Unassuming but undeniably charming British World War Two comedy denied U.S. release until four years later when a savvy distributor jumped on the James Bond bandwagon. Primarily of interest these days for the opportunity to see a pre-Bond Sean Connery (Dr No, 1962) in action its merit chiefly lies in ploughing the same furrow, though with a great deal less pomposity and self-consciousness, as the later The Americanization of Emily (1964), of the coward backing into heroism.
Horace Pope (Alfred Lynch) is a scam merchant who only dodges prison by enlisting. Assigned to the RAF he teams up with Pedlar Pascoe (Sean Connery) and they embark on a series of schemes designed to keep them as far away from the front line as possible. It’s hardly an equal partnership, Pope dreams up the fiddles while Pascoe just falls in with them. It’s not dumb and dumber but a collaboration that goes no further back in the annals of movies than brain and brawn.
Needless to say, the movie lacks the the damsels in bikinis which were a prerequisite of the Bond pictures. Sean Connery takes top billing Stateside where he was originally behind Lynch.
It’s certainly a cynical number, reflecting the boredom experienced by many of the Armed Forces backroom staff, the administrators whose inefficiency turns them into easy dupes, and the determination of soldiers to take advantage of every opportunity to bend the rules. It takes the unusual position of presenting the ordinary soldier as smart and every officer as a numbskull, an approach that would only have been possible 15 years after the war ended and in marked contrast to the determined heroism of other British war films – such intrepid stiff-upper-lip behavior a hallmark of the British version of the genre.
First stop is to run an operation issuing leave passes – for a price – and the sheer effrontery exhibited by Pope is a joy to behold. Next up is selling stolen meat on the black market.
While Pedlar is the wide-eyed camp follower, and more likely to forever sit on the sidelines, cheerful but shy, and only a few pratfalls away from being a bumbling idiot, they do make a good team. Being sent to France is more of a heaven-sent opportunity to increase their bankrolls than a hazardous wartime mission as Pope sells rations to the French. Eventually, of course, their various scams are rumbled and they are forced into battle.
The only thing better than one pre-Bond Connery picture is two.
The movie switches a bit more deftly into serious mode than the aforementioned The Americanization of Emily mostly because these are actual soldiers trained to be soldiers rather than an officer who landed a cushy number and whose main effort is to avoid combat. War is presented as horrific rather than comedy and it must have been the same experience for an ordinary soldier at the time, after months of inactivity suddenly thrust into the cauldron.
The picture moves at a brisk pace and is continually amusing if not particularly laugh-out-loud. You’ve probably seen most of the set-ups before but they are reinvented with an appealing freshness and briskness As a bonus there’s reams of British character actors and comedians – plus token American Alan King (who would appear in Connery starrer The Anderson Tapes, 1971) – along the way. The term “snafu” in case you’re interested, has a similar meaning to the “fubar” of Saving Private Ryan (1998).
Alfred Lynch (The Hill, 1965) doesn’t milk the Cockney patter overmuch and he’s got a greater international screen appeal than the likes of the more English Sid James (Carry On films) or Norman Wisdom. Think a shiftier Sgt Bilko, if the Phil Silvers creation could be any more untrustworthy.
Connery’s performance is well worth a watch as a prelude to what was to come once his roles were tailor-made. He is an effortless scene-stealer, gifted in expressing emotion through his eyes, and although verbally Lynch dominates it’s difficult to take your eyes off Connery.
The roll-call of character actors includes Cecil Parker (A Study in Terror, 1965), Stanley Holloway (My Fair Lady, 1964), John Le Mesurier (The Moon-Spinners, 1964), Graham Stark (The Wrong Box, 1966) and Victor Maddern (The Lost Continent, 1968).
Cyril Frankel (The Trygon Factor, 1966) comfortably cobbles this together from a screenplay by Harold Buchman (The Lawyer, 1970, and who had ironically enough penned the picture Snafu in 1945) based on the novel Stop at a Winner by R.F. Delderfield.
When the box office supremacy of the Bond pictures was underscored by the reissue of the Dr No/From Russia with Love double bill in 1965, distributors, as had been their wont, racked the vaults for anything featuring Connery that could be re-sold to a willing public.
While there is a readily available DVD, this turns up on a regular basis, in Britain at least, on television.
Sexual adventuress takes trip to the country with disastrous results. Best described as an early British venture in the giallo mold it lacks some of the style of that genre but is notable for the debut of Spanish cult director Jose Ramon Larraz (Vampyres, 1974). Perhaps as interesting is that it details a nascent killer warming to his task and climaxes in a nihilistic ending. Scoring so high on the sex/nudity quotient in the U.S., it was considered an out-and-out exploitationer.
Wealthy older woman Sarah (Pia Andersson) brings home model Tulia (Vivian Neves) for her protégé Theo (Karl Lanchbury), a budding photographer. Sarah’s proclivities are apparent from the start, preferring young women though young men will also suffice, a switch in the normal power play of the era (and now for that matter) of rich old men chasing younger women.
Tulia is no innocent, lured or straying into the big dark house, and she’s game for anything, happily participating in a game of strip poker that ends in sex with Theo. However (and striking a contemporary note), he is unable to perform – for reasons that might be similar linked to young people today who suffer from the same condition due to over-exposure to porn – and in Theo’s case because he prefers watching.
Quite how far he is willing to go to achieve his kicks is shown in a scene where he drives Tulia to the woods where she is almost raped by his friend Tom so that Theo can photograph the act. Quite how far Tulia is willing to go is indicated by the fact that, while upset at this incident, she doesn’t run a mile and instead continues to enjoy games of seduction, this time with Sarah, with Theo at first limiting his participating to recording the action but later taking part in a menage a trois.
