Crime/Thriller – Page 18 – The Magnificent 60s

Flareup (1969) ***

I thought I’d be taking one for the team in tracking down this much-maligned Raquel Welch number. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised. Oh, the movie’s nothing to write home about, desultory home invasion thriller that fails to come close to Kitten with a Whip (1964), Wait until Dark (1967) or The Penthouse (1967). But La Welch is something of a revelation.

Forget the Las Vegas go-go dancer come-on, this is more of a gentle romance. While attractive, Welch dispenses with the bra-busting outfits and overt sexiness, settling for a girl-next-door persona. In fact, you could have dumped the entire murder plot and had a more interesting picture, along the lines of Fade In (1969) where the normal hot-to-trot Burt Reynolds plays a gentler character.

*Artistic license taken to an extreme. Raquel Welch is a brunette not a redhead.*

Since, (spoiler alert) in her sole dance number Welch keeps her attributes well-hidden, the producers felt obliged to stick in some topless dancers (quite how Welch is permitted to keep her clothes on in a topless go-go bar is never explained) which gives the picture a sleazy feel that runs counter to the tone of the romance.

So, Michele (Raquel Welch) is on the run from nutjob killer Alan (Luke Askew) who has bumped off his ex- Nikki (Sandra Giles) and her friend Iris (Pat Delaney). But why Michele is in the killer’s sights is never satisfactorily explained, except that she purportedly turned Nikki against him. Michele swaps Las Vegas for Los Angeles, finding work in another go-go bar and romance with Joe (James Stacy) whose interest in bull-fighting might have scared her off. But that’s tempered by his enthusiasm for flying model airplanes (an important plot point it transpires).

Cops are on the killer’s trail but not before he bumps off a guy who gave him a lift. Michele’s not hard to find, a drug addict employee of the Las Vegas operation points him in the right direction. There’s some desultory car chase footage and for no reason at all a chase on foot through an old zoo (presumably a genuine old zoo).

I had half-expected there might have been a lion or snake left behind to ramp up the thrill-quotient, but no such luck. What we do get, however, is a rarity in the chase department – exhaustion. Most people being chased on foot manage to drum up an insane amount of energy. Michele, on the other hand, is on the point of collapse.

But she’s not dumb. She might be rootless, not the questing soul of Easy Rider, but driven away by parental issues and, in gaining independence not keen on surrendering it to any passing male. And come the climax, she’s got a nasty weapon up her sleeve.

Essentially, she’s a sweet gal. Not the kind of character you’d expect La Welch to be playing, and perhaps that’s what attracted her to the script. It gives the actress the opportunity to escape from her sexy persona, and, while the tale is hardly weighty, the chance to prove she can do more than hide behind her particulars. Innocence isn’t something you’d associate with Raquel Welch, but here she exudes more of that than earthiness or sex appeal.

James Stacy (star of Welch’s debut picture A Swingin’ Summer, 1965) is a likeable boyfriend, not the kind trying to hustle her into bed. Luke Askew (The Devil’s Brigade, 1968) doesn’t do much except play mean.

James Neilson (The Moon-Spinners, 1964), while not able to jazz up a rancid plot, allows, as he did with Hayley Mills (an odd comparison indeed), Welch the chance to grow up on screen, defusing her sexuality but allowing her space to create a character so far removed from anything previously seen. But the tempo sags with over-reliance on dancing sequences, the Las Vegas backdrop and too much chasing that goes nowhere. Mark Rodgers (Let’s Kill Uncle, 1966) dreamt this up.

One perhaps for completionists. Lack of sexy scenes might be off-putting but, equally, you might want to see what Welch can do when playing against type.

https://amzn.to/3s0UpRi

Kitten with a Whip (1964) ****

I’ll let you down gently. Ain’t no whip. What you have instead is one of the most under-rated, unseen and maligned mini-masterpieces you will ever come across marching to the film noir beat. Bewildering femme fatale and the kind of disenchanted anti-authority teenagers who would drive the “youthquake” that almost destroyed the industry half a decade later. And within this, one of the great tragedies of Hollywood, the performance of her career from Ann-Margret, buried because it wasn’t what the public, the critics or the industry expected from the young star.

Edgy score with soulful sax underwrites a picture brimfull of surprises and plays constantly with your expectations, the picture shifting gear so often you’d think you were in a tumble dryer. The doorbell plays like a loaded gun, every interruption racking up tension.

Stylish credits that hint of Hitchcock precede a brilliant opening as in full noir fashion a band of light catches the eyes in the darkness of a blonde (Ann-Margret) dressed in a nightgown cresting a hill.

She tries to jump on a moving goods wagon, eventually makes her way to a deserted house, untouched wrapped newspapers littering the lawn, clambering into a bed, clutching a teddy bear for comfort. You want mystery? This is just the start. In one of the best neat cuts, we jump from the eyes of a teddy bear to headlights. Owner returning home is budding politician David (John Forsythe), wife away due to marital issues.

