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Poor casting blows a hole in this picture’s great premise and only an excellent turn by Anthony Quinn as an indignant kidnappee prevents it achieving “so-bad-it’s good” infamy. In fact for the first third of the movie you could pretty much guarantee it’s going to be a stinker so dire are the performances of the quartet of hippy kidnappers. Only when the camera cuts  Quinn a bit more slack and the script skids into a clever reversal does the movie takes flight although still hovering dangerously close to the waterline.

Faye Dunaway (Sandy), all blonde hair and pouting lips, looks for the most part as though she has entered an Ann-Margret Look-A-Like Competition. Michael Parks (Sureshot) resembles a fluffy-haired James Dean. George Maharis is condemned to over-acting in the role as ringleader Taurus while Robert Walker Jr. as Herby does little more than mooch around. None shows the slightest spark and behave virtually all the time as if they are in on the joke.

For no special reason, beyond boredom, they kidnap hotel tycoon Roc (Quinn) hoping to make an easy score with the ransom. Unfortunately for Roc, none of those he is counting on to cough up the ransom – wife Monica (Martha Hyers), current business partner Fred (Milton Berle), former business partner Sam (Oscar Homolka) and offscreen mother – will play ball. In fact, Monica and Sam, enjoying an affair, would be delighted if failure to produce a ransom ended in his death.

Eventually, while the movie is almost in the death throes itself, Roc fights back, using blackmail to extort far more than the kidnappers require from his business associates and taking revenge on his wife by setting her up as his murderer. It turns out Roc is a former gangster and well-schooled in the nefarious. So then we are into the intricacies of making the scam work which turns a movie heading in too many directions for its own good into a well-honed crime picture.

Quinn is the lynchpin, and just as well since the others help not a jot. As a kidnappee only too willing to play the victim in case he endangers wife and son, he achieves a complete turnaround into a mobster with brains to outwit all his enemies. But in between he has to make a transition from a man in control to one realizing he has been duped by all he trusted.

Director Elliott Silverstein, who got away with a lot of diversionary tactics in Cat Ballou (1965) – musical interludes featuring Stubby Kaye and Nat King Cole – essays a different kind of interlude here, fast cars speeding across the screen at crazy angles, that does not work at all. Probably having worked out pretty quickly that he can’t trust any of the young actors, he mostly shoots them in a group.  

Some scenes are completely out of place – a multiple car crash straight out of It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, for example. But occasionally he hits the mark in way that will resonate with today’s audience. Sureshot, confronted by a policeman, refuses to lower his hands in case he is shot for resisting arrest. Although drug use is implied rather than shown, Sureshot is so stoned he can’t remember if has actually made love to Sandy. And like any modern Tinderite, neither knows the other’s name after spending a night together.  

The strange thing about the youngsters was that they were not first-timers. Dunaway had made her debut in Hurry Sundown (1967). George Maharis had the lead in The Satan Bug (1965) and A Covenant with Death, Michael Parks the male lead in The Idol (1966) and played Adam in The Bible (1966) and although it marked the debut of Robert Walker Jr. (Young Billy Young, 1969) he had several years in television. But, like his character, Anthony Quinn (Lost Command, 1966) takes charge and shows all these wannabes how it’s done.

Frank Pierson (Cool Hand Luke, 1967), James D Buchanan (Midas Run, 1969) and Ronald Austin (Midas Run) devised this hotchpotch. Not their fault the kids spoiled it.

Anthony Quinn proves what a star can do with indifferent material.

Satire’s a difficult game at the best of times. Of course, it usually requires a cocky writer or director blessed with the self-belief to even consider the sub-genre. The hardest part is getting all the elements to match. Not only do you require a subject that’s going to reverberate beyond the immediate, but a director who can apply stylistic muscle and actors who are in on the game but don’t tip the wink to the audience. Stanley Kubrick’s paean to nuclear nightmare Doctor Strangelove (1964) is about the only one that’s ever unquestionably pulled it off.

Other attempts fizzle out like the over-sexualized Candy (1969), reliant on rampant nudity and marquee names to pull in an audience despite hitting the target in several areas that would touch a contemporary nerve – the aggrandizement of the medical industry, literary celebrity and the fool’s gold of the new religion. Unlike the Kubrick with its settled unremitting narrative arc, Lord Love a Duck took the scattergun approach, like a series of comedy sketches, if this one doesn’t work then they’ll chortle at our next brilliant idea. At least that had the salvation, if you’d like to call it that, of aiming for some big targets.

