adaptation of bestseller – Page 20

Marooned (1969) ****

The forgotten one. Left out in the cold by audiences and critics alike in the late 60s sci fi boom by the more audacious 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Barbarella (1968) and Planet of the Apes (1968). And that’s a shame because it’s by far the most realistic (to the nth degree) of the space movies. Audiences growing up with astronauts saving their own skins with ingenious maneuver – sling shot and whatnot – in Apollo 13 (1995) and The Martian (2015) might be shocked by the harsh reality of space travel as evidenced here. Astronauts are little more than helpless creatures in a tiny box with ground control in obsessive control. It’s salutary that escape was the audience mindset even after the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster of 1986.

Nobody thought to tell audiences to buckle up because they were in for a hell of a ruthless ride back in the day, but this one really should come with a warning.

Casting makes this work – when it shouldn’t. It’s full of those kind of actors who scarcely move their lips and rarely engage in extraneous facial movement. You can hear director John Sturges issuing instructions: to Gregory Peck, keep those brows knitted; to David Janssen, keep your head lowered and keep with the muttering; to Richard Crenna, don’t move a muscle; to Gene Hackman, limit that trademark chuckle to just once. Why this shouldn’t work is because the big star isn’t in the goldfish bowl of the shuttle cockpit, and since there’s none of the get-to-know-the-crew backstory of The Right Stuff (1983) or Apollo 13 there’s nobody to really root for, especially as the crew is just siting there, doing (by instruction) nothing and awaiting their fate. Which, by the way, which is constantly spelled out, is to suffocate from lack of oxygen.

But there’s a reason Gregory Peck’s on the ground and not in space. Because he’s the one making the life-and-death decisions.

This is by far Gregory Peck’s toughest role. He pulled out of Ice Station Zebra (1968) because he didn’t like the slant of the character, and since then he’d been in typical upstanding heroic mode in The Stalking Moon (1968), Mackenna’s Gold (1969) and The Chairman (1969). Here he’s the king of data management and crisis control, the most ruthless, heartless sonofa you’d ever encounter, not willing to take a risk on greenlighting a rescue mission because the computer says no. The weaselling PR-speak that’s all about saving the space program and making allowance for collateral damage is nothing compared to his terrible delivery of news to one of the wives that her husband is dead. She collapses with emotion, he puts the phone down.

If you’re geek-minded, you’ll give this five stars because there’s information overload. “Go” and “Mark” are the most commonly used words. And in case you can’t judge from the visuals what’s going on, there’s usually some television commentator voice-over to help you out.

So, the Ironman One mission hits trouble when its retro rockets refuse to ignite for return to Earth after several months in space. They’ve got 40 hours or so to effect a rescue before the oxygen runs out for crew members Jim Pruett (Richard Crenna), Buzz Lloyd (Gene Hackman) and Clayton Stone (James Franciscus). The crew are forbidden to try any stunts themselves because any exertion will use up valuable oxygen.

Plan by chief astronaut Ted Dougherty (David Janssen) to mount a rescue operation via an untried spaceship XRV (smaller than a helicopter, by the way) is vetoed as too risky by NASA boss Charles Keith (Gregory Peck) until the President, terrified of public reaction, overrules him. With time running out the impending launch is hindered by an approaching hurricane. But then, in the only nod to ingenuity, someone suggests taking off in the eye of the hurricane, when wind force will be zero.

Meanwhile, up in space, the three stalwarts are slowly coming apart. Buzz, the toughest-looking of the trio, is worst affected, screaming his head off as the prospect of dying looms. Then they are faced with a terrible decision. With the rescue delayed, there’s not enough oxygen to see them through, so one has to sacrifice himself.

I told you it was brutal stuff. About the last 30 minutes are not about whether they can be saved, but who will die and how, the impact of asphyxia on the brain spelled out by resident boffin Clayton. By this point anything they do will almost certain sabotage any rescue and they’re in cloud cuckoo land as Keith tries to keep them in line.

While there’s certainly information overload and a few questionable scientific decisions (can you really open a hatch straight into space?), the reality of the drama more than holds the enterprise together. The realpolitik, the callous use of the wives to go along with the company line as they watch their husbands suffer before their very eyes, the management of potentially bad news, was perhaps a shock for audiences back in the day but would be accepted more easily by contemporary moviegoers.

The acting is first class. Gregory Peck never attempts to lighten his load, to make his character less unattractive and appease his following. David Janssen (Warning Shot, 1966) is as solid as ever. Gene Hackman (The Gypsy Moths, 1969) is the pick of the crew but Richard Crenna’s (Midas Run, 1969) less showy disintegration packs a punch. Lee Grant (The Big Bounce, 1969) is the standout among the wives.

Much as Sturges lets the computerspeak run away with itself, he doesn’t flinch when it comes to the really tough scenes. Written by Mayo Simon (I Could Go On Singing, 1963) from the Matt Caidin source novel.

Under-rated. Worth a look.

The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin (1967) ***

All studios believed in their brand name. That the sight of the MGM lion or the Twentieth Century Fox searchlight or the Paramount mountain represented a quality mark that would buffer expectation and reassure an audience they were not going to be rooked. That might have been the case decades before when the Warner Brothers logo might mean gangster pictures or socially aware movies or MGM, with more stars than there are in heaven, pictures with top-notch talent, or Universal determined to scare the pants of you with its horror catalog.

But that was no longer the case, most studios so desperate for survival that they would fork out for whatever trend seemed most likely to make money and the industry lurched from western to musical to adventure and back again whenever a big hit appeared. The only studio which still retained genuine marquee appeal was Disney. As studios dipped into more unsavory fare, according to the older generation, and the prospects of sending your children to the movies without having to check out the picture in advance diminished, a Disney film was a guarantee of fret-free entertainment.