Come morning, he discovers his guest, Jody. She recites a sad tale of fleeing sex abuse. But soon he realizes she’s got a story to fit every occasion and can turn the emotions on like a tap. Manipulation is in her DNA. But she’s a tough little number. “Hands off, buster,” she snaps at one point as she tries to physically hustle her out.

It’s unspoken that the idea of being caught, regardless of whether he’s entirely innocent, in illicit dalliance would mean the end of his political ambitions, but she’s happy to spell it out. If the cops work her over, who knows what would spill out.

He buys her clothes, gives her money. Sayonara, baby! Except it’s not. He discovers she’s on the run from juvie, where she torched the home and stabbed the matron. Worse, she’s not left after all, but returned, the house filled with the noise of television cartoons, floor littered with teenager mess.

It’s unclear what exactly she wants. But she knows if she screams rape that’s curtains for him. And if Freud (1962) used a length of rope to show how a psychiatrist can’t escape his client, Jody’s version is a length of telephone cable, dragging her quarry to the floor when he’s talking to his wife.

And before you know it, it turns into home invasion. She’s called up some pals, younger versions of the creeps in The Penthouse (1967) but with a similar set of philosophic ramblings (“the meanings of the meaningless”) from thug Ron (Peter Brown), not averse to sharing buddy’s docile girlfriend Vera (Patricia Barry). And now it’s blackmail. And violence, a cutthroat razor the weapon of choice, though thug Buck (Skip Ward) is handy with his fists, too.

The kids, drug peddlers, want driven over the border. So now we’re racing off in the dark. David is savvy enough to leave Buck entangled in barbed wire, manages to drop the wounded Ron off at a doctor’s surgery and now desperately tries to escape Jody, though, as you might expect she has other plans.

So the movie spins all the time on the twin axis of discovery that could end David’s career and the demonic damsel. While it steers clear of any sexual attraction by David for the young glamor girl, his interest is initially more paternal, and consequence-aware. Quite what she does want is unclear, beyond some kind of freedom, power even, “I call the shots, not you,” the upper hand over the males, marking him with her nails in the way she has been scarred.

But it races along, it’s impossible not to be dragged into the quandary, half the time you hoping that somehow she will escape her demons, while fully aware that she’s on the fast track to Hell and will take people with her.

This is Ann-Margret (The Swinger, 1966) as you’ve never seen her. It’s not that the sexiness is hidden, it’s a heck more subtle than that, and when she parades in some flimsy item it’s clearly more for approval than arousal. At one point she dances in a jokingly sensuous manner, but otherwise there’s no trademark singing and dancing. She’s a junior version of the more fully-fledged femme fatales of noir who’ve hooked some sap into crime. This gal hasn’t got that kind of criminal brain – or maybe not yet – she’s a victim of circumstance and, let’s face it, the powerful male.

There’s a terrific moment when Vera accepts that she means little more to her boyfriend than that she has a car, exhibiting the kind of impotence that came with the territory for young women of the era lacking confidence or a decent role model. Jody’s the opposite. She’s confident enough, but no idea what to do with it, beyond ensuring no man gets the better of her.

You’ve heard enough of Jody’s sob stories not to believe a word she says but still the power of Ann-Margret’s performance is that you feel the deeper, hidden, pain.

Writer-director Douglas Heyes (Beau Geste, 1966) directs with tremendous verve, keeping his foot down on the tension pedal. That the movie was generally seen as a low-point in the career of Heyes and Ann-Margret is one of those Hollywood anomalies, or ironies if you will, probably dumped on because it was perceived as flying too close to the Lolita (1962)/Baby Doll (1958) template, although in reality the character avoids going down the simpering child route except as a means of extracting sympathy.

John Forsythe (Topaz, 1969) begins on the rack and never gets free.

Nothing like would you expect – and certainly not from the title – and deserves full reassessment and all the critical accolades going especially from those who appreciate the noir canon.

Massive disservice to Ann-Margret, whose performance here should have opened up a career of more serious movies.

B-movie noir masterpiece.

https://amzn.to/3FP3WxL

https://amzn.to/46Xr0q4

The Running Man (1963) ****

Twisty Carol Reed thriller pivoting on emotional entanglement that keeps you guessing right up to the end. In revenge for losing his business after an insurance company failed to cough up for his crashed plane, entrepreneur Rex (Laurence Harvey) fakes his own death and flees to Malaga in Spain.

But when girlfriend Stella (Lee Remick) joins him she discovers he has assumed the identity of an Australian millionaire whose passport he has purloined and completed the transformation by changing his black hair to blond. Rex has a mind to repeat the experiment by killing off himself (under the new identity) and claiming the insurance. Stella, complicit in the original scam, not only balks at this idea but finds disconcerting his change of personality and clear attraction to the opposite sex.

Tensions mount when mild-mannered insurance investigator Stephen (Alan Bates) appears on the scene. Anyone watching the film now has to accept that in the days before social media every face was not instantly tracked and accept that Stephen is unaware of what Rex looks like.