Beach movies wouldn’t fall into that category and hardly the kind of pompous bubble that required to be pricked. So whatever kind of self-belief director George Axelrod exuded, it wasn’t one of high intelligence, picking apart contemporary mores until the heart of America lay dismembered in the dust.

In any case, the majority of the satire in Lord Love A Duck would go over the head of anyone who wasn’t American although it stands as a snapshot of a generation in which adults were in control before the “youthquake” embodied by long hair and dropping out and pot had the older citizens muttering over their cocktails.

But you try and convince a general audience of the importance of the “Cashmere Club” or wearing a guy’s pin (whatever that is). Spring break we’re just about familiar with as an American rite of passage these days from countless other movies about rampant youth but I doubt audiences in other countries would have been familiar with the concept, least of all that the censor had no problem with endless scenes filled with beefcake and cheesecake. I’ve no idea where Balboa is and why it should assume prominence in student life. But sure, old guys have always been creepy and at the sight of teenagers prancing about they become even creepier, but I’m assuming that all this male playing with pencils is incidental. 

The main pot shots are, I guess, stardom, religion and beach movies. Barbara Ann (Tuesday Weld) is the young lass in the thrall to Hollywood stardom, how being known and feted would redeem her shallow life. Rather than taking the usual boring route of attending drama classes or auditioning for the college play she somehow manages to enlist the support of fellow student Alan (Roddy McDowall) whose self-appointed task is to fulfil her dreams, no matter how outlandish and despite his own shortcoming in the dream-realization business.

Poverty keeps her out of the kind of exclusive girls’ club inhabited by malicious teenagers put in their place in later years by a serial killer. With the help of the wealthy Alan, rather than as you might hope embarking on a shoplifting spree, Barbara acquires sufficient cashmere to join a particular club. And instead of ascending to Queen Bee status and ruling over all the other mean girls, she drops out and takes a job as a secretary – hardly a sure route to stardom unless you plan on hanging out in a tight-fitting cashmere sweater in a drugstore.

From here it’s a quick step to organized religion where she falls for pastor Bob (Martin West) and then, as is standard with movies that quickly run out of narrative steam, chance encounter takes over. She meets film producer T. Harrison Belmont (Martin Gabel) and realizes she won’t get far if she’s weighted down by a disapproving husband. So the movie takes another sharp turn and becomes one of those movies investigating how many ways you can kill a guy. Largely incompetent in this department, Alan only succeeds in maiming Bob. Then Axelrod provides Lindsay Anderson with the idea for the ideal climax to the more artie If… (1968) by having Alan taking out several classmates via tractor rampage. Naturally, Barbara becomes a star though I doubt if Axelrod had the foresight to work out that the beach movie was on the way out so her type of stardom would be immediately redundant.

Tuesday Weld (Bachelor Flat, 1965) isn’t sufficient compensation and Roddy McDowall (Five Card Stud, 1968) is miscast. Sure, he was fresh-faced but it was asking a lot of the cinemagoer to accept an actor approaching 40 as a student roughly half his age. Lola Albright (A Cold Wind in August, 1961) is underused.

In his directorial debut, Axelrod (The Secret Life of an American Wife, 1968) also co-wrote the movie with Larry H. Johnson from the bestseller by Al Hine.

While slight, it does, as I mentioned, cast a look at some of the issues of the era.

Unless you could afford to visit first run in big cities or grew up in the multiplex era when every cinema played the same movies, you would have noticed in 1967 a considerable difference between what was shown, both in type of movie and length of run, in different towns all over the country, whether you lived in the USA, Britain, France, Italy, Australia or the Far East. The U.S. trade magazine Box Office ran a fortnightly page devoted to reports of how various movies performed in various locales. Small town cinemas showed movies long after their first run, second run and even third run in the big cities. Sometimes they refused to pay exorbitant rentals and waited even longer. More likely, they turned down pictures they didn’t think would appeal to their clientele. So this is a snapshot of the lives of exhibitors back in the 1960s.

How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965) went down a storm in Lockwood, Missouri, so much so that exhibitor Charles Burton planned to bring it back for a third run. He was less keen on Born Free (1966), “a fine film” but a box office turkey because, unlike Disney, Columbia didn’t put merchandising weight behind it. Of The Chase (1966) headlining Marlon Brando, he complained “I refuse to call this a movie.” British adventure East of Sudan (1964) proved a hard sell in part due to the title at the Capitol in Rochester, New York. That Man in Istanbul (1965) was considered “better than any James Bond” at the Villa in Malta, Montana.

