Just Stop Drugs would have been the title had the movie come out today. A bunch of urban guerillas, each scarred by personal or family-related experience with drugs, on the basis that the authorities are doing too little and cops in any case too open to corruption, decide to take the battle to “the man.”
Starts with an excellent heist opening, conducted for the most part in silence, and pretty inventive at that. One guy pole-vaults over the gate of a factory. The rest of the gang turn up with what these days is called an aerial work platform but is most recognizable to the rest of us as a version of a fireman’s turntable ladder. So they hoof it up the ladder to the fourth or fifth floor, bringing with them a captive who’s got the keys to a safe. When he refuses to cooperate, they dangle him out the window.
Every now and then we cut to a woman in the street. At first she looks like a witness, but when she doesn’t go racing to call the police, it’s clear she’s either a fascinated observer or a lookout. From what’s otherwise a very ordinary factory, the gang remove millions of dollars worth of heroin and blow up the gates.
When eventually Det Lt Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) appears on the scene, it’s not to investigate a robbery but a homicide. The captive is dead. It looks like suicide until they discover he’s been shot by two different guns. Tibbs is also puzzled by the timescale. There were also 20 minutes between the gates being blasted open and the cops arriving. It takes longer to run up and down the stairs.
But then Tibbs gets a break. The gang calls him in, want him to work with them to bring down “the organization.” Which puts the detective in a tricky spot. He’d be conniving with known thieves, possibly murderers.
After this excellent and intriguing start, the movie doesn’t so much go downhill but tie itself up in knots. In the first place Tibbs doesn’t do much actual detection. Pretty much all the legwork is done by the gang who put themselves out there as bait to try and snag the Mr Bigs of the drug world.
The gang are a do-gooder version of The Magnificent Seven. Tibbs ends up doing little more than following their leads. Most of the time the movie focuses on the various members of the gang, who are variously beaten up, tortured or killed. Just to keep us on edge and promote the notion that the force is riddled with corruption a police captain commits suicide.
Tibbs is more interesting when he’s being outsmarted by his son who’s on the verge of learning the facts of life. The child’s got the best line in the picture. We are introduced to him coming out of a lecture at school on sex in which he declares no interest. Dad and Mum (Barbara McNair) get into a minor tizz over who’s best suited to fill him in on the realities of life. Later, Tibbs discovers an erotic magazine in the boy’s belongings. When confronted, the boy explains he isn’t bored by sex just by a lecture on it.
Anyways, the gang proves more successful in luring out the mobsters, Juan (Raul Julia) especially adept at coming up with the game plan. Naturally, the bad guys don’t play by the rules he’s set down and Annie (Lani Miyazaki), the only female member of the gang, ends up in the drink. The nightwatchman (Charles H. Gray) is the victim of a drive-by shooting.
When Tibbs does get down to working things out on his own, his investigation leads him to the alcoholic wife (Sheree North) of the nightwatchman who is independently wealthy of her husband.
When, finally, Tibbs gets his hands on two of the Mr Bigs this being the Cynical 1970s there’s no happy ending, the pair when arrested rubbed out by a sniper.
So interesting stuff, but, unfortunately, most of the interest doesn’t lie with Tibbs. He’s pretty much an onlooker. As a story, the movie would have done better to leave him out altogether and set up the narrative as the urban revolutionaries trying to take down the drug dealers.
But you’ll enjoy some talent spotting. Raul Julia (Kiss of the Spider Woman, 1985) and Ron O’Neal (Super Fly, 1972) lead the pack ahead of Daniel J. Travanti (Hill St Blues, 1981-1987) and Bernie Hamilton (Starsky and Hutch, 1975-1979).
Sidney Poitier, in his final outing as Tibbs, is fine with not much to do and Barbara McNair, (Stiletto, 1969) as usual is underused.
Directed by Don Medford (The Hunting Party, 1971) from a screenplay by James R Webb (Alfred the Great, 1969) based on the John Ball bestseller.
An oddity in the genre and more enjoyable if you ignore the central character.