The couple cannot run because they are awaiting a bank draft. Stephen immediately sets the tone for suspicion when he pronounces that their vehicle “looks like a getaway car.” Forced to follow “The Godfather” dictum of keeping your enemies closer, the pair befriend Stephen with the intention of finding out what he knows and what are his intentions. Rex and Stella have to pretend they have only just met, separate bedrooms et al, leaving the door open for Stephen to gently woo Stella, an action endorsed by Harvey. They are caught out in small lies. Rex’s Australian accent falters. Stephen keeps on making notations in a notebook. Rex foils his pursuer’s attempts to photograph him.

The ensuing game of cat-and-mouse is complicated by Stephen’s romantic inclinations towards Stella. Is this as genuine as it appears? Or is he trying to get her on her own to admit complicity? Both Rex and Stella are, effectively, forced to adopt the new identities they have forged to dupe Stephen, with unforeseen results. There are red herrings aplenty, a race along mountainous roads, and some marvelous twists as the couple find the tale they have woven is turning too tight for comfort until murder appears the only solution.

As with his international breakthrough The Third Man (1949), Carol Reed grounds the whole Hitchcockian enterprise in local culture – this being unspoiled Malaga prior to the tourist deluge – Spanish churches, a wedding, fiesta, the running of the bulls, with an occasional ironic twist – “gypsy” musicians watching ballroom dancing on television. Reed resists taking the material down a darker route – Hitchcock would undoubtedly have twisted the scenario in another direction until Stella came under threat from Rex – but instead allows it to play out as a menage a trois underwritten by menace.

The acting is sublime. Laurence Harvey (A Dandy in Aspic, 1968) wallows in his part, Remick (Days of Wine and Roses, 1962) quietly anxious scarcely coming to belief that she had played a part in the original crime, Alan Bates (The Fixer, 1969), his deceptively pleasant inquisitive demeanor the ideal foil to Harvey. Unusually, they all undergo change, Harvey uncovers a more ruthless side to his character, Remick responds to the gentler nature of Bates, while Bates shrugs off his schoolmasterly aspects to become an attractive companion.

A couple of footnotes – special mention to Maurice Binder for the opening credits and this was the final score of British composer William Alwyn (The Fallen Idol, 1948). John Mortimer (Bunny Lake Is Missing, 1965) wrote the screenplay based on the Shelley Smith novel.

Full throttle film noir.

https://amzn.to/45ZFynU

Retribution (2023) **** – Seen at the Cinema

Take a renowned screen tough guy and turn him into a nervous wreck. Stick a bomb under his car seat. Hobble him further by saddling him with his kids in the back. Ensure he is so frazzled by constant explosions that he lacks the time to do the clever things that heroes in his position, no matter how dicey the situation, generally manage. And the usual running and gunplay is out of the question. Screw that lid down tight.

And play around with Liam Neeson’s Taken (2008) screen persona, show him demolishing a punch bag at the very start to convince us he still has the cojones, with a special set of skills to take down the bad guys. But that image is quickly shredded.

Once he is blamed for a series of devastating car explosions and can’t escape the electronic voice in his ear and the bad guy five steps ahead of everyone, this just ramps up the stakes and in the Neeson portfolio nestles a shade below Unknown (2011) where the actor was equally disorientated, though that time by amnesia.

Matt (Liam Neeson) is a financier having a tough time. It’s just his bad luck he needs to take the kids, rebellious Zach (Jack Champion) and precocious Emily (Lilly Aspinall), to school because, unknown to him, wife Heather (Embeth Davidz) needs time out to consult a divorce lawyer. Now he’s being held hostage in his own car by a tech whiz kidnapper.

Sure, there are shades of Speed (1994) but thank goodness fewer echoes of the likes of Phone Booth (2002) and a few plot holes and a fair bit of misdirection – wife Heather (Embeth Davidz) perhaps having a lesbian affair, financial shenanigans catching up with him, mysterious motorcyclist on his tail – but precisely because Matt has no leeway and the running time is lean (under 90 minutes once you remove the credits) it works like a dream. Just no let-up.

There’s a surprise reveal at the end and a neat get-out-of-jail that Bryan Mills in his element might have dreamed up but mostly it’s pedal-to-the-metal.

After a few direct-to-streaming losers like Marlowe (2022), this is Neeson back at his best, relying far more on his acting talent than his action chops. Even the title is against type. Mention the word retribution and you expect it will be the actor doing the seeking, not being its object.

With the exception of Schindler’s List (1993) – and that’s three decades away – most people can’t remember when Liam Neeson was being touted as a genuine Oscar contender. Producers didn’t seem to know what to do with him. Every star turn in a compelling drama was accompanied by a supporting role in some big-budget extravaganza (not least his Star Wars episodes). And, miraculously, just as it appeared his career was winding down, he reinvented himself as Bryan Mills and was forever typecast in thrillers, but the law of diminishing returns meant that he was as synonymous with Nicolas Cage in making pictures that couldn’t get a cinema release break.

Here’s a movie that depends entirely on facial expression. And no escape from that. Which means relying on whatever he can tick in the acting box. Which, luckily, Neeson still has in spades.

This is kind of movie Sky used to make, a low-budget effort with a big name down on his luck, killed off by poor production values and low-end direction. But if this is the way Sky is heading, upping its game in the face of Netflix and Apple’s clever manipulation of cinematic release, then this movie deserves a wider showing.