Meanwhile, a Scotland Yard Detective Inspector (Barry Craine) interrogates businessman Mr. Field (Edwin Brown), sugar daddy to missing Irishwoman Rhonda (Johanna Heger), and Field takes it upon himself to pay Theo a visit. Quite how he knows of Theo’s involvement with Rhonda is unclear but he doesn’t accept the explanation that the girl has gone home and hangs around to do a bit of spying. Not such a good idea, because he pays the penalty.
Although it’s a pleasant detached cottage and far from an old dark house, Tulia takes it upon herself to take a look at Theo’s studio where she finds various items of female clothing and photos of an unsavoury nature. A flashback reveals the death of Rhonda, seduced by Tom, then, following the arrival of Theo and his trusty camera, raped by a tramp. But it’s not Theo who kills her. It’s Tom, and largely by accident.
So what’s being set up really is how far beyond his normal games Theo will go, with Tulia providing the test case.
A chunk of the tension comes from having no idea what’s going on beyond Sarah indulging Theo. She appears ignorant of the depth of his perversion. And with Tulia being so complicit initially in the sex it appears to be going down a different route to the slasher pictures like Scream and more in keeping with the giallo which had yet to get into its stride. Tulia is a modern girl for the times, certainly not sexually repressed, which was refreshing, and being a model comfortable with her body. But she would not have been expecting something like this.
Karl Lanchbury (What’s Good for the Goose, 1969) looked like he was perfecting the creepy persona that would carry him through a few more Larraz pictures. Vivian Neves was a model, famous two years later for featuring in the first nude advertisement in The Times, but also a glamour model with pictorials in Penthouse and The Sun, and known as “The Body” a quarter of a century before that title was appropriated by Elle Macpherson, and later set up her own modelling agency. Pia Andersson only made this one picture.
Given he was dealing with so much inexperience and was himself a debutant, Larraz does a pretty good job. He would go on to make another 25 films mostly in the exploitation vein.
I came across this on YouTube while looking for the Otto Preminger film noir Whirlpool (1950). The version I saw is taken from a very ropey VHS with time codes but there’s a better print on the channel under the title of Perversion Flash.
Harlow presents such a convincing picture of Hollywood abuse that I was astonished to discover that it was not entirely truthful where the title character was concerned.
Jean Harlow was a hugely popular star in the 1930s before her untimely death at the age of 36. This film depicts her as a virgin (not true) who turns neurotic (not true) after her impotent husband commits suicide (debatable) on their wedding night (not true) leading to her go off the rails and die from pneumonia (not true). But in terms of the Hollywood system a great deal rings true and if the Me Too movement had existed in the late 1920s the finger would be pointed at a huge number of men.
The film is at its best when dissecting the movie business. A five-minute opening sequence demonstrates its “factory” aspect as extras and bit players clock in, are given parts and shuffle through great barns to be clothed and made up, often to be discarded at the end of the process.
No sooner has this version of Jean Harlow (Carroll Baker) been given a small part than she encounters the casting couch, operated by a lowly assistant director, who bluntly offers five days’ work instead of one if she submits to his advances. When she turns him down, work is hard to come by and she resorts to stealing lunch before rescued by agent Arthur Landau (Red Buttons). After tiny parts that mostly consist of her losing her clothing, receiving pies or eggs in the face and displaying her wares in bathtubs, she geta a big break only for that producer to demand his pound of flesh – “I’ve already bought and paid for you.” Here she has “the body of a woman and the emotions of a child” and ends up choosing the wrong suitor which leads to a calamitous outcome.
However, the pressures of stardom are well-presented: she is the breadwinner for her unemployed mother Jean (Angela Lansbury) and lazy stepfather Marino (Raf Vallone) and soon box office dynamite for studio chief Everett (Martin Balsam) who sees in her the opportunity to sell good clean sex. The negotiations/bribery/blackmail involved in fixing salaries are also explored.
But the film earns negative points by mixing the real and the fictional. The agent and husband Paul Bern (Peter Lawford) existed but most of the others are invented or amalgamations of different people. MGM is represented as “Majestic” and among her films there is no Red Dust (1932) or China Seas (1935) but lurid inventions like Sin City.
Director Gordon Douglas was a versatile veteran, with over 90 films to his credit, from comedies Saps at Sea (1940) and Call Me Bwana (1963) to westerns The Iron Mistress (1952) and Rio Conchos (1964) and musicals Follow That Dream (1962) and dramas The Sins of Rachel Cade (1961) and Sylvia (1965) which also starred Baker. The opening scene apart, which is a seamless construction, he is adept at this kind of helter-skelter drama. John Michael Hayes (Rear Window, 1954) has produced a punchy script based on the book by Arthur Landau and Irving Shulman.
In the title role Carroll Baker (Sylvia) has probably never been better, comedian Red Buttons (Stagecoach, 1966) excellent in a straight role while the smarmy Raf Vallone (Nevada Smith, 1966) is the stand-out among an excellent supporting cast that also includes Angela Lansbury (In the Cool of the Day, 1963), Peter Lawford (Sylvia), Leslie Nielsen (Beau Geste, 1966), Martin Balsam (Seven Days in May, 1964) and Mike Connors (Stagecoach, 1966).
Except that virtually none of the movie is true, I would have given it four stars for its portrayal of Hollywood but I have come to expect that biopics, while moving facts around for dramatic purposes, are required to be good more faithful to their subjects than this.