United Artists had reinvented the sequel business, shifting it away from the low-burn low-budget Tarzan adventure or Gene Autry western or any inexpensive picture movie capable of maintaining a series character, to bigger-budgeted numbers like James Bond (four sequels so far), The Magnificent Seven (two), The Beatles (four) and The Pink Panther (two). Even Hawaii (1966) spawned The Hawaiians (1970). So when the company hit commercial and critical gold – five Oscars including Best Picture and Best Actor – with In the Heat of the Night (1967) it seemed too good an opportunity to miss not to try for a repeat.
You might have expected UA to continue with the pairing of Sidney Poitier and Oscar-winner Rod Steiger and locate a sequel again in the Deep South. Instead, Steiger was junked and the Poitier character Virgil Tibbs relocated from his Philadelphia hometown to the more snazzy environs of San Francisco, recently popularized by such items as Bullitt (1968).
But minus the racism element what you’re left with is pretty much a standard detective tale with domestic issues thrown in. Tibbs isn’t the kind of cop we’ve come to expect, sinking into alcoholic oblivion or having thrown away a marriage. Instead, and this would strike a contemporary chord, he’s struggling with fatherhood. His son comes off best in arguments and at one point Tibbs resorts to giving the child a few slaps. That looks initially as if emotions will quickly heal and the repentant dad quickly administers a comforting hug, but any bonding is blown apart when the resentful boy complains, as if this represents betrayal, that his father made him cry.
Tibbs is also the old-fashioned kind of male who believes the only way to teach his son not to fall into bad ways like smoking and drinking is to force him to puff on a big cigar and knock back a stiff one until the child throws up.
But Tibbs does do a diligent enough job of detection, evidence relating to the murder of a high-priced sex worker hinging upon whether the killer had long fingernails. The most obvious suspect is street preacher Rev Logan Sharpe (Martin Landau), who visited the prostitute in his capacity as spiritual adviser and who’s heading up a campaign to clean up the streets. But his alibi holds up.
Next in line is building owner Woody Garfield (Ed Asner), exposed, to the shame of wife Marge (Norma Crane) as being a client of the prostitute, and then a janitor of low intelligence called Mealie (Juano Hernandez) and pimp Weedon (Anthony Zerbe), the kind of hood who enjoys taunting cops.
While Tibbs doesn’t indulge in the blatant maverick approach to the job of the earlier Madigan (1968) or the later Dirty Harry (1971) he’s not above putting the squeeze on witnesses.
Rather foolishly, but perhaps feeling this has now become de rigeur, there’s a car chase which hardly compares to Bullitt. In fact, we’re stuck in an automobile rather too often but these only result in desultory conversations between Tibbs and his sidekick. While in some respects it’s refreshing that Tibbs isn’t subject to any racism, and the picture doesn’t head down the blaxploitation route, the result lacks edge.
Tibbs’ reactions to his child bring him down sharply from the ivory tower of sainthood from the previous picture, and the family stuff, while building up his character, doesn’t make up for what the story lacks.
Gordon Douglas, who had previously excelled in this genre via Tony Rome (1967), The Detective (1968) and Lady in Cement (1968), found out the hard way that Frank Sinatra was more appealing as an investigator and cop than Sidney Poitier and, without steaminess or wise-cracking to fall back on, the sequel quietly runs out of steam.
Screenplay by Alan Trustman (The Thomas Crown Affair, 1968) and James Webb (Alfred the Great, 1969) from the bestseller by John Ball. Not a patch on the original
The dismissive verdict of Sam Peckinpah (he wrote the script) is the main reason this remains unfairly underrated. This came out the same year as that director’s over-rated Major Dundee and covers some of the same themes – the training of raw recruits and the woman requiring a protector.