Remake of a 2015 Spanish picture, directed by Dani de la Tore and scripted by Alberto Marini, the new version sticks to the knitting, no complicated sub-plots involving the kids, just them sitting in the back waiting to become collateral damage.

Nimrod Antal (Predators, 2010) does an excellent job teasing out the tale, throwing in a car chase through the streets of Berlin, but keeping the camera squarely on the trapped trio. With an inferior star, this could easily have failed to grip, but Neeson pulls it off with ease.

If you can’t catch it in the cinema, where my guess it will only last a week, put it on your must-watch list elsewhere.

Destined to become a DVD “sleeper.”

https://amzn.to/3QDjHhH

Suitable Flesh (2023) *** – Seen at the Cinema

Lollapalooza! Trash horror is back. Step aside the relatively classy Blumhouse offerings and the torture porn of the Saw dynasty, what the world needs now is a throwback to the so-bad-it’s-good style of horror where blood flows like a burst dam and reanimated corpses trail yards of intestines.

Not forgetting that the star turns are either pop-eyed or garnish every line with a smirk. H.P. Lovecraft may well be turning in his grave, or relishing every camped-up ramped-up moment of this updating of his tale of gender-bouncing possession The Thing on the Doorstep. Throw in hypnosis, bdsm, smoking treated as illicit pleasure, and the kind of sexuality that used to be the prerequisite of the DTV scene.

Dr Derby (Heather Graham) has to be the dumbest psychiatrist ever to hit the screen, breaking the golden rule of never seeing a client, especially one as deranged as Asa (Judah Lewis), in their house. But, sensing a book or at least a write-up in a journal, she discovers he’s possessed by nasty father Ephraim (Bruce Davison). Or by a creature going back centuries whose main aim in life/death is to jump like an eternal parasite from person to person, indifferent to gender.

Such transference works magic with the sex genes, the good doctor soon capable of playing the kind of sex games her husband never imagined while the snarky Asa is turned into a sex god with magnetic appeal to women. So, when everyone isn’t at it like rabbits, they get a tad worried about seizures.

In a nod to Dracula, it’s brains not hearts that have to be put out of commission, and there’s a whole bunch of demonic mumbo-jumbo served up to make this sound believable but by this point the audience is beyond caring. More, we call out, give us more – gore, sex, transgendering gone mad, references to Dunwich, bitchfights, corpses that won’t die – who the hell cares.

Mostly, it’s the kind of slam-bam horror fest that dominated the 80s/90s, with prime specimens of either sex to the fore. There’s a desultory pair of cops who do little more than add narrative confusion: who died, or did they even die, and was it all in Dr Derby’s mind? And once the sly Dr Upton (Barbara Crampton), also a dumb psychiatrist, who is either Derby’s sister or best pal, with a shady past, enters the picture the possibilities multiply.

Whoever is in charge of pushing a movie into cult territory better have a look at this especially when you consider the ropey camerawork – shaky or spinning screens dominate – not to mention that idea that was once the preserve of cartoons where the screen disappears into a dot. Cinematically, if anyone is remotely interested in that, there’s one scene of note, where the usual stunt of following action in a rearview mirror becomes seeing it from a vehicle’s reversing screen.

At times Heather Graham looks as if she’s walked in from playing the pop-eyed innocent of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), other times she’s time traveling back to the uninhibited Killing Me Softly (2002). Whatever, she has worked out subtlety is not required. Judah Lewis pays homage to Bruce Willis and Mickey Rourke by reviving their trademark smirk. Johnathan Schaech (That Thing You Do, 1996) spends most of his time shirtless, showing off his pecs and hairy chest, and trying to get obsessive wife to drop her workload and jump into the sack. Craching additiont to the Bruce Davison (Last Summer, 1969) can, and Barbara Crampton (Alone with You, 2021) has a sackload of this kind of thing (left on a doorstep or not) in her closet.

Dennis Paoli (Re-Animator, 1985) did the updating, Joe Lynch (Point Blank, 2019) the camping up to high heaven.

Judging from size of the cinema audience when I saw it, this isn’t going to last more than a week at your local multiplex. So drop your planned schedule and get there now.

Otherwise Shudder has this for streaming in January.

Call the cult police!

https://amzn.to/3MsP8J1

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) *****

Let me stop you right there. This isn’t a review of this particular movie, you’re probably sick to death of those already, and it’s not some kind of Scorsese retrospective, but an expression of what it’s like to live through the transformation of one of the greatest directors Hollywood has ever produced. That zipping excitement when you first encounter a new Hollywood animal and when he charges down a different track or seems to lose control.

Catching up on a director’s life work via a carefully-curated retrospective hasn’t got an ounce of the flavor of living through it, from the days when film festival break-outs were not the carefully-orchestrated distribution and publicity machines they are now.

I first encountered Scorsese before a clever journalist had coined the rather derisory notion of a Brat Pack, when the director was just another new voice clamoring for attention in a world of considerably more cinematic noise than exists today, when MCU and streaming didn’t exist, and audiences could find massive variety every time they attended the cinema.

