1960s film – Page 26 – The Magnificent 60s

Behind the Scenes: “The Silencers” (1966)

Producer Irving Allen remains best known as the fella who turned down James Bond. While partnered with Cubby Broccoli in Warwick Films, he decided the Ian Fleming books were not big screen material. Their production shingle, based in Britain, had turned out movies like The Red Beret (1953) with Alan Ladd and Fire Down Below (1957) pairing Robert Mitchum and Rita Hayworth. Divorced from Broccoli, Allen headed down the big-budget historical adventure route but neither The Long Ships (1964) spearheaded by Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier nor Omar Sharif as Genghis Khan (1965) hit the box office target.

Luckily, Allen had already made an investment in espionage, owning the rights to the hard-edged Matt Helm novels, knocked out at the rate of one or two a year since 1960 by Donald Hamilton whose most notable brush with Hollywood was selling the rights to his novel The Big Country (1958) filmed by William Wyler with a top-class cast. The Matt Helm series was praised by the top thriller critic of the era, Anthony Boucher, who noted that Hamilton brought “sordid truth” to the espionage genre and “the authentic hard realism of Dashiell Hammett.”

Having optioned the books, Allen persuaded Columbia to buy the rights to eight, with the notion of setting up a direct rival to James Bond, that idea given an extra fillip when the Sean Connery series which had appeared on an annual basis skipped 1966. Initially, Allen planned to make films that followed the novel’s serious approach to espionage, intending to cast a marquee name like Paul Newman (The Prize, 1963) – who ironically proved major competition for the first offering through Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain (1966) – or conversely a relative unknown such as Mike Connors (Harlow, 1965).

To hook Dean Martin, Allen had to make him a partner, resulting in the actor making more dough out of a spy film than Sean Connery did from Bond. Martin was something of a Hollywood enigma. Audiences who flocked to the Rat Pack outings tended to disdain his stand-alone efforts such as Toys in the Attic (1963) and Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) and if he was a current household name that owed much more to his recording and television career.

But Allen shifted the emphasis away from straight adaptation to tongue-in-cheek, setting up the series initially as gentle parody rather than out-and-out spoof though as the movies progressed they fell more into the latter category.

Playing to Martin’s strengths of urbane charm and effortless style, as well as his reputation as a lothario, and accommodating his age (he was 48) by ensuring his character was brought out of retirement, and with comedy writer Herbert Baker brought in at Dean Martin’s behest to beef up Oscar Saul’s script, and by surrounding him with more heavyweight damsels than the Bonds, the series was good to go. Baker had written early Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis vehicles like Jumping Jacks (1952) and Scared Stiff (1953). The script drew upon two Hamilton novels, Death of a Citizen (the first in the series) and The Silencers (the fourth). The idea of Helm being married was dropped to allow him the same sexual license as James Bond.

Stella Stevens and Daliah Lavi were unusual choices for the leading ladies of a spy picture, their proven marquee appeal considerably in excess of that of Ursula Andress (Dr No, 1962), Honor Blackman (Goldfinger, 1964) and Claudine Auger (Thunderball, 1965), that trio of movies opening Hollywood doors for the actresses rather than as with Stevens and Lavi already being welcome attractions. Lavi had starred in The Demon (1963) and Lord Jim (1965) while Stella Stevens had been female lead in The Nutty Professor (1963) and Advance to the Rear (1964). The Slaygirls, however, a direct imitation of the Bond Girls, also owed something to Playboy’s Playmates.

Other cast members had some distinction, Victor Buono Oscar-nominated for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962) and James Gregory acclaimed for his role in The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Both had worked previously with Martin, Gregory on The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) and Buono on 4 for Texas (1963) and Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964).

Martin also called upon President Lyndon B. Johnson’s personal shirtmaker Sy Devore, previously personal clothier to Martin and Lewis, to come up with his stylish attire.

Budgeted at just under $4 million, The Silencers began shooting on 12 July 1965, the 12-week schedule (ending 16 September) taking in locations like Carsbad Caverns, White Sands, El Paso and Juarez with the car chases filmed in Santa Fe and Phoenix, Arizona. Columbia’s backlot was deemed too small for interiors, and two of Desilu’s largest soundstages were joined together to make Big O’s underground HQ.

Director Phil Karlson (The Secret Ways, 1961) and the producer didn’t see eye-to-eye. Despite ostensibly aiming for a comedy, Allen wanted Karlson to adopt the style of the more serious The Ipcress File (1965) and shoot “through chandeliers, under tables.” It turned out that movie’s director Sidney J. Furie had relied on Karlson for most of his cinematic flourishes.

Like Sinatra, Martin preferred one take. “Dean was always great to work with,” recalled James Gregory, “because he never took himself seriously…Dean was always relaxed – if it doesn’t work do it over, but for heaven’s sake you oughta not need more than that one or two times to get it right.”

Despite the easy-going atmosphere, there were casualties. Buono was out of action for four days after slipping while climbing a wall, foot in an unseen cast for the rest of his time on the picture. Supporting actor Arthur O’Connell’s face was sliced open during an explosion. He completed the scene with the bandage covering the wound hidden under a turtleneck sweater. Stunt man Tom Hennessey lost three front teeth. There was a bill of several thousand dollars to cover an unexpected explosion on set, combustible dust igniting after one of the grenades went off on the Big O set.