You wouldn’t figure director Henry Hathaway for a caper movie. He seemed more at home with action, whether that be war (The Desert Fox, 1951), adventure (Legend of the Lost, 1957) or western (Nevada Smith, 1966) although he was a dab hand at film noir (Kiss of Death, 1947). And before the big-budget all-star Oceans 11 entered the equation in the same year as Seven Thieves – and stole much of its thunder – the heist movie ran mostly on B-movie steam such as Rififi (1955), The Killing (1956) and Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958).
And probably judged against other glossy efforts of the 1960s like Topkapi (1964) and Gambit (1967) Seven Thieves would appear on the surface to come up a bit short. No doubt accounting for it being so under-rated. But while this is in itself a neat little thriller the kick comes in the emotional entanglements and a succession of twists at the end that sends it in my book into a higher category.
And it’s so outrageously clever that the mystery of why French-based criminal mastermind Theo Wilkins (Edward G. Robinson) would reach out across the Atlantic Ocean to recruit former jailbird Paul Mason (Rod Steiger) to spearhead the heist of a cool four million dollars from a Monte Carlo casino is not resolved until the end, and in spectacular fashion.
Technically, there are actually only six thieves, the other is an inside man, Raymond (Alexander Scourby), who has fallen for the seductive charms of nightclub dancer Melanie (Joan Collins). Making up the rest of the septet are safe cracker Louis (Michael Dante) and muscle-cum-driver Hugo (Berry Kroeger) with Poncho (Eli Wallach) playing the key role of the pretend crippled, arrogant, irascible millionaire – and contrary to the claims of one poster he is the decoy not Melanie.
Distrust of his team makes Theo bring in Paul, who ruthlessly knocks them into shape, putting into seamless action the plan devised by Theo. Simply put, Poncho is going to act as a distraction by having a heart attack at the gambling table while Paul and Louis climb out a window along a ledge to the casino director’s flat which provides, by means of an elevator, direct access to the underground vaults. Once they’ve stolen the cash, they clamber back along the ledge and hide in the flat where, by this time, Theo, playing the role of Poncho’s personal physician, has taken him. The money will be hidden in Poncho’s wheelchair and removed to a waiting ambulance.
But Paul is a rather suspicious character and wants to know what he’s letting himself in for so in turn works out the weaknesses of his team. Melanie hides behind a façade of high birth, Pancho is too reckless, “measuring danger only in terms of profit,” Hugo prone to unnecessary violence, while Louis has omitted to mention he is terrified of heights, the ledge on which the operation depends standing on a 100ft high cliff.
In some posters, this was promoted as Al Capone (Steiger) vs Little Caesar (Robinson).
The plan relies on Poncho actually appearing to be dead, so dead that the casino director (Sebastian Cabot) will not hesitate, at Theo’s insistence, to shift him out of sight of the rest of the gamblers into his flat. But Complication No 1 is that Poncho doesn’t want to be dead, even if it is a ruse, skeptical of Theo’s plan to convincingly knock him out by means of a carefully measured dose of cyanide. Complication No 2 is that a night club client recognizes Melanie and casts doubt on her credentials as a lady of quality. Complication No 3 is that English physician Dr Halsey (Alan Caillou) questions whether Poncho is as dead as he seems.
But such complications are nothing compared an extraordinary range of twists that raise tension sky-high at the movie’s denouement. I challenge you to guess what these three superbly-conceived twists would be, all of them one by one turning the project on its head, and it rapidly shifts from one direction to another, ending with an unbelievable – and yet so in keeping with the premise – climax.
Attention to character detail lifts this out of the rut, whether it be Theo’s penchant for collecting seashells, Paul resplendent in a white suit, Melanie resisting the blandishments of becoming a kept woman, Raymond trying to climb out the murky depths into which the lure of Melanie has taken him, and a series of subtle relationships, some developing through the robbery, others which began long before the heist working themselves out.
The heist itself is well done, tension kept constant mostly through the failings of the crew and the suspicions of the dupes. All in all an excellent picture.
This was a critical film in the careers of most of the cast. Edward G. Robinson (The Cincinnati Kid, 1965) was handed his first top-billed role in four years. It was a deliberate change of pace for Rod Steiger (The Pawnbroker, 1964). For Eli Wallach, best known at the time for stage work, it was the first of three films that year that would launch him into the higher ranks of top supporting stars; it was followed by The Magnificent Seven and The Misfits. After being leading lady to the likes of Gregory Peck and Richard Burton, this spelled the end of Twentieth Century Fox’s belief in Joan Collins’ star qualities while for Michael Dante (The Naked Kiss, 1964) it was a step up.
Wallach and Dante could be accused of over-acting but Robinson, Steiger and Collins all act against type with considerable effect. Hathaway does a superb job working from a script by Sydney Boehm (Rough Night in Jericho, 1967) based on the Max Catto bestseller.
There’s a surprisingly good movie here once you strip out the cliché jungle stuff and the racist elements. The diamond of the title is actually a MacGuffin, just enough to get you started on two parallel tales of revenge.
Dan (George Segal) is a mining engineer-cum-adventurer and Erica (Ursula Andress), daughter of mine owner Kramer (Harry Andrews), as far from the traditional jungle heroine (except in one regard) as you could get. She saves him from crocodiles, rescues him from jail and quicksand, swims across a hippo-infested river and is a better shot than him (or anybody for that matter) with a rifle. This is female empowerment with a vengeance.