The owner of the Jackson Theater in Flomaton, Alabama, complained he had been duped into paying a 50 per cent rental for Lady L (1965) starring Sophia Loren and Paul Newman. “I’ll never learn,” he moaned and was equally dismissive of all-star comedy roadshow Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (1965), “very disappointing in gross and entertainment value.” Paul Newman, even allied with Julie Andrews,  proved no bigger a draw there in Torn Curtain (1966). “The lowest Hitchcock grosser I’ve ever played,” lamented the owner.

The manager of the Starlite Drive-In in Chipley, Florida, recommended sci fi The 10^th Victim (1965), “guaranteed to hold interest,” although he conceded that Ursula Andress was the draw. Another house in the same state, the 90 Drive In in Baldwin,  attributed the success of Boy, Did I Get A Wrong Number (1966) not to sexy European sex symbol Elke Sommer but to comedienne Phylllis Diller because Bob Hope “doesn’t usually draw well here” and it did the best business ever for a movie featuring the star. Leon Kidwell at the Majestic in Allen, Oklahoma, reckoned Red Line 7000 (1965), a flop most places, was “just what my crowd likes” and also recommended Arabesque (1966) “one of the best pictures to come out Pinewood (England).”  But “war stories don’t work” in the Scenic in Pittsfield and Henri Verneuil’s Weekend at Dunkirk (1964) no exception despite “nice performances” from Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Spaak and the in-built excuse that it was foreign.

Opinions varied on Elvis. “Poor business..(not) like they were one time (when audiences) wanted to see Elvis every few months. Old, new, rerun, they didn’t care,” but the bottom had dropped out of the market for a revival of Kid Galahad (1962) at the Main Theatre in Stonewall, Alabama, while Paradise Hawaiian Style (1966) was deemed “good enough” at the Scenic – “its Elvis and that’s a lot” commented the cinema’s Arthur K. Dame.

There was clearly still an audience for less controversial films, witness the remake of Smoky (1966) starring Fess Parker, hardly a marquee name, but it came off as a “very good horse story” at the Jackson and A Man Called Flintstone (1966) was a hit at the Star Drive In in St Johnsbury,  Vermont. Offbeat Lord Love A Duck (1966) starring Roddy McDowell and Tuesday Weld hit a home run at the Scenic. “My small audience got a big kick out of it and went home happy,” noted Dame. A reissue of The Brides of Dracula (1960) did well at Rochester which also had audiences clamoring for more gritty historical offerings like The War Lord (1965) featuring Charlton Heston. In light of the success of Cat Ballou (1965) and The Professionals (1966) the Jackson rescheduled Lee Marvin oldie The Killers (1964) as part of a double bill. .

The chances of such houses enjoying anything approaching a day-and-date release were remote. So when the Lans in Lansing, Iowa, had the opportunity to do so you could hardly blame the exhibitor for taking the gamble of putting more advertising bucks behind locally-made The Hostage (1967) but in retrospect the “fine suspense picture…didn’t do business.”

Of the features mentioned, Those Magnificent in their Flying Machines had the longest run, four days, probably dictated by the distributor, and the unheralded Lord Love a Duck the shortest (one day). Arabesque. Torn Curtain, The Hostage and That Man from Istanbul merited three days but for all the rest screenings were limited to two days, and not just at the start of the week, many of those showings taking place over the Saturday-Sunday period.  

It’s somewhat surprising to see how towns with tiny populations could support their own cinema. Among the operations featured here, the Capitol in Rochester had the biggest catchment area, a 330,000 population, but it wouldn’t have the market to itself, an area that size would have competitors. Of the other towns mentioned, Pittsfield had a population of 2,300; Malta 1,900; Flomaton 1,480; Lansing 1,328; Allen 1,000; and Lockwood 852. Small wonder they changed programs so often

SOURCE: “The Exhibitor Has His Say,” Box Office, January 9, 1967, pA4.

This affectionate homage to 1920s vaudeville goes awfully astray under the heavy-handed direction of William Friedkin. There’s an epidemic of over-acting apart from a delightful turn from Britt Ekland as the innocent star-struck Amish lass who accidentally invents striptease and former British music hall star Norman Wisdom who knows what he’s doing on the stage. The plot is minimal – burlesque theater manager Billy Minsky (Elliott Gould) needs to save theater from going bust in a few days’ time. That’s it – honest!

