adaptation of bestseller – Page 20

Stiletto (1969) ***

The bursting of the B-movie bubble dealt a death blow to the careers of the two stars here. In the past, rising talent who failed to make the marquee grade could find almost a lifetime of contentment in low-budget westerns, neo-noir thrillers and down’n’dirty exploitationers with the hope of an occasional supporting role in a bigger picture to ease their path. By the end of the decade, just about the only option were Roger Corman biker flicks or spaghetti westerns. Especially if they had gone down the tough guy route, B-pictures might have provided an exemplary move for both Alex Cord and Patrick O’Neal. As it was, this was their last shot at the big time. And it was lean pickings.

Retirement can be a tough call any time for a high-flying businessman. But when you’re at the top of your profession in the Mafia, loosening such ties can prove problematic. Count Cesare (Alex Cord) is a part-time assassin, spending the rest of his time as a fun-loving playboy with a string of women, fast cars and racehorses. Only problem is, he wants to retire from the Family – and not in normal fashion, weighted down by a block of cement. Unfortunately, his dilemma doesn’t solicit sympathy from boss Matteo (Joseph Wiseman).

Adding to his problems is tough cop Baker (Patrick O’Neal) on his tail who fastens onto illegal immigrant Illeana (Britt Ekland), Cesare’s girlfriend when he’s not pursuing Ann (Barbara McNair). A strictly by-the-numbers thriller it’s enlivened by two underrated tough screen hombres. Alex Cord (The Brotherhood, 1968) isn’t given enough of a character here to tug at audience heartstrings although elsewhere he had proved better-than-expected value. If anything, he’s an existential kind of hero.

Cord made a brief splash as an action hero in the monosyllabic Clint Eastwood/Charles Bronson mold after debuting in the John Wayne role of the Ringo Kid in the remake of Stagecoach (1966) and didn’t have more than half a dozen stabs at making his name on the big screen before disappearing into the television hinterlands. So he’s something of an acquired taste, maybe the small output enough to qualify him for cult status. Here, he’s a decent fit for the violence but saddled with a role that makes little sense.

Patrick O’Neal (El Condor, 1970) followed a similar career trajectory, swapping television with the occasional movie and even managing a screen persona as a snarky type of villain/supporting character. A few more tough-guy roles and he might well have built a stronger footing in the business.

This is another thankless role for Britt Ekland (Machine Gun McCain, 1969), there to add glamor, but, surprisingly, she manages to bring pathos to the part. Barbara McNair (If He Hollers Let Him Go, 1968), always worth watching and who had made an auspicious debut the year before, hardly gets any screen time.

Director Bernard L. Kowalski (Krakatoa, East of Java, 1968) proves better at the action than the characterization, though, luckily nobody needs to be anything other than tough. Three scenes, in particular, are well handled – the opening murder in a casino, a shoot-out a penthouse and the climax on a deserted island which has more than a hint of a spaghetti western. Joseph Wiseman (Dr No, 1962) rustles up another interesting performance and collectors of trivia might note Roy Scheider (Jaws, 1975) putting in an appearance.

This old-style tough-guy thriller would have been better off had the Cord vs. O’Neal set-up taken center stage, with the assassin on murderous overkill hunted down by the zealous cop. As it is, it’s a missed opportunity for Cord to develop an Eastwood/Bronson persona and enter the action star hall of fame.

Based on a thin Harold Robbins bestseller, the screenplay by W.R. Burnett (The Great Escape, 1963) and A.J. Russell (A Lovely Way to Die, 1968) doesn’t take any prisoners.

Doesn’t quite deliver what it says on the tin, but interesting to see Cord and O’Neal battle it out.

The Sicilian Clan / Le Clan des Siciliens (1969) *****

Absolutely cracking, brilliantly structured, gangster thriller featuring two fabulous heists and three legendary French stars in Jean Gabin, Alain Delon and Lino Ventura. Roger Sartet (Delon) is a trigger-happy robber whose terrific prison escape is organized for a hefty fee by French-based Mafia chieftain Vittorio Manalese (Gabin). Le Goff (Ventura) is the rugged cop hunting down the escapee which brings him into the orbit of Manalese, about whose existence he is completely unaware, the gangster having kept an extremely low profile, never engaging in violence, hiding behind the legitimate front of a pinball machine business. Veteran French director Henri Verneuil (Guns for San Sebastian, 1968) dukes between the twin storylines with ease.