Astonishingly the movie came in $500,000 under budget and $1 million was recouped from television sales. Columbia was so taken with the end result that prior to its release two sequels were announced.

The Slaygirls featured prominently in promotional activities in the U.S. with six sent overseas to hustle up interest. As well as a movie tie-in paperback and album, merchandising included toy guns from Crescent Toys and Louis Marx. Martin wasn’t available for the Chicago world premiere (he was shooting Texas Across the River, 1966) on 16 February 1966. The movie was gangbusters from the start, clocking up $7.35 million in U.S. rentals (the studio’s cut of the box office), enough for 85^th spot (by my exclusive count) on the list of the top earning films of the decade.

SOURCES: Brian Hannan, The Magnificent ‘60s, The 100 Most Popular Films of a Revolutionary Decade (McFarland, 2022); Bruce Scivally, Booze, Bullets and Broads, Behind the Scenes with Dean Martin’s Matt Helm Films of the 1960s (Henry Gray, 2013); William Schoell, Martini Man: The Life of Dean Martin (Cooper Square Press, 2003); Cinema Retro Movie Classics Issue No 9: Matt Helm’s Back in Town.

The Silencers (1966) ****

An absolute delight. Have to confess though I had been pretty sniffy about even deigning to watch what I always had been led to believe was an ill-judged spoof of the Bond phenomenon especially with a middle-aged Dean Martin with scarcely a muscle to crease his stylish attire.

Full of witty repartee, and even a whole jukebox of snippets from the Dean Martin repertoire (plus an aural joke at the expense of Frank Sinatra) and a daft take on the Bond gadget paraphernalia. The spoofometer doesn’t go anywhere near 10 and the whole enterprise not only works but damn near sizzles. No wonder it led to another three.

Called out of retirement – hence cleverly swatting away any jibes about his age – Matt Helm (Dean Martin) resists becoming re-involved in the espionage malarkey until his life is saved by former colleague Tina (Daliah Lavi) as he falls for the seductive technique of an enemy agent. Back in harness with ICE (Intelligence and Counter Espionage), Helm is called upon a thwart a dastardly scheme by the Big O organization headed by Tung-Tze (Victor Buono) to stage a nuclear explosion.

Some malarkey about a secret computer brings into Helm’s sphere the klutzy Gail (Stella Stevens) whom he initially treats with suspicion. Gail and Tina end up as rivals for Helm’s afections.

But you could have invented any number of stories and they would still have worked because it’s the rest of narrative that makes the whole thing zing. We could start with the massive effort that goes into ensuring that the private parts of naked men (and women) are concealed by a wide variety of objects, a kind of bait-and-switch that paid homage to the James Bond legend while casually taking it apart. Since Helm now operates legitimately as a fashion photographer it makes sense that his most deadly gadget is a camera that fires miniature knives.

And knowing how much delight villains take in despatching secret service agents in the most gleeful fashion, wouldn’t it make sense to kill said agent with his own gun? Who could resist such a notion? Until it, literally, backfires and the bad guy is shot by a gun that shoots a reversible bullet – two bullets if you’re so dumb you can’t believe that’s what’s happening and you shoot yourself twice.

And what about the laser? Another famed Bond device. Why not have that go haywire?

But there’s also a playful Heath Robinson aspect to those gadgets whose purpose is pure labor-saving. Helm can automate his circular bed so he doesn’t have to get out of it to answer the phone and to save him walking a few steps into the bath the bed is programmed to jerk upwards and tip him in.

“Treasure hunt,” remarks Helm, slyly, as he spies a string of discarded female clothing. But making love to a strange woman feels rude so Helm is impelled to complain they haven’t been introduced. “You’re Matt Helm,” says the stranger. “Good enough,” replies Helm.

And that’s before we come to the joy of Gail, who has been taking lessons from Mrs Malaprop, and, despite lurching into Helm at every opportunity, giving him the mistaken impression that she’s keen to get to know him better, Gail actually is wary. So wary that in a thunderstorm she tries to escape their cosy nest of a car (equipped with separate sleeping arrangements, don’t you know) only to end up slipping and sliding through the mud.

While Daliah Lavi (The Demon, 1963) isn’t exactly called upon to act her socks off, she at least is afforded a believable character, but she can’t hold candle to Stella Stevens (Rage, 1966) when the blonde one decides to go full-tilt boogie into comedy slapstick. Sure, Stevens relies overly on other occasions on a pop-eyed look, but the thunderstorm sequence reveals a deft, and willing, knack for physical comedy.

Dean Martin (Rough Night in Jericho, 1967) struck a solid seam with his interpretation of Helm, slick enough to get away with Bond-style lothario, laid-back enough for no one to take it seriously.

Nancy Kovack (Tarzan and the Valley of Gold, 1967), Cyd Charisse (Maroc 7, 1967) and Beverley Adams (Hammerhead, 1968) up the glamor quotient.