Throughout the decade adults as much as kids swarmed to the Disney repertoire. In 1961 the studio scored a box office triple whammy when The Absent-Minded Professor, The Parent Trap and Swiss Family Robinson took three of the top four slots in the annual box office race. In the following years Bon Voyage (1962), Moon Pilot (1962), Son of Flubber (1963), In Search of the Castaways (1963), The Sword in the Stone (1964), The Misadventures of Merlin Jones and especially Mary Poppins (1964) kept the studio buoyant, not to mention the string of pictures starring Hayley Mills and a stack of animated classics it could reissue at the drop of a hat.

Disney ruled the lightweight world, its films often driven by a simple plot device. And as the rest of the industry coveted sex and violence, exhibitors relied on Disney to bring in the kids (and adults) during holiday periods. It would end the decade on a whopping high with The Love Bug (1969).

Here, the ploy is as old as the hills, a fish out of water, in this case an English butler. Disney had rung the changes on that particular sub-genre through the governess in Mary Poppins, steadfastly ignoring a trend towards more sinister servants as demonstrated by The Servant (1963) and The Nanny (1965). But Disney did have the ability to hook name actors for its child-friendly movies, here Roddy McDowall (Lord Love a Duck, 1966), Oscar-winner Karl Malden (Nevada Smith, 1966) and Suzanne Pleshette (A Rage to Live, 1965).

If you are expecting whiplashing escapades of the Indiana Jones variety, you will be in for a disappointment. Eric Griffin (Roddy McDowall) is the aforementioned butler escorting a child Jack (Bryan Russell) on a treasure hunt through the gold fever American West. When his charge runs away, Griffin finds the boy stowing away on a ship. The ever-genteel Griffin has skills that see him through any situation, working as cook on the ship, setting up his stall as barber on the mainland, and occastionally employing a devastating right hook to knock seven bells out of giant bully Mountain Ox (Mike Mazurki).

The plot, such as it is, revolves around recovering a treasure map stolen by swindler Judge Higgins (Karl Malden) and eventually when the movie needs some zap the feisty Arabella Flagg (Suzanne Pleshette), Griffin’s bankrupt employer who as it happens fancies the bulter, turns up.

There’s enough action to keep the picture on a steady keel, a storm at sea, a stagecoach hold-up, prizefight and a climactic town-wrecking fire. There are, perhaps surprisingly, a few choice lines.

But there’s a misinterpretation at the center of the movie so it’s as well its made with kids in mind. The fish-out-of-water notion would play better if historically movies fielded idiot butlers rather than ones who tended to take command when things get tough, though it’s unliklely kids would be aware of previous entries in the sub-genre. So, theoretically, it’s a surprise when Griffin outfights the lummox and outwits the swindler.

If the kid isn’t cute enough there are compensations elsewhere, a decent support in Harry Guardino (The Pigeon That Took Rome, 1962) and Hermione Baddeley (Harlow, 1965). Roddy McDowall at least is in a movie that suits his screen persona and deceptively languid acting style while Suzanne Pleshette takes a feminist slant to the Wild West. Whether British comedian Tony Hancock – he was sacked during filming – would have added much to the proceedings is open to debate.

It’s worth remembering that, outside of Hayley Mills offerings, Disney comedies of this period revolved around adults coping with bizarre situation. This doesn’t quite have the gimmicks that drove Son of Flubber, The Ugly Dachshund (1966, also headlining Pleshette) and Lt Robin Crusoe U.S.N. (1966).

Adequately directed by James Neilson (Dr Syn Alias the Scarecrow, 1963) from a screenplay by Lowell S. Hawley (Swiss Family Robinson) drawn from the novel The Great Horn Spoon! by Sid Fleischmann.

I remember seeing this as a kid and feeling pretty content coming out of the cinema, so since it did what it says on the tin, I’m loathe from an adult perspective to take it to pieces.

A movie that says – lighten up!

Barbarella (1968) ****

While sci-fi was being viewed through a serious glass darkly what with Fantastic Voyage (1966), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Planet of the Apes (1968) along came Roger Vadim’s little number to set up an alternative universe of camp fun. Had this been a box office smash in the nature of The Odd Couple ($18.5 million in U.S. rentals) rather than under a third of that there might have been less of the po-faced doomladen sci fi in the following decade.

But if you wonder where Star Wars got its vibe, setting aside the overt sexiness portrayed here, this is as good a place to start. Naïve adventurers, check. Ice planet, check. All sorts of weird creatures in strange otherworldly locales, check. A doomsday weapon, check.

It’s kind of newsworthy to be rewatching this given that star du jour Sydney Sweeney (Anyone But You, 2023) is going to be donning the Barbarella costume for a remake next year. And who knows to what Oscar-winning fare that might lead, if she were to follow the Jane Fonda template, given it was La Fonda’s follow-up that brought her serious attention from the Academy.

But it would be remiss of me if I didn’t bring up the testy matter of director Roger Vadim’s uncanny obsession with getting his myriad girlfriends to shed their clothes for the movies, Fonda being the latest example, and in no uncertain terms, the striptease performed during the opening credits certainly rivaling Kubrick and Spielberg for the most jaw-dropping opening to a sci-fi movie.

Whether it was Fonda or someone else and whether it was Vadim or someone else you couldn’t get away from the fact that Barbarella as a sci-fi icon was most definitely on the sexy side as determined by her creator Jean-Claude Forest, sharing like British comic strip heroine Jane a predilection for losing her clothes.

Barbarella shares something of the same innocent abroad personality, the kind who gets into one unexpected scrape after another, after being despatched from peace-loving Earth to save the world by finding Durand Durand (the pop band making homage to the movie dropped the final letter of this character’s name) and his doomsday machine.

So mostly, it’s one imaginative character or scene after another, delivered in disconnected episodic manner, and it sometimes has the feel of a jukebox movie, of the greatest hits of the comic strip writer strung together, with an occasional comment on the problems created by sex and a climactic gender-spinning twist. You’d have to remember what Pop Art was to chuck it into that short-lived category but if you think it belongs on the same planet as the more earthbound Modesty Blaise (1966) and Danger: Diabolik (1968), think again.