Suspected of stealing the diamond, he is hunted by ranger Karl (Ian Hendry), Dan’s love rival, who intends to win Erica back using the simple expedient of killing the thief. Lying in wait is all-purpose rogue Plankett (Orson Welles) who seeks revenge on Karl. The second unit had a whale of a time filming anything that moved – lions, leopards, zebras, giraffes, buffaloes, monkeys, antelopes, the aforementioned hippos and crocodiles and what looked like a cobra – and at one point everything does move in coordinated fashion if you can call a stampede coordinated.
But the main focus is an Erica who constantly confounds Dan’s sexist expectations. Docility is her disguise. Anytime she appears to be doing what she’s told you can be sure she’s planning the opposite. While Dan does have his own specific set of jungle skills, he often looks a fool. But they do make a good screen partnership and their dialogue is lively.
Hollywood spent millions of dollars trying to create screen chemistry between various stars and although it seemed to work very well in the industry’s golden age with Clark Gable and any number of MGM female stars, Bogart/Bacall and Tracy/Hepburn and I guess you could chuck John Wayne-Maureen O’Hara into that particular mix, the formula seemed to have gone awry by the 1960s discounting the Doris Day/Rock Hudson combo, big budget romances like El Cid (1961) and Doctor Zhivago (1965) and an occasional home run with whomever Cary Grant was romancing on screen. So it was usually hit-or-miss whether any sparks flew between the stars.
Andress had certainly been a European femme fatale par excellence as seen in Dr No (1962) and The Blue Max (1966), but it was certainly not a given that she would more than hold her own for an entire picture. Segal was nobody’s idea of a romantic leading man although the notion had been given a tryout in The Girl Who Couldn’t Say No (1968) with Virna Lisi. But here the whole enterprise works in an It Happened One Night vein with the supposedly superior male recognizing that perhaps his companion was more than a match.
Harry Andrews and Orson Welles both try to steal the picture, with polar opposite characterizations, Andrews loud and menacing, Welles soft and menacing. You can tell Scottish director Sidney Hayers (The Trap, 1966) was an editor because he cuts for impact and mostly does an efficient job of sticking to the story. Supposedly, Orson Welles directed his own scenes, but that might be to make sure he got to hog the camera. He has enough choice lines and bits of business to keep him happy and gives his venomous character a camp edge. Matakit (Johnny Sekka), Dan’s buddy, who actually has the diamond, is separately pursued and subjected to racism and being whipped.
Despite my reservations, this is well constructed and keeps one step ahead of audience expectation with plenty twists to subvert those, although the music by Johnny Dankworth gets in the way, offering musical cues opposite to what is required.
As it is a jungle picture there is the obligatory heroine’s bathing scene – and to balance the books on that score Segal does whip off his shirt at one point. Except for the clichés and the racism, it would have gone higher in my estimation for by and large it is well done and Andress is once again (see The Blue Max) a revelation.
Somewhat lost in the rush to acclaim star Gregory Peck for his Oscar-winning To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), this bold attempt to tackle mental illness among the armed forces deserves reassessment.
Set towards the end of World War Two, psychiatrist Captain Newman (Gregory Peck) heads up a unit addressing the previously ignored mental health issues of U.S. airmen. One of the first to identify post- traumatic stress disorder, Newman employs a whole raft of unusual techniques such as allowing his clients to tend sheep. And he’s not above using romantic sleight-of-hand to woo Lt. Corum (Angie Dickinson), a nurse in a non-psychiatric department, to join his team. Orderly Corporal Leibowitz (Tony Curtis), more of a con artist than a medical professional, is the other key member of the team.
As you might expect, Newman has to battle superiors to allow him to even attempt to cure any of the men under his care since in standard armed forces opinion they are really just cowards trying to duck out of their duty. Given there’s no prescribed treatment for his clientele, Newman basically improvises on a case-by-case basis to get to the heart of what caused mental collapse.
While the movie motors along nicely on the interplay between these three characters – the potential for real romance between Newman and Corum and Newman’s acceptance of Leibowitz’s alternative, more down-to-earth and decidedly un-medical approach – it focuses on three critical cases. Col Bliss (Eddie Albert) suffers from split personality, Capt Winston (Robert Duvall) is catatonic and Corporal Tompkins (Bobby Darin) too bubbly by far.
In dealing with each, Newman adopts a different persona, occasionally entering into the make-believe world of his clients to expose how much of a fiction they are. Stern with some, he is gentle with others and when he appears to go over the score explains he is not shouting at a person but at his symptoms.
And while at time it feels like a mental equivalent of episodes of a hospital soap, the underlying drive, the knowledge that men are hiding from the horrors of war or endure guilt over action they may have taken or are unable to face the consequence of orders they carried out takes this into a different level. Almost all suffer from the standard conviction that they must be cowards. Newman’s task is to make all face up to their fears.
Presumably to overcome fears of audience resistance to the downbeat subject matter, the U.S. poster plain misled the public – “love, laughter and tears” were not much in evidence.
And it’s Corum’s self-appointed job to get under Newman’s skin and in so doing get to the heart of the terrible irony of his role. If he fails and men are discharged without being cured they will be returned to their units while mentally unstable and make decisions that could endanger thousands of men. If he succeeds, he sends men back to face potential death.
Luckily, it’s far from dour. Instead of taking the audience down a medical jargon rabbit-hole, the movie sensibly concentrates of character and humanity. It is filled with brilliant dialogue and whenever Newman appears overwhelmed up pops Leibowitz like the self-appointed class clown to bring events to a cheerier conclusion. Up till the end – a Xmas show by inmates and the arrival of a bunch of Italian POWs – the movie steers well clear of sentimentality and delivers a lucid exploration of the effects of war on the human psyche.