Director Phil Karlson (The Secret Ways, 1961) and screenwriter Oscar Saul (Major Dundee, 1965), adapting the Donald Hamilton bestseller, provide the basic template but Dean Martin makes it work.

Great fun.

Song without End (1960) ***

Contemporary audiences will be familiar with the jukebox picture. Moviegoers attending biopics of Queen or Elton John can be guaranteed a greatest hits package and if the narrative isn’t driven by problems facing rock superstars nobody is really bothered by an over-confected storyline such as Mamma Mia (and sequel) as long as the soundtrack is filled with beloved classics. On top of that we have the modern phenomenon of Event Cinema where cinemagoers pay to see a live performance, mostly plays, but Andre Rieu taking care of anyone who requires live music.

Song without End is more liberal than most when it comes to the music choices. As well as focusing on the tunes of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, it also takes time out for snatches of Chopin or Wagner. These days a star like Dirk Bogarde would be a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination for all the training he put in to prove he could actually play the piano – and in demonic style – rather than showing him knocking out a couple of chords before cutting away to his face or any other shot of the piano except one involving his fingers.

And that’s both the plus and minus point of the movie. Plenty sequences of the maestro at the piano to satisfy the most ardent fan, plenty shots, too, in cutaway, of audiences, that element mostly boring until we are shown the rabid female fans who created the term “Lisztomania.” But the music comes at a price. Unless you are a big fan of the composer you’re faced with the same scene over and over again. Yes, he plays different compositions, and not always his own, and although the fingers move to different keys on the instrument, still it’s nothing but a guy sitting at a keyboard for ages.

So, if the music does it for you, a joy. Otherwise, not so much going on or could be explored in any great depth at the time. Franz Liszt (Dirk Bogarde) was a bit of a lad – when the picture opens he’s living with married woman Marie (Genevieve Page), a countess, and is about to dump her for married Carolyne (Capucine), a Russian princess. Outside of his adultery, the main storyline is him making the transition from pianist to composer. And he helps along newcomer Richard Wagner (Lyndon Brook) – they became great friends until Wagner married Liszt’s daughter, though that’s outwith the movie’s remit.

*George Cukor gets the directorial credit on this poster.*

But he’s something of a contradiction – zest for the high life with buddies Chopin (Alex Davion) and George Sand (Patricia Morison) countered by religious ideals (not shared, it transpires, by the countess). Liszt is very much the “artiste”, given to flouncing around, and having a hissy fit with the Czar of Russia for keeping him waiting. You could surmise that Tom Hulce modelled his portrayal of Mozart in Amadeus (1984) on this kind of charismatic character. Slap him in a pair of tight-fitting trousers, and given his good looks and flowing locks, and you’d have a modern day rock god. .

You’ll not be surprised to learn the movie gives a wide berth to the way he developed music; he was credited with several technical innovations. If you knew what you were looking for, probably you’d pick them out from his performances. He fair batters that piano as if trying to extract every last conceivable note.

This was something of a departure for British star Dirk Bogarde (Victim, 1961). His standard screen person was more prim, tight-lipped, straight-laced, repressed, so this feels like a monumental release, a cathartic moment. He’s certainly put in the work to come across as a proper piano player. The head-tossing and flouncing and heart-breaking is a doddle by comparison.

Columbia French starlet Capucine (The 7^th Dawn, 1964), an MTA, made her debut with the kind of icy performance that became her fallback.

Columbia had been trying to make the picture for a decade and it nearly fell at the final hurdle. Director Charles Vidor, who had helmed A Song to Remember (1945) about Chopin, died soon after filming began. George Cukor (Justine, 1969) took over, adding trademark lushness and altering the ending, but, critically, giving Vidor sole credit. Oscar Millard (The Salzburg Connection, 1972) handled the screenplay.

Bogarde is pretty good, especially on the piano stool, and the music is terrific. So, ideal for music lovers not expecting much else. Bit of a let down for the general audience with not so much in way of narrative to get your teeth into.

Jukebox triumph.

Stagecoach (1966) ****

It’s probably sacrilege to admit that I quite enjoyed this. Also it’s been so long since I’ve seen the John Ford original that I could remember very little of the specifics and I haven’t seen the remake before so this was just like watching a new movie. Basically, it’s the story of a group of six passengers taking the stagecoach to Cheyenne for different reasons who are joined by an escaped murderer and shepherded along by the driver and a town marshal. There is some excellent action but mostly it’s a relationship picture, how the characters react to one another and their response to crisis.

Good-time girl Dallas (Ann-Margret) is on the run, banker Gatewood (Bob Cummings) is hiding a stash of stolen money, alcoholic doctor Boone (Bing Crosby) is penniless, liquor salesman Peacock (Red Buttons) is a coward, gambler Hatfield (Mike Connors) has Civil War secrets, pregnant Lucy Mallory (Stefanie Powers) is meeting her cavalry husband in Cheyenne. The ornery Buck (Slim Pickens) is the driver and Curley (Van Heflin) is riding shotgun and when he comes upon stranded escaped murderer the Ringo Kid (Alex Cord) promptly arrests him.

