepreneur, they have to get the show on the road themselves, a combined effort to solve the problem.

Not so much why they are gathered here, but why they keep on getting bumped off, and rather in the fashion of the titular song. The movie business wasn’t awash with serial killers though this decade would see nascent interest in this sub-genre, witness Psycho (1960) and The Boston Strangler (1968). But Ms Christie mysteries never really seemed to get going until the death toll had reached multiple figures.

The good element of this kind of movie with a large cast is that each character gets a moment in the sun, here that spotlight largely concerned with what crime they committed for which they were never truly punished. Pop singer Mike (played by pop singer Fabian) gets the ball rolling, explaining that his only punishment for killing someone while driving under the influence was a temporary withdrawal of his license.

And so it goes on, everyone wondering who will be next to be despatched and going from the initial conclusion that Owen is responsible and is hidden somewhere in the house to the obvious one that Owen is one of them. I have to confess I’m easily gulled by the murder mystery and I hadn’t reached that conclusion myself.

The movie’s not necessarily filled with that kind of twist – although there certainly are a good few, some people not as guilty as they might appear, not quite who they appear to be – more you glancing at the cast list and wondering, by dint of billing or box office pull, who will be next for the chop and unless the director has got the Hitchcock vibe it’s not going to be one of the leads.

So it’s a choice of Hugh Lombard (Hugh O’Brian), secretary Ann Clyde (Shirley Eaton), actress Ilona Bergen (Daliah Lavi), General Mandrake (Leo Genn), Judge Cannon (Wilfrid Hyde White), Dr Armstrong (Dennis Price) and the aforementioned Blore plus servants the Grohmanns (Marianne Hoppe and Mario Adorf). And this isn’t your standard serial killer either with a constant modus operandi that will eventually, through standard detection, trap him or her. Instead, variety is the key. Death by fatal injection, knife, poison, slashed rope.

As the numbers whittle down, and you even feel sorry for the actions of some, the actress, for example, whose husband committed suicide when she left him, the tension mounts. You won’t be on the edge of your seat because there are just too many characters involved for you to become overly concerned with their plight but it’s still has you on the hook. You do want to know whodunit and why and you can be sure Ms Christie, as was her wont, will have some clever final twist.

At least, unlike the later variations on the genre, nobody’s been bumped off because they are too fond of sex, and the violence itself is restrained, almost dignified, and there’s no sign of gender favoritism.

All in all, entertaining stuff, though since by now this kind of murder mystery, given we’ve been through various iterations of Poirot – Albert Finney, Peter Ustinov, Kenneth Branagh et al, not to mention numerous Miss Marples – a lot of this feels like cliché (though that’s a bit like a contemporary audience considering John Ford’s Stagecoach old hat, not realizing this was where many of those western tropes were invented or polished to a high level). And I had to say I had a sneaky hankering for some of the out of left field goings-on of The Alphabet Murders (1965).

Sad to see Hollywood not taking advantage of Daliah Lavi’s acting skills, under-estimated in my opinion after her terrific work in The Demon (1963) and The Whip and the Body (1963). But then this wasn’t Hollywood calling but our old friend producer Harry Alan Towers (Five Golden Dragons, 1967) who specialized in dropping a biggish American name into a B-list all-star-cast.

George Pollock, who helmed this decade’s four Miss Marple movies, enjoys keeping the mystery alive without resorting to a central know-it-all. Everyone cast does what they’re expected to do. Towers wrote the screenplay with his usual partner Peter Yeldham.

Worth considering alongside The Alphabet Murders, but stands up well on its own.

PREVIOUSLY REVIEWED IN THE BLOG: Hugh O’Brian in In Harm’s Way (1965), Texas: Africa Style (1967); Daliah Lavi in The Demon (1963), The Whip and the Body (1964), Lord Jim (1965), The High Commissioner (1968), Some Girls Do (1969).

The Alphabet Murders (1965) ***

Just about the barmiest idea ever. Just about works. Tony Randall (Bang! Bang! You’re Dead / Our Man in Marrakesh, 1966), a cross between David Niven’s younger brother and a distant relation of Inspector Clouseau, would be nobody’s notion of a perfect Hercule Poirot. But back in the day, Agatha Christie’s famed detective was not a hallowed concept.

