Crime/Thriller – Page 6 – The Magnificent 60s

The Doomsday Flight (1966) ***

Early entry to the hijack subgenre – this one pivoting on the bomb-on-a-plane. Could almost deem it a template for what to do and not do in this particular field. Airport (1970) was the most obvious beneficiary although Speed (1994) could be reckoned to be something of a homage. And though “what if” was largely the preserve of sci fi, this posed very scary questions for audiences only beginning to enjoy the benefits of cheaper international travel. A quartet of excellent twists and three examples of men under pressure heat up the concept.

Unusually, the writer was the main selling point, Rod Serling (Seven Days in May, 1964) being more famous than most screenwriters thanks to The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) scaring the pants off viewers in ways that nobody thought television would dare to do.

Propped up by an interesting cast – Jack Lord (The Name of the Game Is Kill!, 1968), former major league movie star Van Johnson (Wives and Lovers, 1963), Edmond O’Brien (Rio Conchos, 1964), John Saxon (The Appaloosa, 1966), Ed Asner (The Satan Bug, 1965) and Michael Sarrazin (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They, 1969).

Unusual in that the two main characters lose it and the movie is probably the first to touch upon PTSD in Vietnam. While Special Agent Frank Thompson (Jack Lord), leading the task force on the ground, appears to be in complete control, in fact he’s hidden the fact that his wife is on the hijacked plane. That’s only revealed in the final climactic twist, so you have to cast your mind back over the movie and reassess Jack Lord’s apparently unflappable performance.

The anonymous hijacker (Edmond O’Brien) is a pretty cunning individual. He’s set a bomb to explode on the plane’s descent and removed the easy option of making a speedy landing by forcing the jet to remain above a certain height otherwise an altitude-sensitive trigger will blow the passengers to kingdom come. He demands a $100,000 ransom which the airline is only too willing to pay.

Meanwhile, Capt Anderson (Van Johnson), who had appeared the insouciant handsome epitome of the airline pilot of the kind you saw in advertisements, is sweating profusely under the pressure as the cabin crew begin to search for the bomb. The passengers are not quite as terrified as you’d expect, most sitting in their seats, and i’ts left to celebrity George Ducette (John Saxon) to kick up a ruckus until put in his place by an anonymous army corporal (Michael Sarrazin) who has a distinct aversion to bombs and so far has sat rigid in his seat.

The hijacker keeps everyone on their toes by constantly moving from phone to phone. There’s a hiccup when the delivery van carrying the ransom has an accident and the cash is obliterated. By this point the hijacker, in a bar, is getting drunk and his iron control is tested by the news. The plane, meanwhile, is running out of fuel and Capt Anderson has long run out of patience.

Turns out the bomber isn’t the evil genius you expect. He’s been cast aside by the American dream, his considerable talents overlooked, and he wants everyone to know that he’s worth more. Unfortunately, he doesn’t get his moment in the sun, either literally having made off with the money, or by having his face splashed over the front pages of newspapers.

When he dies of a heart attack, the plane still circling and fuel levels dangerously low and now unable to locate the bomb, that’s a heck of a fabulous twist. But what Rod Serling takes away with one hand, he gives with the other, and the pilot soon works out that if he lands at a high altitude airfield he’ll prevent the bomb exploding.

Safely on the ground, we come to the third twist. The hijacker had deposited the bomb in Capt Anderson’s flight bag, carelessly left lying around at the airport. The final twist is the revelation that Thompson’s wife was on board.

What had every opportunity of becoming a run-of-the-mill thriller, especially since we are light on passenger drama (no pregnant women about to give birth, no kids or nuns to claw at our sentiments), segues into something more interesting as it delves into the cracking up of the hijacker and intimation that soldiers returning from Vietnam do not feel like heroes.

Edmond O’Brien is the pick, but Van Johnson possibly the most courageous in filleting his screen persona. You wouldn’t have predicted Michael Sarrazin’s later success from this performance, nor that Jack Lord would hit a home run in television’s Hawaii Five-O (1968-1980).

Ably directed by William Graham (Waterhole #3, 1967) and although, technically, all he has to do is point the picture in the direction of the twists, he brings more by allowing Edmond O’Brien to humanize his character.