Who’s That Knocking at My Door slipped through the arthouse cracks in 1967 – the year of The Graduate, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night, The Dirty Dozen and El Dorado. I didn’t see it then. I would be surprised if anyone did. Nobody was ready for that brash style with its insistent use of pop/rock music. I caught up with a few years later when the Scorsese we know now was still in embryo form.

Sure, Mean Streets (1973) gave strong indication of the gangster path towards which Scorsese was inclined, but it wasn’t so obvious then that he would make that genre his own, not when he interspersed that with a tale of Depression-era hobos, Boxcar Bertha (1972), and Alice Doesn’t Live Here (1974), a proto-feminist narrative whose stunning tracking opening set out his technical directorial credentials. And it was anybody’s guess which way he’d go from here.

And I doubt if anyone expected Taxi Driver (1976), the moody glimpse of the New York underbelly with a psychopath hero, and certainly after that exploded at the box office and had critics purring, nobody would guess his career would take a musical turn, New York, New York and The Last Waltz in consecutive years. You might consider Raging Bull (1980), prototypical Scorsese. But the truth is, he was never typical. He jumped from project to project in a manner that only appeared to make sense to himself.

Some choices were so atypical you wondered if there had been any through-thread – what possibly connected King of Comedy (1982) to The Age of Innocence (1993) and Hugo two decades later. Certainly, when he imbibed a deep spiritual draft, you could make a thematic connection between The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Kundun (1997), and Silence (2016).

But by this point he had achieved Hollywood nirvana, the mixture of critical adulation that put him top of the hitlist of those studios with one eye on the Oscars and bouts of box office glory that kept the same studios sweet. If he ever felt the need to revive a fading career he could churn out the likes of apparently mainstream but dark-tinged Cape Fear (1991), The Aviator (2004), Shutter Island (2010) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2103). And at the back of your mind, as a fan, was the question of how long would it take him to return to the gangsters. If you had Goodfellas (1990) forever etched on your mind, Casino (1995), Gangs of New York (2002), The Departed (2006) and The Irishman (2019) seemed almost always within reach.

Of course, he can hardly be separated from Robert DeNiro, his go-to star, ten teamings in all including the current number. And for a DeNiro substitute, Scorsese didn’t go far wrong with Leonardo DiCaprio, six including the new one. Stars with an edgy side were attracted to Scorsese and vice-versa.

It’s perhaps no coincidence that DeNiro and DiCaprio play murderous relatives in Killer of the Flower Moon, but the performances both deliver are so subtle, so far removed from what Scorsese’s asked of them before, as to point them both in the direction of the Oscar.

You think you kind-of know what you’re going to get with Scorsese, but, more than any other director, he whips the ground out from under you. Killers of the Flower Moon is bereft of the Scorsese trademarks, voice-over, exuberant violence, thumping soundtrack.

So when you’ve been watching his movies for over half a century, you look on him as you might a favored son, delighted in his achievement. But you don’t want him to stop, you want him to keep going. There must be one more film in him. Like Ridley Scott, he’s more bankable than ever, especially if the streamers are looking for a short-cut to hooking up with the best talent available.

Like Oppenheimer, this one is unmissable.

https://amzn.to/3MeEe9U

https://amzn.to/3Q6Lw0p

Arabesque (1966) ***

By this point in the 1960s, Gregory Peck’s career was pretty much at a standstill. Prestige had not saved Behold a Pale Horse (1964) from commercial disaster, thriller Mirage (1965) went the same way, other projects – The Martian Chronicles, Ice Station Zebra – failed to get off the ground or like The Bells of Hell Go Ting-a-Ling-a-Ling were abandoned once filming began. So, he was the main beneficiary of Cary Grant’s decision to retire.

Stanley Donen had Grant, with whom he had made the highly successful thriller Charade (1963), in mind for the role of the hieroglyphics professor caught in in a web of intrigue in Arabesque. In some ways Peck was an adequate replacement but lacked the older actor’s gift for comedy and failed to master the art of the double-take. Arabesque was almost a counterpoint to Charade. In the earlier movie Audrey Hepburn is continually suspicious of Cary Grant. The new movie sees a gender reversal, Peck constantly puzzled as to where Sophia Loren’s loyalties lie.

The story itself is quite simple. A code has been put inside a hieroglyphic and a variety of people are trying to get hold of it either to decipher the secret within or to stop someone else finding out what it contains. When the scientist who has the code is killed, the man who ordered the killing, the sinister Beshraavi (Alan Badel), approaches Prof Pollock (Gregory Peck) to unravel the code, but is turned down. The professor is then kidnapped by Arab prime minster Hassan Jena (Carl Duering), whom he admires, to ask him to take up the job. Beshraavi’s provocatively-dressed wife Yazmin (Sophia Loren), flirting outrageously with Pollock, is also after the code.