But this is the first cavalry picture I’ve seen where training covers more than recruits falling off their horses, picking fights with each other and getting drunk and into scrapes. The main task of Capt Harrod (Tom Tryon), apart from teaching them to shoot, is to ensure they ride in formation and are ready to take part in action. There’s a brilliant scene where Harrod fakes an Indian attack where they are all in a flash knocked off their horses. And another superb scene where, having achieved an almost impossible goal in double-quick time, Harrod leads them in a ride-past in front of General McCabe (Andrew Duggan) and they ride in about ten rows six abreast, keeping time and distance. When the soldiers dismount during combat, how they arrange for the horses to get out of the way but not run off is also revealed. The scene of the whole detachment leaving the fort is also breathtaking. They are lined up in columns, five or six abreast, and you begin to see, for really the first time, how the U.S. Army operates as a trained unit.
But that’s just the cream of a very finely worked crop. Harrod and McCabe are at odds because the captain’s previous company of raw recruits was virtually wiped out in a previous engagement when the general used them as bait. McCabe is the “glory guy” of the title, everyone else is just trying to keep alive. The only certainty of going into battle, Harrod reminds his men, is that they have a fair chance of not returning home.
Widow Lou Woddard (Senta Berger) pops up to wreak romantic havoc. She owns a gunsmith business, and responsible for driving up sales, so not quite the vulnerable woman. What’s most at stake is her standing in town, her honor if you like, and she can’t be seen to be playing the field. While hardly promiscuous, she has two men on the go, Harrod, who seems disinclined to take the romance beyond a fling, and Army scout Sol Rogers (Harve Pressnell) who is off earning the chunk of money it will take for them to settle down elsewhere.
She doesn’t let on they are rivals and when they discover this it triggers an all-out slugging match – you almost wince with the power of the blows. This ain’t a brawl but a last man standing punch-up where literally they trade blows, one at a time. And she keeps dithering between the two. She reckons Sol isn’t the settling down kind while Harrod’s not keen on commitment. So any time she’s spurned by Harrod she flaunts Rogers.
If she gets her come-uppance, it’s not from either of the men. Attempting to trade barbs with McCabe’s snippy wife Rachael (Jeanne Cooper) she is publicly humiliated. And there’s a terrific scene as the calvary is set to leave the fort and the physical distance between Lou standing on the sidelines with the wives waving husbands goodbye and Harrod on horseback stretches into an emotional chasm simply from the way director Arnold Laven lines up his camera.
The action is clearly based on the Battle of the Little Big Horn. McCabe, instructed to form one half of a pincer movement, races his men ahead to beat his rival general into battle. True to form, he uses Harrod’s men as decoys, theoretically sent out to protect his flank, in reality to draw out the enemy, permitting the general to attack their unguarded rear.
The battle scene is just superb, hordes of cavalry charging towards the enemy, then turning tail when facing superior forces, dismounting to take up positions, then retreating again to the rocks, pursued but managing, mostly, to survive. The scene where Harrod comes across McCabe’s wiped-out army is like the beginning of Zulu (1964). (In fact, it’s worth bearing in mind that Little Big Horn and Isandlwana took place just three years apart and had there been instant global communication in those days the combined events would have sent shockwaves throughout the world.)
It is an excellent script regardless of how Peckinpah felt about the outcome. But it is also a very good western with sufficient changes rendered to the genre’s standard tropes. The compulsory saloon brawl is elevated by an ongoing comic element of Trooper Dugan (James Caan) being constantly defeated in his determination to smash a bottle over someone’s head.
Senta Berger completists should enjoy this far more than her performance in Major Dundee. She essays a more complete realistic character, not quite grasping, but not far short, and in chasing a dream coming close to heartbreak. Tom Tryon (The Cardinal, 1963) is better than I expected and hoofer Harve Pressnell (Paint Your Wagon, 1969) is a revelation. James Caan (El Dorado, 1967), playing a “miserable whining sugar”, is awful, a terrible Irish accent sinking all his attempts at scene stealing
Arnold Laven might have felt hard-done-by in regard to Peckinpah, given the director, in his capacity as producer, had dreamed up The Rifleman television series on which Peckinpah made his name. While this isn’t quite in the same league as Rough Night in Jericho (1967) but better than Sam Whiskey (1969) it deserves reappraisal. Had it featured bigger stars in the two male principal roles it would have attracted more attention at the outset instead of demanding it now.