In fact, in movie terms he was pretty much a nobody, not a single big screen appearance in three decades, the forgotten man of cinema sleuths, not a patch on Sherlock Holmes or Maigret who had enjoyed umpteen iterations. So that character, if you like, was there for the taking, up for grabs, not one so sacrosanct it was imprinted on audience minds.

You could do what you liked as long as he had a moustache, spoke with an exaggerated foreign accent and every now and then pointed to his head and mumbled something about little grey cells.

MGM had had some fun and box office success with Christie’s other famous criminal creation Miss Marple in a quartet of low-budget pictures in the light comedy vein starring Margaret Rutherford beginning with Murder, She Said (1961) and clearly believed the same recipe would work wonders with a character generally considered too stiff to work at all.

This is a chucklesome broth, some astute detective work mixed up with all sorts of sight gags. Frank Tashlin (The Glass Bottom Boat, 1966) is at the helm and the writing team of Jack Seddon and David Pursall who reimagined Miss Marple adapt the mystery.

It kicks off with the very contemporary trope of talking to the camera as real-life actor Tony Randall walks off an MGM set and transforms himself into Poirot. Hastings (Robert Morley), who in the novels is more an amiable companion, a kind of Dr Watson, is here portrayed as somebody high up in the British Secret Service trying to whisk Poirot out of the country. Mostly, he acts as a comedy foil.

After being attacked by a beautiful masseuse, Poirot finds himself on the trail of a serial killer who conveniently leaves an ABC London Guide at the scene of the crime and kills in alphabetical order (with a bent for alliteration) which would make the attempt on the detective’s life a bit of an aberration (that even Poirot doesn’t apparently notice). Anyway, the first victim is an Aquabatic, the second Betty Barnard (Grazine Frame). Poirot is on the case by the time the third likely victim Sir Carmichael Clarke (Cyril Luckham) hoves into view.

As luck would have it, a fourth contender Duncan Doncaster (Guy Rolfe) is both psychiatrist to chief suspect Amanda Beatrice Cross (Anita Ekberg) and lover of Clarke’s wife Diane (Sheila Allen). Inspector Japp (Maurice Denham) of Scotland Yard and Poirot are invariably at cross purposes.

The detective has a special set of skills, including cooking to restaurant standard, being able to vanish in a trice, horse-riding, and knocking down two sets of ten-pin bowling pins at the same time.

That the comedy works is mostly thanks to the likes of Airplane (1980) which has accustomed contemporary audiences to barmy, almost literal sight, gags, faces elongated via shaving mirrors, while a cop elucidates a clever plan we are only shown the back of the map he’s pointing to, a conversation takes place over the sleeping body of a snoring wife, a business card tossed nonchalantly onto a desk ends up in a coffee cup, Hastings is trapped in the trunk of a car with a comely wench

You still get your London tourist features – the docks, bus stops, military parade, horse riding in Hyde Park – but these are invariably set-ups for sight gags. A naked Hastings invades the parade, fog shrouds the docks, Poirot’s horse leaps over (wait for it!) a park bench.

This version of Poirot might be heresy to some, and too jaunty by half, but there’s too much serious detection – and some classic Poirot intuition – to dismiss it as entirely a spoof, and I spent too much time chortling to dismiss it as a waste, so it lands in an odd halfway house, but I suspect that’s very much where Tashlin intended it to land.

Worth a look if only to suspend your disbelief.

PREVIOUSLY REVIEWED IN THE BLOG: Frank Tashlin’s The Glass Bottom Boat (1966); Tony Randall in Let’s Make Love (1960), Lover Come Back (1961), Send Me No Flowers (1964), Bang! Bang! You’re Dead (1966); Anita Ekberg in 4 for Texas (1963); Robert Morley in Oscar Wilde (1960), Nine Hours to Rama (1963), Hot Enough for June (1964), Of Human Bondage (1964), Topkapi (1964), Genghis Khan (1965), The Loved One (1965), A Study in Terror (1965), Some Girls Do (1969).