Sartet brings Manalese the opportunity to pull off the most audacious jewel robbery in history, even though the older man despises Sartet’s penchant for violence and sex. We often see Manalese at family gatherings, head of the dinner table, the family watching television together, frowning on one son’s liking for alcohol, playing with his grandson. He is not just a calm and clever businessman, but very quick-thinking, his sharp mind in a couple of instances preventing disaster. Sartet, on the other hand, will happily endanger his life and freedom by consorting with prostitutes and breaking an unspoken code of honor in an affair with Manalese’s son’s wife (Irina Demick).

The result combines dogged detective work by Le Goff and the inspired planning and execution of the jewel robbery until the two worlds collide. The investigation alone would have made this an outstanding picture. Le Goff, always seen with an unlit cigarette in his mouth although he is trying to give up smoking, concentrating initially on Sartet, sets up surveillance on the thief’s innocent sister and begins an involved – and engrossing – process of tracking down every potential lead and when at last he has Sartet in his sights it brings him up close to Manalese.

Le Goff’s professionalism is matched by that of Manalese and the picture develops into an absorbing battle of wits and the latter’s family values and moral compass puts him at odds with loner Sartet. There is some brilliant invention, the sacrificial watch, for example, and the unexpected appearance of a faithful British wife, although you do guess just how long Le Goff will go before lighting his ever-tempting cigarette.

The ultra-cool Alain Delon (Once a Thief, 1965) excels in this kind of amoral part, but Jean Gabin (Any Number Can Win, 1963) and Lino Ventura (Army of Shadows, 1969) as old-style gangster and cop, respectively, steal the show. Irina Demick (Prudence and the Pill, 1968) thrives as the bored wife of a dull gangster who is attracted by the violent Delon, at one point deliberately putting herself in the line of his potential fire for the thrill. Actually, it’s the jewel heist that steals the show. Unlike other heist pictures where you have fair idea in advance of the details of the theft, here the audience is kept completely in the dark. Just as important in any heist is that the thieves get away with their plunder and the plan in this instance is breath-taking.

As proved by The Burglars (1971) director Henri Verneuil has the nose for a heist, but this tops that for sheer audacity and elan. Verneuil, Delon and Gabin had worked together on Any Number Can Play. Written by Verneuil and Jose Giovanni (Rififi in Tokyo, 1963) from the novel by Auguste Le Breton (Rififi, 1965).

Preceding The Godfather (1972) in its exploration of family and Mafia code of conduct, it offers plenty in the humanity department while dazzling with ingenuity in the criminality stakes.

Unmissable.

Our Mother’s House (1967) ***

Lord of the Flies set in a sprawling London Victorian mansion. At its best when kids give rein to vivid imagination, not so strong when melodrama intrudes.

After the death of her invalid mother and dreading being sent to an orphanage, eldest child Elsa (Margaret Brooks), who has been with the help of a maid running the house anyway, determines that she and the rest of the brood will pretend their mother is still alive. They bury the body in the garden, manage financially after Jimimee (Mark Lester) discovers an aptitude for forging their mother’s signature on the monthly cheques she receives from a trust fund, and hold séances in the shed to commune with the deceased one.

To maintain the pretence, they get rid of the nosey and querulous maid Mrs Quayle (Yootha Joyce) and come up with all sorts of reasons to explain their mother’s absence to school teachers and neighbors. Child fears run rampant as they visualize the terrible lives they would lead in an orphanage. But the generally tolerant community lifestyle is disturbed by the dictatorial rule of Elsa, determining that Gerty (Sarah Nicholls), for example, must have her long hair sheared off for innocently breaking a house rule and, in keeping with their mother’s fundamentalist beliefs, refuses to call a doctor when the girl falls ill. But the séance takes on a creepier aspect, Elsa the one in communion with her mother and therefore using the supposed other-worldy presence to enforce her will.