The passengers have heard rumors of the Sioux on the warpath. The audience knows it’s not a rumor because the picture starts with the Sioux slaughtering camped cavalry. Soon enough, the passengers know it, too, coming across a patrol dead at a staging post, and of course they are soon battling for their lives when ambushed.

The drama unfolds as the characters confront each other or their own weaknesses. Dallas, who has a high old time as a saloon girl, is way out of her depth in respectable company, feeling out of place even dining with the others, hiding the secret of her affair with the married Gatewood. Ringo coaxes her along, bringing her out of her shell, giving her back self-respect, and of course falling in love. Curley, with his eyes on the $500 reward for bringing Ringo in, has no intention of letting the gunslinger take his revenge in Cheyenne on Luke Plummer (Keenan Wynn) who killed his family. Boone and Peacock are the most fun, the doctor spending most of his time separating the salesman from his cargo of booze.

There are endless permutations with a story like this, the kind of material that was mined in the disaster movies of the 1970s like Airport (1970) and The Towering Inferno (1974), a group of disparate characters forced to battle for survival. The action is only part of the deal. The picture only truly works if the characters are believable. For that, you need a heap of good acting. The audience could certainly rely on old dependables like Bing Crosby (The Road to Hong Kong, 1962) in his big screen swansong, Van Heflin (Shane, 1953), Red Buttons (Oscar-winner for Sayonara, 1957), Robert Cummings (Saboteur, 1942) and cowboy picture veteran Slim Pickens to put on a good show. But the main dramatic load was to be carried by relative newcomers Ann-Margret and Alex Cord.

Ann-Margret has made her name with sassy light-hearted numbers like The Pleasure Seekers (1964) and had only just stepped up to the dramatic plate with Once a Thief (1965). This was Alex Cord’s sophomore outing after Synanon (1965) and he was stepping into some mighty big boots, the odds stacked against him playing the role John Wayne made famous – and which turned John Wayne into a star.

Amazingly, the casting works. Ann-Margret moves from feisty to restrained, meek to the point of being cowed, and for most of the film, far removed from the false gaiety of the saloon, seeks redemption. The trouble-making minx emerges only once, to knock the wind out of Mrs Mallory, but, after taking a tumble down the humility route, gradually steers her way towards a better self, preventing Gatewood from causing chaos, nursing Mallory and inching her way towards true feelings for Ringo. As in the best movies, it’s not for her to open up about her woeful life but for another character, in this case Ringo, to identify her flaws: “What you doin’ about your scars, you got ‘em even if they don’t show…when you goin’ to stand up and stop crawlin’?” When they finally kiss it is one of the most beautiful tender kisses you will ever see and most of that is down to Ann-Margret’s reaction.

I had already taken back all my reservations about Alex Cord’s acting skills that were mostly due to his moustachioed performance in Stiletto (1969) after seeing him in The Scorpio Letters (1967) and this is another completely different portrayal. As much as he can deliver on the action front, it’s in the dramatic scenes that he really scores, gentle, vulnerable, caring. He certainly matches the Duke’s trademark diffidence in terms of romance. There’s a point where the camera just holds on their faces to nine depth of expression and we are not disappointed.

Gordon Douglas (The Detective, 1968) is the director who had the gall to take on the remake, and he delivers a character-sensitive picture shaded with action. Written by Joseph Landon (Von Ryan’s Express, 1965) based on the original by Dudley Nichols and Ernest Haycox.

Pretty damn good effort.

The Rat Race (1960) ****

Surprisingly hard-edged tale with Debbie Reynolds giving the performance of her career and with a steely contemporary relevance. Snookers the audience into thinking it’s a standard romance, mismatched characters thrown together by circumstance, various rows and incidents to keep them apart before the expected happy ending. If screenwriter Garson Kanin had held his nerve, there wouldn’t be the get-out of a happy ending. As it is though, a formidable drama that doesn’t pull its punches.

From the title I expected a movie set in the world of big business, but instead we’re looking down on the lowest tiers of the entertainment business and, effectively, it’s a piece about the price paid for dreams. There are laffs, some good one-liners, but even these have a sourness to them.

Pete (Tony Curtis) leaves Milwaukee for New York seeking fame and fortune as a saxophonist, not realizing he’s more likely to join the thousands of out-of-work musicians already resident, dreams dashed but determined to avoid the ignominy of going home with their tails between their legs, not just to face the mundane life that awaits but seared through with the guilt of failure. Through circumstance he ends up sharing an apartment with model-cum-dancer Peggy (Debbie Reynolds), who’s already given up on her dream once, but couldn’t stand more than a few minutes of the home she’d clearly been desperate to leave.

Peggy is clean out of modelling assignments and hasn’t made it to Broadway, either, not even to a chorus line. Instead, she earns not much of a living as a taxi dancer, more innocent than it would be now in the era of the lap-dancer but still seedy enough with roving male hands. She’s paid to dance with complete strangers, the kind of deadbeats unlikely to ever get on the dance floor with a beautiful woman in the normal course of events.

She’s about to lose her phone, but not above leading on the creepy repairman (Norman Fell) to believe he’s onto a promise should he give her a break. Only pride prevents her solving her financial problems – as well as not making her rent she owes cash to her sleazebag boss Nellie (Don Rickles) – by going down the sex worker route.