The Corrupt Ones / The Peking Medallion (1967) ****

Non-stop action as spy Cliff Wilder (Robert Stack) battles a variety of crooks in Macao on the Chinese border as they seek to recover the legendary Peking medallion. Wilder hails from the James Bond school of espionage, duty bound to kiss every girl he meets. He might wonder at their compliance until he realizes they are only after his knowledge of the missing medallion.

The violence is criminally brutal – punch-ups, gunfights, samurai swordfights, murder and torture by blowtorch and acid and being dragged behind a motorboat. The string of sexy women is matched by handsome men, Brandon (Christian Marquand) and Danny (Maurizio Arena) in addition to Stack. The thriller pitches helter-skelter through nightclubs, casinos, caves, temples and palatial mansions, the pace only slowing down for, naturally, a scene in a stately rickshaw.

As well as Wilder who briefly – and unknowingly – has the medallion in his hands, others in the hunt include Lilly Mancini (Elke Sommer), wife of Danny who had passed it to Wilder before being killed. Mancini is on the wrong side of the femme fatale equation. Once Wilder is wise to her seductive charm,s he quips, “Maybe you’re telling the truth but I can’t trust you.”

Also in hot pursuit are gangster Brandon and a Chinese mob headed by Tina (Nancy Kwan) That’s on top of a corrupt cop (“I have never feared death, only poverty” is his mantra) who doesn’t care who wins the prize as long as he gets his share. Double cross is the order of the day, alliances forged then broken. The action never stops long enough for one of those tension-building scenes of which Alfred Hitchcock or imitators like Stanley Donen (Charade, 1963, and Arabesque, 1966) were so fond.

Wilder faces danger with a quip, a kiss or gritted teeth, an old-fashioned tough guy without the James Bond self-awareness. He carries out his manly duties until his brain kicks in and he realizes this isn’t a spy picture after all but a genuine treasure hunt with clues that have to be deciphered. After that, the pictures sidetracks down another route. For a moment, the movie seems to have lost the plot. But then all hell breaks loose and we are back on the safe ground of fistfights, double-crossing and shooting.

Fans of improbable storylines, exotic settings, action, interesting bad guys and twists and turns will love this. How can you fail to love a movie with a samurai vs camera tripod swordfight?

An exemplary cast for this kind of malarkey, a French-Italian-German co-production with English as the mother tongue. Scarcely creditable that Robert Stack, in his biggest picture since The Untouchables tv series (1959-1963), was once Oscar-nominated given subtlety is never required. Nancy Kwan (The World of Suzie Wong, 1960) steals the show as the villainess but she’s run close by Elke Sommer (The Prize, 1963). In supporting roles are Werner Peters (Istanbul Express, 1968) and Christian Marquand (The Flight of the Phoenix, 1965).

Might seem a considerable change of pace for director James Hill after Born Free (1966) but that’s only if you ignore his work on the equally complicated A Study in Terror (1965). Screenplay punched out by Englishman Brian Clemens (And Soon the Darkness, 1970), Hungarian Ladislas Fodor (best know for the Dr Mabuse series) and Harald Bloom, his only known credit.

Great fun.

PREVIOUSLY REVIEWED IN THE BLOG: Robert Stack in Is Paris Burning? (1966); Elke Sommer in The Prize (1963), The Art of Love (1965), The Money Trap (1965), The Oscar (1966), The Venetian Affair (1966), Deadlier than the Male (1967), They Came to Rob Las Vegas (1968) and The Swiss Conspiracy (1976); and James Hill’s A Study in Terror (1965); Nancy Kwan in Tamahine (963), Fate Is the Hunter (1964), The Wild Affair (1965).

Signpost to Murder (1964) ****

Very tricky home invasion thriller. And not just from the narrative perspective and my guess is you’ll work out what’s going on long before the end, but that’s deliberate, you’re meant to, because the final twist isn’t plot but emotion, unexpected pent-up release.

Deftly directed by George Englund (The Ugly American, 1963), distinguished camerawork, long shot and overhead put to exceptional use. Biggest surprise is Stuart Whitman (Rio Conchos, 1964) taking the acting plaudits from Oscar-winner Joanne Woodward (A Fine Madness, 1966).