So far, so Lord of the Flies, and excellent in its depiction of a world ruled by children according to their fears and beliefs and without adult intercession. But it loses its grip when melodrama takes hold.

Their mother’s dissolute husband Charlie (Dirk Bogarde) returns, romancing Mrs Quayle, and, initially, spoiling the children, who are delighted to see him. He soon reverts to form, spending all their money, getting Charlie to forge his mother’s signature on the house deeds, planning to pocket the proceeds and dispatch the kids to an orphanage. Worse, he breaks the spell their seemingly devout mother had over their children, informing them that their mother’s conversion to religion only came after a life of debauchery and that, in fact, every single one of them is illegitimate and not his offspring. That’s too much for Diana (Pamela Franklin) who kills him with a poker.

Too many twists for sure and by diverting a fascinating dissertation of childhood into adult melodrama robs the film of much of its power.

Director Jack Clayton had been here before with The Innocents (1961) but, there, less was spelled out. Dirk Bogarde (Justine, 1969) is surprisingly good as the charming rough layabout with an eye to the main chance but it’s the children who captivate especially Pamela Franklin (And Soon the Darkness, 1970) and Mark Lester (Oliver!, 1968). The children’s innocence in any case would have been despoiled as they challenged Elsa’s rule and it would have been more satisfying to go down that route.

It was based on the bestseller by Julian Gloag and for anyone wondering what happened to Haya Harareet (Ben-Hur, 1959, and The Secret Partner, 1961) she married Clayton and is credited with the screenplay of this along with Jeremy Brooks.

Slow-burn that trips the wrong way.

Rocket to the Moon / Those Fantastic Flying Fools (1967) ***

The Jules Verne express grinds to a halt in part because the promise of outer space adventure fails to materialize and in part because the treatment is comedic in the manner of The Great Race (1965). A series of sketches with a shifting array of characters rarely works. Occasionally it hits the mark in a laugh out loud fashion but too often the jokes are labored although as a tribute to a maze of inventive invention it’s a treat.

Unusually for such an all-star cast venture, we are, long before the titular action and a race (of sorts) commences, treated to the greatest hits from the book of all-time failures. So we have electricity setting on fire the first country house, belonging to the Duke of Barset (Dennis Price), to be so illuminated; a new-fangled suspension bridge, courtesy of Sir Charles Dillworthy (Lionel Jeffries), that collapses when Queen Victoria cuts the ribbon; and a new type of explosive invented by German von Bulow (Gert Frobe) that proves a tad overpowering. Meanwhile, making possible the idea of sending a man to the moon is the arrival in Britain of the diminutive General Tom Thumb (Jimmy Clitheroe) accompanied by the bombastic and greedy Phineas T. Barnum (Burl Ives).

Combining the various scientific advances of propulsion and engineering have the flaw of not being able to bring a manned rocket back home. And sinister forces are at work, spies and fraudsters.

As with all these all-star comedies you spend half the time wondering how your favorite star is going to be worked into the equation and, having been squeezed into the narrative, justify their ongoing involvement. Daliah Lavi (Old Shatterhand, 1964), not particulary known for her comic gifts, is a case in point. On her wedding day she (as Madelaine) jilts French groom Henri (Edward de Souza) in favor of balloonist Gaylord (Troy Donohue) who has, literally, appeared on the horizon. Henri trying to down said balloon triggers an awful joke about a shotgun wedding.

To gain revenge, Henri funds the project on the basis of Gaylord being the moon pilot, and, in anticipation of the craft’s failure, that he will regain his bride. Madelaine, having been sidelined by all the developments, suddenly rushes back to center stage when she uncovers the devious plot and is shipped off to a home for wayward girls, run by the very wayward Angelica (Hermione Gingold). But that requires she escape and find her way back to her beloved, that aspect complicated because she loves both men (it transpires).