Scream Queen Barbara Steele (The Crimson Cult / Cult of the Crimson Altar, 1968) is the big attraction in this heady brew of witchcraft, ancient curse, hypnotism and plain ordinary seduction, with an ingenious double twist. And elegantly mounted, crisply photographed as if a Hollywood picture of the 1940s.
After a drought lowers the water level, a 200-year-old statue of the beautiful Countess Melena is recovered from the seabed. The locals fear it carries a curse. Artist Roberto (Anthony Steffen), hired to restore the artwork, arrives only days before the young countess Harriet (Barbara Steele) returns to claim her inheritance. With some clever sleight-of-hand, veteran Italian director Camillo Mastrocinque (Crypt of the Vampire, 1964) misleads the audience into thinking this is all about secret love affairs, Harriet’s uncle the Count (Claudio Gora) in an illicit relationship with housekeeper Ilda (Marina Berti), maid Rita (Ursula Davis) tempting timid schoolteacher Dario (Vassilli Karis), nascent love between Harriet and Roberto hitting a stumbling block and various shades of unshackled lust from woodcutter Vittorio (Aldo Berti) and village strong man Carlo (Mario Brega).
But pretty quickly, the picture takes a different turn. Turns out it’s not Melena who’s the problem – but her jealous ugly cousin Belinda who threw the statue into the water in the first place. Whatever the cause, there’s an outbreak of malevolence, mostly emanating from Harriet.
She strips naked for Carlo then savagely beats him for daring to stare at the nude body. She seduces Dario, looks like she’s making a play for Rita, goads Roberto and tells him she likes violence and has Carlo in her thrall.
In short order a female villager is raped and murdered, another barely escaping a similar fate, the schoolteacher commits suicide, several villagers are axed to death, the strong man sets fire to his cottage, killing wife and seven children, and the woodcutter is speared by pitchforks.
You can tell this is a classier number because the violence is minus any gore and there’s little attempt at deliberate shock, more of a slow burn as Harriet torments those around her. Roberto is permitted small touches of investigation, and there’s a clever special effect of a painting appearing to talk.
The traditional horror elements – lightning, slamming windows, storms – are primarily employed to nudge Harriet and Roberto together; it just so happens that she is scared of lightning and he’s the person most conveniently placed to comfort her. There’s a hint of the narcissism found in Hammer’s later lesbian horror pictures, and only the censor or the director’s discretion prevents more full-blown nudity as a prelude to seduction of both male and female. Harriet’s a dab hand at inveigling males to be in the wrong place at the wrong time invariably with her clothes in disarray to lend substance to her claims of being attacked.
While, as regular readers will know, I’m generally in favour of the climactic twist – the more the merrier – here I’m not so sure this was the road to go down. As Roberto already knows that the curse applies to wicked cousin Belinda rather than Melena, it would have been enough for him to declare this and find a way of removing it, most likely adopting the simple solution of chucking the statue back in the sea, which is what the villagers have been demanding all along.
It’s quite clear that much of the rape and killing is down to hypnotism by Harriet, but once we discover she’s being hypnotized by the Count, in one fell swoop what had been an intriguing horror story transforms into a more run-of-the-mill crime tale since if Harriett is committed to an asylum then he can continue to rule the roost.
But he’s in the thrall of Ilda who turns out to be the ancestor of Belinda. So not quite the satisfactory ending unless the criminal element had been introduced earlier on.
I doubt if Barbara Steele fans will care as the actress is very much in her element and, although in the end a victim, for the bulk of the picture she is in total – and seductive – command. Nobody’s going to compete with her and sensibly nobody tries. Anthony Steffen didn’t need any help with his career because had had already headed down the spaghetti western route.
Classically directed – excellent composition and camera movement – from a script by Mastrocinque and Giuseppe Mangione (Anzio / Battle for Anzio, 1968) from a novel by Antonio Fogazarro.