The best sections are truly terrific. The sharp-teethed menacing robot dolls are exceptionally scary as they nip chunks out of our heroine’s flesh and leave her blood-soaked. There’s a homage to The Birds (1963) where our plucky heroine is trapped in a cage with a flock of sparrows. You’ve also got the The Catchman, performing the same function but considerably scarier than the same year’s Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. But no wonder the kids need caught because they are full of evil intent.

You’ve got a blind angel (John Phillip Law) who can’t fly, a problem mysteriously solved by sex with the ever-gracious Barbarella who, previously, has discovered, courtesy of The Catchman, the immense pleasure of the art of making love the old-fashioned way rather than just popping a pill. The angel also has no memory, permitting an ironic twist ending. You’ve got an incompetent rebel (David Hemmings). Sex is pretty much top of everyone’s agenda, even the villain (Milo O’Shea) who uses it to kill people via his own invention, which proves not much cop, since rather than murdering Barbarella with excessive pleasure, she makes it blow up.

Along the way there’s any number of interesting inventions: a manta-ray acts as the skis for a futuristic sailing ship, hollow robotic soldiers, a labyrinth.

Some of the special effects wouldn’t pass muster these days, but that’s a minor flaw compared to the rest of what’s on show. It’s not exhilarating in the real sense, but if you’re unfamiliar with the source material, it retains an endless fascination, more like a sexed-up version of the Ray Harryhausen world than anything that would have interested Kubrick. And, heck, just fun. What’s not to like.

Jane Fonda (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They, 1969) holds it all together, innocent rather than naïve, even her sexuality is innocent not exploitative, and possibly for a film deemed sexy makes greater comment on the dangers of lust than many a more self-important movie.

Great supporting cast with David Hemmings (Blow-Up, 1966), John Philip Law (Danger: Diabolik), Anita Pallenberg (Performance, 1970), Milo O’Shea (Ulysses, 1967) and Marcel Marceau.

Roger Vadim’s best film. Written by a huge squad of writers, nine in total, headed up by Vadim and Terry Southern (Candy, 1968).

Will probably be yanked out of circulation at the approach of the remake so now’s your chance to catch up on a fun sci fi.

The Pigeon That Took Rome (1962) ***

Netflix would know how to sell this. Append the “based on a true story” credit and you’ll attract a global audience. I’ve no idea how true this tale is though I assume that at certain points in war using a pigeon may have been the most efficient method of communication. If this had been under the Netflix aegis there would surely have been a scene to explain that you can’t just point the bird in any old direction but that it automatically returns to its home, that aspect being pivotal to the movie, the reason it was made in the first place.

That is, if you believe in the rather fanciful notion, as shown in what appears to be an official newsreel, of said pigeon being presented with a medal for its part in the Allied invasion of Rome in World War Two. Luckily, there’s more to this picture than the intricacies of homing pigeons.

Not much more, I hasten to add, because the other significant plot point, which I suspect has a more substantial basis in truth, is that passing American soldiers had a tendency to impregnate (and abandon) Italian women. If you were to argue that Elsa Martinelli (who had just put John Wayne in his place in Hatari!, 1962) is what saves the picture you wouldn’t be far wrong. But you can’t complain about Hollywood churning out lightweight movies in the 1960s since a chunk of the current output falls into that category.

For no apparent reason, no espionage experience for example, Yank soldiers Capt MacDougall (Charlton Heston) and Sgt Angelico (Harry Guardino) are delegated to sneak into Rome, disguised as priests, and spy on the Germans. They are put up in the household of Massimo (Salvatore Baccaloni), an underground figure, but his daughter Antonella (Elsa Martinelli) takes against the pair since they are extra mouths to feed and if only the Americans would hurry up and enter the city the populace wouldn’t be starving. However, she makes nice when her sister Rosalba (Gabriella Pallotta) reveals she is pregnant by a previous Yank (whether he was the espionage business, too, is never revealed) and is desperate need of a husband.

The sergeant is quite happy to romance the girl since a couple smooching in the park makes good cover for him transmitting messages by radio. And when that form of transmission becomes too dangerous, the Americans rely on pigeons. Soon Angelico realises his feelings for Rosalba are real and proposes to her, even after she reveals her condition. But that means celebration to announce their forthcoming nuptials.

Short of any food, Antonella slaughters the pigeons, convincing MacDougall that the meal consists of squab. To cover up, the Italians steal a bunch of pigeons from the Germans. Of course, as you’ll have guessed, that means the pigeons will return to the enemy. But once MacDougall works this out, he starts sending the Germans false messages that prove (apparently) pivotal to the Germans hightailing it out of the city (hence the medal awarding).

Pretty daft and inconsequential sauce to be sure, but Antonella keeps matters lively, knocking back MacDougall at every turn, taking every opportunity to condemn men for starting wars, and presenting herself as something of a conniver, possibly willing to lead on the Germans in return for food (MacDougall when burglarizing a German villa comes across her naked in the shower). Her occasional swipes give the picture a harder edge than you’d expect, but, her fiance killed in the war, she leads MacDougall a merry dance in the manner of the romantic comedies of the day. Otherwise, the comedy is for the most part lame, the old hitting your thumb with a hammer one such moment.

Despite co-starring with Wayne and here Heston and later Robert Mitchum (Rampage, 1963), Martinelli didn’t fit into the Hollywood pattern of taking European stars and slotting them into the female lead opposite a succession of top male stars. Think Sophia Loren with Heston in El Cid (1961), with Gregory Peck in Arabesque (1966) and with Marlon Brando in The Countess from Hong Kong (1967) and headlining a few pictures on her own. Gina Lollobrigida led Rock Hudson by the nose in Come September (1961) and Strange Bedfellows (1965) and Sean Connery a merry dance in Woman of Straw (1964).

Martinelli seemed to fade too quickly from the Hollywood mainstream which was a pity because she’s the glue here. Charlton Heston (Number One, 1969) spends most of the time looking as if he wondered how he managed to allow himself to be talked into this. You want to point the finger, then Melville Shavelson’s (Cast a Giant Shadow, 1966) your man – he wrote, produced and directed it.

Worth it for Martinelli.