As the script is in the invidious position of having to place the participants into similar frying pans in order to effect similar rescues it’s as much a game of ping-pong as a movie. But there are some nice gags, a rocket attached to a helmet, the ruination of a teleprinter and the criminally-inclined Washington-Smythe (Terry-Thomas) who rooks billiard players with a magnet. And there’s a very contemporary financial element in that large wagers are placed on failure rather than success, the equivalent of betting on stocks going down rather than up (short selling in the modern idiom)

The rocket is launched, with rather a different crew than originally anticipated following further skullduggery, and although it’s something of a cosmic joke that it only gets as far as Russia it’s rather a disappointing ending for fans of Verne who anticipated a more rigorous approach. Verne’s novel From the Earth to the Moon was surprisingly accurate in imagining how a projectile would achieve its aims. The novel had even more of a contemporary feel since it left the crew floating in space, a daringly artistically inconclusive climax, leaving the way open – again the contemporary flair – for sequel Around the Moon that explained their fate.

Oddly enough, Daliah Lavi, as the bride who can’t make up her mind, has one of the better parts, more fleshed out than most of the other flimsy characterizations. The likes of Troy Donohue, caught between heroism and doing nothing much at all, often looks flummoxed. Terry-Thomas (How To Murder Your Wife, 1965) in wily mode is the pick of the rest.

Director Don Sharp (The Brides of Fu Manchu, 1966) proves that comedy is not his metier. Screenplay by Dave Freeman (British TV sitcom writer making his movie debut) after Harry Alan Towers (Five Golden Dragons, 1967) altered the author’s original premise. While it could be skewered for taking such liberties with the august author, it is far better than you might expect, but not as good as it could, or should, be.

Three into Two Won’t Go (1969) ***

Unhappily married and childless salesman Steve (Rod Steiger) begins an affair with kooky promiscuous hitchhiker Ella (Judy Geeson). A free spirit in control of her life – no VD and on the Pill – and happy to drift from mundane job to mundane job, Ella ranks her many lovers on their sexual performance. Steve has just moved into a new house on a dreary new estate, perhaps in the hope of revitalizing his staid marriage to Frances (Claire Bloom).

While Steve is away on business, Ella turns up at his home where, revealing, without implicating Steve, that she is pregnant, she convinces Frances to let her stay the night. Naturally, it is Steve’s baby, but Ella plans an abortion. Steve wants the baby and so, too, still unaware of the father, does Frances, seeing adoption as the solution to their marital woes. And so a love triangle, or more correctly a baby triangle, plays out, with a few unexpected twists.

Like most of the marital dramas of the 1960s, especially in the wake of the no-holds-barred Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), this is riddled with outspoken protagonists who have no idea how to find real happiness. Based on the book by Andrea Newman and adapted by Edna O’Brien, who both have previously marked out this kind of territory, the picture shifts sympathy from one character to the next. While no one is entirely culpable, none are blameless either. Yet there is an innocence about Steve and Frances in the way they fling themselves in the direction of unlikely salvation. They are not the first couple to find themselves in a marital cul de sac, nor the first to do nothing about it, hoping that somehow through a new house or job promotion things will right themselves.

Audiences, accustomed to seeing Steiger (In the Heat of the Night, 1967) in morose roles, might have been shocked to see him happy and he manages to present a more rounded character than in some previous screen incarnations. In burying herself in domesticity, Claire Bloom (Charly, 1968) essays a far from fragile character, whose resilience and pragmatic character will always find a way forward. Geeson is the surprise package, at once knowing and in charge, and at other times completely out of her depth, and to some extent enjoying the chaos she sparks. The exuberant screen personality she presents here is almost a grown-up more calculating version of the character she portrays in Hammerhead (1968).

Director Peter Hall (Work is a Four-Letter Word, 1968) generates more universal appeal by ensuring the movie is not so obviously grounded in the 1960s that it would quickly become outdated and the snatching at last-minute fantasy to avert marital disharmony will still strike a note. The performances are all excellent, including a turn by Peggy Ashcroft (Secret Ceremony, 1968) and bit parts from British character actors Paul Rogers (Stolen Hours, 1963) and Elizabeth Spriggs in her second movie.

Complex but not hard work.

Two Weeks in September (1967) ***

Soubriquets were not common currency in Hollywood. Names might be shortened to a Christian name or a surname, as in Marilyn or Garbo, and occasionally a reporter might suggest an unlikely familiarity by referring to a star as “Coop” and for sure Bogie must have been desperate for people to call him anything other than Humphrey, hardly a name that spun off the tongue for a supposedly hardbitten hero eschewing his middle-class origins. But the world swung on its axis when simple use of the star’s initials were enough to guarantee universal acceptance.