I saw this as the supporting feature to Carry On Doctor and as a youngster never came out of a cinema more scared. Originally it was a made-for-television number though yanked after only one screening after airlines, not surprisingly, objected, so, as with many hard-to-find pictures it entered the cult zone in the USA.

As YouTube is often the curator of cult you can find it there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Class act.

Tiger by the Tail (1968) ***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Waterfront (2025) ***** – Netflix

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two episodes in and I’m hooked.

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

Catch it on Netflix.

The Amazing Transplant Man (1960) ***

Sci fi film noir. Anything that involves cult director Edgar G. Ulmer (Hannibal, 1960) tends to put an unusual twist on a tale and here he takes the kind of mad scientist who would be perfectly at home in the MCU and turns him inside out. In fact, Major Krenner (James Griffith) is pretty close in intent to Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss) in the asterisk version of Thunderbolts (2025) in wanting to build an indestructible army.

His is going to be invisible. (Presumably, this would have been called The Invisible Man had Universal been more obliging.)

It was quite the thing as we have seen from I Aim at the Stars out the same year for the U.S. after World War Two to purloin German scientists, and here Krenner is one step ahead of the Government by snaffling Dr Ulof (Ivan Triesault).

The good doctor is given something of a free pass here because he’s been coerced into working for the major on account of his daughter being held hostage. And because he accidentally killed his wife during one of his experiments. But given he was working for the Germans in a concentration camp and his experiments, had they been successful, would have resulted in the creation of an invisible army for the enemy, maybe we shouldn’t be so lenient.

Ulmer isn’t so lenient with the rest of the bunch and there’s double cross all the way. Safecracker Joey (Douglas Kennedy) doesn’t show the gratitude you’d expect after being sprung from jail by Krenner and his moll Laura (Marguerite Chapman). Being amply rewarded for being a guinea pig isn’t enough and he reckons that if he can walk unnoticed into a government facility and steal nuclear materials, then he could just as well walk into a bank unnoticed and make off with the kind of cash that would fund retirement.

Laura begins to warm to the notion of sharing her bed with a hunky action man rather than a weedy pedant and even more to the idea of sharing the loot and the retirement. There’s also a resident thug Julian (Boyd Morgan) who’s been duped by the major into adding muscle to the operation.

*Clever publicity stunt. Joey is going to appear invisibly in person at every performance.*

So instead of the usual set-up of good guy, and a girl he met on the way (or vice-versa), intent on stopping the mad scientist, you’ve got the complete opposite, bad guy and hook-up planning to keep on being bad.

There’s a heap of good old-fashioned fun with the invisibility. Some trick photography to make Joey disappear but it’s more fun to watch the other actors throw themselves around to simulate being punched in the face or stroke an empty space and pretend they are touching a real human being, and to see vault doors miraculously open, or onlookers agape at watching a bag of loot hovering in midair. Or even better to see parts of Joey’s body unexpectedly materialize in the middle of a robbery.

You can’t build tension in normal heist fashion. You don’t need to endlessly go over an elaborate plan or hold your breath to see if a guard or some such is going to appear at an awkward moment or another obstacle get in the way, not when you can just walk in and walk out and nobody even know you’re there. So Ulmer doesn’t bother with that aspect, concentrating more on the personalities involved, each as mean and calculating as the others.

Even free pass Ulof, who could sabotage the project at any opportunity, decides it would be better if a hunky action man rather than another weedy individual took on that task. So he lets on to Joey that just as invisibility wears off so does his lifespan courtesy of the radiation which is slowly poisoning him. So it’s Joey who does the needful, not out of a hero’s ambition to save mankind, but out of pure revenge.

Thanks to the characters involved this is never corny. Old-fashioned maybe in an enjoyable old-fashioned way before it cost the world to create special effects.

It says a lot about the marquee quality of the stars that Marguerite Chapman (The Seven Year Itch, 1955) as the femme fatale is top-billed when she hadn’t been in a movie in half a decade and wouldn’t be in another one ever again. Douglas Kennedy (The Destructors, 1968) was a bit-part player and this was as close as he’d get to playing a leading man. Ditto James Griffith (Heaven with a Gun, 1969). But since mostly what they’ve got to show is malevolence nobody is being asked to step outside their comfort zone.