There follows more twists and double-crosses than you could shake a stick at, leaving the amenable Pollock mightily confused. “What is it about you,” he asks Yazmin at one point, “that makes you so hard to believe?” It looks like director Donen is playing a variation of the famous Raymond Chandler maxim, that when a plot begins to flag, “have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.” Sometimes, there is actually a gun or similar weapon, but mostly it’s just another twist. If Pollock doesn’t know what the hell is going on, then the audience is in the same boat.

But it is stylish, set in appealing parts of Britain (antique university, Ascot), Yazmin decked out in glamorous Dior outfits and even Pollock gets to wear a morning suit. Drop in a couple of action sequences, Hitchcock-style chases in a zoo and pursuit by a combine harvester, Pollock nearly run over by horses in a race, and the pair of them having strayed into a builder’s yard facing demolition by the British equivalent of a wrecking ball. But the standout scene is when Yazmin hides the professor in her shower (curtain drawn) while being interrogated by her suspicious husband and then steps in naked and then they play footsie with dropped soap. And she proceeds to expound, “If I was standing stark naked in front of Mr Pollock, he’d probably yawn.”

Beshraavi’s jealousy over his wife’s flirtation with Pollock adds another element of tension. Beshraavi is a very sinuous, sensuous bad guy, who can turn a harmless massage into a matter of life and death. He also has a pet falcon with a habit of ripping people’s cheeks. But even in the face of obvious threats, Pollock holds his own. In one scene as Beshraaavi attempts to retrieve what he believes is the code from Pollock’s dinner plate, where it has fallen from the hiding place in the professor’s clothing, Pollock taps the man’s invading fingers with the sharp tines of his fork.

And there is some accomplished dialogue. When Pollock offers the falcon a date and is brusquely told the bird of prey only eats meat, he responds, “I thought he looked at it rather wistfully.” Beshraavi retorts, sharply, “It must have been your fingers.”

Donen had not made a film in the three years since Charade, so there was some critical feeling that he was a bit rusty and used experimentation – big close-ups, odd camera angles – to cover this up. He was living in London by this point and had been for nearly a decade. But there was very little that fazed him in any genre, and he had switched from musicals like Singing in’ the Rain (1952) to romantic drama (Indiscreet, 1958) and comedy (The Grass Is Greener, 1960). And though there is no question the film would have been better with Cary Grant, Peck proves a reasonable substitute.

The movie’s main drawback is the lack of romance since falling in love with someone you believe is either a traitor or a compulsive liar is a hard trick to pull off. But if you like the idea of pitting your wits against the screenwriters – Peter Stone (Charade), Julian Mitchell (Another Country, 1984) and Stanley Price (Gold, 1974), the latter pair in their movie debuts – then this is one for you.

Stranger in the House / Cop-Out (1967) ***

Standout performance by James Mason (Age of Consent, 1969) holds together this curiosity. Based on a novel by Georges Simenon from 1951, it is updated to the Swinging Sixties and transposed from France to the English provincial town of Winchester (possibly chosen thanks to the hit single the previous year). While featuring an investigation, but minus Maigret, it’s essentially a character study.

Given John Sawyer (James Mason) is a depressed, divorced, retired lawyer, it could easily have sunk under the weight of cliché. Realistic portrayals of depression, except amongst those confined to institutions, were rare in this era. The bulk of the audience would probably view him just as a grumpy old man.

Sawyer is not only estranged from everyone, distancing himself from daughter Angela (Geraldine Chaplin), but sliding into oblivion and even when offered potential redemption can scarcely lift his head above a parapet of boredom, almost catatonic in his attitude, overwhelmed by the loss of wife and, presumably, the esteem that came with his career. A member of the upper middle-class, he shows surprising sensitivity to the underprivileged, outsiders, especially migrants, usually dismissed with a racist epithet, and sex workers whom he treats as victims rather than a corrupting influence.

When the corpse of young American ship’s steward Barney (Bobby Darin) is found in his disused attic, suspicion falls on his daughter’s unemployed Greek boyfriend Jo (Paul Bertoya). Turns out Barney is a nasty piece of work, blackmailing Angels and her friends for trespassing on his ship.

As well as being put up initially in an empty warehouse by Desmond (Ian Ogilvy) whose father, a department store magnate who owns the building, a former cinema, and later in Sawyer’s attic, Barney extracts cash and sexually humiliates his victims. Attempted rape of Angela comes with his conviction that she’ll “thank me for it.”

Eventually, Sawyer is convinced to take on the case and is up against his daughter’s pompous employer and his wife’s lover Hawkins (Bryan Stanion). Maigret would have solved this in a trice but the joy of this is Sawyer’s indifference to the police procedural. He spends most of the time during the trial attempting to make a necklace out of paper clips, asks virtually no questions of witnesses, and makes no pretence of interest in the proceedings.

Among his unusual techniques are summoning up references to Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Unusually, the pay-off doesn’t come in a courtroom but at the twenty-first birthday celebration of the entitled Desmond when to attract attention Sawyer whips off a tablecloth, sending glasses and crockery crashing, and introduces a woman in red.

Estrangement from his daughter could easily be his fault, too wrapped up in a high-flying career to pay the child much heed, but that indifference might as easily be ascribed to the possibility, as his wife taunts him, that the girl is not his.