Slightly throws you because the interesting questions it asks about the treatment of the insane and the rehabilitation of criminals could, in retrospect, just be a contrivance to serve the plot. Basically, it’s a one-set show but thrumming continually in the background is a working water mill, the location being an English mill house belonging to American Molly (Joanne Woodward) awaiting the return of her husband from a business trip to Amsterdam. She’s got quite the hots for her lover because she’s planning to greet him at the door all decked out in a swimsuit.

But that’s in the future, takes 20 minutes of this exceptionally short picture (just 78 minutes) before we get to her. First of all, we’ve got the set-up. Confined within an asylum surrounded by high electric fences is wife killer Alex (Stuart Whitman), five years into his stretch, whom resident psychiatrist Dr Fleming (Edward Mulhare) not only believes is sane but also innocent, the convicted man having no memory of killing his wife and, as it later transpires, no motive.

The asylum officials ain’t so crazy on Fleming’s theories but by this time the good doctor has fed Alex a line, a loophole in English law dating back to the Victorian Lunacy Act, which, bizarre though it may seem, allows a man who escaped from an institution and remained free for 14 days to be permitted a re-trial.

When Fleming’s request for leniency is turned down, Alex escapes, heads for the river to elude hound dogs picking up his scent and ends up at the mill. The siren has sounded so everyone in the village is on the alert. From his cell high on a hill, Alex has previously scoped out the village, and with the help of Fleming, identified various houses, and from his own observations learned about the community, such as that the mill owner is handy with a shotgun, killing rabbits with abandon.

*The original play enjoyed a successful tour of the British provinces after a West End run*,
*though the characters skewed older in the stage version,*
*Margaret Lockwood approaching 50, Derek Farr just past 50.*

So it’s Alex who is greeted by the swimsuit. And then it’s the familiar duel of minds. Though we’ve just seen him knock out the doctor and an electrician, when Alex enters this house he’s a changed man. Sure, he has the shotgun but he’s planning to only hide out for a night, till the search expands away from the village and he can sneak through the gaps and hide out for the fortnight necessary to implement the loophole.

We know he’s not exactly a maniac, or a tough guy in the Lee Marvin mold, because we’ve seen what a sensitive and intelligent character he is through his conversations with Fleming, and he’s trusted enough by the officials to be allowed an axe to chop wood. But Molly doesn’t know that. She’s expecting a maniac and is thrown when he’s calm and gentle, not to mention tender.

He seems to shed nine lives when he enters this realm of domestication. She’s not half as confident as her sophistication might suggest. Her marriage has not brought her the comfort or the love she expected. The countryside is shrouded in fog, so her husband’s not going to be back till morning, which removes one complication, but adds another, a growing feeling that they are kindred souls, lost and vulnerable.

His story appears to make sense to her and when he espies a corpse trapped on one arm of the wheel it’s she who comforts him when he thinks its imagination run wild and then in the more obvious sense they console each other.

Comes the twist. That was a real body. Her husband.

This where you think. Uh-oh. The old story of the femme fatale and the patsy and you wonder were any of her feelings true or was she just acting the part to gull him. So, when the police and Dr Fleming arrive, the finger is most obviously pointed at a man who has no memory of killing before. Remember, this is in the days when the simple detection methods available now would have easily cleared him, so you have to go with the flow.

When Alex defends himself and declares that they slept together and sounds so utterly confused, one of the cops, for no desperate reason it has to be said in the absence of the usual clues on which we rely, thinks something foul is afoot.

And it’s her who confesses. She had expected a maniac not a gentle man who touched her soul in a way that neither husband nor lover, Dr Fleming, managed. Totally turns the picture on its head. And instead of the usual plethora of clever sleuthing, we have a resounding emotional climax.

Full marks though to George Englund, not just for the outstanding use of the camera, creating distance between characters even in intimate situations, one great shot where through separate windows Alex and Molly stare at each over the rolling watermill, and to offset the tension some excellent comedy as the Yank comes to terms with British tradition after a death. He cleverly opens up the original stage play by Monte Doyle, and there’s a strong hint of irony in the opening section which sees a car-load of kids point to two loonies on the hill. We quickly learn only one is designated as such, Alex, but the other one, the sane one, Dr Fleming, turns out to be every bit as mad.

