1960s film – The Magnificent 60s

The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die/Catacombs (1965) ***

Gordon Hessler (The Oblong Box, 1969) makes his directorial debut with this neat horror thriller. It starts with a twist exceptional for the times. Ellen (Georgina Cookson) is the shrewd and shrewish millionaire businesswoman, her husband Raymond (Gary Merrill), from whom she demands frequent sex, the eye candy, a kept man. “I married a lover, not a businessman,” she retorts when, bored out of his mind, he asks for the opportunity to play a role in her business. In a further twist on the norm of the damsels decorating 1960s movies by displaying cleavage or disporting themselves in bikinis, Raymond is often seen with his chest bared in all its hirsuteness. In a further gender twist her secretary is also male, Dick (Neil MacCallum), a former, unknown to her, jailbird.

Tall, beautiful, dominant and domineering Ellen appears to have occult power, able to read minds, which keeps the larcenous-minded Dick in check, and has command of her own physical frailty – she walks with a stick – and can put herself in a trance to overcome occasional pain from her injured hip.

*Conspiracy of fear: Raymond (Gary Merrill) and Alice (Jane Merrow).*

But when Raymond falls for Ellen’s niece Alice (Jane Merrow), an artist returned from a year in Paris, he puts into action a plan that had clearly only been a pipe-dream, blackmailing Dick into participating. It’s quite clever as murderous plans go. He hires an actress to impersonate Ellen, known to go off to Italy on her own for spa treatments and with a knack for reckless driving, various driving charges over the years. Meanwhile, he strangles Ellen, allows Alice at a distance from an airport viewing terrace, to see her aunt, complete with walking stick, climbing up the steps of a plane. Faked cables and postcards arrive from Italy purportedly showing Ellen enjoying herself, even visiting the famous catacombs. In Italy Dick fakes a car accident to kill the actress.

However, twist number one comes at the reading of the will. Raymond and Alice split the million-pound bounty but while the latter is given custody of the big house the former is condemned to live for life, on pain of forfeiting the inheritance, in the cottage, in whose potting shed Ellen’s body lies. Further twists naturally follow. The maid (Rachel Thomas) doesn’t quite so much smell a rat but adds to the killer’s incipient discomfort by proclaiming that with her hip problem and claustrophobia that Ellen would never descend into the catacombs.

*Entitled “Catacombs” in the U.K. after the novel by Jay Bennett on which it was based, it was retitled*
*“The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die” for the U.S. market.*

And Raymond might have lived happily ever after with Alice except for his guilt. Several creepy incidents, knocking, tapping, door handles turning, shadows, a depression the shape of a body in a bed, cigarettes smoking in ashtrays, lights going on and off indicate to the already nervous Raymond and the visibly frightened Alice that Ellen may not be dead after all. Virtually the entire third act is the pair of them reacting to real or imagined fears. Alice has a good line in looking scared witless. But Raymond, while trying to contain his inner demons, is equally rattled.

As you might expect there are further excellent twists to come. In fact, they are soon piling up and even at the very end the screen freezes on a final twist.

Georgina Cookson (The Picasso Summer, 1969) steals the show as the imperious businesswoman, with everyone cowering under her glare and not above stating the obvious, “I bought you body and soul,” she reminds Raymond. I’m not sure Gary Merill (The Power, 1968) is quite as good in the second half as he is in the first. Initially, he exudes charm, physical prowess, and, while under his wife’s thumb, still emotes a certain measure of confidence. He doesn’t appear to me to quite frightened enough in the second half as his plans go awry. Jane Merrow (The Lion in Winter, 1968) is excellent as the young woman caught in a mental trap and Neil MacCallum (The Lost Continent, 1968) is surprisingly effective.

But this is a low-budget B-picture that was destined for the lower half of a double bill so there was no particular reason why it should be as good as it is. Except for the Italian sequence, the action takes place on just two sets and for most of the time it’s a three-hander. But Hessler has a keen eye for composition and in a number of critical scenes makes bold choices. For Ellen’s murder, he concentrates on Raymond’s face rather than the victim’s, only showing her feet. There’s one super-shocker with a mirror. But mostly he is content to built up the tension, either by the various noises or by the reactions of Raymond and Alice.

An old-fashioned gem of a picture.

The Unfinished Task / I’ll Give My Life (1960) ***

For completists only. Fans of Anglie Dickinson have responded to reviews of Jessica (1962) and several others. This should round off your Angie Dickinson collection with the bonus that it’s a long-lost number. Almost unrecognizable as a brunette, Dickinson carries much of the emotional weight of this tale about an outsider rejecting a chosen career.

Hollywood pictures about creative outsiders such as artists and writers relied on charismatic actors – Kirk Douglas in Lust for Life (1956), Charlton Heston in The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) – to bring the project to life. Similarly, you might think, in movies about another type of outsider, of the religious variety, having the likes of Gregory Peck (The Keys of the Kingdom, 1944) or Bing Crosby in Going My Way (1944) goes a long way to giving such ventures audience-appeal.

*This poster does not do the film justice. It’s nothing like as “heavenly” as that. Howco was an exhibition company that entered distribution in order to provide enough product for its cinemas.*

Here, Jim (John Bryant), the son of a successful construction tycoon, having completed a degree goes against the wishes of father John (Ray Collins) by becoming a minister instead. In due course he is sent overseas to a mission in New Guinea, and like Father Stu (2022) contracts a deadly disease. Jim is far from charismatic, just a plodding ordinary guy who has found “something more important than building skyscrapers.”

The story is instead told through the eyes of John, resentful of his son’s decision, and his girlfriend/fiancée/wife Alice (Angie Dickinson) who, expecting marriage to a wealthy engineer, instead has to set aside her own ambitions and go along with her husband’s wishes, this being post-WWII America, and independence hardly a prerequisite in a wife, never mind a woman.