The rest of the story looks tacked on – the overbearing leering other half Raymond Paine (Jason Robards) of the Chick Williams (Norman Wisdom) double act tries to bed anything that moves, Amish father Jacob (Harry Andrews) in pursuit of Rachel, vice squad official Vance Fowler (Denholm Elliott) determined to shut the theater down.

The saving grace of this debacle is Ekland’s performance in carrying off a difficult part. Could anyone really be so dumb? She is endearing in a murky world but still capable of interpreting the Bible to her own ends (there is dance in the Good Book, for example) and she has confidence that the Lord will give her the go-ahead to have sex. Her innocence appears to transcend reality and since she doesn’t know a showbiz shark when she sees one she carries on as if life is just wonderful. Somehow this should never work but Ekland is so convincing that it does.

What might have been another saving grace is the documentary feel of much of the background, black-and-white pictures of the epoch transmuting into color, but too often the movie simply cuts to that without any real purpose. Equally, the various song-and-dance acts, chorus lines and comic turns provide an insight into burlesque reality but, again, all too often, that goes nowhere. There are plenty of people trying to be funny without much in the way of decent laughs. There’s altogether too much of everything else and not enough of the ingredients you might have considered essential.

This scarcely sounds like William Friedkin material given that although this preceded The French Connection (1971) and The Exorcist (1973), by this point he had already made his mark with an adaptation of Harold Pinter play The Birthday Party (1968). In fact, his original cut was re-edited once he had departed the picture. Might have worked better with Tony Curtis in the Jason Robards role as originally planned – he certainly had more charm than the jaundiced Robards. Regardless of who was cast what it needed most was a better story and less in the way of stock characters. Written by Arnold Schulman (Goodbye, Columbus, 1969), Sidney Michaels (Key Witness, 1960) and Norman Lear (Come Blow Your Horn, 1963).

Comedy doesn’t stoop much lower.

NOTE: If you’re interested, there’s a behind-the-scenes on the Blog on the whole shebang.

Yes, same cinema as The Great Race, since you’re asking, the Fine Arts in Los Angeles. American actors had been heading for Europe for over a decade seeking artistic redemption – Burt Lancaster in The Leopard (1963) – or commercial validation, Clint Eastwood in the “Dollars” trilogy and Charles Bronson in Adieu L’Ami (1968). But somehow Marlon Brando managed both at once after hooking up with Italian Bernardo Bertolucci (The Conformist, 1970) for an atypical look at the traditional French romance.  

Not content with becoming the poster boy for the Mafia, and in passing (at the Oscars) highlighting the cause of the Native American, Marlon Brando helps push the soft porn envelope with what is now more properly viewed as a typical May-December love story featuring a somewhat predatory male and a young actress who now feels there is a case to answer in the Me Too department.

Setting aside the sexuality, there’s more than enough angst to go round. Paul (Marlon Brando) is mourning the death of his unfaithful wife who committed suicide while Jeanne (Maria Scheider) is in an unsatisfying relationship with a wannabe filmaker who seems unable to commit to genuine intimacy. Perhaps, she wasn’t expecting to get hot and heavy with the first older American male she comes across while searching for an apartment but the tang of sexual mystery proves irresistible. At first she’s happy to go along with the notion that they are an anonymous pair who meet only to couple, but, of course, soon enough she wants to know more about her lover than the tales he spins, some of which may be true.

She certainly was unprepared for anal rape, and whether the actress knew what was coming any more than Sharon Stone did in Basic Instinct (1992), you can’t help but feel a director has certainly taken advantage of a young actress probably too intimidated to complain.

When Jeanne comes over all whiny, the tale slips away into more cliched territory, even more so by the end when Paul has decided, too late, he needs to own up to his emotions, by which point she is slipping out of his grasp. A less authentic ending you couldn’t find, especially given the rawness of what has come before.

But there’s still a standout performance here, mostly because, without the need to be pinned down by the demands of narrative, Brando is given enormous leeway, and this may well stand as his most virtuoso piece. Sure, he immersed himself in the character of Don Corleone in The Godfather (1972) but this seems more real, a character, who in the act of witholding his emotions, spills them out with his eyes every few minutes. Paul is as full of charm, wheedling, playful, spouting nonsense, as he is calculating and demanding.

That he fails to blame himself for his wife looking elsewhere for affection or for any part he might have played in her death while cavorting with a more submissive lover seems to define him far better than any confessional monologue. For a closed-down shut-off kind of guy he certainly had plenty to say, and it’s the combinaiton of loquaciousness and taciturnity that brings him so much to life.   