BB was born on a wave of controversy. After And God Created Woman (1956) broke box office records all over the world, a star was born. But one who seemed to live as much on the pages of newspapers as on the screen. She could forever be guaranteed to provide a revealing photograph to spice up the more puritan newspapers.

But BB’s global fame didn’t translate into worldwide box office in part because her movies were mostly X-certificate in the U.K. and, being made generally by foreign companies, slipping past the Production Code in the U.S. and therefore into arthouses or shady emporiums in both countries rather than mainstream houses.

This isn’t the best introduction to her canon, but in many senses it’s pretty typical. The camera adores BB and shuns anyone else in her presence. There’s not much story here – bored wife dashes off to a model assignment in London and has an affair and can’t decide whether he’s ready for divorce.

To fill in the time we get plenty Carnaby St fashion shoots, certainly put into the shade by the likes of Blow-Up (1966), but of the kind that used to be so common, beautiful women in outlandish clothes against backdrops like zoo animals or suits of armor and all the while flirting with photographers and being chatted up in night clubs by all and sundry. As you might expec, red buses and mini cars are common, though the chances of a cop on horseback at night seems to stretch it a bit.

Cecile (Brigitte Bardot) seems too lively for staid husband Philippe (Jean Rochefort) and burdens him with ensuring her happiness. But he seems, I guess unusually for the time for such a wealthy character, to be happy for her to continue in her profession. She’s never been unfaithful unlike model buddy Patricia (Georgina Ward). But all this cavorting brings out the lech in photographer Dickinson (Mike Sarne) and while she flirts with him she fancies for no apparent reason the doe-eyed Vincent (Laurent Terzieff) although his doe-eyed dog is livelier.

Anyway, off they go to Scotland for a romantic idyll since every filmmaker in the world has been duped by Scottish Tourist Board fantasies of sunshine, tartan, heather and miles of unspoiled beaches (unaware they are empty because the natives have more sense than to go diving into icy water in freezing temperatures). Mostly, what they get is damp streets and grey skies, though if you have BB romping in the water then nobody’s really going to notice the awful weather. And, naturally, the highways and byways are filled with tartan-clad gents so Brigadoon rides again.

*Not quite sure how “To Their Heart’s Content” – clumsy in translation as it is –*
*is turned into the dull “Two Weeks in September.”* *Though she hardly seems happy in the poster.*

In any case, by the time September comes round, the sun has already packed up for the winter in Scotland, so there’s your get-out-of-jail-card in the title. Not much happens in Scotland either, mostly soulful camera work, soulful BB and dull-as-ditchwater Vincent. There’s a contrived ending.

What impresses most is how little BB you need to make a picture work, even one as patchy as this. It is almost the same template as an Elvis picture minus the songs. Just like BB, Elvis scarcely required a working script, just any excuse to get him on screen. Some stars possess screen charisman that it’s impossible to shift. Shame it was left to Serge Bourguignon (The Picasso Summer, 1969) to get more out of the faint storyline because he was never that bothered with narrative and inclined just to get by on close-ups and scenery. With BB she was as much scenery as audiences ever seemed to require.

Hardly falls into the recommended bracket but nonetheless an interesting example of how Bardot could get away with the mildest of trifles.

Murder Ahoy! (1964) ***

Agatha Christie tales were in a mostly B-movie limbo in the 1960s, despite Billy Wilder’s Witness for the Prosecution (1957) and would have to wait another decade before glorious all-star resurrection in Sidney Lumet’s Murder on the Orient Express (1974). In the meantime, audiences made do with Margaret Rutherford’s Miss Marple in an MGM quartet – all directed by George Pollock – that ended with Murder Ahoy!

Rutherford did not enjoy the national treasure status of the likes of Maggie Smith and Judi Dench these days, but she had been elevated to late-career fame by winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for The VIPs (1963). But she never quite made the cinematic impact anticipated after Blithe Spirit (1945) and was mostly seen in roles that called for eccentricity or determination, characteristics associated cinematically with Christie’s second most famous sleuth (although, in reality, the author was furious with her impersonation). And this had nothing to do with any published Christie work, just borrowed the character.