No Way to Treat a Lady (1968) ****

Sly, cunning highly original drama hugely enjoyable for a number of reasons, top among which would be Rod Steiger’s serial killer. As the wealthy and cultured Christopher Gill, the actor employs disguise to enter the homes of the unsuspecting. These range from Irish priest, German maintenance man, camp wig salesman, a woman and even a policeman knocking on doors to advise people not to admit strangers.

Clearly Steiger has a ball with these cameos, but, more importantly, his character pre-empts the celebrity status accorded the modern-day mass murderer. This is a killer who wants everyone to know just how good he is at his self-appointed task, who desperately wants to be on the front pages, who revels in a cat-and-mouse taunting of the police. To be sure, an element of this is played as comedy, but from our perspective, half a century on, it is a terrific characterization of the narcissistic personality, and far more interesting than the psychological impulse that causes him to kill in the first place.

The hapless detective (George Segal) on the receiving end of Gill’s brilliance is named Morris Brummel which means that he is met with laughter anytime he introduces himself since he that is invariably shortened to Mo Brummel, too close to Beau Brummel, the famous dandy, from whom the cop could not be further removed. And Brummel is not your standard cop, stewed in alcohol with marital problems, feuding with his bosses and close to burn-out. Brummel would love marital problems if only to get out from under his nagging mother (Eileen Eckhart) , with whom he lives.

He is dogged, but respects authority and takes his demotion like a man. Not coincidentally, killer and cop are linked by mother issues. Although Gill is angry when ignored he does not taunt Brummel the way his mother does. She is ashamed he is a cop and not wealthy like his brother.

Even less standard is the meet-cute. Kate Palmer (Lee Remick) is a useless witness. She can’t remember anything about the priest she passed on the stairs. When the cop arrives, she is hungover and just wants to get back to sleep, and without being aware that Brummel is in fact Jewish praises his nose. Gill is a bit ham-fisted in the seduction department and it is Palmer who makes the running. But although appearing glamorous when first we see her, in reality she is a mundane tour guide. Their romance is conducted on buses and a police river launch, hardly the classic love story.

Although the trio of principals boasted one Oscar and two nominations between them, their careers were at a tricky stage. Winning the Oscar for In the Heat of the Night (1967) did not trigger huge demand for Steiger’s services and he had to skip over to Italy for his next big role. Both Remick and Segal, in freefall after a series of flops, had been working in television. Whether this picture quite rejuvenated their careers is a moot point for the picture was reviled in certain quarters for bringing levity to a serious subject and it was certainly overshadowed in critical terms by The Boston Strangler (1968) a few months later. But all three give excellent performances, especially Steiger and Segal who subjugated screen mannerisms to create more human characters.

While Jack Smight had directed Paul Newman in private eye yarn Harper (1966) the bulk of his movies, regardless of genre, were tinged with comedy. While he allows Steiger full vent for his impersonations, he keeps the actor buttoned-down for most of the time, allowing a more nuanced performance. Violence, too, is almost non-existent, no threshing of limbs of terrified victims. John Gay wrote the screenplay from a novel by William Goldman (who had written the screenplay for Harper) so short it almost constituted a movie treatment.

In reality, the comedy is slight and if you overlook a sequence poking fun at the vertically-challenged, what remains is an examination of propulsion towards fulfilment through notoriety and the irony that the murders elevate the mundane life of the investigating officer.

Behind the Scenes: “Compulsion”(1959)

Controversy breeds controversy. Convicted killer Nathan Leopold was furious when author Meyer Levin reneged on his deal to write a book concentrating only on the murderer’s prison time, instead churning out a fictionalized account of the “crime of the century.” Levin’s novel, published in October 1956 by Simon & Schuster in the U.S., was snapped up by Darryl F. Zanuck for an upfront fee of $150,000 and the same again when the movie appeared.

A play, also ensnared in controversy, preceded the movie. Broadway producer Michael Myerberg was so dissatisfied by Levin’s script that he called in Robert Thom as co-writer. For his efforts Thom was due one-fifth of Levin’s share of the stage royalties. The play opened at the Ambassador in New York on 24 October 24, enjoying a healthy 18-week run.

There was contemporary feel to the cast given that, like now, Broadway was recruiting big names from Hollywood including Rex Harrison, Richard Burton, Walter Pidgeon, Anne Baxter, Joan Blondell, Paulette Goddard and for Compulsion rising star Dean Stockwell (Gun for a Coward, 1956). Actually, there was a heck of cast. As in the movie Stockwell played Judd. Roddy McDowell (Five Card Stud, 1968) played Arthur. But the big sensation was an “obscure actor” understudy Michael Constantine (Beau Geste, 1966), thrown into the limelight by illness, in the key role of the defense attorney. Also in small roles were Ina Balin (The Commancheros, 1961), Barbara Loden (Fade In, 1968), Suzanne Pleshette (Nevada Smith, 1966) and John Marley (The Godfather, 1972).

Levin complained he had been forced “under duress” to take on Thom as a co-writer and refused to pay him. The case went to court. Levin lost but he won a victory of a sort in writing Thom out of the play when it made its London West End debut. Meanwhile, Leopold was intent on his own revenge, on release from prison on parole in 1958 and having published his own autobiography, suing Levin and Zanuck, among others, for $1.5 million. He, too, was a loser in court.

In an early version of the nepo baby, Darryl F. Zanuck gave son Richard a leg-up by assigning him to be producer of the movie.

When director Richard Fleischer entered the equation Orson Welles was already cast as the defense attorney modelled after Clarence Darrow. The director might well have signed up on the strength of the script by Oscar-nominated Frank Murphy (Broken Lance, 1954). “It was the best I ever read,” he said. Among other things, Murphy had tightened up on the action of the play, removing scenes set in prison long after event, and taking a documentary-style approach to the film.

On hearing Welles was involved, “my tongue was hanging out,” admitted Fleischer. Given Welles’ murky finances, time was always going to be of the essence. Tax problems limited the amount of time – ten days exactly – he was available for shooting. And nobody was going to waste any of that valuable time on rehearsals. He arrived from Mexico on the day of the shooting and was booked onto a voyage to China the night filming finished.