Don’t get too hung up on the supposed rampant sexism in this third iteration the Matt Helm series. These women – bikini-clad or not – are weaponized to the hilt rather than our hero Matt Helm (Dean Martin) who has to make do with a gun disguised as a camera. In fact, he makes pretty good use of the gadget created for the females – the one that melts metal, designed to get rid of the clasp on men’s belts, forcing their trousers to fall down, which, as any student of farce knows, is the easiest way to disable the male.
There’s also a weapon triggered from a bra and a sedative concealed inside lipstick so that males seduced into intimacy will soon be snookered. And it’s also a woman, secret agent Sheila (Janice Rule), who’s impervious to the electromagnetic waves which kill off the opposite gender. Of course, to be fair, it’s not Matt Helm we see sinuously dancing around a playboy mansion in Acapulco the way the women do, although for Francesca (Senta Berger) that appears a clever method of entering the enemy’s lair. Who’s going to question another sexy dancing queen? And the bad guy has one of those devices that make the zips on female attire unzip. (James Bond purloined that one.) But it’s Matt who has the ideal rescue weapon, the levitation gun.
If you’re looking for a more male-oriented theme, how about beer? At various points Matt Helm is literally swimming in the stuff. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised had the plot concerned beer manufacturer Ortega (Albert Salmi) planning world domination through poisoning the global supply of beer or arming his beer gals with bullet-spraying bras. Even though this is largely a spoof, more so than the first in the series, it’s not that much of a spoof and Ortega has more serious intent. Using lasers, he’s hijacked the U.S. Government’s secret flying saucer and plans to sell it to the highest bidder.
Sheila, the pilot, also hijacked, has gone off piste after her experience, and is thrown together with Matt Helm as husband-and-wife, a role they previously played on another mission, to hunt down the villain and recover the missing spaceship. Francesca is also after same, and happy to seduce, trick or sedate Matt in order to achieve that end. Despite believing (from the previous encounter) that she is still Matt’s wife, Stella, despite an instant blow-up tent being laid on, takes a while to understand her duties include getting hot’n’heavy even if she’s less comfortable in the bikini department. Eventually, Matt and Sheila team up with Francesca. Turns out she works for supervillain Big O but is first to find the flying saucer.
More than the earlier entries in the series, this one relies on a series of unlikely events. The switcheroos when the lights in the train go out. But the firing squad sequence is hilarious. The in-jokes about Dean Martin’s recording rivals continue, but the bevy of bikini girls disappear from view pretty much after the opening section.
Janice Rule (Alvarez Kelly, 1966) is generally seen as a class above the previous female leads in the series but that would only be if you ignored Ann-Margret’s performance in Once a Thief (1965), the Stella Stevens of Rage (1966), the Senta Berger of The Quiller Memorandum (1966) and especially the stunning playing of Daliah Lavi in The Demon (1964). Dean Martin was on the cusp of much finer work in Rough Night in Jericho (1967) and Firecreek (1968) so this might just have been a warm-up.
Directed by Henry Levin (Genghis Khan) from a screenplay by Herbert Baker based on the Donald Hamilton novel.
Doesn’t take it itself seriously, which is just as well.
Inventive screenplay by William Goldman (Masquerade, 1965), the ideal combination of witty lines and others that strike to the heart, and Paul Newman’s most naturalistic performance, and a family at each other’s throats, create a genuine addition to the private eye genre. Punch-ups are limited, generally the sleuth comes out worse, his skull an easy target apparently for any villain wanting to give him a good biff.
Most people remember the celebrated credit sequence. But, in fact, most people do not. They remember that this is a guy who will reuse old coffee grinds, which is as good a character definition as you’re going to get. But the opening sequence says much more – he sleeps in a pull-out couch, he falls asleep with the television on, dunking his face in ice suggests a hangover, and – the killer – he sleeps in his office. You won’t forget the ending either, the freeze frame, as fed-up Harper (Paul Newman) just gives up on the stupidity of mankind. And just before that there’s a delicious moment when crippled mother Elaine Sampson (Lauren Bacall) trills to the daughter she loathes Miranda (Pamela Tiffin) in a voice that would denote happiness but is anything but, “I’ve got some news for you,” as she looks forward to informing the child that the father she adores and that Elaine equally loathes is dead.