The title had led me to expect a picture set on a liner or a cruise ship. Instead, this being a cheaply-made British black-and-white feature, we are limited to sojourn on a sail training ship which remains moored at all times. Nonetheless, Miss Marple (Margaret Rutherford) is resplendent in naval attire and disports herself as if she were the captain.

Her excuse to get on board is the sudden death of a member of the committee overseeing said ship just before he makes an announcement. Miss Marple relies on a good deal more than Hercule Poirot’s little grey cells and through laboratory experiment determines the man died from strychnine poisoning. Among her other hidden talents are signaling mastery and dexterity with a sword and she drops popcorn on corridor floors to warn of imminent arrivals when she invades cabins.

The suspects include Capt Rhumstone (Lionel Jeffries), Sub-Lt Eric Humbert (Derek Nimmo), Lt. Compton (Francis Mathews) and Commander Breeze-Connington (William Mervyn) while Dr Crump (Nicholas Parsons) is described in double entendre fashion as “brisk.”

Naturally, there is more murder, and the subplots include burglary, secret romance involving Matron Fanbraid (Joan Benham) and thwarted romance with Shirley (Norma Foster). However, nothing can deter Miss Marple and she soon puts the world to rights.

It’s an engrossing enough little film, the resolution a surprise, and Rutherford has skill and charm enough to almost trademark the role. At one time in the 1960s in the USA the Marple pictures were revived as double bills but generally in Britain treated with less regard.

Although you could argue that MGM could have bolstered the standards of production, much of the merit derives from the quaintness and the quintessential English lives portrayed. Of course, Margaret Rutherford steals the show but he is ably supported by Lionel Jeffries (First Men in the Moon, 1964), Derek Nimmo, strangulated mannerisms from later BBC’s Oh, Brother not in evidence, William Mervyn (Hammerhead, 1968) and Nicholas Parsons (ITV game show Sale of the Century.)

As a bonus there are moments of well-observed comedy and a very inventive score from Ron Goodwin (633 Squadron appeared the same year). Directed by George Pollock (Kill or Cure, 1962) from a screenplay by the team of David Pursall and Jack Seddon (The Secret Partner, 1961).

Taken in the spirit it was intended and acknowledging the low budget, not bad.

Candy (1968) **

Ode to the male gaze. Once a cult vehicle, this will struggle to find favor these days what with its backward attitudes. Virtually impossible to excuse the rampant self-undulgence. The sexually exploited naïve Ewa Aulin in the title role didn’t even have the benefit of being turned into a star. The satire is executed with all the finesse of a blunderbuss. And while, theoretically, picking off a wild range of targets, if this movie has anything to say it’s to point out how easy it is for men to deify themselves at the slightest opportunity.

Not much of a narrative more a series of sketches slung together with the slightest connecting thread. Most its appeal lies in watching huge marquee names make fools of themselves. Or, if you’re that way inclined, seeing how much nudity will be imposed on the star, intimacy rarely consensual, clothes usually whipped off her.

Teenager Candy (Ewa Aulin) has father issues, daddy (Jack Austin) being a dumb angst-ridden teacher. Randy poet McPhisto (Richard Burton) drives a class of schoolgirls into a frenzy with his lusty reading, inveigles Candy into his chauffeur-driven car, ends up in her basement drunkenly humping a mannequin while Mexican gardener (Ringo Starr) with an accent as coruscating as that of Manuel from Fawlty Towers assaults her on pool table. Scandalized father packs her off to his twin brother in New York, that notoriously safe haven for nymphettes, while on the way to the airport they are almost driven off the road by the gardener’s vengeful biker sisters (Florinda Balkan et al).

For no apparent reason she is hitching a lift on a military plane commanded by randy Brigadier Smight (Walter Matthau) who, on the grounds that he hasn’t had sex for six years, commands her to remove her clothes for the good of the nation. In the Big Apple, rock star surgeon Dr Krankheir (James Coburn), entering the operating theater to the same kind of waves of acclaim as McPhisto, finds an excuse to have her undress and submit to him, this just after she’s managed to avoid the attentions of her randy uncle. It should come as no surprise that Krankheit treats women as his personal property to the extent of branding them like cattle.