But if this is a story of a conversion – as was the case in Father Stu – it’s about the conversion of the father and Alice and the bulk of the story hinges upon their reactions to the path taken by Jim rather than him taking center stage. So it’s cleverly done, and whether this is due to budgetary pressure, or creative decision, it proves the right choice. John is the kind of self-made man who would dominate any stage, forever making plans, spinning the world as he would like it to be. In Alice’s eyes we see nothing but her weighing up Jim’s choices, sometimes accompanied by shock, occasionally elation, but mostly resignation and infrequent resentment as she, too, is parted from family to follow her husband into an unknown in which she had considerably less faith.

Unlike Father Stu, conversion does not come easily. Jim is long dead, two-thirds of the way through the picture as it happens, before John comes to realize that his son’s demise should not be in vain and that he left behind “an unfinished task” for his father to complete, namely raising awareness of the power of missionaries to improve the lot of the miserable and poor in foreign parts. Bear in mind the era in which this was made, so there are some attitudes that will make you wince, but generally it is well done, not weighted down with platitudes and, in concentrating on the doubter, brings alive a difficult subject.

And although this was before questions were asked about the sexual corruption of priests and ministers, men who followed religion were still not as easily accommodated in the general community, seen as overly pious and, to the businessman, existing in a vacuum. The idea that the Church, of various kinds, had not done enough to ease global suffering, is continually raised and nobody here is giving themselves a pat on the back.

Alice is actually given more screen time than Jim, his father using her as a sounding board, and, while Jim is off in New Guinea, enjoying herself with the firm’s resident beau, Bob (Jon Sheppod), and finally taking on motherhood and coping with the premature death of her husband and still fighting to open the father’s eyes to the good being done.

Angie Dickinson (Jessica, 1962) gives a very good account of herself, especially as the narrative restricts her to the kind of wifely 1950s role rather than the frisky sexuality she exhibited in the 1960s. Her acting skill saved her from being lumbered with portentous dialogue since she could portray her feelings more easily with her eyes.

Ray Collins (famed for a running role in the Perry Mason series) is excellent as the father confused by his son’s decision, fighting him every inch of the way. John Bryant (The Bat, 1959), it has to be said, does not light up the screen, lacking the magnetism of a Peck or a Crosby but in some regard this kind of straight playing suits the film, since the character is not meant to be out of the ordinary.

William F. Claxton (Desire in the Dust, 1960) directed from a script by Herbert Moulton, better known as a producer of shorts. Although this film was released in 1960, it appears to have been made before that, some suggest as early as 1955. Given it was funded by the Lutheran Church, the script does not make heavy weather of the religious elements and John’s resistance to his son’s vocation reflected that of any father to a son embarking on as shaky a career as painting or writing.

You can catch this on YouTube, though it’s not a great print. And, yes, that is Angie Dickinson sitting demurely at a desk.

The Night Walker (1964) ****

Deserves its spot in the cult pantheon, hints of Spellbound (1945) and Vertigo (1958), mesmeric atmosphere of dream/nightmare held together by a hypnotic performance by Barbara Stanwyck, tonsils in overdrive. But no point screaming at the unseen, at the unknown, when it invades reality, no point trying to escape a dream when you’re trapped inside.

Except that there’s no sign of the demonic figure haunting widow Irene Trent (Barbara Stanwyck) on the poster it delivers on all other fronts, driving you to question our heroine’s grip on reality as much as she questions herself. If there’s such a thing as self-gaslighting, she’s in the vanguard.

Creepy rich blind husband Howard (Hayden Rorke) is an emperor of surveillance, microphones everywhere catching her every word, including what she utters in her dreams, which convinces him that she’s having or has had an affair. When he dies in an explosion, body eviscerated in the inferno, she can’t come to terms with her freedom, holing up in the tiny apartment at the back of her beauty parlor, relying on assistant Joyce (Judi Meredith) and attorney Barry (Robert Taylor) for moral, and perhaps in relation to the solicitor, physical support.

When the unreal invades her daily life and she begins to believe in her dreams and when the handsome lover (Lloyd Bochner) of her night-time imagination takes shape, she begins to doubt her sanity. But so convinced, on the other hand, that she must be sane, she tries to convince Barry that her dreams have basis in fact. She tracks down the apartment (No 341) she visited in her dreams and the chapel where she imagined she was married to said lover.

You wish director William Castle (Straitjacket, 1964) had continued exploring the theme of dreams vs reality, and how to cope when the imagination takes over. But instead, it twists into thriller territory, the old set-up, the gaslighting that could send Irene over the edge and straight into a sanatorium while her husband’s substantial wealth ends up elsewhere.

Even so, once it heads down this particular path, it’s still mighty tricky. Who could be in on the act? All the people she trusts – Barry, Joyce, even Loverboy? And if she’s going to let her suspicions run riot, how is she going to come out the other side, for surely that will tip her over into madness?

Exceptionally lean, barely 80 minutes once you exclude the treatise on dreams at the start that establishes the premise of the “Night Walker” – the person who lives through their dreams – and exceptionally clever. Irene is so given to screaming that you’d scarcely think there’s space left in her brain to to work out just what’s going on. And there’s no shortage of permutations.

Has her dead husband, half his face obliterated by burns, come back to haunt her? Is the Lover just a figment of her imagination? Why can’t she make do with someone as handsome as Barry?

We’ve got smoke issuing from under doors, recurrent bright flashes of explosion, mannequins that seem alive, all sorts of jiggery-pokery with guns, telephone wires cut, a blind man who can tell the color of your dress, eyeballs plucked from faces and squeezed until they pop, and the expectation all the time of a straight dive into madness. No escape in other words.