Pete thinks he’s got the smarts but in fact he’s afflicted with dumbness and gets ripped off for a mink coat made of cat fur and then loses a complete set of brand-new musical instruments to another scam. When he’s thrown the lifeline of a gig on a cruise ship, Peggy stumps up to buy him a new sax and the requisite tux. She’s paying for this with a promise to Nellie to enter the prostitution game, not quite spelled out as that but as close to the knuckle as you’re going to get in this era, the kind of soft-soap approach that worked for Butterfield 8 (1960).

When Peggy fails to deliver, Nellie humiliates her in the worst possible way. Beginning with her jewellery he strips her down to undergarments to show how much he owns her and just how good he is at playing hardball. It’s a gut-clenching scene. Sure, you know there’s not going to be any nudity, not in this period before the Production Code got flattened, but even so, it works extraordinarily well, especially as clearly Peggy doesn’t know just how far he will go and that he might not, in his quiet fury, be above turning her out into his club starkers.

Meanwhile, to ensure we get to the ending that audiences expected, Pete, on board the ship, has been ignoring any other romantic opportunities, and sending her a heartfelt letter a day, which she appears determined to ignore, knowing that the “rat race” isn’t the kind of world that accommodates long-term romance.

Suffice to say, when Pete manages to bail her out, that changes her mind, though the genuine Peggy would still have balked, knowing that, with their levels of talent, they were only going to become more wasted by lack of fulfilment.

So, yeah, happy ending, but you feel that’s been grafted on to allow audiences to take the rest of the tougher storyline. The MeToo campaign has exposed the pitfalls of the entertainment business, so what happens to Peggy wouldn’t come as a surprise to a contemporary audience.

By this point Debbie Reynolds (Goodbye Charlie, 1964) wasn’t known for drama, more for a spunky or sparky screen persona in a series of lightweight comedies or romances, this showed Hollywood what it was missing. Tony Curtis (Goodbye Charlie) had proven he could do comedy or drama and here he mostly plays it straight.

Director Robert Mulligan (The Stalking Moon, 1968) is probably responsible for maintaining the harder edge. This was originally a Broadway number, so I doubt if the sharpness would have worked so well in that medium. Garson Kanin (Where It’s At, 1969) and an uncredited John Michael Hayes (Nevada Smith, 1966) knocked out the screenplay based on the former’s play.

Worth it for Reynolds alone.

Sol Madrid / The Heroin Gang (1968) ***

Was it David MacCallum’s floppy-haired blondness that prevented him making the jump to movie action hero because, with the ruthlessness of a Dirty Harry, he certainly makes a good stab at it in this slightly convoluted drugs thriller? Never mind being saddled with an odd moniker, the name devised surely only in the hope it would linger in the memory, Sol Madrid (David MacCallum) is an undercover cop on the trail of the equally blonde, though somewhat more statuesque, Stacey Woodward (Stella Stevens) and Harry Mitchell (Pat Hingle) who have scarpered with a half a million Mafia dollars. Mitchell is the Mafia “human computer” who knows everything about the Cosa Nostra’s dealings, Woodward the girlfriend of Mafia don Villanova (Rip Torn).

Sol tracks down Woodward easy enough and embarks on the audacious plan of using her share of the loot, a cool quarter of a million, to fund a heroin deal in Mexico with the intention of bringing down both Mexican kingpin Emil Dietrich (Telly Savalas) and, using the on-the-run pair as bait, Villanova. A couple of neat sequences light this up. When Sol and Woodward are set upon by two knife-wielding hoods in a car park, he employs a car aerial as a weapon while she taking refuge in a car watches in terror as an assailant batters down the window. Sol has hit on a neat method of transferring the heroin from Tijuana to San Diego and that is filled with genuine tension as is the hand-over where Sol with an unexpected whipcrack slap puts his opposite number in his place.

Meanwhile, Villanova has sent a hitman to Mexico and when that fails turns up himself, kidnapping Woodward and planning a degrading revenge. Most of the movie is Sol duelling with Dietrich, suspicion of the other’s motives getting in the way of the trust required to seal a deal, with Mitchell, who has taken refuge in Dietrich’s fortified lair, soon being deemed surplus to requirements. Various complications heighten the tension in their flimsy relationship.

Sol Madrid is Dirty Harry in embryo, determined to bring down the gangsters by whatever means even if that involves going outside the law he is supposed to uphold, incipient romance with Woodward merely a means to an end.

David MacCallum (The Great Escape, 1963) certainly holds his own in the tough guy stakes, whether trading punches or coolly gunning down or ruthlessly drowning enemies he is meant to just capture, and trading steely-eyed looks with his nemesis.

It’s a decent enough effort from director Brian G. Hutton (Where Eagles Dare, 1968), but is let down by the film’s structure, the expected confrontation with Villanova taking far too long, too much time spent on his revenge with Woodward, for whom audience sympathy is slight. Just at the time when Hollywood was exploring the fun side of drug taking – Easy Rider just a year away – this was a more realistic portrayal of the evil of narcotics.