Maria Scheider (The Passenger, 1975) is the weak link here. Less than 20 years old when the film was made, her acting inexperience adds to her character’s innocence, but there’s no way she would ever, at that age, be able to hold a candle to Brando. So it’s an unequal pairing, as ultimately the fictional coupling proved to be.

There are tremendous flaws in the script, not least the drawn-out ending, and Jeanne’s boyfriend Tom (Jean Pierre Leaud) seems a tad too facile and almost a metaphor for Bertolucci himself, treating women with scorn, viewing them only through a lens, and that, darkly.

Hailed very much as groundbreaking cinema at the time, and dealing a death blow to the censorship system, this has lost much of that power but still remains in the top tier of Brando performances and coupled with The Godfather provided the actor with the commercial clout to bring Hollywood to heel as it had done in his glorious 1950s heyday.

Worth it for Brando’s performance but I doubt if you will come away feeling comfortable about the use of directorial power.  

As you know I’m a sucker for a swashbuckler. And as often I’m suckered. But this is an unexpected delight, as much double-dealing as derring-do, an intelligent plot,  huge slices of cunning on every side, and some decent action.

While esteemed for his nautical skills Capt Luis Monterey (Lex Barker) is less lucky on the romantic side, rejected by wealthy Isabela (Estella Blain), niece to the powerful Governor  Don Fernando (Loris Gizzi) who plans to marry her off to the Governor of Santa Cruz. But Hispaniola is riddled with pirates, just how cunning Monterey discovers when, transporting a shipment of silver, he stops to pick up a raft of shipwrecked womenfolk only to find they have sabotaged his vessel, allowing it to become easy pickings for dread pirate (as William Goldman would say) Olonese (Livio Lorenzon).

Blame for the disaster falls on Monterey and accused of treason is condemned to life in prison, but while being shipped back to to Spain manages to escape, hijack the ship, turn pirate himself, make for Tortuga and team up with Olonese. Monterey gets away (courtesy of the disguise of an eyepatch) with posing as Capt Nobody (the moniker Capt Nemo already being taken, presumably) since Olonese has a terrible memory and can’t place him as the commander of the ship bearing the silver. To prove his worth, Monterey must take part in an attack on Santa Cruz. But while the original pirates raid the town, plunder the gold and make off with Isabela (sent there to romance the Governor), Monterey’s vessel is out-gunned by the island’s fortress and left to founder.

Monterey returns in time to save Isabela from the clutches of Olonese but meanwhile we learn that Olonese and Fernando are in infernal league, plotting to monetize impending war between the English and the Spanish, with Isabela now tossed in as a makeweight for the deal. So of course Monterey has to put the world to rights.

So plenty of twists and turns, the romantic elements complicated by Olonsey’s moll Ana (Liana Orfei) taking a shine to Monterey and, discovering she also has principles, shocked at the pirate chief’s betrayal. Ana is an ideal criminal confederate, as head of the supposed shipwrecked women, leading on Monterey’s crew, getting them drunk on rum, and flooding the hold containing the ship’s supply of gunpowder, making opposition to the raiding pirates hopeless. And there’s time enough for Isabela to rue the error of her ways, not just being stuck with her uncle’s initial choice of consort but being traded off to the pirate.

The costumes are wonderful and the ships look quite splendid and there’s plenty action, including a duel between Monterey and Olonese. It’s helped along by Monterey not being as astute as your normal swashbuckler, dupe in a clever scheme hatched by Fernando, and patsy once again to Olonese. The fact that he’s an unrequited lover means he doesn’t fit into the all-conquering-stud of the Errol Flynn persuasion. So, a more complicated character than normally permitted in the swashbuckler.

Lex Barker had made a steady progression from donning the loincloth (Tarzan’s Magic Fountain, 1949) to muscular heroic figure of B-westerns and adventures before stepping into swashbuckler territory with the likes of The Pirate and the Slave Girl (1959) and he’d make another screen transformation into Old Shatterhand with Winnetou (1963) as well as crime efforts like 24 Hours to Kill (1965). While not an A-list star, he was dependable and given the right material, such as here, cuts quite a dash.

French star Estella Blain (Angelique and the King, 1966), was also a singer, though she commited suicide in 1982, but she has the straight romantic role here, not much to do except appear distant at first then see the error of her ways. Former trapeze artist  Liana Orfei (Hercules, Samson and Ulysses, 1963) has the better role as the spitfire who switches sides.

Colorful and enjoyable.