Even when it fast approaches a climax you might have guessed the outcome of, turns out you were wrong and there’s still a few more twists – and screams – to come.

The fact that it turns into a straightforward thriller at the time tended to diminish the emphasis on the demonic, but these will be more fully appreciated today when the line between reality and fiction is stretched ever thin.

Four-time Oscar nominee Barbara Stanwyck (A Walk on the Wild Side, 1962) might have been accused of slumming it in low-budget horror fare such as this, but, boy, in her final big screen appearance, (although she successfully switched to television as star of The Big Valley, 1965-1969) does she give it her best shot. If this was Stanwyck’s swansong, Robert Taylor (A House Is Not a Home, 1964) , a fellow relic from Hollywood’s Golden Age, wasn’t far behind, only a few movies left in him.

For all this relied on William Castle’s directorial dexterity, the imagination behind it came from master of the macabre Robert Bloch (Psycho, 1960).

Cult doesn’t come much better.

Experiment in Terror / The Grip of Fear (1962) ****

For a modern audience any film that contains mention of “Twin Peaks” and “Tarantino” either shows amazing prescience and/or an indication of what is to come. This classy thriller does not disappoint. Part police procedural, part portrait of a killer, part clever heist and part women in peril, it has you wondering why director Blake Edwards did not stick to the genre. Set in San Francisco in an era when the F.B.I. was generally considered a good thing rather than the paranoia-inducing entity it would become a decade later.

Bank teller Kelly Sherwood (Lee Remick) is terrorized by an unknown assailant into helping him carry out a audacious $100,000 heist. F.B.I. agent Ripley (Glenn Ford), aware of the prospective theft, is drawn into the diabolical web as is Sherwood’s younger sister Toby (Stefanie Powers). The only clue to the thief is his asthmatic voice. Levels of forensic detection set a new bar with the F.B.I. employing telephone, personal and even aerial surveillance, commandeering of television cameras to scan a crowd, and analyzing a telephone conversation to identify the criminal.

Released in Britain as “The Grip of Fear,” exhibitors tried to pull a fast one on the public by using as the support “Operation Mad Ball,” a Jack Lemmon number from 1957, in a bid to convince moviegoers that this program would repeat the successful pairing of Remick and Lemmon in “Days of Wine and Roses.”

There are red herrings aplenty. Tension is racked up so adroitly that any character entering the frame automatically arouses suspicion. Edwards takes a leaf out of the Hitchcock suspense book by finding constant ways to remind Kelly – and the audience – just what is at stake, Ripley promising her a “reign of terror” and not, as you might expect, lying to her about the threat she faces.

As Ripley digs further into the robber’s past, he uncovers not only a catalogue of crime including rape and three murders, but also an unusual personality. Yes, as you might expect, a control freak, but also a guy capable of affection and of lavishing thousands of dollars on those worse off than himself. And, of course, he is exceptionally good at planning crime, outwitting the F.B.I., and picking the kind of vulnerable victim susceptible to intimidation. Every time, the F.B.I. thinks it is closing in, he remains one step ahead. Eventually, the F.B.I. has amassed so many clues, including his identity, a photograph and previous lovers, that you think it’s impossible for him to escape – until he does.

Kelly is so on edge, in following instructions, that she picks up the wrong man in a bar, the police so antsy they mistake a drunk for the assailant. Drenched in atmosphere and rich in subsidiary characters, there’s scarcely a dull moment, from a mannequin repairer (Nancy Ashton) with a roomful of dangling inert bodies, a karate class with (ironically) a woman well able to defend herself, to a small boy desperate to see a G-man’s weapon, an informant (Ned Glass) with a penchant (as did director Edwards) for silent comedies, and a bank manager who promises Kelly a promotion even if she has to steal the money.

On top of this there are some genuine creepy moments that up-end our expectations. What Ripley doesn’t tell Kelly is that she’s also bait and clearly has little concern that she might end up collateral damage – anticipating at the very least she will have a nervous breakdown when it’s over, if, in fact, she survives – in his bid to snare the criminal. A terrified kidnapped Toby strips down to underwear in front a man we know is a rapist. And the movie touches on the woman-who-loves-a-killer motif, a theme very much in the contemporary vein.

Blake Edwards (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 1961) delivers a directorial tour de force. The criminal is hidden for most the picture, drip-fed to the audience in glimpses, his mouth here, his back there, other times in disguise. Edwards establishes the F.B.I. as such a “very efficient organization” using the most up-to-date methods and involving a vast number of staff plus police that it seems impossible to fail – until it does. And there is an absolutely brilliant six-minute sequence at the outset, milking the best of film noir lighting, when the criminal surprises Kelly in her garage and spells out in detail her vulnerability and the basics of his plan. By keeping the criminal in the shade, and what little available light there is covering her face, Edwards makes the most of Lee Remick’s eyes – every bit as iconic as Audrey Hepburn’s outfits in Breakfast at Tiffany’s – and her acting skill.

Remick (Sanctuary, 1961) is superb, trapped by emotion as much as terror, placing her trust in an F.B.I. that lets her down time and again. This is an edgier role for Glenn Ford (Fate Is the Hunter, 1964) as he steps up from the trustworthy guy-next-door to reveal a more ruthless streak. Stefanie Powers (The Warning Shot, 1967) does well in a small role and there is sterling support from Ross Martin (The Ceremony, 1963), Patricia Huston (Synanon, 1965) and Clifton James (Live and Let Die, 1973). Gordon and Mildred Gordon wrote the screenplay based on their novel Operation Terror.