In due course, she encounters a gang of mobsters, an underground movie director and a hunchback (Charles Aznavour) who, in return for her showing pity for his condition, proceeds to rape her. She is arrested. Guess who wants to frisk her. Naturally, when she escapes she runs into a bunch of drag queens.

Then she finds sanctuary in a semi-trailer truck, home to guru Grindl (Marlon Brando). He’d be convincing enough as a mystic except he, too, finds an excuse to rip her clothes off. There are more cops to contend with and another guru, facial features obscured by white clay. If they’re going to have sex then naturally it must be in a Hindu temple. Turns out the latest person to take advantage of her is her father but he’s been handed a get-out-of-jail-free card because by now he’s brain damaged.

This might all be a dream/nightmare. Candy might even be an alien. It’s dressed up in enough psychedelia to sink a battleship and its highly likely that any lass as gullible as Candy will find herself at the mercy of any man, so in that context it carries a powerful message. I’m sure many beautiful young girls will attest to the truth that men feel they have the right to paw anyone who comes their way without asking permission. And the other message is just as powerful – how many young actresses have been seduced by thoughts of fame to disport themselves in this fashion only to find that all the industry wants is their nudity not their acting talent.

You might say that the target is so obvious it hardly needs pointing out but the MeToo campaign will beg to differ and you would hope that Hollywood has wised up. It’s just a shame that the satire is so heavy-handed. The military and the medical profession are sorely in need to answering tough questions. Unfortunately, this picture doesn’t ask any. It’s like an endless casting couch.

Directed by Christian Marquand (Of Flesh and Blood, 1963) in, thankfully, his final picture, from a screenplay by Buck Henry (The Graduate, 1967) and Terry Southern (Dr Strangelove, 1962) based on the novel by Southern and Mason Hoffenberg. Nobody comes out of this well and it’s rammed full of cameos from the likes of Elsa Martinelli (The Belle Starr Story, 1968), John Huston (Myra Breckenridge, 1970), Anita Pallenberg (Performance, 1970), Marilu Tolo (Bluebeard, 1972) and boxer Sugar Ray Robinson.

Ewa Aulin (Start the Revolution Without Me, 1971) isn’t given much of chance, her character whimsical, pallid and submissive and she didn’t become a major marquee name.

A mess.

The Prize (1963) ****

Thoroughly involving potboiler with alcoholic novelist Andrew Craig (Paul Newman) turning unlikely detective to uncover murky double-dealings at the annual Nobel Prize ceremony. Based on the Irving Wallace bestseller set in Stockholm, director Mark Robson (Von Ryan’s Express,1965) strings together a number of different stories that coalesce in a gripping climax. Screenwriter Ernest Lehman (North by Northwest,1959) brings alive what could have been a very soggy adaptation of a beefy bestseller with witty and literate dialog and a plot that hovers just the right side of hokum.

Inger (Elke Sommer), delegated to look after the author, starts out as a stuffed shirt not a sexpot, allowing Newman’s attention to drift towards Emily Stratman (Diane Baker) – daughter of another winner Dr. Max Stratman (Edward G. Robinson) – while he is dragged into romantic entanglement with neglected wife Dr Denise Marceau (Micheline Presle). Mostly, Newman just wants his next drink, and his almost continual inebriation sparks some good comedy and he is gifted good lines to extricate himself from embarrassment. Simmering in the background are warring winners – the Marceau husband-and-wife team and Dr John Garrett (Kevin McCarthy) convinced that Dr Carlo Farelli (Gerard Oury), with whom he is sharing a prize, has stolen his research.

There are sufficient character clashes and plots to be getting along with if you were just intent on taking a Valley of the Dolls approach to the material, that is, cutting between various dramatic story arcs, but, without invalidating the other subsidiary tales, the movie takes quite a different turn, providing the potboiler with considerable edge.