Of all the problems facing America right now, it can do without this simplistic mess. Good idea, poor executed. Sure, I guess it’s meant to trigger intense debate about a divided country but seeing it through the prism of callous glory-hunting war reporters for whom you can’t extend a shred of sympathy isn’t the way to do it. And it’s as if these decades of alien invasion, with scenes of thousands of abandoned cars and the wanton destruction of every sacred man-made edifice, never existed.

It’s like a slasher movie. You got four candidates – make that six when two other guys join our little team with the sole purpose you quickly realize of being victims – for the slaughter and you can guess from the outset who’s not going to make it. We’ve seen these characters a hundred times before, in the more mainstream war picture, the hardened veteran trying to show the rookie the ropes while we know that more likely than not the newcomer is going to get the oldster killed.

By the time that happens we’re so inured to the sensitivities of these desensitized human beings that we’re hardly surprised when said youngster is only too delighted to take a snap of the person being killed and then, shock be hanged, I’m a true professional now, I’m just going to leap past her corpse because there’s the photo of the lifetime just waiting, the execution of the President.

The rights of war reporters I’m sure are enshrined in the Geneva Convention or in the Rules of War and it’s clearly every soldier’s duty to prevent them getting killed when they put themselves in harm’s way. There’s no doubt about the many famous war photographs but there’s equally been an ongoing debate about why a photographer deems it more important to take a picture of someone dying rather than to stop them dying.

They are meant to be neutral, that elusive get-out-of-jail-free card denied combatants, only in this case they break that golden rule and under threat themselves revert to killing.

The details of this war are pretty vague. For supposed switched-on journalists they don’t seem to have much idea of what exactly is going on, so the audience is just kept in the dark. And because they are neutrals, they can switch sides without the enemy noticing and, what’s more, manage to inveigle themselves with the troops about to storm the White House, said soldiers seemingly trained in the art of hand signals required to keep reporters from giving away their position and getting them all killed.

So we got three veterans, Lee (Kirsten Dunst), Joel (Wagner Moura) and Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) who decide in the midst of this conflict to drive from New York to Washington (D.C. as we’re constantly reminded in case we think it’s the other city thousands of miles away) because Joel, who must be more famous than in his own head, wants an interview with the President because, in the midst of this conflagration, he’ll have nothing better to do than try and appease the “press” (as they’re in old-fashioned fashion known here rather than the contemporary “media”).

War photographer wannabe Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) cadges a ride and proceeds virtually the entire journey to venture into more dangerous territory, first up finding some looters strung up and bleeding to death and nothing to do for it but take a photo of the people who strung them up. There’s various shoot-outs and whatnots and it takes an age for the one character to appear that the trailer had us sold on, the racist Jesse Plemons, who forces them to take sides while digging a mass grave.

If this all meant to be a heavy-handed satire on the role of war journalists it pretty much succeeds, Joel determined not to let the President die before he gets the killer quote for which both will be remembered.

There’s not much any of the actors can do with such tightly prescribed roles. Kirsten Dunst (The Power of the Dog, 2021) does her best, tight-lipped and scrubbed clean of make-up to show she’s a serious actress when portraying a burnt-out character is always a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination. Poor Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla, 2023) has to go from shock to delight in seconds, but that twist is so unbelievable or so heinous, take your pick, it blows her character to hell.

In theory, this is sold as some kind of dystopian action picture in near-apocalyptic America, but that’s hardly going to work when every two seconds the action stops for, wait for it, a grainy black-and-white (black-and-white!!!) photo of the combatants. Written and directed by Alex Garland (Ex Machina, 2014)

This promised much but ended up as a dubious snore-fest.

Another cheat. Anatomy of a Fall Part Two. Let’s set the story in the early 1960s when cops were too dumb to think it unusual that three adults in neighboring houses could commit suicide within a very short space of time. Let’s just plain ignore the fact that the woman who has lost a child miraculously gains one from this unlikely sequence of events – in fact let’s give it our blessing and  allow a woman who’s plain loopy to adopt an orphan because, as we all know, sentiment runs wild in adoption cases.

Let’s saddle the audience with the kind of serious actors whose normal instinct would be to run a mile from this shoddy bill of goods. Yikes, we can’t even blame a manager or  casting director because Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain not only signed up to this but are behind it being brought to the screen, they are the producers.  

Bad things happen to glamorous people would be a more sensible take on these shenanigans and if the movie had gone down the more interesting route of how the well-off cope with grief and loss it would have worked even when these are the kind of mean mothers who would give mean mothers of the male variety a bad name. This is filled with the kind of underplayed bad acting that Oscar winners think they can get away with.