Gregory Peck (Mirage, 1965) is outstanding, not just from the way he adapts his character to suit the situation, but because quite a lot of his role is just to react to what is being said. Most stars would run a mile from being on the receiving end of chunks of dialog and insist on altering the script to make them appear more dynamic. Unlike Atticus Finch who is convinced he can find a solution, Newman knows his detection skills are very basic.
Tony Curtis (The Boston Strangler, 1968) might appear as if inhabiting a custom-made role suited to his natural effervescence and charm, but this is a deeper character than initially seems the case and rather than ride along and enjoy himself he has spells of challenging Newman’s authority. It’s a more subdued role for Angie Dickinson (Jessica, 1962), too, but she also brings a level of seriousness to the part and is integral to the picture’s success.
Bobby Darin (Pressure Point, 1962) was Oscar-nominated but I found his acting over-the-top. Eddie Albert (Green Acres television series 1965-1971) and Robert Duvall (To Kill a Mockingbird), in particular, were more assured. Look out for James Gregory (The Secret War of Harry Frigg, 1968) and former child star Jane Withers.
David Miller (Hammerhead, 1968) strikes the correct tone, leavening the seriousness with humor, but not avoiding the deeper issues. In their final screenplay assignment Henry and Phoebe Ephron (Carousel, 1956), parents of Nora Ephron (When Harry Met Sally, 1989), teamed with Richard L. Breen (A Man Could Get Killed, 1966) for an intelligent screenplay based on the bestseller by Leo Rosten.
What if redemption isn’t enough? When shame is buried so deep inside the psyche it can trigger no release? That’s the central theme of Richard Brooks’ adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s classic novel.
The title character’s shame comes from, as a young officer, abandoning a ship he believed was sinking only to later discover it had been rescued with a cargo of pilgrims who point the finger of blame. He is branded a coward and kicked out of the East India Trading Company, plying his trade among the debris of humanity.
You might think he later redeemed himself by foiling a terrorist plot at great risk to his own life. But that cannot erase his shame. Nor can helping revolutionaries overthrow a despotic warlord (Eli Wallach), enduring torture and again at great risk. What other sacrifice must he make to rid himself of the millstone round his neck?
Writer-director Brooks had a solid pedigree in the adaptation stakes – The Brothers Karamazov (1958), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Elmer Gantry (1960) and The Sweet Bird of Youth (1962) – but sometimes you felt the writer got in the way of the director. That’s the case here. There was enough here to satisfy the original intended roadshow customers, great location work, grand sets, length, a big star in Peter O’Toole, but there is no majestic camerawork. There are good scenes but no great sweep and the result is a slightly ponderous film relieved by stunning action, some moments of high tension, the occasional twist to confound the audience and ingenious ways to mount a battle.
Hired killer Gentleman Brown (James Mason) has many of the best lines – “heroism is a form of mental disease induced by vanity” and “the self-righteous stench of a converted sinner” – all in reference to Jim. Everybody has great lines except Lord Jim, as introverted as Lawrence of Arabia, face torn up by self-torture, fear of repeating his original sin of cowardice and convinced he will be cast out again should people discover he had abandoned hundreds of pilgrims.
Apart from the storm at the outset, the central section in the beleaguered village is the best part as Jim finds sanctuary, love and purpose, and conjures up the possibility of burying the past.
Part of the problem of the film is the director’s need to remain faithful to the source work which has an odd construction and you will be surprised at the parts played by the big-name supporting cast of James Mason, Jack Hawkins and Curt Jurgens. Many of the films made in the 1960s were concerned with honor of one kind or another and, despite my reservations about the film as a whole, as a study of guilt this is probably the best in that category, in that this character’s conscience refuses to allow him an easy way out.
Peter O’Toole (Lawrence of Arabia, 1962) is chock-full of anguish but finds it difficult to create a character of similar heroic dimensions to the David Lean picture. James Mason (Age of Consent, 1969) is surprisingly good in an unusual role. Eli Wallach (The Magnificent Seven, 1960) as The General plays a variation of a character he has essayed before.
This may have been a step up the Hollywood ladder but it was backward move in acting terms given Daliah Lavi’s performance in The Demon (1963) – reviewed here some time ago. Her talent is somewhat wasted in an underwritten part. Also in the supporting cast: Curd Jurgens (Psyche ’59, 1964), Akim Tamiroff (TheLiquidator, 1965), Andrew Keir (Quatermass andthe Pit, 1967) and Jack MacGowran (Age of Consent).
Director Richard Brooks was also on screenwriting duties.
Certainly doesn’t start off as your standard entry to the criminal-trying-to-go-straight mini-genre when a bald woman beats up and robs her pimp. Kelly (Constance Towers), who knows “your body is your only passport,” nonetheless sets out to create a new life for herself as a salesperson (hawking overpriced champagne) in a small town where prostitution is outlawed.
She could easily settle for being the mistress of corrupt cop Griff (Anthony Eisley), but he’s something of a pimp, sending girls-off-the-bus across the river to the joint run by Candy (Virginia Grey). Instead, she takes up nursing, in an institute for crippled children, providing tough love to the kids. In due course, she hooks up the town’s handsome philanthropic millionaire Grant (Michael Dante), a relationship which Griff threatens to wreck.