Turns out that Andrew is so impoverished that he has been writing detective novels under a pseudonym and suspecting that Dr Stratman is an imposter he starts investigating. So in some respects it’s a private eye procedural played out against the glamorous backdrop of the awards. But the clues are inventive enough and there is a femme fatale and once Inger comes along for the ride and with Andrew a target the picture picks up an invigorating pace. Echoing the humorous auction scene in North by Northwest is a sequence set in a nudist colony where Andrew seeks refuge to avoid villains while another terrific scene plays out in the docks.

Paul Newman looks as if he is having a ball. In most of his pictures he was saddled with seriousness as if every part was chosen with an eye on the Oscars. Here, he lets rip with a lighter persona, and even if he mugs to the camera once too often, the result is a screen departure that lifts the picture. Inebriation has clearly never been so enjoyable. Sommer is a delight, showing great dramatic promise. Edward G. Robinson (Seven Thieves,1960), more renowned for his gangster roles, convinces as a scientist. Diane Baker (The 300 Spartans, 1962), Kevin McCarthy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers,1956) and Leo G. Carroll (North by Northwest) provide sterling support.

Robson directs with dexterity, mostly with an eye on pace, but it is Lehman’s script with occasional nods to Hitchcock that steals the show.

The Venetian Affair (1966) ****

Robert Vaughn gives a terrific performance as a numbed alcoholic ex-C.I.A. journalist Bill Fenner drafted into Venice to investigate a plot involving ex-wife and Communist defector Sandra Fane (Elke Sommer). He’s the spy who lost it rather than a flashy contemporary of James Bond. This occasionally very stylish number kicks off with a terrific credit sequence that concludes with a suicide bomber blowing up a nuclear disarmament conference. Unshaven and with a Columbo cast-off overcoat, Fenner discovers Fane was key to the bombing, the bomber an otherwise distinguished diplomat with no known proclivities in the area of mass murder.

Although sold as an action picture, nobody is ripping through the canals as in a Bond film, and it is altogether a more somber, reflective, intelligent movie. Fenner’s feelings for his ex-wife are palpable when, in her apartment, he tenderly touches her clothes and smells her perfume. Far from being party to the plot, it appears Sandra has had a change of heart and wants to defect back, leaving Fenner in a perilous dilemma. Does he believe her or is she just using him? It is beginning to sound like a modern-day film noir, except he is already being used by the C.I.A., his presence in Venice a device to draw Sandra out, C.I.A chief Rosenfeld (Edward Asner) every bit as ruthless as the villains.

His investigations lead him to Dr Pierre Vaugiraud (Boris Karloff) and power broker Robert Wahl (Karl Boehm) who has a mind-altering drug that can make a man terrified of a mouse, send him into a trance and on his way to deliver savage retribution. There is death aplenty, fisticuffs and chases and Sandra, in hiding disguised as a nun, is worth waiting for.

Based on the bestseller by Scottish novelist Helen MacInnes, who challenged Alistair MacLean in her day, the project was at one point to be directed by Guy Hamilton. Coincidentally, David McCallum, Vaughn’s co-star in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. television series, was in Venice at the same time shooting Three Bites of the Apple.

Television stalwart Jerry Thorpe making his debut contributes some interesting moments. Interpreters listening in to the conference hear the magnified ticking of the bomb moments before explosion. The sequence on a train is well done and the activity surrounding the mouse is first class. Vaughn is superb in a downbeat role – shaking off his Napoleon Solo television persona- never sure if he is being duped, on the rack from falling back in love, and emerging from an alcoholic haze with a few decent ruses up his sleeve.

There’s a solid cast, Asner menacing even as a good guy, Karl Boehm a charismatic villain, Karloff memorable in his last performance in a non-horror picture, and interesting appearances by Felicia Farr as a C.I.A agent masquerading as the murderous diplomat’s unsuspecting mistress and Luciana Paluzzi as the girlfriend of an agent. Lalo Schifrin produces an outstanding score.

It was a flop first time round because audiences, partly duped by the title (all Uncle episodes incorporated the word “Affair” although the book, in fairness, was written long before the television series was envisioned) expected to pay to see Napoleon Solo, or something quite like him, on the big screen, with all the pizzazz and gimmickry of the small-screen show. Unfairly under-rated, this is a really satisfying thriller set against a murky Cold War background with Vaughn, trapped between love and redemption, the only character with a streak of morality.

Time to revive this.