Ulmer filmed this back-to-back with Beyond the Time Barrier, with the two films forming a double bill.

Good fun.

Tornado (2025) **** – Seen at the Cinema

Cult’s a strange creature. Try to cultivate it from the outset and chances are you’ll strike out – the days of Quentin Tarantino hitting a bulls-eye are long gone. So, basically, what you’re left with these days is a picture that flopped on initial release but gradually developed exceptional word-of-mouth and maybe found a welcome home in streaming or on the retrospective circuit if that still exists. But that process takes several years, and the best hope these days is that it gives the director or star a lift. In this case, the door’s been left open for a sequel.

And on paper this sounds an awful conceit. Samurai swordsmen on the loose in antique Scotland? We’re talking 1790, for goodness sake. Were they shipwrecked, enslaved? We never find out. Back story here is in short supply and that’s all to the good because tension never dissipates.

There are only a couple of tropes – a pair of mewling nepo babies suffused with entitlement is as far as that goes.

The rest is original, intriguing and directed with authority. You’ve got gangsters, puppeteers, a circus troupe, and skeletons playing the violin. Twists are in short supply – the expectation that a knife thrower might turn into a male lead is dashed, and dust settling on the top of a piano which should give away the presence of a fugitive is ignored.

The tale is one of greed. And of the greedy feeding upon the greedy. By chance, travelling samurai puppeteer Tornado (Koki) spots the theft of a thieves’ haul of gold by a young pickpocket (Nathan Malone). She helps the boy secrete the two bags of gold in the caravan of her father Fujin (Takehiro Hira). But then she tosses him out of the moving caravan with only one gold piece for his trouble.

When the thugs led by Sugarman (Tim Roth) catch up, her father, unaware of his daughter’s complicity in the theft, is killed protecting her. So the girl and the boy go on the run. There’s none of the usual bonding of thieves.

Sugarman’s son Little Sugar (Jack Lowden) knows the girl has stolen the gold and in rebellion against his father determines to have it all to himself and not above killing off a colleague who gets in his way. Sugarman is a ruthless thug, setting fire to the encampment of the circus troupe for hiding the girl, and not above knifing his son to death.

Tornado doesn’t show the slightest sign of remorse at being the reason for her father and the boy and a strongman who protected her being killed nor for being the cause of the circus troupe being rendered homeless. She’s as amoral as the rest of them. But in the end she does put them all to the sword.

So, theoretically – and this is how it’s being marketed – it’s a revenge thriller or a samurai western (which has already been done with Red Sun, 1971) and both attempts at categorization are way off the mark. It has much more in common with Tarantino, of infighting among gangsters, but it’s so splendidly done, with terrific composition and use of the widescreen that it touches the cult mother lode, in that it is indescribable, creating a world of its own, set in a lawless world where the strong dominate and the weak run for cover. And it’s also a world where you better not get wounded, because that will be cue for someone else to take advantage.

Tornado transitions from rebellious daughter – “who put you in charge” she complains to her father – moaning about being bored and can’t take the job of being a puppeteer seriously, and she’s not that good either at paying attention when her old man tries to teach her more swordfighting. And, of course, she’s to blame for the death of her father. Her instinct is to run and hide and wait till the brouhaha dies down. And it’s only when she realizes that she can’t effectively carry two heavy sacks of gold that she decides to cut and run – with the emphasis on the cutting, slicing and dicing the gang till there’s only Sugarman left and he’s, ironically, dying anyway from a wound inflicted by her father.

So not your ideal heroine. In the old days she’d have been an innocent, guiltless, only taking up the sword or gun after her father was killed by ruthless villains. It’s all the more interesting for not going down that route.

The choices director John MacLean (Slow West, 2015) doesn’t make define the picture. There’s no love interest, Little Sugar and Tornado could as easily have conspired to make off with the dough, or some narrative device could have thrown them together. But both want all the gold for themselves. The knife expert you think is being introduced to come to her rescue. But no go there either.