There’s much to admire in the observations of ordinariness, loneliness, a class system filled with puffed-up mediocrities revelling in the slightest sliver of power, female advancement often requiring dispensing sexual favors to predatory employers or some form of begging.

There’s a brief appearance by Eric Burdon and the Animals, a modelling assignment using the cathedral as backdrop, and drugs. Difficult to imagine though that the pistol holstered by a carnival booth operator could be the real thing.

James Mason’s employment of a limp (result of a war wound) probably went against any genuine assessment of the subtlety of his performance. Geraldine Chaplin (The Hawaiians, 1970) builds up her character with action rather than dialog, showing tenderness where you might expect anger. Bobby Darin (Pressure Point, 1962) essays another creepy thug.

Paul Bertoya (Che!, 1969) is underused. Ian Ogilvy (The Sorcerers, 1967) is so smug you want to thump him. Look out for Pippa Steel (The Vampire Lovers, 1970), Moira Lister (The Double Man, 1967) and Yootha Joyce (Our Mother’s House, 1967).

In his sole directorial assignment Frenchman Pierre Louve, who wrote the screenplay, has better luck dissecting English mores than finding the essence of Simenon, whose non-Maigret novels generally concentrated on a man under pressure. While Mason delivers a fine performance, and his depression is obvious, there’s no sense of him teetering on the edge, more a general decline. In fact it’s the opposite, returning to the legal fray provides him with redemption.

Breathless / A Bout de Souffle (1960) ****

I’m conscious of puncturing a sacred arthouse cow. While applauding the cinematic bravura of Jean-Luc Godard’s debut feature that launched the French New Wave, what are we to make of a leading man who is a sexist pig? Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) refers to women repeatedly as “dogs”, complains about their driving skills, accuses them of cowardice, steals from them, forbids them to see other men, chases after them in the street to lift their dresses, constantly gropes his sometime girlfriend Patricia (Jean Seberg), and boasts of other sexual conquests.

While attempting to ape hero Humphrey Bogart, he hasn’t a shred of that star’s romantic inclination, all his energy directed towards getting sex from the nearest available female with nary a notion of love. He’s not just hard-boiled, he’s hard work, as close to the despicable males of Guide for a Married Man (1967) as you could get.

I’m no proponent of woke, but I guess audiences these days who happily accept him as thief and murderer will draw the line at his attitude to women. I found myself squirming at times at being asked to swallow this amoral character in what was otherwise a homage to the Hollywood B-picture. And it says a lot about the directorial skills that he ends up with any audience sympathy at all. And part of that certainly comes from his proximity to the more existential-minded arty Patricia. Not for the first time are we asked to re-examine our instinctive reaction to a charming thug because a sympathetic woman in either loving him or appearing to offer him understanding provides a conduit between audience and character, asking us to see him from her less judgemental perspective, no matter how misguided that might be.

You can see the connection between the Cecile of Bonjour Tristesse (1958) and Patricia here but it’s hardly as clear-cut as Godard suggests. Patricia has qualms not just a nice comfort blanket of guilt. She’s not, as Michel wishes, some kind of sidekick or accomplice. He fails to unlock her criminal tendency as Clyde would later in the decade with Bonnie in Arthur Penn’s gangster picture. But, just as Cecile rids herself of a rival in Bonjour Tristesse, Patricia finds it relatively straightforward to turn in to the police a man for whom she has no feelings and who would prove, without the parachute of love, an irritation in her life.

Certainly, Michel is the quintessential bad guy but with entitlement issues. He wants it all, or nothing. If Santa came knocking, top of his wish list would be death. He’s a dab hand at stealing cars, can whack anybody over the head, and not above rifling through a girlfriend’s purse. But, essentially, he’s the delinquent who never grew up and Patricia is one of the many saps he’ll try to con throughout his life.

But, in fact, if you were making this today, the angle would be different. It would be the vengeful woman, as epitomized by Jenna Coleman in television mini-series Wilderness, relishing the prospect of being tagged a “bunny boiler” or predatory wolf. Much as Patricia is happy to spend some time with Michel while working out her feelings towards him, given that he is the father of her unborn child, she is far from the soft touch he imagines, betrayal in her genes.

I’m guessing budget issues contributed to much of the cinematic bravura. It’s much cheaper to eliminate close-ups, and to film outdoors where light is less of an issue than indoors, and where nobody’s bothering to seek civic approval to shoot. So, there’s certainly a freshness, a boldness, the kick in the pants that stuffy Hollywood with its insistence on certain procedures required.

The camera is restless, not just in the tracking shots (especially the famous final one), but in bobbing around, as if questioning just what was the Hollywood obsession with nailing everything down, keeping it fixed, as if the camera was merely a tool rather than a means of directorial expression. And Godard does bring to exceptional life characters who would otherwise be passersby, dreamers who are more likely to fail than succeed, who try to provide themselves with codes as if that will assuage inner doubt.

Except for her self-preservation instincts and urge for independence, there’s every chance that Patricia would end up the dissatisfied housewife, especially with baby in tow. Michel is a dumb criminal, not the heist genius of so many other movies. Cocking a snook at authority might be the only true freedom he ever attains.