However, she fesses up to Grant, now her fiancé in double-quick time, about her past and, remarkably, he forgives her. And you think, my goodness, she’s going to get away with it, new life, new career, a job she loves in which she is adored by the kids. You could be tootling along Sentimental Boulevard: Kelly forms the kids into a choir, she coaxes slightly mad landlady Josephine (Berry Bronson) back to reality, determines to make her own wedding dress rather than be beholden to the millionaire, and takes under her wing nurses Buff (Marie Devereux) and Dusty (Karen Conrad) who have fallen victim to life’s traps.
You could be in Movie of the Week territory, another hooker with a heart of gold, except while she’s been turning her life around, there’s the inherent tension that she must fail. But this being a Sam Fuller (Shock Corridor, 1963) picture, Kelly is one tough cookie, outsmarting for a start Griff, who sees her as another in his assembly line of sex workers, and beating up Candy for daring to seduce Buff away from nursing by the promise of big money. Kelly ain’t sentimental. She views herself as a “broken down piece of machinery” with a future beckoning of “nothing but the buck, the bed and the bottle.” This is partly a shrew observation of herself but also of the production line nature or prostitution.
So there’s a catch. And it’s just plain awful. Grant is a paedophile. He has chosen Kelly because, as a sex worker, she is a deviant who will “understand my sickness.” And she’s sickened that despite her best efforts, that’s how she’s viewed, as a woman who would condone such behavior, and that he somehow believes she is complicit, in encouraging young girls from the hospital to visit him. So she kills him.
And then reality strikes with a vengeance. She finds herself embroiled in the worst kind of small town corruption. Griff, who’s gunning for her anyway, refuses to believe her accusation against Grant, his best pal. Candy, who’s also gunning for her, says Kelly planned to blackmail Grant. There’s money missing, so she’s branded a thief as well. And nobody can find the little girl Grant had lined up.
An absolutely terrific film, constantly switching gear, twist after twist, but incredibly humane. There’s probably never been a better portrayal of the working girl, here all shown as vulnerable rather than predatory, as victims caught in a man-made web, and although dealt with in subtle fashion many clearly suffering from mental illness.
Kelly is cultured, reads Byron and Goethe, embraces the classical music education a relationship with Grant promises, but is unusually self-analytical. When she looks in a mirror she’s not seeking physical flaws but shortcomings of character. She understands all too well how men play women. Her tragedy is that when she sets aside her inbuilt cynicism, the man she trusts turns out to be as untrustworthy as they come.
Constance Towers (Shock Corridor) carries the picture, revealing several shades of personality, from hard-bitten woman to tender nurse, from avenger to pragmatic problem-solver. Michael Dante (Harlow, 1965) pulls off the difficult role of being persuasively a good guy gone bad. Veteran Virginia Grey (Jungle Jim, 1948) is all veneer.
But it is Sam Fuller’s movie. He was a triple hyphenate, writer-producer-director, so his vision was never in doubt. The dialog is terrific – the explanation of the title alone is extremely creepy – often cutting to the bone, but the best sequences lack words at all, the black-and-white photography bringing an air of film noir, and for all the striking toughness of the heroine, several moving scenes.
It’s not shocking in Fuller’s normal manner. As I can testify, it suggests to the viewer it’s going one way, and the core terrible act creeps up upon the audience. But it is brilliantly directed, even with a B-picture cast. Pulp reinvented as art. You could possibly argue in its vision and subject matter this was the birthplace of the indie.
If this had appeared a couple of years later after Stanley Kubrick had popularised the psychedelic in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and with his budget, it might have been a bigger hit. As it is, the ground-breaking sci-fi adventure, going in the opposite direction from Kubrick, exploring the mysteries of the body rather than the universe, is a riveting watch.
Before we even get to the science fiction, there’s a stunning opening 15 minutes or so, a thriller tour de force, the attempted assassination of scientist Dr Jan Bedes (Jean Del Val), vital to the development of embryonic new miniaturization technology, baffled C.I.A. agent Charles Grant (Stephen Boyd) transported to a futuristic building (electronic buggies, photo ID) where he is seconded to a team planning invasive surgery, entering the scientist’s bloodstream and removing a blood clot from his brain. They only have 60 minutes and there’s a saboteur on board.
Heading the mission are claustrophobic circulation specialist Dr Michaels (Donald Pleasance), brain surgeon Dr Peter Duval (Arthur Kennedy) and lovelorn assistant Cora (Raquel Welch). Backing them are up Captain Bill Owens (William Redfield) who designed the Proteus submarine.
The high concept is brilliantly delivered with ingenious improvisations, of the kind we have come to expect from the likes of Apollo 13 (1995) and The Martian (2015) that save the day. I’ve no idea how accurate the anatomical science was but it sounded very convincing to me. There’s a brilliant sequence when the scientist’s heart is slowed down and the heartbeat is reduced to a low thump but when the heart is reactivated the sub literally jumps.
The bloodstream current proves far stronger than imagined, taking them away from their planned route. After unexpectedly losing air, they need to literally suck air in from the scientist’s body. Swarms of antibodies attack. Claustrophobia and sabotage up the ante, not to mention the anxious team overseeing the operation in the control room, the minutes ticking by.
It’s not a fantastic voyage but a fantastic planet, the visualisation of the human interior – at a time when nobody could call on CGI – is as fascinating as Kubrick’s meditations on outer space. They could have landed on a distant planet judging by what look like rock formations. It’s wondrous. Sometimes the world takes on a psychedelic tone. The special effects rarely fail, the worse that occurs is an occasional flaw in a process shot, and a couple of times the actors have to fall back on the old device of throwing themselves around to make it look like the vessel was rocking. The craft itself is impressive and all the gloop and jelly seems realistic. There’s a gripping climax, another dash of improvisation.