“Twin Peaks” in case you are wondering is the district in which Kelly lives. There’s a sign towards the end for Tarantino’s World-Famous Cocktails.

The Birds (1963) *****

Years ago I was asked to write a book on the six best Hitchcock films and from those choose the one I considered his very best. My choice was The Birds (1963). And it is for these reasons.

Firstly, unusually in the master’s work, there is a proper meet-cute. In most of his films, the couple are either already together (Rear Window, 1954; Torn Curtain, 1966) or when they get together it is for a hidden reason, one is on the run, or being pursued by the other, and the getting together is a convenient way of reaching an ulterior goal. When Melanie (Tippi Hedren) and Mitch (Rod Taylor) meet in the pet shop it is a certainly a precursor for the future and ensures that Mitch gets in a stickier jam he would otherwise likely have avoided but in the true sense it is the traditional Hollywood boy-meets-girl.

Secondly, and now cutting more to the chase, this is where the modern action film was invented. You might think that honour rested with Dr No (1962) or any other of the Bond pictures or even as late as Bullitt (1968) with its epochal car chase. But although the Bonds are filled with derring-do and escape, there is nothing to match the scene when the birds attack the town, wave after wave, as if they were World War Two bombers. There is even the point-of-view from the air which Hitchcock also invented and has been repeated in airplane war films ever since, most famously Pearl Harbor (2001).

But the way in which full-scale disaster, with everyone rendered helpless, unfolds is a true first. People in the café can see the river of petrol and the match about to be discarded and can only observe as the river of flame reaches the petrol tanker and in a perfectly ordinary town setting – rather than a military base – there is an almighty explosion. It is terror for the sake of it. And there is no escape, no one racing to the rescue, just pure devastation,

Lastly is the ending. It is apocalyptic. In every other Hitchcock when the hero/heroine escapes from dire peril, that is the end of the matter, there is no final twist as with a film like Carrie (1976). But although the birds are now silent and the couple can pick their way through their lines, you know full well this is not the end and that the birds will soon be as inexplicably massing somewhere else.

That’s three reasons but there are many more. For a start, in other films where the hero/heroine is in danger, the peril is not relentless. And often it is the threat of danger or of being captured that provides the narrative spring. And if there is physical threat in that era it was not unrelenting. And it is with another character whom you can fight or at least attempt to outwit. Not just, later in this instance rather than sooner, realize that there is no way to defeat these marauding creatures, no way at all. So, compared to his other films, when attacks of one kind or another punctuate a film, here it is like a battery of machine-guns and not episodic but virtually non-stop for over 30 minutes.

The storyline since it is after all a meet-cute is excessively simple. Melanie and Mitch meet, trade remarks, she leaves him what would easily be interpreted as a love token, and they link up after she is attacked by a gull. Wherever they go now, there will be no escape. Gulls attack children playing outside. The same day sparrows invade Melanie’s home. There is another attack on children. In town the gulls swarm in wholesale, wreaking the devastation mentioned above. All his is just a prelude to the final overwhelming siege. Except in modern horror pictures where a body is dispatched every ten minutes or so, there is nothing to match the unremitting attacks. It is as though Mitch and Melanie are in the front line of battle, under siege, Zulu (1964) with birds perhaps, but with no hope of salvation. Unlike Zulu, there is no sign that in raising the siege, the birds are hailing their bravery.

Unusually, too, for a Hitchcock film, there is considerable back story that informs current action. Mitch has an overbearing mother who seems to hover over his life attempting to scare off any woman who comes near. Annie has been left behind precisely because he needed to escape his mother. For her part, Melanie’s mother ran off with another man and she is a spoiled socialite with a habit of getting into trouble, possibly attention-seeking behaviour as a result of abandonment issues. Full to the brim with sophistication. Melanie is the least likely candidate for motherhood, yet her maternal feelings rush to the fore when she has to care for a terrified child.

Tippi Hedren’s career when south when she parted company with Hitchcock so we only have this and Marnie (1964) to consider her worth as a star. This is easily her best performance, shifting from icy cold to playful to romantic to maternal and of course no one has quite emoted such shock and terror. This is Rod Taylor (Dark of the Sun, 1968) coming into his stride as a leading man. He always had the charm and certainly the brawn, but rarely displayed both in the one picture. You would not have picked the Rod Taylor of Seven Seas to Calais to lead a squad of mercenaries in Dark of the Sun but he might well be first pick after this performance.

Hitchcock got so many of his effects by laying on the tension, a man or woman on the run, an innocent framed, a man displaying dubious morality (Rear Window, 1954, and Vertigo, 1958) nonetheless being presented as hero, the question in every instance being whether they will escape their fate. Here, the barrage of devilry is so intense it is almost inconceivable that anyone could get out alive. That they sneak out by the skin of their teeth, watched by their silent conquerors, for me was only the prelude to The Birds Part Two.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Birds-Tippi-Hedren/dp/B00I953TVA/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1M01BG775O41C&keywords=the+birds&qid=1657318569&sprefix=the+birds%2Caps%2C71&sr=8-1

Sumuru, Queen of Femina / The Girl from Rio / Mothers of America (1969) ***

Cult fans assemble. Sci fi crime thriller with for the time a fair sprinkling of nudity, and channelling psychedelic turns like Barbarella (1968) and Danger: Diabolik (1968) and one step up from the ultra-confident gals of Deadlier than the Male (1967) and Some Girls Do (1969). It would have helped if there was a decent plot, and not just a barrage of double-crossing halfway in, but you can’t have everything and director Jess Franco seems to believe that the presence of a tribe of women decked out in red capes, white knee-length boots and not necessarily much in between, goes some way to compensate.