Both mothers have a get-out-of-jail-free card. Celine (Anne Hathaway) can’t have any more children and is the kind of fun mother who rarely exists in real life. Alice (Jessica Chastain) is a lot less fun because she’s saddled with a kid, Theo (Eamon Patrick O’Connell), who will die if he eats peanut butter and is prevented from going back out to work because, heck, what would the neighbours say. Plus, their husbands are only pretending to be lovey-dovey and the minute their wives start behaving like nutters out comes the finger-waving and dragging by the arm.

And it pivots on the dumbest of pivots. Celine’s son falls off a balcony. Alice, in her garden seeing the boy teetering precariously on a ledge, screams a warning that Celine can’t hear pecause perfect housewife that she is she’s busy with the vaccum and that just makes so much noise it shuts out the screaming of a demented woman. And if that dumb pivot isn’t enough Celine thinks that Alice thinks (you see where this is going) that it’s all her fault. That, presumably, she didn’t scream loud enough.

Worse, dumb pivot No 3, Alice places Theo’s beloved fluffy toy bunny alongside the corpse in the (natch!) open coffin (as if every parent at the funeral service just wants to gawp at a dead child) and Theo (who, of course, needed to sneak a peak at his dead buddy) kicks off and is the first of the people to be dragged off somewhere by the exasperated adult male.

Of course, when the women fall out, it doesn’t occur to Celine to ask Alice for her front door key back. Nor, when Alice sneaks into Celine’s house, is the former, suddenly returning, capable of noticing the pair of high heel shoes Alice left in the foyer so she could creep about the house undisturbed.

This is just so bonkers it overrides all the good bits. The Mad Men Meets Desperate Housewives malarkey, the men who can’t believe they’ve got it so good, scoring wives way out of their league, nice kids, food on the table, cocktails aplenty, the women all dolled up like they stepped out of a fashion catalog, and intelligent conversation about John F. Kennedy and Jackie O before she became Jackie O.  

But this relies not just on your suspending disbelief but on you sympathizing with two women you would run a mile to avoid them. It’s based on a French film (Duelles) and I’m wondering if the French had a way of getting away with this kind of stuff. Nope, wait a minute, it was the French who came up with Anatomy of a Fall.

This was the start of my Quadruple Bill – I was catching up because I’d spent the previous Monday at the theater (blasphemy, I know) watching Hamilton – and I though this looked a winner.

So it’s a big nope from me.

If ever a career was dashed by public perception and screen persona. By the end of the 1960s Raquel Welch should have been coasting, western 100 Rifles (1969) a big hit, ranked in top dozen female stars by Box Office magazine[i] and named in the Top Ten Female World Film Favourites by Reuters [ii]and beginning to be taken seriously as an actress, lined up for one of the most controversial films of the next decade in Myra Breckenridge (1970).

Sure, she had passed on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) whose success might have shot her into the box office stratosphere. And she also pulled out of The Dubious Patriots / You Can’t Win ‘Em All (1970) with rising superstar Charles Bronson and Tony Curtis.[iii] Another movie produced by husband Patrick Curtis – “vicious Hollywood love story” Laurie Lee in the Movies, written and directed by Robert Culp [iv]– failed to get funding.

Her final three movies of 1969 – Flare Up, The Magic Christian and unreleased or never-made mystery that was The Boodle (nobody seems to know what happened to that) – did nothing for her career.

Already the Queen of the Western after Bandolero!  (1968) and 100 Rifles, she was set to solidify that position with the $1.4 million Hannie Caulder (1971) and the $2 million Nitro[v] (not made either). Still, she moved into more serious acting with The Beloved (1971) aka Disgrace aka Tilda aka Restless aka Sin (“Let Raquel Show You The Way Of Sin”), a $650,000-budgeted romantic drama filmed in Cyprus by newcomer George Pan Cosmatos and opposite heavyweight actors like Flora Robson and Jack Hawkins, La Welch taking minimum salary in return for 32.5% of the profits.[vi]

Not only was she aiming to knock ‘em dead with Myra Breckenridge and this but she was lined up to play one of Cellini’s mistresses in the Terence Young biopic.[vii] And if she fancied playing up to her sex queen image the role of Tiffany Case in Diamonds Are Forever was hers for the asking.[viii]  When an enterprising New York cinema reprised A House Is Not a Home (1965), the posters presented her as the star even though she had only as bit part and still the crowds kept coming.[ix] And when Hammer came to cast The Creatures the World Forgot (1971) it used Welch’s fur bikini image from One Million Years B.C. to launch a talent hunt to become the “screen’s hottest sex symbol.”[x]