The only problem is the characters who seem stuck in a cliché, Grant the action man, Duval blending science with God, Michaels the claustrophobic, an occasional clash of personality. But given so much scientific exposition, there’s little time for meaningful dialogue and most of the time the actors do little more than express feelings with reaction shots. Interestingly enough, Raquel Welch (Lady in Cement, 1968) holds her own. In fact, she is often the only one to show depth. When the process begins, she is nervous, and the glances she gives at Duval reveal her feelings for him. It’s one of the few films in which she remains covered up, although possibly it was contractual that she be seen in something tight-fitting, in this case a white jump suit.
If you are going to cast a film with strong screen personalities you couldn’t do worse than the group assembled. Stephen Boyd (Assignment K, 1968), five-time Oscar nominee Arthur Kennedy (Nevada Smith, 1966) ), Donald Pleasance (The Great Escape, 1963), Edmond O’Brien (Rio Conchos, 1964) and William Redfield (Duel at Diablo, 1966) aren’t going to let you down.
But the biggest credit goes to Richard Fleischer (The Big Gamble, 1961, which starred Boyd) and his Oscar-winning special effects and art direction teams. While not indulging in wonder in the way of Kubrick, Fleischer allows audiences time to navigate through the previously unseen human body simply by sticking to the story. There are plenty of set pieces and brilliant use of sound. Harry Kleiner (Bullitt, 1968) created the screenplay based on a story by Otto Klement and contrary to myth the only part Isaac Asimov played in the picture was to write the novelization.
A joy from start to finish with none of the artistic pretension of Kubrick. This made a profit on initial release, knocking up $5.5 million in domestic U.S. rentals against a budget of $5.1 million according to Twentieth century Fox expert Aubrey Solomon and would have made probably the same again overseas plus television sale.
Although the weekly computerized box office system covering the Top 50 pictures and drawing on information supplied by nearly 1,000 cinemas in the United States did not appear, courtesy of Variety magazine, until 1969, there still existed a weekly tabulation, based on receipts from a smaller base from which the magazine produced a weekly Top Ten. And although box office watching was not yet a recognized leisure activity, what movies made and their rankings on the weekly box office chart were compulsive reading for the thousands of cinema owners hoping to snap up the next big one and the Hollywood studios gambling they had released the next big one.
So I thought it might be fun to track box office throughout the year, based on that weekly chart.
By 1963 Hollywood had turned into a casino. To beat the growing threat of television, the movie industry was committed to bigger pictures with, unfortunately, bigger budgets, heralding in the roadshow era, the 1960s equivalent of 3D or Imax with premium prices and reserved seats and two shows a day. Despite John Wayne’s 1960 epic The Alamo proving such gambles could spectacularly backfire, studios had a slate of movies that, if failures, could clean them out. Already fears were mounting that Brando’s Mutiny On The Bounty, opened in October 1962, would never recover its $19m cost.
Cinerama staked a fortune on its first story-led movie How The West Was Won and Columbia Pictures had bet the house on a 3-hour 20-minute opus Lawrence of Arabia that starred a complete unknown. The latter had opened at Xmas 1962 and if it was to make its money back had to play well night through most of 1963 on the roadshow circuit. If that wasn’t enough, blizzards mashed up the country and a three-month newspaper strike in New York meant – in the days before television marketing – there was nowhere to promote big new movies, delaying the U.S. opening of How the West Was Won. .
But Lawrence was monumental, playing to capacity crowds for a dozen weeks at the Criterion in New York, clearing $43,000 – equivalent to over $400,000 now – every week. In in the fifth week, by dint of adding an extra show, it broke its own record.
Roadshows opened in a handful of cinemas – knocking up revenues today’s exhibitors would envy – and playing seemingly forever (in the UK, for example South Pacific was being readied for general release four years after its premiere).
So big movies were slow-burners and Lawrence didn’t top the charts till week six of the 1963 box office calendar . Its reign lasted only two weeks, replaced by Gregory Peck’s To Kill A Mockingbird which in one cinema alone, New York’s legendary 6,000-seater Radio City Music Hall, had taken $160,000 (about $1.5 million now). That was knocked aside by the season’s first surprise hit, Disney’s Son of Flubber which went on to become the year’s seventh top grosser – ahead of Mockingbird. It wasn’t the only surprise. Biblical tango Sodom and Gomorrah went to number one in its first week, a rarity, although it quickly faded. The third surprise chart topper, in March, gave comic mainstay Jack Lemmon his first serious role in Days of Wine and Roses. Hitchcock’s The Birds took over the perch in mid-April before How The West Was Won which reigned for weeks.
Over the January-April period, other hits, that is enjoying some weeks in the Top 12 chart, in their opening stanzas were Charlton Heston’s Hawaiian movie Diamond Head, Yul Brynner and Tony Curtis squaring up in Taras Bulba, Laurence Olivier drama Term of Trial, Anthony Quinn in Barabbas, Dean Martin comedy Who’s Got The Action, small-budget David and Lisa and the pairing of Robert Mitchum and Shirley Maclaine (sparking their affair) in the adaptation of Broadway hit Two For the Seesaw. Bear in mind, however, that initial success was no guarantee – what played to packed houses in New York or Los Angeles might empty theatres in Arkansas.
But the year’s biggest gamble appeared to be already paying off. Cleopatra had sold out its first 19 nights six months ahead of its June premiere and taken $8m in cash advances from cinemas in 20 cities. And there was also the little matter of the forthcoming release of the British box office sensation Dr No.