Crook Jeff Sutton (Richard Stapley) holes up in Rio with $10 million in stolen cash, unaware that his presence has already been noted by gang boss Masius (George Sanders) and local ultra-feminist Sununda (Shirley Eaton). After hooking up with manicurist Lesley (Maria Rohm), Sutton is set upon by Masius’ henchmen but escapes in a plane to Femina, “the capital city of the world of women,” a female fortress along the lines of the Bulldog Drummond pictures.

Turns out Sununda is partial to men with piles of cash, kidnapping and torturing them until they hand it over. So she can’t believe her luck when millionaire Jeff walks into her lair. Except Jeff is a bit of a fibber, having made up the story about the ten million, and instead landing at Femina in order to rescue Ulla (Marta Reves).

The plot only really kicks in when he escapes. Masius agrees to help Jeff in return for the pretend-thief helping him hijack Sununda’s vault of gold. In reality, Masius is using Jeff as bait, to tempt Sununda down from the clouds, and then turn him over in exchange for just half her gold. And so it’s back to Femina for all concerned.

There’s no real pretence at the kind of sci-fi that enthralled Barbarella audiences and none of the slick campness of Danger:Diabolik, and most of the ideas seem still-born and occasionally contradictory – in order to enslave men women must first be taught how to be irresistible to them – torture is accomplished either by whispering or kissing, and the ray-guns employed looked like cast-offs from the 1950s, but the regiment of women, with spies infiltrating everywhere, led by the ruthless Sununda, have the makings of a warrior nation.

The movie has far better luck with Masius, a splendidly-drawn character who doodles on restaurant tablecloths, enjoys reading Popeye comic books, and – a bit of drawback for a man in his profession – can’t stand the sight of blood. While his sidekicks are mostly incompetent, they do drive around in hearses that resemble pagodas or dress in unnecessary masks and while his girlfriends appear docile they are in fact spies. And there’s a spot of waterboarding in case you ever wondered where the American secret services got the idea.

The source material was from Sax Rohmer but Sununda lacks the inherent obvious evil of the author’s more successful Fu Manchu series, Shirley Eaton no match for Christopher Lee, the most recent Fu Manchu, nor Richard Shapley on a par with Fu Manchu nemesis Nayland Smith, regardless of whether played by Nigel Green (The Face of Fu Manchu, 1965), Douglas Wilmer (The Brides of Fu Manchu, 1966) or Richard Greene (The Blood of Fu Manchu, 1968, and The Castle of Fu Manchu, 1969).

And anyone attracted to the picture by director Jess (Jesus) Franco is going to be disappointed by the lack of sleaziness he exhibited in pictures like Succubus (1968), 99 Women (1969) and Marquis De Sade’s Justine (1969) and there’s not enough style, though abundant campness, to make up. It’s hard to say quite why it did not have a harder edge, perhaps producer Harry Alan Towers, responsible for 99 Women, felt it should err in the softer direction of Fu Manchu than the overt sex-and-violence of the nascent women-in-prison genre.

Franco and Towers (24 Hours to Kill, 1965, and Bang! Bang! You’re Dead!, 1966) had collaborated on The Blood of Fu Manchu and The Castle of Fu Manchu as well as Venus in Furs (1969) and Marquis De Sade’s Justine so presumably knew how far they could go and decided that here it was better to rein in Franco’s tendencies. Whether a tougher-edged approach would have made much of a difference given the indifferent playing – neither Shirley Eaton (The Scorpio Letters, 1967) nor Richard Stapley (Two Guns and a Coward, 1968) bring much to the leading roles and George Sanders (Warning Shot, 1967) is not in it enough to save it. Maria Rohm, Franco’s wife, appeared in many of his films.

Towers appeared on surer ground in the likes of 24 Hours to Kill (1965), Bang! Bang! You’re Dead! (1966) and Five Golden Dragons (1967) when he could draw on a more interesting cast, better stories and more colourful locations. This was a sequel to The Million Eyes of Sumuru (1967) again with Shirley Eaton and plum role for Klaus kinski.

Despite the film’s potential, the director and George Sanders it does not fit into the so-bad-it’s-good category nor has enough going for it to be labelled a true cult film. But I could be wrong in both those assumptions.

Lady in Cement (1969) ****

Frank Sinatra in cruise control reprises his Tony Rome (1967) private eye in a hugely enjoyable and vastly under-rated murder mystery with man mountain Dan Blocker of Bonanza fame and femme fatale Raquel Welch of pin-up fame. One of the actor’s greatest characterizations, albeit with little in it for the Oscar mob, this is one of the coolest gumshoes to hit the screen. Exhibiting none of the self-consciousness of latter-day Philip Marlowes or Sam Spades, Sinatra embellishes the character with more “business” than ever before, larding his dialogue with quips while he talks his way out of sticky situations and, as a big star, happy to be picked up by Blocker and dumped on a work surface. Can’t see Newman, Redford, McQueen, and Eastwood et al putting up with that kind of treatment.

Tony Rome is almost as much of a bum as he is a detective, betting on anything possible, wasting his time on fruitless quests for sunken treasure, lazing around in his yacht until in one of his deep sea forays comes across the naked titular damsel. Reporting the murder sees Rome co-opted by cop Lt. Santini (Richard Conte) to ID the woman. Sent to the apartment shared by Sandra Lomax and Maria Bareto in search for a potential client, Rome encounters Waldo (Dan Blocker) who hires him to find Lomax.