But this is Stuart Whitman’s tour de force. He had earned an Oscar nomination for The Mark (1961) but appeared to exert more box office appeal when he went all square jaw in action pictures. I’m not the first observer to mention that one of the key points in a performance is an actor’s reaction to their surroundings. Like you or me, they should look round. I noted that with David Janssen in The Swiss Conspiracy (1976). But here is an even better example. When Alex sees the lounge and all the elements of domesticity, he’s not just having an ordinary look, he’s soaking it up and it’s taking him back to the life he lost, one he can’t understand why it was taken away from him. You look at a modern film. The camera does all the work. The director uses a habitat to guide you into the mind of the inhabitant but rarely, as in the old days, to allow reflection on the part of a visitor.

There’s a huge range of emotion for Whitman to pack in, not to mention a convincing British accent, and he does it all. Woodward nearly steals the picture away from him with that final, unexpected, scene. Molly knows that by confessing she’s about to lose the love of her life and if she doesn’t be condemned to live with a man who doesn’t come close.

In the stage play Molly was clearly the top role and always attracted the bigger star. Same here, Woodward is billed above Whitman. The last scene is a peach for any actress. But Whitman’s is the more difficult role. Should maybe be a split decision but I come out for Whitman.

Superb minor gem.

Pay or Die (1960) *****

Hollywood had outlawed the deification of villainy after the gangster gold rush of the 1930s and, before Coppola and Scorsese popped up with self-serving operatic epics, the consensus was that thugs were scum, no matter how well organised or how deep the corruption went. There had been a blast of gangster biopics in the late 1950s/early 1960s, many of them covered on these pages, but, outside of the equally thuggish Clint Eastwood cops, you would have to wait until Serpico (1973) and The Untouchables (1987) before Hollywood decided the cop was actually the hero after all.

I’m guessing Scorsese and Coppola had seen this particular picture which presented an entirely different picture of the Mafia, including its historic importance in America, but decided the bad guys were just more interesting than the good guys and that some kind of mythical Mafia presented better cinematic opportunity. Now this is just as much a low-budget number as the bulk of the gangster pictures of this particular short-lived era so don’t go looking for any late cycle film noir or the kind of classy mise-en-scene or big stars that comes with the later bigger budgets.

But this is so spot-on, with incredible depth, that it deserves a good bit more attention than the eight critical reviews on imdb and the measly 30 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In fact, you could point to several scenes where you could imagine Coppola and Scorsese took inspiration, and there are some quite astonishing scenes of brutality, not blood-drenched or lingered-over as was the style in the 1970s but incredibly powerful precisely because they are rendered in such lean fashion.

This is based on the true story of an Italian who took on the Mafia in New York. Only it wasn’t called the Mafia then. If you remember the Robert De Niro section in The Godfather Part II (1974) you’ll recall that the gangster he rubbed out belonged to The Black Hand. That’s what they were called at the turn of the twentieth century in New York and since prohibition didn’t exist they didn’t become bootleg millionaires and then dabble in drugs. Their main businesses were extortion and kidnapping.

Italians in Italy didn’t trust cops for historical reasons. When anyone wanted to keep the populace in line they used the cops as muscle. That was the root reason for the growth of the Cosa Nostra. So when Italians emigrated they were equally inclined not to call the cops when someone put pressure on their businesses or demanded a ransom for a stolen child. And one of the reasons nobody called the cops was because not a single cop in New York spoke Italian. Joe Petrosino (Ernest Borgnine) was the first Italian on the New York police force. He made lieutenant but lack of education prevented him climbing any higher.

But let’s get back to the blistering opening. You’ll be familiar with such openings from Coppola/Scorsese, the religious procession, candles, hymns, music from traditional instruments, priests, robes aplenty. But this one has a difference. They string two kids between the rooftops. Not string them up, string them along ropes attached to their backs and dress up the sweet girls as angels so that they can hover over the procession and utter words of importance as its climax. The kids don’t look terrified, they look delighted to be chosen.

But hood Lupo (Barry Russo) has a different idea of how the ceremony should end. He slices through the rope. Down crash the kids, legs, backs broken, barely surviving the fall. But they survive enough for that calamity to be all that’s required for one parent to cough up the dough demanded by The Black Hand, despite Petrosino’s entreaty to stand fast against the crooks.