Welles always supplied himself with a false nose, and that was the director’s first astonishing encounter with his star, on the first day of shooting. Welles explained his real nose was “just a button” and only once had appeared with it in a movie. He claimed Laurence Olivier was prone to the same insecurity. That wasn’t the actor’s only peccadillo.

He had trouble remembering lines. To cover this up he would claiming he was “reaching” for the words, actorspeak for showing thinking on camera. Fleischer discovered the way to challenge the actor over this was to tell him his reaching was so “realistic” it looked like he had forgotten his lines. In addition, Welles hated having anyone in his eye line, couldn’t cope with eye contact at all. So when it came for his part of a two-person scene he would play it to a blank wall, but with pauses, laughter, “exactly as though there were someone speaking to him.”

In the normal course of filming such a problem could be accommodated. It was a different story when it came to the movie climax, an 18-minute speech, the longest uninterrupted monologue in movie history. It was impossible to film it in one take. Apart from anything else, a movie camera only held ten minutes of film. So it needed broken down into smaller sections, some of which were quite long in themselves. As some of the speech was directed in general terms to the courtroom that didn’t demand eye contact so Welles was safe there.

But other sections had to be directed to the prosecutor (E.G. Marshall) and his team. To get round the problem of maintaining eye contact, Welles had a simple solution. All the other actors had to keep their eyes closed. And that’s what they did. Fleischer recalled as “a ludicrous but memorable sight” seeing all the actors “line up, listening intently, with their eyes closed.”

Only four days were left for the speech. So the director pointed his three cameras in one direction and shot every section of the speech that applied to, then moved the cameras around until he had completed a 360-degree rotation. However, the last section was filmed in one complete, technically complicated, three-minute section. It was rehearsed to fulfil the technical criteria and then Welles was left alone on the set for a couple of hours to do his own rehearsal. He didn’t want Fleischer to see any of his performance beforehand, just come in and film it. In other words, trust the actor. A dangerous proposition given this was the second last day Welles was available. However, Welles delivered a virtuoso performance captured by intricate camerawork.

To save money, the studio had revamped a set from another picture, dressed up with “a little paint, some different trim…a set for almost no cost.” Fleischer had redressed an older that set lacked one wall. Welles, clearly unaware of budgetary problems, wanted to make his exit from the scene through the side that had no wall. Told that was impossible, Welles noted that, if director, he would have stood up to the studio, forced them to build a wall so he could exit in the manner that seemed most appropriate. “That’s why I’m directing this picture and not you,” was the director’s prompt reply.

Needless to say, Welles was not always on his best behaviour. Sometimes, he was playing to the gallery, especially if the producer hove into view, or if he was feeling narked that a director with conspicuously lesser directorial skills was in charge. Among those to receive both barrels were a hapless stills photographer and a publicity man guilty of an imaginary slight. Both these incidents could be brushed off, the collateral of tension on any movie. It was a different story when the director was in the legendary actor’s sights, as occurred when Welles had the opportunity to view dailies. He took the film apart, “a total disaster from beginning to end.” Explanation for the unexpected explosion came from the fact that his salary had been “garnished” by a tax official, meaning he wouldn’t be paid.

At Cannes the three stars shared Best Actor honors. Fleischer was nominated for a Bafta and a DGA. Despite fears that to avoid stirring up old controversy Chicago would be denied a release, that city proved one of the earliest to show the movie. It did well in the big cities, less well elsewhere. Rentals were a disappointing $1.8 million, ranking it 48^th for the year. In London, exhibitors exploited the old gimmick of denying patrons entrance once Orson Welles lumbered to his feet for his big speech.

Despite success in the big-budget adventure field with movies like 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (1954) and The Vikings (1958), Fleischer hankered after independence. He set up his own shingle Nautilus but complained that with so many “properties” tied up by the studios, and likewise marquee names, he was reduced to “combing library shelves and finding properties major studios had missed.” He had three projects on his planned indie slate – Willing Is My Lover, an original screenplay by Frank Murphy, an adaptation of Tolstoy’s Resurrection and Trouble in July by Erskine Caldwell. But none ever saw the light of day.

SOURCES: Richard Fleischer, Just Tell Me When To Cry, Carroll & Graf, 1993, p161-175; “Writers Harvest,” Variety, December 5, 1956; “Compulsion Producer,” Variety, September 25, 1957, p1; “Legit Increasingly Recruits Players from Film,” Variety, October 9, 1957, p63; “Shows on Broadway,” Variety, October 30, 1957, p82; “Levin Withholds Thom Royalties for Compulsion,” Variety, December 11, 1957, -p73; “Meyer Must Pay,” Variety, March 12, 1958, p73; “Meyer Levin to London,” Variety, December 28, 1958, p49; “Old Gimmick, New Pic,” Variety, May 13, 1959, p12; “Properties, Stars Monopolized,” Variety, July 22, 1959, p10; “Now-Free Slayer Sues on Privacy,” Variety, October 7, 1959, p21.

Compulsion (1959) ****

One movie that didn’t need Orson Welles to ride in and save the day and in some senses he gets in its way. Not because he’s – as was often his wont if lacking strong direction – over-acting but because his presence shifts the narrative imperative from motive and psychiatric investigation to a plea against passing the death sentence. A fictionalized version of the “crime of the century,” the kidnapping and killing of a young boy by Leopold and Lowe, a pair of intellectually arrogant wealthy young men, in Chicago 1924, it would make ideal fodder for a Netflix true crime slot, especially as there was no contesting the evidence.

Until the arrival of woebegone defense attorney Jonathan Wilks (Orson Welles) – Clarence Darrow in the real case – this has been given a low key docu style treatment even if it only touches upon what might have caused Arthur (Bradford Dillman) and Judd (Dean Stockwell) to embark on their terrible deed. They have intellectualized murder, believing that they are beyond mortals in their cranial superiority and therefore not only capable of committing the perfect crime, but relishing the prospect of getting away with it and rubbing their inferiors’ noses in the dirt.