*The British release paired an action picture with a sex comedy, the idea being to catch different types of audiences rather than putting two action films or two comedies together which would*
later become the prevailing exhibition wisdom. *Although the two films had in common a star in bikini*.
*Note that the double bill went on general release at the same time as the two pictures*
*were, separately, playing at London’s West End.*

That takes Rome to Jilly’s go-go club where his conversation with dancer Maria (Lainie Kazan) is rudely interrupted by owner Danny Yale (Frank Raiter). Next stop is a swimming pool and who should emerge in a wet bikini than millionairess Kit Forrest (Raquel Welch) whose party Sandra attended. But a) she’s an alcoholic with memory issues and b) objects to snoopers so calls in neighbor and former hood Al Mungar (Martin Gabel) who sends Rome packing. When Maria is bumped off, Waldo is the prime suspect.

So we are enveloped in an interesting plot that soon involves blackmail and robbery and a suspect list that extends to Mungar and son Paul (Steve Peck) who has the hots for Kit, Yale and muscular boyfriend Seymour, and of course Waldo (whose reason for finding Sandra is revenge) and Kit. Despite the seeming light touch, inheritance is a theme, and the tale is character-driven, relationships complex, locales somewhat off-beat, a crap game in a mortuary, a nude painter’s studio, strip clubs, massage parlors and go-go dancing establishments abound, but with none of the moralizing that came with the territory. A racetrack is almost prosaic by comparison.

For most of the picture Santini and Rome have an antagonistic relationship until we find out, in a lovely scene, that Rome was the cop’s ex-partner, that the grumpy cop has a loving home life and that Rome is greeted with delight as “Uncle Tony” by Santini’s son. Rome is also very well acquainted with film noir and knows that a woman who appears too good to be true is in fact too good to be true so he’s sensible enough to steer clear of seduction (the bane of any film noir character’s life) unless he’s just pretending in order to glean information.

*Raquel Welch is more sedate in this poster.*

It’s a classic detective story, one lead following another, naturally a few contretemps along the way, some deception, and the laid-back Rome proves not as relaxed as you might expect, possessing a handy right hook and a neat uppercut. Interesting subsidiary characters include Al’s neglected wife, a bumptious beach attendant and a whining nude model.

Director Gordon Douglas – who handled Sinatra in Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964), Tony Rome and The Detective (1968) – brings out the best in the actor, keeps the action zipping along despite multiple complications and prefers a quip to a momentous speech.

Sinatra is just so at ease he oozes screen charisma. His shamus is no slick unraveller of truth, but a steady digger, accumulating information. You might think any tentative relationship with Kit stretches the age angle a tad but bear in mind at this stage Sinatra was married to Mia Farrow, 30 years his junior. Raquel Welch (The Biggest Bundle of Them All, 1968) is surprisingly good as a vulnerable mixed-up wealthy alcoholic and, except in her opening scene, manages to steer clear of a bikini for most of the picture.

Richard Conte (Hotel, 1966) is as dependable as ever but Martin Gabel (Divorce American Style, 1967) steals the supporting show as an apoplectic racketeer trying to go straight. You might like to know Lainie Kazan (Dayton’s Devils, 1968) is still working, The Amityville Murders (2018) and Tango Shalom (2021) among her recent output. It’s a shame Dan Blocker did not live long enough (he died in 1972) to build on his idiosyncratic performance.

The lively screenplay was written by Marvin H. Albert (A Twist of Sand, 1968) and Jack Guss (Daniel Boone: Frontier Trail Rider, 1966) based on Albert’s novel. Mention, too, for the jaunty theme tune by Hugo Montenegro (The Undefeated, 1969). You’ll find yourself humming it for days on end, it pops up often enough.

Into the catchphrase hall of fame must go Blocker’s exhortation “Stay loose” just before he unleashes mayhem. And while we’re about it, what is it about the quality of actor or status of a star that permits hoodlum Al’s peeved “I tried to go clean and you dragged me down” to be ignored while a couple of decades later a similar line from The Godfather Part III (1990) uttered by Al Pacino is hailed as a classic. You know the one I mean: “Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.” Steven Spielberg is another who should have watched this picture for tips on how to deal with marauding sharks – Rome’s solution: kick them on the snout. By the way did Blocker fall out with imdb? Despite third billing, he’s not listed at all in the main credits and when you scroll down to the extended credits, he’s at the very bottom. Jeez!

The Party (1968) ***

Had director Blake Edwards (The Pink Panther, 1963) stuck to his guns and followed his instinct and gone down the silent film route, this would have emerged in better shape. Blame star Peter Sellers (The Pink Panther) for deciding “brownface” had worked so well in The Millionairess (1960) that it was ripe for a repeat and that dialog was essential to the audience empathizing with his character.

On reflection, the fish-out-of-water concept would have been more acceptable with a character originating from anywhere but India which would have still permitted the star to adopt one of the zany voices that were his trademark.

The script was originally 58 pages long which would have delivered a finished product running just short of an hour. The extra time would have been made up by the actor’s improvisation.

His character probably didn’t need to be actor either to find himself at bigwig’s party in Los Angeles. When Sellers is at his inventive best this just purrs along. Some of the ideas are priceless – trying to retrieve a shoe from a pond, meddling with a electronics system, getting his tie stuck in an unlikely spot, spraying all with water. But when he opens his voice, it drags.

Part of the problem is that Hrundi V. Bakshi (Peter Sellers) lacks lines with any zap. He just mumbles along, repeating the same humorless drivel. And while other characters make fools of themselves through dialog, that’s rarely with incisive wit either, the audience just laughing at their inflated opinions of themselves.

Bakshi is an incompetent Indian actor who manages to blow up the expensive set on costume epic Son of Gunga Din movie set at the height of the British Raj. He should have been blacklisted, but instead elementary error sees him invited to the party of studio boss General Clutterbuck (J. Edward McKinley) where he encounters a drunken starlet, an alcoholic waiter determined to steal the slapstick high ground, pompous western star “Wyoming Bill” (Denny Miller) and French singer Michele Monet (Claudine Longet) trying to avoid the advances of movie producer Divot (Gavin MacLeod).