The summer period – May through to the end of August – was marked by three enormous gambles as How The West Was Won,Cleopatra and 55 Days At Peking took center stage. The western boasted John Wayne, James Stewart and Debbie Reynolds. Cleopatra was the most expensive film ever, at four hours nearly the longest and, thanks to Burton-Taylor’s shenanigans the most scandal-ridden.
Summer as we know it – with Memorial Day and Independence Day massively important – did not exist in the 1960s. Until the roadshow, opening dates were not juggled, movies simply released as soon as made. The importance of advance bookings for roadshows altered the pattern. Unlike now when saturation screening means nobody is turned away on opening weekend, the definition of a hit was being made to wait . Epics like El Cid, Lawrence of Arabia, and How The West Was Won were publicized months ahead and Cleopatra set the marketing bar at insane levels.
That’s Irma, by the way, of “Douce” fame.
How the West Was Won was No 1 in the Variety chart for eight weeks, notching up fabulous returns, but nothing to match Cleopatra which peaked for nine weeks and grossed $3.1 million in 33 days – faster than any roadshow before. 55 Daysat Peking, Samuel Bronston’s follow-up to El Cid, surprisingly not roadshown, grabbed No 1 in its opening week but tumbled fast. Dr No, pulverizing the UK box office the previous year, suffered by going on release too fast. Unable, like roadshows, to groom an audience, it didn’t hit number one and lasted only four weeks in the Top Ten. In his last hit for a decade, Brando did better – The Ugly American managing eight weeks, again not a chart-topper..
Others featuring in various slots in the Top Ten were a mean Paul Newman in Hud, Frank Sinatra in Come Blow Your Horn, the Jack Lemmon-Shirley Maclaine non-musical adaptation of the Broadway musical Irma La Douce,The Great Escape (charting for 13 weeks), and Doris Day in The Thrill of It All. Surprise appearances included Ray Harryhausen’s Jason and the Argonauts, Peter Sellers’ The Wrong Arm of the Law, Hayley Mills in Summer Magic, Sandra Dee in Tammy and the Doctor and teen dreams Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello in Beach Party. Biggest disappointment was John Wayne’s Donovan’s Reef which only lasted one week at in the chart and then on its lowest rung – No 10.
But taboos were broken that summer, changing cinema forever. Sneaking into the Top Ten were the original ‘shockumentary’ Mondo Cane, adult fare like Lillian Hellman’s Toys in the Attic, the first of the British kitchen-sink dramas The L-Shaped Room (“Sex Is Not A Forbidden Word!” the catchy catchline) starring Leslie Caron as an unmarried mother, Joanne Woodward in The Stripper and most, astonishingly of all, Fellini’s 8½.
How studios must have loved the release system in those days. Instead of movies being whipped off screens after three or four weeks or to fit into a preconceived streaming showing, big hits, especially roadshows, could hold onto their screens for months and months.
For the September-to-December period of 1963, the biggest stars were Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Cleopatra spent another seven weeks at No 1 in the Top Ten, The VIPs three weeks. But Jack Lemmon ran them close as star of the year. Just after Irma La Douce ended a 21-week Top Ten run, Under The Yum Yum Tree snapped top spot in December. Cleopatra was hardly innocuous, and Irma was a prostitute, but Yum Yum went much further with Lemmon playing a lascivious landlord renting rooms to nubile girls.
Bubbling under the American psyche was a desire for the illicit. What else explained the appearance in the Top Ten of films about mental illness – Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor and The Caretakers starring Robert Stack. Even Paul Newman’s latest hit A New Kind of Love pivoted on Joanne Woodward being mistaken for a call-girl. The Top Ten seethed with ‘Adult’ or ‘Continental’ themes – ‘shockumentary’ Women of the World, children as feral monsters in Lord of the Flies, the title of the Italian Cannes-winner The Conjugal Bed said it all while In The French Style with Jean Seberg only hinted at it. Fellini’s 8½ paved the way for arthouse break-out Visconti’s The Leopard starring Burt Lancaster which, incredibly, peaked at No 5. Sophia Loren led a star-studded European cast in The Condemned of Altona based on the Jean-Paul Sartre book. Robert Wise’s seminal horror film The Haunting spent a week in Top Ten. More significantly, Sidney Poitier broke through the glass ceiling to become the first African American actor to have a significant hit with Lilies of the Field.
Back in the mainstream, Debbie Reynolds’ Mary Mary, based on the Broadway hit, spent two weeks at No 1. Hollywood stalwarts charting successfully included Kirk Douglas in For Love Or Money, James Stewart (with Sandra Dee) in Take Her She’s Mine, Robert Mitchum (plus sexpot Elsa Martinelli) in African adventure Rampage, John Wayne in spanking good form with Maureen O’Hara in McLintock and Elvis in Fun in Acapulco. . Surprise successes were The Incredible Journey and television’s Dr Kildare Richard Chamberlain in courtroom drama Twilight of Honor plus two Disney reissues – Fantasia and Kirk Douglas in 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.
The year’s blockbusters showed astonishing legs – How The West Was Won playing 52 weeks in the Top Ten, Lawrence of Arabia 41.
The Top Ten grossing films of the year were (in order) – Cleopatra, The Longest Day, Irma La Douce, Lawrence of Arabia, How The West Was Won, Mutiny On The Bounty, Son of Flubber, To Kill A Mockingbird, Bye Bye Birdie and Come Blow Your Horn.
The Magnificent 60s 