Tim Roth (Rob Roy, 1995) is superb as the cold-eyed gang boss and Jack Lowden (Slow Horses, 2022-2024) as his shifty son and MTA Koki makes a startling debut.

It’ll be gone from cinemas by the time you read this review but look out for it on a streaming platform and I hope it will prick your interest as much as mine.

Impasse (1969) ***

The kind of desultory B-movie Burt Reynolds was relegated to before Deliverance (1972) sent him on his way into the superstar stratosphere. And you could see why he might as easily have ended up at the lower level. This was his third stab at top billing and he’d have another two goes before Hollywood gave up on him and he tried again (he’d been in the shortlived Hawk series in 1966) in television as Dan August (1970-1971). In what could have been a career breakout – 100 Rifles (1969) – he was left trailing the wake of the incendiary combo of Raquel Welch and Jim Brown.

When you’re at this lowly level in the Hollywood pecking order, you are destined just to take what comes your way. This is set up as mission-picture-cum-heist but it takes way too long to get under way and there’s little tension on what passes for the heist.

More time is spent on chief thief Pat Morrison (Burt Reynolds) organizing his love life with main squeeze Mariko (Miko Mayama) who happens to be the wife of one of his recruits Jesus (Vic Diaz). He’s on board because he was present at the World War Two secret mission on Corregidor where the Yanks stashed away $3 million in gold. Morrison has tracked down two others who were present – Apache Draco (Radolfo Acosto) and racist Hansen (Lyle Bettger). But there’s a complication – they were blindfolded during the operation.

Morrison could have found the gold just through the medium of Jones (Clarke Gordon) who led the expedition. But there’s a complication. He’s too ill to make the trip. And just when Morrison needs him there’s a further complication – he’s kidnapped by The Wombat (Jeff Corey) who wants his share.

Meanwhile, to further delay the team getting going, there’s a further complication. Jones’s daughter Bobby (Anne Francis), a tennis champ, becomes involved. But there’s a complication and we’ve got wait a while till she sorts out how she’s going to deal with hippie tennis groupie-cum-stalker Penny (Joanne Dalsass) and we find out whether she swings both ways. That factor is never properly determined but just to complicate things further – and set up the climax – Morrison beds Bobby much to the anger of Mariko. And the fact that Morrison was in a relationship with Mariko sets up another complication when, once the trip gets underway, Jesus finds out.

There’s some colourful background to while away the time in between Morrison getting his shirt off and the various fisticuffs and shootouts that delay the mission getting started. Eventually, the reach their destination. The loot is hidden in a tunnel and is found by the trio re-enacting the previous circumstances, blindfolded as before and counting off the individual number of steps each took in the tunnel. There’s another complication – what did you expect? – because before the final steps are completed they hit a wall and it does take them way too long to work out that the edifice must have been constructed after the gold was hidden.

And just when they’re making their getaway there’s a complication. Philippine soldiers are waiting and they’re all shot except Morrison who is captured. And it’s then he discovers the price of his two-timing Mariko, in revenge she’s informed on him.

Way too complicated to be set up as a star-making vehicle for Burt Reynolds (Sam Whiskey, 1969), but he does exhibit some of the persona that would later be his trademark, the smug grin and the naked chest, easy with fists and charm. Anne Francis (The Satan Bug, 1965) adds sparkle but she’s not in it long enough and she’s distracted by father and groupie. Jeff Corey (Seconds, 1966) is otherwise the pick.

Directed by Richard Benedict (Winter a Go-Go, 1965) from a script by John C. Higgins (The File of the Golden Goose, 1969). The complications don’t have the black comedy feel of The Hellbenders (1967) and mostly hold up the story up rather than adding tension.

Come at it as a supporting feature and it would be more enjoyable than if you had paid your hard-earned dollar to see it as the main feature.

Dr Crippen (1963) ***

I have to confess my ignorance of this infamous British murderer. I knew the name and that he had hacked up his wife and buried her under the floorboards, so I just assumed a nutcase in the vein of Jack the Ripper, a sadist with a bent for mutilation. So I was quite surprised by this biopic which tended more towards explanation – perhaps going as far as expiation – rather than exploitation.