Although this was reputedly shot in sequence, the running order doesn’t really matter. Set Peter Sellers in his pomp down in any situation and chaos will ensure. Wigs will come off, shoes will rocket around a room, anything on a plate, bowl or tray will fall off, anyone in the vicinity will be drenched or battered. Tempers will rise until they are nicely cooking and set to explode.

Quite where a Russian ballet troupe and a painted elephant fit into this is anyone’s guess except that both were intended as cues for further hilarity. When guests aren’t tumbling into the pool they’re soaked in soap suds. Naturally, Bakshi’s ineptitude triggers gentle romance with Michele.

This would certainly have built up a good head of steam if seen in a cinema with an audience. But the cinema audience would have encountered the same problem as anyone watching it at home. For every sequence that hits a comedic bulls-eye, others just fall flat. When the movie relies on the star’s charm rather than his ineptitude it falls apart.

It’s almost a highlights reel and my guess is that if it was cut back to the original one-hour length we might well have a classic on our hands. As it is, padded out, it doesn’t come close.

While at one time it acquired cult status my guess is that the contemporary audience won’t find enough to compensate for the offensive Brownface.

Certainly there are moments of genius, the shoe sequence and the electronics section are huge fun. But too much just doesn’t work.

You might end up fast forwarding every time Sellers opens his mouth. He is a master at finding fun in the inanimate, less impressive when dealing with people. Didn’t do anything for Claudine Longet, no more movies after this. And that was not surprising. Everyone was just a stooge to Sellers.

I apologize for falling back on that old analogy of the curate’s egg – good in parts – but that pretty much defines it.

Jungle Street / Jungle Street Girls (1961) ***

More social document than thriller. Two elements make it stand out. Critics pointed to the likes of kitchen sink drama Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) as exemplifying the British working class. Equally, when looking for a picture that identified the British criminal, critics and academics were more likely to point to Robbery (1967) and Get Carter (1971) where the villains demonstrated considerable intelligence, leadership and acumen.

Let’s get the social aspects out the way first. Petty thief Terry Collins (David McCallum) still lives with his parents. He argues with his father, is mollycoddled by his mother. There’s a fry-up for breakfast. The kitchen doubles as the dining area. Excitement is limited to winning the Pools (a football-based version of the current Lottery) and going to the cinema. His father (Thomas Collins) has worked all his life shifting sacks of potatoes (presumably in a market). But he’s not disillusioned with life. He’s brought up his family and can still spend time down in the pub.

Terry is a delusional gangster. But only a part-time one, making his living working in a garage, having chucked in his factory job. He thinks he can make a big score and run off to Europe to live the high life. He’s in love with stripper Sue (Jill Ireland) who doesn’t respond to his romancing. She’s taken to stripping because her lover Johnny (Kenneth Cope) is serving a one-year stretch for a jewel robbery.

People always seem to be laughing at Terry and he reacts violently. But he’s not the rough-tough dominant male he aspires to be. Three times he gets whacked about the face, twice by criminal colleagues, once by Sue.

Inadvertently, he’s killed an old man while robbing him. So the police are on his tail. Johnny’s been released from prison, reclaiming Sue, and wants to know what happened to his share of the loot from the jewel heist in which Terry was his partner. To compensate, Terry offers to set up a robbery of the safe at the strip club whose routines he has studied.

Once the safe has been opened, he clatters Johnny over the head, and scarpers with the cash, makes for Sue, and is astonished when she refuses to accompany him. Eventually, the police catch up and another deluded petty criminal bites the dust.

Initially, of course, the audience sides with our young lad, understands his need to escape the boredom of ordinary life that awaits. But, gradually, he provides little to root for.

Given the regular sequences of girls stripping, the running time is even leaner than usual. The heist has some considerable moments of tension especially when the watchman, bound hand and foot, inches along the floor to the alarm button, and then when Terry appears trapped before jumping out a window.

There’s nothing glamorous about the strip club either, Sue having to constantly ward off the unwelcome advances of owner Jacko (John Chandos) and every other customer who thinks a stripper is morally lax. Even though she’s kept herself for Johnny, he doesn’t believe her. Some girls know how to play the system, a new stripper not giving in to Jacko until he’s spelled out the financial benefits.

The seediness of the lower depths is depicted well and it’s not hard to see how young men and young women are easily snookered into this kind of existence when the alternative is so mind-numbingly boring.

David McCallum (Sol Madrid/The Heroin Gang, 1968) and real-life wife Jill Ireland (Cold Sweat, 1970) are both convincing, exuding surprising emotional depth. Kenneth Cope (Randall and Hopkirk Deceased/My Partner the Ghost, TV series 1969-1970) is on hand to show the young ingenue what it means to be a proper tough guy.

Charles Saunders (Danger on My Side, 1962) directs from a script by Alexander Dore (The Wind of Change, 1961) and Guido Coen (Baby Love, 1969).

More interesting as a character study than as a thriller.

Blue (1968) *****

Easily the most underrated western of all time. Few people saw it on release and precious few since. If remembered at all, it’s for reasons of movie trivia. Robert Redford got into a legal fight with Paramount when he pulled out of the starring role. And it was what was being shot in the background of the Burt Reynolds movie Fade In (1968).

Decades before cultural appropriation was a major no-no, Americans didn’t take too kindly to Brits taking on top-billed roles in westerns. Audiences sniggered at Dirk Bogarde as a Mexican bandit in The Singer Not the Song (1960), John Mills proved an obstacle to audience acceptance of Chuka (1967) and Shalako (1969) starring Sean Connery, the world’s biggest box office draw at the time, would become a huge flop Stateside.