It is also quite prescient, foreshadowing both The Godfather Part II (1974) in the way Villanova has modernised the organisation, achieving respectability through money laundering, and the all-out police battles with the Narcos. And there is a bullet-through-the-glasses moment that will be very familiar to fans of The Godfather (1972), and you will also notice a similarity between the feared Luca Brasi and the Mafia hitman Scarpi (Michael Conrad) here.

The action sequences are excellent and fresh. Think Madeleine cowering in terror as the car window is battered in No Time to Die (2021) and you get an idea of the power Hutton brings to the scene of a terrified Woodward hiding in the car. Incidentally, you might think MacCallum was more of a secret agent than a cop with the cold-blooded ruthlessness with which he dispatches his enemies.

Stella Stevens (Rage, 1966) is the weak link, too shrill and not willing to sully her make-up or hair when her role requires degradation. Her role is better written (“I never met a man who didn’t want to use me”) than Stevens can deliver and she gets a clincher of final one. Telly Savalas (The Dirty Dozen, 1967) surprises by delivering a playful villain, though the trademark laugh is in occasional evidence whereas Rip Torn is all villain. Ricardo Montalban (Madame X, 1966) is Sol’s Mexican sidekick and Paul Lukas, a star of the Hollywood “golden age”, puts in a fleeting appearance. Written by David Karp (Che!, 1969) and Robert Wilder (The Big Country, 1958).

Proved a winner for Brian G. Hutton – next gig Where Eagles Dare. Less so for David MacCallum – next outing The Mosquito Squadron (1969).

Has its moments.

Shadow of Fear (1963) **

The Eady system at its worst. I’ve been singing the praises of quite a few of these British crime B-movies, made to take advantage of the Eady Levy cashback system and a Governmental dictat that cinemas had to show a certain proportion of British-made features. Generally, they were intended to fill the supporting feature slot, providing cinemas with a double feature. In the course of writing this Blog, I’ve uncovered a few minor gems, brisk, well-directed thrillers, good acting not necessarily essential.

The best this has to show for it is the ruthlessness of British spy chiefs in using an innocent couple as bait for foreign spies. Otherwise, beyond the initial twist, it’s too desultory for words, with too much time – even in a 60-minute feature – spent on too little.

American oilman Bill Martin (Paul Maxwell), flying back to London from Baghdad, agrees to carry a coded message for Jack Carter (Antony Wager), a casual British acquaintance. On landing at Heathrow Bill discovers Jack has been murdered. He’s accosted by a couple of cops, taken to a seedy hotel to wait for a fellow called Oliver, accepting all this oddness because he assumes he’s delivering a message for British Intelligence. After handing over the message he makes the mistake of telling Oliver that not only did he read the message, although failing to decode its content, but, having a photographic memory, had committed it to his brain.

Cue imprisonment. He escapes only because someone attempts to kill him and in turning the tide finds a way out. He flees to girlfriend Barbara (Clare Owen) and she whizzes him in a nifty sports car to her Uncle John (Colin Tapley) who knows somebody who knows somebody and it soon emerges that the fellow called Oliver was actually a fellow called Sharp (John Arnatt), a spy of unknown affiliation.

Assuming the bad guys would still want to eliminate our hero, the real Oliver (Reginald Marsh) reckons this is too good an opportunity to miss – the end justifying the means and all that rather than the more traditional British notion of fair play – and gets Bill and Barbara to agree to act as bait to trap the spies.

This doesn’t go as neatly as the good guys might expect and the baddies make further attempts on the couple’s lives and finally manage to kidnap them and take them out to sea with the intention of dropping them overboard. Luckily, the Brits are able to call in the Coastguard – armed for the occasion – to intercept and it all ends happily.

There’s not enough of anything to keep this moving – scarcely a red herring – and there’s about a dozen characters who flit in and out, various thugs, a top thug called Warner (Alan Tilvern), a femme fatale Ruth (Anita West) who is given no chance to exert her femme fatale wiles, and sundry MI5 and FBI characters and various others along the way. From the amount of time spent focusing on the belly dancer (Mia Karam) in the Baghdad hotel, you might have expected that she would have a role to play because she had more screen time than Ruth.

Nobody went on to greater things. Canadian Paul Maxwell (Man in the Middle / The Winston Affair, 1964) specialized in playing Americans in British films and television, even had a running part in soap opera Coronation Street and if you look closely you’ll see him pop up in A Bridge Too Far (1977).

Director Ernest Morris (Echo of Diana, 1963) can’t do much with the script by Ronald Liles (Night of the Big Heat, 1967) and Jim O’Connolly (Smokescreen, 1964) based on a tale by T.F. Fetherby.

Dull whichever way you cut it.

Behind the Scenes: Sunday Programming – A Reissue Phenomenon

I deserve a slap on the wrist. I wrote an enormous book (250,000 words including notes) on the history of movie reissues, revivals, encore premieres, call them what you will, and I didn’t know there was, at least in Britain, a constant source of reissue on a weekly basis, namely the “Sunday Cinema” program.