I’m not sure this was part of Godard’s thinking, but it’s plain to me that Michel’s biggest problem is crossing over into the real world. The minute he comes up against a woman who lives an ordinary life, albeit with elevated expectation, he comes a cropper because she doesn’t subscribe to his limited world-view. It’s not exactly a clash of cultures, because, in reality, she’s every bit as vicious as him. If she loved him, it might be a different story. But as with Jenna Coleman in Wilderness, fail to safeguard that love and it’s curtains.

Without doubt a singular earthquake of cinematic proportions, freeing up a generation to filmmakers to challenge the hierarchy, but requiring reassessment in view of its dubious attitude to women.

Rise of the Footsoldier: Vengeance (2023) *** – Seen at the Cinema

If a train strike hadn’t forced me to drive to the Bradford Widescreen Weekend and threat of a storm ensured I set off early in the morning, leaving me an afternoon to kill, and if my hotel wasn’t slap bang next to a multiplex, I might not have been tempted. And I guess you could add to this list of possibilities that if cinemas had not been so strapped for product, it might have gone straight to streaming or DVD. So I’m happy to report that the British B-picture is alive and kicking.

Revenge is the order of the day, no surprise there in a crime flick, but here’s the twist: while ostensibly it’s just Tate (Craig Fairbrass) seeking vengeance for the death of a gangster buddy, in fact he’s also got a target on his back, three figures from his past intent on payback.

So, the plot is complicated to say the least, but here’s the other twist: it’s the family element that stands out. Not “family” Mafia-style where omerta rules and only women are allowed to shed a tear. But family as in, tough as they are, these criminals have emotions. One particularly hard-boiled specimen bursts into tears in front of his cellmates on hearing of the death of a loved one. A budding gangster, boxer and drag artist (take your pick at which he shows the most talent) Billy the Kid (Ben Wilson) – who, father foolishly uses the same moniker for his stage act as his boxing – is terrified of coming out to trainer father Fergus (Stephen McCole), relying on his aunt Margo (Tara Fitzgerald) for a shoulder to cry on.

Mental and physical scars are on greater display than normal. Every time it looks like the violence quotient is about to up the ante, in sneaks a moment of humanity, a hood with a baby, the aforementioned reactions.

Set in the 1990s drugs scene, the movie has a Point Blank (1967) sensitivity (if that’s the word), Tate constantly confounded by what’s going on. No matter how many people he kills, the situation just gets murkier. To be honest, I’m not surprised, I was confused.

The low-budget dictates we stay pretty well removed from any period detail. The cars and the gentlemen’s club – the movie’s virtually an advert for the real-life Platinum Lace – and the fact that the bright lights of central London conceal a lot, is as far as we go. Hazy backgrounds and longshot keep the past out of sight.The attractions in the club are such that the punters are not diverted by the entrance of bloodied gun-toting gangsters and the first gunshots pass them by.

Neat touches abound. The young girlfriend Charlotte (Emily Wyatt) of chief crook Hexell (Phil Davis) is in reality a safecracker and at the first opportunity heading off to foreign parts with a hefty haul. When Tate makes the mistake of driving into Fergus’s breaker’s yard he has not taken into account how easily his vehicle, shades of Mickey One (1965), can be scooped up and crushed to oblivion. Faulty information results in a heist being a bust. There’s some comedy with an out-of-date grenade and a machine gun firing blanks. In a more horrific echo of The Long Good Friday (1980) a miscreant is trapped in a car and burned alive.

But the best scene, amidst the carnage necessarily for a revenge picture, is a dying man accepting his son’s right to live his own life. And there is some honor among thieves, or at least an old pals act to fall back on.

There’s plenty violence for your buck. Knife, bullet, gas, grenade, fire, the permutations are endless and would need to be because so many people require to be dealt with. In individual combat, of course Tate wins the day, but given he is constantly outfoxed his fists and guns don’t always achieve their long-term purpose.

While Tate is not in the John Wick/Rambo league, he could certainly sit on a second tier that might encompass the movies of Dolph Lundgren, Steven Seagal, Jean-Claude Van Damme, though he’s not as athletic as the last two.

The marketeers were handed an unlikely bonus in the shape of a three-star review from normally morally upright British newspaper The Guardian, and my guess it would be for the same reasons as I was impressed, the refusal to toe the DTV line and invest the picture with some humanity.

This series kicked off in 2007 and this is the sixth. The services of original star Ricci Hartnett were dispensed with after the second film. Fairbrass was top-billed for the next pair but ceded that to Vinnie Jones. The original was based on a true-life memoir but has gradually evolved into a more wide-ranging gangster series. Most have gone straight to streaming/DVD.

Good performances all round. Craig Fairbrass (Villain, 2020) should get a shot at something bigger. Directed with some elan on a tight budget by Nick Nevern (The Hooligan Factory, 2014) and the screenplay by producer Andrew Loveday (involved in two others in the series) and Jason Maza, also incidentally a producer, in his screen debut, has left an opening for a sequel.