Yet there are some extraordinary moments here. Some, frankly, I’m astonished never rated a mention at the time nor since. The director’s use of natural sound is ground-breaking. For a start, there’s very little music, none of the triumphal brass that generally accompanies hordes of cowboys racing across plains. Often, here, all we get is hoofbeats. In terms of the aural Hitchcock would have applauded one scene, where a man is hunted through tall grass. All we hear is the crackling sound of the pursuers as they stalk him through the dried-out terrain.

Most times when in other films we see a bunch of cowboys charging along, it’s filmed from the front or the side. Reason being, shoot it from the back and you’ve got to deal with all the dust churned up by the hooves. Not so, here, bring on the dust. Let’s have something new.

There’s even a nod to The Searchers (1956), the famous doorway scenes, but here the main character is neither coming nor coming but cannot make up his mind whether to do either and so slouches against the doorframe.

The opening sequence is The Wild Bunch (1969) in reverse. It’s the good guys in the town, and the bandits who create the ambush and, minus Peckinpah’s obsession with bloodletting, treat their captives ever bit as brutally. Even here, there are two notable scenes. In the first, our hero Blue (Terence Stamp) has been sitting napping under his hat when a troop of Mexican soldiers arrive. Once they hunker down inside the saloon he throws a huge red scarf in the hair, signal to the watching bandits. Then, after the soldiers have been routed, and their leader is still trying to make a stand, Blue races up behind and whips away first his upraised gun, then his hat, then the man himself.

And these are not ordinary bandits. You might think they are given our post-action introduction to them shows them whoring, gambling and fighting. But actually they are revolutionaries and leader Ortega (Ricardo Montalban) has a strategic brain and realizes that they have to take the fight across the river to the Americans – on their most important day of the year, July 4^th, Independence Day – and get them so riled up they do something about the inequities in Mexico.

And he has his work cut out to rein in his rebellious son and the concerns raised by his number two that the life, hiding out in the hills and sleeping in caves, is losing its appeal to his followers. So, intelligent bandits.

The Americans might not be particularly bothered by their neighbors, but still they’ve got a stuffed mannikin hanging from a noose with the word “Greasers” written upon its chest. The bandits break up the party, rob the Yanks, but for some reason leave the enemy with all their weapons, allowing the farmers to form an immediate posse and set off in pursuit.

Blue is shot but makes his way to a farmhouse where, luckily for him, he is tended by farmer’s daughter Joanne (Joanna Pettet) whom he previously saved from rape. It’s a bit of a tip-off that the fugitive goes by the name Azul (the Spanish word for “blue”) to the Mexicans given, I’m assuming, all Mexicans are brown-eyed. So he must be an outlander. And so he is, brought up by the Mexican bandits.

At first he appears to be of the Clint Eastwood persuasion, monosyllabic to the point of dumbness, but, eventually, in a quite brilliant scene, forced to utter a word before Joanna cuts his throat with a razor, an idea that found its way, as I recall, into Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning (1988).

And if ever action carries more meaning than words, it’s in the scene where Joanne discovers Blue has apparently fled only to spy him ploughing the fields. As you might expect, whether an American male or female is brought up by Native Americans (Hombre, 1967) or as here Mexicans, they find it hard to be accepted. The issue is forced upon his new countrymen when the bandits return, and Blue has to choose a side.

Blue was an orphan thanks to racism against his American parents when they settled in Mexico. And he suffers, unfairly you would say given he was born in the U.S., from racism again when he crosses the border.

The sex scene is brilliantly handled, relying both on sight and sound. It’s Joanna who has to instigate it, instinctively knowing that he won’t make any move in case it is wrongly interpreted. The father, noting her bedroom is empty, begins to walk along the corridor to Blue’s room. Hearing his footsteps, Joanna turns out the light. Seeing the light go out, the father retreats – on tiptoe.

There’s also the best demonstration of pistol shooting this side of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid the following year. And without taking anything away from the Robert Redford scene, it’s remarkably similar.

And Blue proves himself to be a brilliant tactician. He sets up a stunning ambush and the bandits are slaughtered from both sides of the river when they attempt to cross. His leadership, unusually, sets up emotional issues. When Joanne reacts against this new tough side of him, it’s her father that calms her. But that isn’t the peach. Blue confesses that he enjoys killing, it “pleasures” him.

I’m afraid to say the ending of Butch Cassidy also has remarkable similarities to this. There it’s the freeze frame that encapsulates the death of the heroes. Here, the camera draws back and back into the sky as Joanne holds her dead lover in the river.

Terence Stamp (The Collector, 1965) doesn’t quite have enough going on behind the eyes to become a top-class actor so sensibly director Silvio Narrazino (Georgy Girl, 1966) avoids going in too close on the baby blues and allows the actor freedom of movement to reveal his feelings, the slouching in the doorway one example, another being Blue’s slow realization that much of what he sees in the farmer’s house is familiar. Stamp acquits himself well in the action scenes.

But Joanna Pettet (The Best House in London, 1969) is the revelation. We’re quite used to spunky or feisty females in westerns. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen one who takes control with subtlety. Her father Doc Morton (Karl Malden) can’t get a word out of Blue no matter the threats uttered and violence threatened. But when Joanna takes up a cut-throat razor for the first time in her life and begins to trim his stubble, deliberately making a hash of it, that’s as novel a meet-cute as you’re going to find as well as one of the best definitions of female character that you’ll see in a western.

Written by Meade Roberts (The Stripper, 1963) and Ronald M. Cohen (The Good Guys and the Bad Guys, 1969).

One of the most stylish and innovative westerns you’ll ever see and you need to watch it with your ears attuned to sound.

A true find.