Mostly, this is set around a court case with flashbacks to fill in the story. This is one of these pictures where the victim is completely unsympathetic. Mrs Crippen (Coral Browne) as portrayed here was just awful. An ex-music hall artiste, she not only slept around but taunted Dr Crippen (Donald Pleasence) about how much better her, invariably younger, lovers were in bed. She treated him as her servant, always on the lookout for the opportunity to humiliate him and was at her most venomous when drunk, a common occasion.

He had fallen for a much younger woman, his secretary Ethel Le Neve (Samantha Eggar), who, despite the age difference adored him. Though the notion of her apparently inept husband consorting with a woman was hilarious to Mrs Crippen, his wife wanted to use the opportunity to humiliate him further. Divorce is out of the question. In 1908 the scandal would ruin an outwardly respectable man. In innocent fashion, Ethel plants in the doctor’s head the potential solution.

Crippen poisons his wife, chops her up, buries her in the cellar and comes up with a fantastical tale to account for her disappearance, namely that she had run off to America to take up with a previous lover. The police think he’s lying – assuming she has just run off – but don’t believe this innocuous little man could be guilty of murder. The situation only becomes dicey when Crippen and lover flee the country and this creates a hue and cry, front page news across the world, and they are apprehended on board a steamship where they maintain the charade of being father and son, a cover blown by the fact her male outfit hardly conceals her figure and that he can’t resist squeezing her hand in public..

Ethel believes Crippen is innocent and although he is found guilty, there is a coda where it might appear that the crime should be manslaughter rather than murder. He intended the poison to be used as a sedative, to stop her verbally abusing him, and he only accidentally gave her an overdose.

So it’s far from drawing a lurid picture of a terrible murderer in part due to the portrayal of his philandering, drunken, abusive wife; in part due to the meekness of the doctor; in part due to being shown exactly how the overdose could have occurred in unintentional fashion; and in part because we do not see him butchering the body. It comes across as a more sympathetic portrait of one of the most demonized figures in British criminal history.

The only problem is it’s impossible to see the attraction of a vibrant young women to this fuddy-duddy older fellow. Maybe it was his intellect – a young woman dazzled by his brain.

He’s not exactly creepy, but he lacks an ounce of charisma. But that does square with him not being a murderer, and only wishing to sedate his wife – still a crime – to give him some peace.

Resulted in Donald Pleasence (Soldier Blue, 1970) being typecast as a villain which, while limiting his range, ensured career longevity. Samantha Eggar (The Collector, 1965) continued to burnish her growing reputation. Coral Browne (The Killing of Sister George, 1969) steals the show with a vigorous performance, but, oddly enough, didn’t do her career much good, another four years would pass before she was seen again on the big screen. Inveterate scene-stealer Donald Wolfit (Life at the Top, 1965) hams it up but there’s a more measured performance from the normally ebullient James Robertson Justice (The Fast Lady, 1962).

Directed by Robert Lynn (Mozambique, 1964) from a screenplay by Leigh Vance (The Frightened City, 1961).

More than competent biopic.

The Finger Man / Le Doulos (1962) *****

Stunning tour de force combining narrative complexity with technical audacity. Set up the template for later crime epics like Reservoir Dogs (1992) and The Usual Suspects (1995) and influenced Scorsese and Coppola. For the likes of me who revels in technical achievement, a delight, long tracking shots, two scenes over five minutes long shot in single takes, and rare use of the wipe. But technique is nothing without story. Luckily, here we are offered a riveting tale of double crossing, honor, revenge and that rare beast, irony. There’s a veritable tsunami of twists at the end but all the way through there’s the kind of sleight-of-hand that deserves a round of applause.

Jean-Pierre Melville hadn’t named his picture The Informer for the obvious reason of it being considered, erroneously, a remake of the John Ford 1935 Oscar-winning classic or just the danger of being unfavorably compared with it. But the pre-credit titles tell us that Le Doulos is underworld slang for an informer so we’re prepared for that element of the story. What we’re not prepared for is what comes next.