Cocky sexually confident Arthur is the dominant one, constantly tormenting his friend for his social deficiencies, Judd the more vulnerable, astonished to find that someone can interpret the loss of his mother as impinging on his emotional security. We enter the tale post-crime and the narrative assumes the audience is already familiar with the Leopold and Lowe case, which proves a distraction now because I had to look them up to fill in the blanks.

Setting aside their superiority, the movie brings to the fore aspects of criminal behavior only familiar to us from more recent analysis. For example, Arthur wants to remain close to the investigation, offering the police advice, and taking malicious enjoyment out of pointing out possible suspects. Police procedure, which would still have been in its infancy, nonetheless turns upon tracing 4,200 purchases of a very common type of spectacles which, in an unexpected twist, is suddenly whittled down to three thanks to this particular pair containing an unique advanced design element.

However, alibis only fall apart by accident as the pair stick to their rehearsed stories even in the face of intense interrogation, especially Judd’s contention that his spectacles could have fallen from his jacket pocket close to where the body was discovered by pure coincidence. The pair have already confessed when Wilks rides to the rescue, or at least save them from corporal punishment. Most of this is via a legal trick. He places the onus of deciding their fate on the thoughtful judge who can follow legal argument more easily than a bloodthirsty jury appalled at the crime and out for revenge.

In his deployment of Orson Welles, director Richard Fleischer (The Boston Strangler, 1968) plays a blinder. Audiences expecting to see Welles in full bombastic oratory flow were blindsided by the almost apologetic tone taken. There’s virtually none of the usual courtroom sparring and there’s no last-minute witness final twist as was de rigeur for the genre. But, then, you’ve got Orson Welles, the greatest American actor never to win an Oscar, given what he could do with words, glances, whispers and silence. He’s always going to get the last laugh in an exchange of banter, but with a life a stake this isn’t the time for bluster.

It’s an incredibly well-judged performance. Setting aside the monologue, the kind actors would kill for, it’s his general demeanor, almost self-effacing, nothing swanky in his dress, and yet not resorting either to actor gimmicks like wiping sweat from his head with a handkerchief nor even raising his voice. Compare this to the Oscar-winning performance of Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and you’ll wonder why the Academy chose to overlook Welles.

But he’s not the only standout. Bradford Dillman (Circle of Deception, 1961) has the showiest role, oozing icy charm and indifference, but the more obviously emotionally-crippled Dean Stockwell (Psych-Out, 1968) has the more difficult. Perhaps Diane Varsi (Wild in the Streets, 1968) has the toughest part, convincing as the girl who finds something worth caring about inside a killer.

Richard Fleischer has always been unfairly tabbed as the not-great director who made a number of great films. Whichever way your sympathy falls on this issue, this is one of his great movies, steering clear of the sensational, cleverly keeping Welles out of sight until virtually the final third of the movie and then, courtesy of how well he has managed the material, not allowing the actor to steal the show.

Hardly dated at all given the death penalty is still practised in many U.S. states and countries around the world. The plea for clemency isn’t so much the driving force as the acceptance that money doesn’t buy immunity from psychiatric disorder and may well be its cause. Despite his arrogance, Arthur seeks the approval of “Mumsy”, while Judd has no mother. With a host of servants to carry out the parenting, the actual parents can go off and enjoy themselves, ignorant of the dangers of lack of attachment.

It’s still hard to feel any sympathy for the pair, indulging in a thrill kill because wealth protects them and at the mercy of intellect, and while Fleischer makes no attempt at exoneration or mitigation a contemporary audience would intuit more about the family imperfections or lack of parental care or psychiatric awareness that drove them to this.

Unmissable.

Dark of the Sun / The Mercenaries (1968) ****

Rod Taylor made a brisk transition to two-fisted action hero from his previous forte of drama (Hotel, 1967) and comedy foil to Doris Day (The Glass Bottom Boat, 1966) in this violent adventure set in the Congo in the early 1960s. As Captain Curry, assisted by sidekick Sgt Ruffo (Jim Brown) and 40-man local outfit Striker Blue Force, he leads an ostensibly humanitarian mission to rescue settlers cut off by the Simba rebels as a cover for collecting $50 million in diamonds. The loot is essential to save the toppling regime of President Ubi (Calvin Lockhart). The only feasible transport is train. There is a three-day deadline.

Problems immediately ensue, not least a clash with Capt. Heinlein (Peter Carsten), former Nazi leader of Blue Force, who is even more ruthless than Curry, mowing down two native children who stray too close to the train, and apt to go into a fistfight with a chainsaw. The train is attacked by a United Nations plane and on reaching its destination Curry is forced to wait three hours until the time-controlled giant diamond vault can be opened, giving the rebels time to catch up. Then it’s an ongoing battle of one kind or another.

Although the worst of the violence is carried out by the rebels – rape, torture and massacre – a core element of the drama is how a lifetime of killing has affected Curry. Ruffo, a man of principle who grew up in a primitive tribe, acts as his conscience – and that of the audience – spelling out how violence is more than a money-making scheme and essential to upholding order in terrorist times. Curry has some redemptive features, saving widow Claire (Yvette Mimieux) from Heinlein, sending the alcoholic Doctor Wreid (Kenneth More) to help a woman give birth, and eventually acknowledging his strong bond with Ruffo. Although Curry would like to think he is the opposite of Heinlein, they are carved from the same stock and when the savage beast is loose blood lust takes over.

Claie is more or less there as bait, tempting Heinlein and any rebels in the vicinity, but coming into her own in convincing Wreid, paralytic by this stage, to carry out a section on the pregnant woman, and as a reminder of civilization for Curry.

The action scenes are terrific, particularly the plane strafing the train, and there is a particularly good ruse, instigated by Ruffo, to outwit the enemy. Hollywood never managed to portray the terror of the native Vietnamese on being overrun by Viet Cong, and this film could easily be that substitute, especially when some of the rescued white settlers realize they will not escape.