In Britain in the 1960s, movies ran from Monday to Saturday (Mon-Wed/Thu-Sat if a split week) not the current system of Friday to Thursday. So it made little sense to tag on a Sunday as the last day of a run unless the cinema was involved in roadshow presentation. On Sundays, cinemas, if they opened at all, tended to show older movies, revivals of horror pictures or ones with a sensationalist slant.

Sunday showings were a contentious issue anyway. According to the Sunday Entertainment Act of 1932, cinemas could only show movies on Sundays subject to certain conditions. The first of which was that cinema owners had to agree to give over a certain percentage of their takings to charity. And not even a charity of their choice, but one chosen by the local authority. Secondly, they could not, should they wish, show movies all day, or from the usual starting point of between 1pm and 2pm, in case that got in the way of children attending Sunday School. Though, theoretically, cinemas could open from 4pm, most cinemas restricted showings to one full program in the evening. Lastly, should enough of the local populace object to Sunday opening, that could put a stop to the process.

On the other hand, there was one advantage to Sunday opening. Operators paid a flat fee for movies, not a percentage of receipts as they did for the rest of the week. That made it a lot easier to work out costs and potential profits, i.e. whether it was worthwhile opening at all.

With the downturn in cinema attendances in part triggered by the availability of movies on television – in Britain there was a five-year restriction but few pictures except for Bond films and certain roadshows and big hits could resist the temptation of the extra cash that television could bring – cinemas were annoyed at still having to give money to charity and by the end of the decade the government nullified that condition.

There was a ready supply of older movies available on a non-percentage basis. Programs invariably comprised double bills, though often the complete program ran well under three hours.

I did a survey of suburban cinemas in my home town of Glasgow, Scotland, over three separate months – January, June and October – in 1969 and found that certain films were in constant circulation through the year.

Hammer’s The Gorgon (1964) starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Barbara Shelley was shown variously with thriller Recoil (1953), occult The Devil’s Hand (1961) and sci fi 20 Million Miles To Earth (1957). But The Devil’s Hand was also the support for several bookings of horror portmanteau Twice Told Tales (1963) with Vincent Price and Recoil I found supporting The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964).

Blood beasts were on the rampage. You could choose from Roger Corman’s Night of the Bloodbeast (1958) supporting Cage of Doom (aka Terror from the Year 5000, 1958) or Revenge of the Bloodbeast plus peplum/horror mash-up Goliath and the Vampires (1961). Edgar Allan Poe was represented by The Raven (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964) and The Fall of the House of Usher (1960), all the main feature, all headlining Vincent Price. City of the Dead (1960) went out variously with Screaming Skull (1958) and Cage of Doom

Other popular items included Italian occult item Sexy Party (aka Death on the Fourposter, 1964) coupled with Search for Venus and British exploitationer Beat Girl (1961) doubled up with sci fi Unearthly Stranger (1965)

It wasn’t all horror and sci fi. Gangsters occasionally put in an appearance – The Bonnie Parker Story (1958) on a killing spree with Charles Bronson as Machine Gun Kelly (1958). Westerns were rare but there was room for James Stewart in The Far Country (1954) teamed with Louis L’Amour’s Taggart (1964) and Robert Wagner in White Feather (1955) paired with exploitationer The Young Sinners (aka High School Big Shot, 1959). Just as out of place were the ultra daring, but censor-permissible, Nudes of the World (1962), espionage picture Death Is a Woman (1966) and Alan Ladd in Hell Below Zero (1954).

But what horror or sci fi aficionado could resist Invasion of the Hell Creatures (aka Invasion of the Saucer Men, 1957) and She Demons of the Swamp (aka Attack of the Giant Leeches, 1959)? Or The Brain Machine (1955) coupled with Strangler of the Swamp (1945)? Or A Bucket of Blood (1959)/ The Evil Force (aka 4D Man, 1959)?

Despite her proven marquee pull Claudia Cardinale in French-made Swords of Blood (aka Cartouche, 1962) played second fiddle to, variously, Italian-made Perseus vs the Monster (aka Perseus the Invincible, 1963) and The Exterminators (aka Coplan FX 18, 1965).

You could catch up with – or enjoy again – such fare as The Brain Eaters (1958), The Day the World Ended (1955), The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), Deborah Kerr in The Innocents (1961), Joan Fontaine in The Witches (1966), Jack the Ripper (1959), The Sorcerers (1967) with Boris Karloff and Barbara Shelley as Cat Girl (1957).

Those were the days.

Echo of Diana (1962) ***

Minor British B-picture gem, though more for the exquisite narrative and tsunami of twists than the acting. And while not being one of those devious arthouse farragoes spins the starting point as the climax. Also, very prescient, heavily reliant of the espionage tradecraft that would later become de rigeur.

On the day she learns of her husband’s death in a plane crash in Turkey, Joan (Betty McDowall) finds an intriguing reference to the dead man in the “Personal Column” of The Times newspaper signed by “Diana.” Suspecting a mistress or skulduggery, her friend Pam (Clare Owen), a former fashion editor, investigates and triggers trouble. Joan’s flat is burgled, they are accosted by dubious police, the dead man’s effects are foreign to Joan, the receptionist at a newspaper makes a mysterious phone call.