Maurice (Serge Reggiani), just out of prison after serving a six-year sentence, turns up at the house of fence Gilbert (Rene Lefevre) who’s helped him get back on his feet by setting him up with a safe-cracking job. Gilbert is appraising a cache of stolen jewels. Maurice shoots him, steals the jewels and a bundle of cash, burying the loot under a lamppost.

Maurice meets up with his partner Remy (Philippe Nahon) and another gangster Silien (Jean-Paul Belmondo), previously considered untrustworthy, who supplies the tools for the planned heist. While Maurice and Remy set off to burgle a house, Silien phones a cop, Inspector Salignari (Daniel Crohem). Silien viciously beats up Maurice’s girlfriend Therese (Monique Hennessey) and kills her.

The robbery doesn’t go according to plan, the cops turning up unexpectedly. In the shoot-out, Salignari and Remy are killed, Maurice wounded. Maurice passes on details of where he buried the loot to another buddy Jean (Philippe Marche).

Silien is picked up by the police as a known associate of Maurice. The interrogation scene, which lasts five or six minutes, is a piece of cinematic bravura. Shot in a single take the camera follows chief interrogator Clain (Jean Desailly) as he paces round the room, Silien only coming into view when the cop stops in front of him and asks him a question. While refusing to rat on Maurice, Silien agrees, under pressure from the cops who threaten to expose his drug racket, to phone around the various bars where Maurice might be holing up. This triggers another virtuoso piece of filmmaking as Melville employs the wipe. Maurice is located, reading a newspaper report on Therese’s death.

There follows another colossal technical achievement, Maurice interviewed in another long single take, this time the interrogator pacing in front of the prisoner. Maurice is jailed, where he shares a cell with an assassin.

Meanwhile, Silien gets hold of the jewels and cash. He enrols old girlfriend Fabienne (Fabienne Dali), currently the unhappy squeeze of top gangster and club owner Nuttheccio (Michel Piccoli), and hatches a scheme that makes little sense to the audience. So we just have to watch. Silien breaks into Nutthecio’s club and in the guise of selling the gangster the jewels gets him to hold some of the items, thus, we quickly realize, covering them with his fingerprints.

Silien kills Nuttheccio then waits for the club-owner’s partner Armand (Jacques de Leon) to arrive, kills him and stages the scene to look like they killed each other over the jewels which he deposits in the safe. One of the jewels was found at the failed robbery so that’s enough to free Maurice.

Then we play out the revelation, the same kind of scenario repeated in The Usual Suspects, where the audience learns the truth. Therese was the snitch. That’s why she was killed. Gilbert was shot by Maurice because the dealer in stolen goods had drowned Maurice’s previous girlfriend Arletty. Even though you could argue that was justified, Maurice not being a good judge of character and not aware, as Gilbert was, that Arletty was also a police informer.

It was pure coincidence that Silien phoned Salignari on the night of the burglary. Despite being on opposite sides of the law, they were friends and the gangster was merely inviting the cop to dinner.

Silien proves to be such a straight-up guy that he hands all the stolen cash to Maurice. Silien plans to get out of the business and retire with Fabienne to a house in the country. Then we learn that Maurice has distrusted Silien after all and arranged for the assassin he met in jail to kill Silien. To try and prevent that, he races to the country house, fortuitously arriving before Silien and is, ironically, shot by the assassin. When Silien arrives shortly afterwards he, with more savage irony, is also despatched.

I watched this initially thinking what a huge risk Jean-Paul Belmondo (Borsalino, 1970) was taking in playing, as I initially believed, not just a police informer, but stealing from Maurice the buried loot and leading the police to him. It would have been a hell of a note if the narrative had continued in the same hard-nosed vein especially after Silien’s absolutely brutal treatment of Therese. The slap he administered came out of nowhere and resounded like a gunshot. He then tied her up, again venomously, and poured a bottle of whisky over her head.

That it turned out to be a story of honor among thieves was perhaps the biggest twist of all.

Jean-Paul Belmondo is outstanding in an underplayed role, Serge Reggiani (The Leopard, 1963) convincing as the two-timing crook.

Deservedly recognized as one of the most influential crime pictures of all time, this is nothing short of a masterpiece by Jean-Pierre Melville (Army of Shadows, 1969). Written by the director from the novel by Pierre Lesou.