Lupo’s next victim is the baker Saulino (Bruno Della Santino). And when he refuses to pay the thugs bang him up in his own pizza oven, threatening to burn him alive. Petrosino has that Sean Connery Chicago style of dealing with villains and back in the day liberals weren’t going to get in his way and he knows it’s not just a battle of wills but a power struggle. So he batters in Lupo’s door, batters him round the head, drags him down the stairs, pausing only to punch him again so the neighbors can get a good look, carry him on his back outside and dump him in a trash can.

Doesn’t entirely go to plan because a crooked Italian lawyer gets Lupo out and he takes revenge on Saulino by kidnapping his daughter Adelina (Zohra Lampert), cutting off chunks of her hair, ripping half her clothes off, and locking her in a cupboard. When Petrosino finds her she’s got the imprint of a black hand on what remains of her white dress.

Eventually, the police agree with Petrosino’s notion that the only way to beat the thugs is to set up an elite squad composed entirely of Italians, recruited from outside the city, to set out in plain clothes and mix with the local community, getting jobs as barbers and baker assistants, for example, so that they can witness the protection racket at first hand.

Meanwhile, the shy Petrosino has fallen for Adelina, though he has a younger, better educated rival, Johnny (Alan Austin), and in any case the more successful he is in his anti-gangster campaign the more at risk his life (and that of a potential wife) would be. The more successful the squad becomes the more the leaders of the Italian community agitate for it to be run by someone better educated, not a guy who has failed the Captain’s Exams seven times.

Although this is delivered in pretty much documentary style, there are some sensational set pieces. Apart from the falling angels, before thugs chuck Saulino in his own oven they dress him in pizza ingredients, raw eggs, flour, the works, the kind of humiliation a Scorsese gangster would endorse. When Adelina and Petrosino do get it together, every wedding present has to be soaked free of its wrapping first in the bath to ensure parcels don’t contain a bomb.

There’s a tremendous explosion of a car. A thug is captured in a barber’s chair by a cut-throat razor. And in the most horrific scene kids are killed (think The Untouchables) when they get in the way of bomb set to the timing of a big clock, the kind you used to see outside stores that acted as advertising devices.

Most of these sequences would have been delivered with more panache, blood, slow-motion and other gizmos had this picture been made a decade later. But, as I said, they pack a hell of a punch for being stripped of all cinematic artifice.

Within all this there’s time to explain the background of immigrants, the virulent racism they face, the institutional reasons for cling to old ways, the corruption and vote-grabbing politics, and there’s some lovely stuff in the bakery, Adelina not just carrying wood for the pizza ovens on her back but undertaking some of the more skilled baking. And the hunt for the child bomber turns into top-class detective work, down to identifying a wagon by horseshoe and then finding out which merchant was missing a wagon.

There’s some brilliant dialogue. At one point opera superstar Mario Caruso’s life is under threat, his is the car blown to pieces. But outside of his fancy car and voice he holds little attraction for the ladies. When he tries to pick up a beautiful girl by promising to sing for him, she retorts, “promise not to stop singing.” When Petrosino turns down Adelina it’s first on the grounds of danger and then age. “I’m older than you,” he argues. Her answer is to kiss him. “How old do you feel now?”

Ernest Borgnine (Go Naked in the World, 1961) hasn’t had a part this good since Marty (1955) and he’s in his element, two-fisted with criminals, his persuasive powers with his superiors far outranking his exam marks, and entirely believable as a diffident romantic. Zohra Lampert (A Fine Madness, 1966) delivers a winning turn. You might spot John Marley (The Godfather, 1972). Most of the cast appear authentic Italian.

So you get a riveting drama, fascinating backstory, a romance that could have been the main story all on its own, a bit of detection and a terrible twist at the climax.

Taken on its own terms and given the budget limitations director Richard Wilson (the equally under-rated Invitation to a Gunfighter, 1964) presents a multi-layered masterpiece. Richard Collins (Maya, 1967) and veteran Bertram Millhauser (Tokyo Joe, 1949), in his final movie, collaborated on the screenplay.

Minor gem crying out for reassessment.