This is not one of those films like Born Free (1966) or Out of Africa (1985) which are scenic odes to the continent, in part because the picture was shot in Jamaica, but in the main because director Jack Cardiff (Our Mother’s House, 1967) chooses to focus on the mechanics of the mission. And in so doing, he writes a love letter to a train. There had a mini-vogue for war movies set on trains – Von Ryan’s Express (1965) and The Train (1965) come to mind – but none reveal an adoration for the power and perhaps the beauty of the locomotive. Every move it makes (to steal an idea from pop group The Police) is noted on screen and on the soundtrack, the hissing, the belching smoke, the wheels, cabooses, engine, the coupling and uncoupling of links, the screech of brakes, and various tracking and crane shots as the train snakes its way through enemy terrain.

Rod Taylor is excellent in the kind of role he is made for. Jim Brown in a major step up the billing after The Dirty Dozen (1967) is surprisingly good in a part that calls as much for reflection as action. Peter Carsten is the all-time Nazi scum. Yvette Mimieux, who had partnered Taylor in The Time Machine (1960), is also in transition mode, her role a meatier dramatic departure from the likes of the innocuous Monkeys, Go Home! (1967). In what was essentially his last major role – even though it doesn’t amount to much in screen time – Kenneth More (Sink the Bismarck!, 1960) wavers considerably from his stiff-upper-lip default.

The score by Jacques Loussier is particularly good, as Quentin Tarantino attested when he incorporated elements of it for Inglorious Bastards, which was a boon for the composer since up till then he was best remembered for the music accompanying the advert for Hamlet cigars. You might get a laugh out of the screenplay credits. Quentin Werty (i.e. Qwerty, the first six letters on a typewriter) the pseudonym of Ranald McDougall, Oscar-nominated for Mildred Pierce (1945), co-wrote the screenplay, adapted from the novel by Wilbur Smith, with television writer Adrian Spies.

An outstanding example of the all-out action mission picture, its occasional outdated attitudes do not get in the way of the picture and half a century later from what we now know of how wars are fought the levels of violence will appear realistic rather than exploitative.

When Time Ran Out (1980) / Earth’s Final Fury ***

The Director’s Cut, can you believe? Or less pompously, The Expanded Version. An extra 30 minutes added to the general release version that traveled the world to general disfavor. (The original 121-minute cut was edited to 109 minutes and this version clocks in at 144 minutes.) Was it a sense of disgruntlement – or sheer opportunism – that led to the Director’s Cut, so many of which scarcely improved on the original version. How many versions can an audience take of The Exorcist (1973) or Blade Runner (1982)? And even where extra length definitely added depth to Kingdom of Heaven (2005) that couldn’t overcome its major flaw, in a massive case of hubris, director Ridley Scott believing he could get away with casting Orlando Bloom instead of waiting till Russell Crowe became available.

When Time Ran Out killed off the disaster cycle and the Hollywood career of uber-producer Irwin Allen who had started that particular ball rolling with The Poseidon Adventure (1972), upped the ante with The Towering Inferno (1974) and dropped the ball with The Swarm (1978) and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979).

This doesn’t feel so much like a disaster movie as a picture tying up all the knots, various relationships coming asunder, and having to accommodate a bunch of well-known supporting actors of dubious all-star-cast status before they suddenly spring into dramatic narrative view. Audiences had never been particularly keen on volcanic pictures, after all what can the trapped characters do but dodge a sludge of soup and hope they don’t run straight into a tidal wave or, worse, have to negotiate a rickety/rope bridge. The chances of you having a tightrope walker coming to the rescue would generally be remote but that’s what we have here (step forward Burgess Meredith).

I had thought from the title and some guy in a hazmat suit wandering over a desolate area that this might be a prophetic eco-disaster, but excepting that there’s, for reasons best known to the scriptwriters, an oil well being drilled close to a volcano and that hotel investor Shelby (William Holden) has the bright idea of using the volcano as a marketing prop, there’s nothing much going on. The special effects are okay on the small screen, but even if they had been spectacular on the big screen their effect on the much smaller environs of DVD would in any case have been diminished.

So, basically, it’s reliant on working up sufficient audience interest in the relationships to make us care for the characters. We’re offered a pair of two-timing teams. First up, we’ve got Shelby’s secretary and marketing guru Kay (Jacqueline Bisset) who’s just turned down the offer to become his sixth “or seventh” wife, but who, presumably is enjoying, this being the 1980s and not the 1930s, some kind of sexual dalliance with him. When Kay meets up with oil driller old flame Hank (Paul Newman), they rekindle their romance, although with doom impending there’s not much time to take it forward beyond a picnic on the beach.

Next up, hotelier Bob (James Franciscus) is cheating on wife Nikki (Veronica Hamel), Shelby’s god-daughter, with staff member Iolani (Barbara Carerra) who is due to be married to childhood sweetheart hotel manager Brian (Edward Albert). To flesh out the tale, both Shelby and Bob have daddy issues, Tom (Ernest Borgnine) is a New York cop on the tail of swindler Francis (Red Buttons), and no doubt audiences will be desperate to find who wins a cockfighting contest being held in a local saloon.

Modern transport proves no match for an eruption, so in quick succession we see a car and a helicopter tumbling down the mountainside. The tsunami wipes out a good chunk of the actors that didn’t make it into the all-star-cast bracket and everyone else takes to the hills, no doubt hoping they won’t encounter a rickety/rope bridge. Disaster turns enemies into pals, Tom and Francis, for example, though it’s only now that Nikki comes across her husband’s infidelity.

And this would be a disaster all round except that having hooked myself into watching this, courtesy of a freebie on YouTube, and nothing of real dramatic interest going on, I found myself, oddly enough, concentrating on the three principals and was treated, even more odd I guess, to fine examples of just what these stars do to earn their crust. Paul Newman (The Prize, 1963) in particular, with very little to react to, does very little but with incredible facial agility, to genuine effect, portraying emotion with infinitesimal gesture. Sure, he’s always had the shrug and the walk, both far more suggestive of inner turmoil than any other actor I can name, but here, with very little dialog coming to his aid, you can tell exactly what’s going on in those baby blues.