Beg, borrow or steal this one.

The Third Alibi (1961) ***

Sometimes there’s nothing more satisfying than a well-plotted narrative that doesn’t overstay its welcome and comes with a sting – or two – in the tail. And in the B-picture world we can accommodate all sorts of venal characters and even hope – or at least wonder if – they will get away with their nefarious plans.

We might have sympathy for stage composer Norman (Laurence Payne) stuck in a soulless marriage with Helen (Patricia Dainton). Small wonder he seeks spice through an affair with divorced sister-in-law Peggy (Jane Griffiths). After all, being a creative is hard work and we want him to enjoy showbiz success.

But that’s until driving home at night he knocks down an old man and races off without stopping. Luckily, the old fella’s not dead, otherwise it would have been in the papers. But then he’s bounced into asking his wife for a divorce since Peggy has announced she’s pregnant. But Helen isn’t agreeable, not least because of her dislike for her sister. And Helen’s very ill, a heart condition, but for reasons best known to herself, won’t confide this to her husband.

So Norman is left with no alternative but to bump her off. He comes up with a very clever plan that will allow him to pretend not be at home when he kills his wife there and also dreams up one of these clever alibis for Peggy, who’s integral to his plan, by getting her to make a nuisance of herself at the cinema, so everyone recalls her both arriving and departing, allowing her to slip out of the theater for the period of time she needs to assist Norman.

But Helen overhears the conspiracy. And when Norman goes home to shoot his wife, using an unlicensed therefore untraceable pistol provided by Peggy (war heirloom) instead of his own licensed traceable gun, he discovers the house is empty.

*Jazz singer Cleo Laine makes a cameo appearance, as, too, does Dudley Moore*.

When he returns to his lover, he finds her dead, shot through the head. As he rushes out, the police arrive. He’s only a suspect for a short time as his various alibis hold up. Helen appears to be standing by him. But then the police find his gun in the bushes outside the dead woman’s house.

When Helen confesses to the police that her husband has demanded a divorce, that puts her in the firing line. Except she’s got a perfect alibi. She stole the idea from the conspirators, making her visit to the cinema easily remembered by the staff both at the start of the movie and the end. It’s pretty much an unbreakable alibi unless any other witness can finger her.

Norman protests his innocence of course. And the irony is we know he’s innocent, but our sympathies are now with the killer, Helen, which twists around our preconceptions.

After all, not only is she the injured party in the romantic stakes, but she’s very ill, so needs all the audience sympathy she can get. So the audience, against its better judgement, is batting for her.

But, suddenly, twist number one, they don’t have to. Because the strain is all too much, and she has a heart attack and drops dead. And, surely, it won’t be long before Norman can find a way out of his predicament. And he believes he has the very thing.

There’s a nosy old neighbor who takes too close an interest in visitors to the house. So he must have seen Norman arrive there at the very time his lover was shot. The neighbor is brought in.

He’s a poor old soul. And blind. The result of being knocked over by a car a few weeks before.

What a cracking ending to a cracking tale. I always wonder why these kind of stories don’t get resurrected for some sort of portmanteau series, in the manner of Tales of the Unexpected. Although there’s little fat on them, a bit of judicious trimming would make them ideal for a one-hour television slot and this one, in particular, is little more than a three-hander, so wouldn’t cost much.

Each of the main characters is well drawn, each allowed a moment to stretch their emotional muscles. Solid, if not spectacular, acting from Laurence Payne (Crosstrap, 1962), Patricia Dainton (The House in Marsh Road, 1960), and Jane Griffiths (The Double, 1963), and impressive turn from John Arnatt (A Challenge for Robin Hood, 1967) as a doughty cop.

Written by Maurice J. Wilson (The House in Marsh Road) and director Montgomery Tully (The House in Marsh Road) from a play by Pip and Jane Baker. Tully is in fine form at the helm, wasting no time in driving this towards ironic conclusion.

I’ve been clocking up a few from the Tully portfolio in the last month or so. Astonished to find he directed another seven pictures this decade, so I might, in due course, complete the collection.

Enjoyable.