And she proved way ahead of her time in setting up, two years before the format would even become a reality, a video cassette business, that would establish her up as a major “influencer” long before the term was even coined by presenting a series of 20-minute programs giving tips about cosmetics and hairdressing. [xi] She had a music publishing business.[xii] And even though her one-hour television special Raquel, reputedly costing $1 million,  incited Variety’s critic to complain “can’t sing, can’t dance” it was a phantasmagoria of a production aired by CBS and bought by the BBC for prime time showing.[xiii]

But a fall from grace was imminent. Warner Bros had signed her up as the star of Kansas City Bomber (1972) but when they fell out she took the project to MGM.[xiv] It was her last starring role. When Brian De Palma was in the director’s chair she was announced as top-lining Fuzz (1972)[xv] but when the cop picture appeared she was way down the credits with the derisory “and” prefix. But there should have been a comeback. George Pan Cosmatos had signed her up to star in A Pope Called Joan, “a bawdy and irreverent comedy” possibly in the vein of The Decameron (1971) written by film journalist Robin Bean and certainly not in the serious mode of rival production  Pope Joan (1972) starring Liv Ullman.

“As far as I know,” averred producer Patrick Curtis, “these are two different pictures. The other is in a serious vein, ours is a satire with contemporary parallels.”[xvi] But it never appeared. The attachment of Raquel Welch to a project did not guarantee it would get made.

Although there were later flourishes in supporting roles – The Three Musketeers (1974) for example – and the legal minefield of Cannery Row (1982) she became better known as the epitome of how fleeting true movie stardom can be, though few would forget her in a handful of roles such as One Million Years B.C. (1966), Fantastic Voyage (1966), Fathom (1967) and her first two westerns. At least she ended up in the Texas Wax Museum alongside Hollywood stars like Ginger Rogers and Joan Crawford.[xvii]

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[i] “All-American Favorites of 1968,” Box Office, April 7, 1969, p19.

[ii] “Reuters Poll,” Variety, February 12, 1969, p2.

[iii] “Columbia Set in Turkey,” Variety, June 4, 1969, p34.

[iv] “Curtwel’s Laurie Lee with Raquel Welch Set,” Variety, June 4, 1969, p4; “Hollywood Report,” Box Office, June 16, 1969, p14.

[v]  “Curtwel And Tigon Films Join Oater Trend,” Variety, November 18, 1970, p36; “Hollywood Report,” Box Office, February 15, 1971, p10

[vi] “Raquel in Tilda,” Variety, April 23, 1969, p19. “Hollywood Report,” Box Office, June 16, 1969, p14; “Raquel Welch, Johnson To Co-Star in Disgrace,” Variety, August 5, 1970, p24; “Cosmatos, Aide on Exodus, Gets His Own 650G Beloved Finished,” Variety, December 16, 1970, p18. It was based on the novel by Elizabeth Kata who had written A Patch of Blue.

[vii] “Young To Rein Sun Next April and Preps Cellini Biopic,” Variety, November 19, 1969, p5.

[viii] “Raquel Welch Pends,” Variety, February 10, 1971, p6; “Jill and Jo Ann Top Femmes In Connery’s Next Bond,” Variety, March 17, 1971, p34.

[ix] “Carnal on 80-Site Showcase,” Variety, December 22, 1971, p5.

[x] “Columbia and Carreras in Global Talent Search,” Box Office, Nay 11, 1970, p9.

[xi] “Curtwel and Tigon,” Variety.

[xii] “Raquel Welch Is Also A Music Publisher,” Variety, July 8, 1970, p51.

[xiii] “Betting $1-Mil on Raquel Mex Spec,” Variety, February 11, 1970, p31; Review, Raquel, Variety, April 26, 1970; “BBC TV Buys Raquel,” Variety, June 3, 1970, p39.

[xiv] “Corporate Minds,” Variety, May 26, 1971, p6; “Hollywood Report,” Box Office, June 14, 1971, p10; “Raquel Off WB Derby; May Skate for MGM,” Variety, December 22, 1971, p3;

[xv] “Team Raquel, Brynner for Farren-UA’s Fuzz,” Variety, August 11, 1971, p5.

[xvi]“Pact Raquel for Pope Called Joan,” Variety, March 31, 1971, p28.

[xvii] “Likeness of Raquel Welch Now in Texas Wax Museum,” Box Office, September 25, 1972, p7.