Jacqueline Bisset (The Cape Town Affair, 1969), too, dressed a good bit less suggestively than in the posters, essays a confident woman coming unstuck when confronted with a romantic error. The scenes between the pair are not meant to be scorching, so there’s none of the screen charisma audiences might feel they’ve been sold, but instead it’s a slow-burn, a couple trying to come to terms with each other, passing through disappointment and hopefully onto something better. And you can’t find anyone better to carry disillusion than William Holden (The Devil’s Brigade, 1968).

Abject swansong for director James Goldstone (Winning, 1969) and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Carl Foreman (The Guns of Navarone, 1961) but Oscar-winning co-writer Stirling Silliphant (Marlowe, 1969) carried on longer. Who wrote the most effective scenes, Shelby’s engagement ploy and Hank’s initial rejection of Kay, is anybody’s guess but there is some quality writing here. Probably the strangest part of the whole debacle was that the source was a piece of non-fiction, The Day the World Ended by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts, about a 1902 eruption on Martinique that had nothing to do with oil wells or hotel construction.

There’s always something wrong with a disaster picture if you suggest watching it for the acting, but happily, this is the case.

Once Before I Die (1966) ****

Nobody ever took Ursula Andress seriously as an actress. Ditto the directorial skills of her one-time husband John Derek (Bolero, 1984). Their combination was viewed as a cosmic joke. And it doesn’t start well here, the credits little more than a paean to her beauty, hair rippling in the wind etc, so much so you wouldn’t be surprised to find her later on running in slo-mo through a cornfield. The opening sequence couldn’t be more Raquel Welch, Andress sporting a white bikini as she shoots the rapids. And the premise looks like little more than a wartime western.

Instead…

Technically, this is surprising, ocasionally astounding, as the director makes use of the kind of image layering that attracted kudos for Francis Coppola in Apocalypse Now (1979) and with one stunning sequence shown entirely, in close-up, through the eyes of the actress. Andress is far from eye candy. Opportunities to show her naked or at least soaked to the skin, obligatory scenes set in water, are passed over. Instead, she is the camera’s conduit. The innocent bystander responding to war, and sharing in the shock of the youngsters, mostly virgins, who will never see a naked woman before they die.

Having to literally deal with the title should be the only false note and yet strangely enough there’s a haunting lyrical quality in the contrast between her, in the midst of battle, acquiescing to the shameful desire of a 22-year-old soldier to be kissed and his colleagues’ glee at burning to death the occupants of an enemy tank. An act of humanity set off against raw brutality.

The set-up is simple enough. Just after Pearl Harbor, a group of polo playing soldiers in the Phillippines are strafed by Japanese planes. Cavalry leader Bailey (John Derek) and his troop set off by horseback cross country for Manila. He sends his girlfriend Alex (Ursula Andress) off in the same direction in her ritzy car. Against instructions, she loads up her car with puppies and refugees, an old lady and a child, and when she gets stuck, Bailey allows the trio to accompany the soldiers to safety. When they reach a village, her linguistic skills come in handy, pinpointing a Frenchman and his native girl, purportedly translating, as lying about food supplies.

In rooting out a bloodied teddy bear, Bailey is accidentally killed and for the rest of the picture Alex is in something of a catatonic state, but doing her best to keep up soldier morale, as attendant to the worries of the young, fearing death, as to the more experienced gung-ho shaven-headed Custer (Richard Jaeckel) who welcomes a hero’s demise. By the end, she is a combatant, shooting an enemy soldier.

By taking Alex as the cinematic focus, the director can dispense with the usual tropes of a battle-weary squad in wartime. So, beyond the youngster’s confession, we learn nothing of the soldiers’ lives, and that, too, is somehow refreshing, as going down that route at best seems like a vain attempt to make audiences sympathize with unsympathetic characters, and at worst, is a delaying device.

All you need to know is that guys who would otherwise be larking about, drinking beer, telling tall stories or playing polo, are vicious in war, gunning down as if a communal firing squad a captured grunt, so trigger happy they shoot one of their own in the middle of the night, so careless they are liable to drop a grenade at their own feet.

And, much to my astonishment, there’s dialog and scenes Tarantino would be proud of. Custer explaining that he shaves his head “to get rid of every hair” is the kind of line that in a more acclaimed picture would be noted. Custer again, accused of making up a story that he has killed a bundle of Japs, looks initially as if he believes himself guilty of too fertile an imagination until he interrupts a chat between two disbelieving officers by chucking an enemy corpse onto their laps.

And there’s genuine screen charisma between Alex and Bailey, a wonderful scene where she takes gentle umbrage at being scolded for refusing to obey orders, but nothing played out to the brim, everything understated, the actions of a couple who don’t need to display their love to the world because they are already committed.

The Virgin Soldiers (1969) played the central theme for laffs but didn’t achieve an ounce of the truth expressed by the raw youngster, who’s ashamed to be revealing such fears to a woman, and to be even asking her to relieve them, and of the dumbness to be muddying his thoughts in a life-and-death situation with fantasies about sex. You can certainly argue with the notion that women in wartime are obliged to have sex with any passing soldier (who sometimes take without asking) who could die a virgin, and taking that into consideration, this shouldn’t work at all. It’s only a kiss and hand-holding after all, and she’s not maternal about it, or even pitying, and after all, deprived of a future husband, she also needs solace.

I mentioned before about finding suprises in my trawl through this decade’s movies and there couldn’t be a bigger surprise than this which must have lain unseen on my shelves for years as I dreaded inflicting upon myself another movie by the director of Tarzan the Ape Man (1981).

But astute direction and the determination to allow Andress to act, to show scenes through her eyes, the sign of any great actress, pay off. Career-best performance from Richard Jaeckel (The Devils’ Brigade, 1968), no show-boating here either. The budget restricts the action, but, oddly enough, that’s to the film’s benefit as it allows it to play off Andress more.

Well worth a watch.