Fairly quickly, Joan and Pam fall in the purlieu of British espionage chief Col Justin (Geoffrey Toone) who puts them in touch with suave journalist Bill (Vincent Ball), an old colleague of the husband, whose apartment has also been tossed, and who has taken a shine to Pam. The women are somewhat surprised when a murder is hushed up but that’s the least of the espionage malarkey. Mysterious contacts, equally odd points of contact, disguises (though mostly this runs to a blonde wig), code names, double agents, phone tapping and mail drops leave the women somewhat befuddled but they play along and with that British bluffness, not quite aware they are acting as decoys to draw out a crew of foreign spies headed by a rough fella called Harris (Basil Beale).

Halfway through it seems her husband might not be dead after all, but, according to the Turkish ambassador, Joan might need to head off to Turkey or thereabouts and certainly other interested parties want her out of the country.

And it being British, and nobody wanting to take the whole thing seriously, especially since the James Bond boom had not begun in earnest, the drama is offset by some pointed comedy: the proprietor of an accommodation address business has a side hustle in porn mags, one of the contacts is annoyingly punctilious, one promising lead turns out to be a very grumpy old man, another lead results in a race horse called Diana in a grubby betting shop where they are rooked by another old guy.

But it’s lavished with twists: double-crossers double-crossed, misleading clues, bad guys far cleverer than good guys, the wrong person in the right car, kidnap, unexpected occurrence. Pretty contemporary, too, with much of the action driven by telephone calls. But something of an ironic climax, the notice in the newspaper having legitimate espionage purpose.

The action is so pell-mell, Joan and Pam scarcely have time to draw breath, never mind give vent to heavy emotion, the best we are afforded is a moment when Joan doesn’t know “whether she’s wife or widow.” But that’s just as well. We are in B-movie land with a B-movie class of actors, probably recognizable to audiences then as the kind of actors who never managed a step up.

Vincent Ball did best, a long-running role in BBC TV series Compact (1962-1965), male lead in skin flick Not Tonight, Darling (1971) and decades of bit parts. You might have caught Betty McDowell in First Men in the Moon (1964) or The Omen (1976). Clare Owen was female lead in Shadow of Fear (1963) and had a part in ITV soap Crossroads (1965-1972).

Directed by Ernest Morris (Shadow of Fear) from a script by Reginald Hearne (Serena, 1962). You’d say a better script than a movie, and with better casting might have taken off, but, still, very satisfying supporting feature for the times.

Dr Who and the Daleks (1965) ***

The maiden voyage of the time-travelling Tardis is triggered by some unexpected pratfall comedy. On board are the venerable doctor (Peter Cushing), his intrepid great-granddaughter Susan (Roberta Tovey) and a fearful pair, granddaughter Barbara (Jennie Linden) and accident-prone Ian (Roy Castle). They land on a petrified planet ruled by the robotic Daleks with menacing electronic voices.

The malfunctioning Tardis forces them to investigate an abandoned city but they are quickly imprisoned, the steel robots determined to discover why the earthlings should be immune to the radiation that has consumed this planet after nuclear war. Meanwhile, the planet’s remaining inhabitants, the Thals, are planning an uprising.

Budget restrictions ensure that menace is limited, even as the characters endure a heap of traditional obstacles such as swamp and rocky outcrop. Adults who did not grow up in the 1960s when the BBC television series took Britain by storm and apt to come at this without the benefit of nostalgia will certainly look askance at the sets and costumes. And it doesn’t possess the so-bad-it’s-good quality of some 1950s sci-fi pictures. But since it was primarily made for children, then perhaps it’s better to watch it with a younger person and gauge their response – of course, that may be equally harsh from someone brought up on the modern version of the series or already immersed in superheroes.

On the plus side, it does move along at a clip. Roberta Tovey (A High Wind in Jamaica, 1965) charms rather than annoys as the plucky grand-daughter even if her grandfather has mutated from the sterner figure of the television series into an eccentric inventor. Peter Cushing (The Skull, 1965) is only required to ground the production which he does adequately. The innate comic timing of comedian Roy Castle, in his leading man debut, brings a light touch to proceedings as the bumbling boyfriend and generates some decent laughs. Jennie Linden (Women in Love, 1969) has little to do except look scared.

Oddly enough, it was American Milton Subotsky who, in opportunistic fashion, brought the project to the big screen, although the BBC had a track record of providing product that might make such a leap, The Quatermass Experiment in the 1950s the leading example. He wrote the screenplay and acted as producer and had previously worked with Cushing on Dr Terror’s House of Horrors (1965) and was about to embark on horror masterpiece The Skull the same year. He has approached the material with some reverence and the fact that the budget allowed for hordes of Daleks rather than being seen one or two at a time as on the television probably made some child’s day.

Scottish director Gordon Flemyng (The Split, 1968) would make the leap to Hollywood on the back of this picture and its sequel the following year and you can see what made studios have faith in his ability – he deals with multiple characters, works quickly on a low budget and delivers an attractive picture that was a box office hit.

I suspect that audiences will divide into those who watch the film with nostalgia-colored spectacles, those who think it only as good as a bad episode of Star Trek and those who adore any low-budget sci-fi movie.