Not surprisingly, Harper’s on the verge of divorce from wife Susan (Janet Leigh), but he still hankers after being a knight in shining armor, those few days every year when he puts the world to rights rather than chasing down errant husbands in seedy hotel rooms.
The tale is a tad convoluted, involving initially tracking down Elaine’s estranged missing millionaire husband that turns into kidnapping and then murder with a side order of a fake cult headed by Claude (Strother Martin) that’s a front for an illegal immigrant operation, and going through the gears, character-wise, with malicious wife, an extremely flirtatious Miranda who gets her come-uppance when she tangles with Harper, faded alcoholic star Fay Estabrook (Shelley Winters) and junkie Betty (Julie Harris) sometime lover of lothario pilot Allan Taggert (Robert Wagner).
Two distinctive thugs Dwight Troy (Robert Webber) – Fay’s husband – and Puddler (Roy Jenson) offset the dumbest of dumb cops led by Sheriff Spanner (Harold Gould) and lovesick attorney Albert Graves (Arthur Hill), Harper’s longtime buddy, who pines for Miranda.
Torture comes in two guises – the junkie gets the treatment from Dwight and Harper is put through the wringer listening to the endless whining of Fay as he tries to pump her for information. Harper avoids beatings and takes beatings and various characters bounce through doors with a gun – both Taggert and Graves save Harper from being shot.
Harper’s got a slick way about him, but mostly his charm is used to weasel information. He hasn’t got enough of it left to work on his wife.
When Harper’s not racing his sports car along twisting mountain roads, the action shifts to a cult temple, the docks and an abandoned oil tanker. Even when Harper works out who’s in on the kidnapping, it turns out he’s now got a murder to solve since someone’s bumped off the kidnappee.
Despite the endless complications, this whizzes along, helped enormously by Paul Newman’s (Cool Hand Luke, 1967) winning characterization. He’s brought a new trick to his acting arsenal, mastering a method of not listening to a conversation by tilting his head away from the speaker, and there’s a number of novel gestures. The scene where he rejects Miranda is a cracker. Tough guy running short of a soft center, he makes a very believable human being. And he’s got his work cut out because Lauren Bacall (Shock Treatment, 1964) is on scene-stealing duties. As is Pamela Tiffin (The Pleasure Seekers, 1964) though she can hardly match the older woman for arch delivery.
It’s a top-notch cast all the way down. Fans of Strother Martin (Cool Hand Luke) will enjoy his fake healer, Arthur Hill (Moment to Moment, 1966) is engaging, Robert Wagner (Banning, 1967) adds another notch to his rising star bow while Robert Webber (Don’t Make Waves, 1967) emanates menace with his “old stick” routine. Shelley Winters (The Scalphunters, 1968) is a great lush, Julie Harris (The Split, 1968) a junkie trying to pretend she’s not and Janet Leigh (Psycho, 1960), having kicked her husband out, still hoping he might come back in more acceptable form.
Jack Smight (The Third Day, 1965) directs with some zap. This should have had everyone singing the praises of crime writer Ross MacDonald, who in inventing the character (Lew Archer in the original) had inherited the Raymond Chandler mantle, but instead they came away whistling Dixie for screenwriter William Goldman.
John Wayne incapacitated? Robert Mitchum a liability? The hell you say! You bring together two of the greatest male action figures only to turn the genre upside down and inside out. And I know it’s tradition for heroes to be unable to listen to their hearts, never mind deal with emotion, but it’s a heck of a stretch for them to just completely fall apart when spurned. And I know also that Duke is not invulnerable, this isn’t the MCU for heaven’s sake, and he’s been known in his long career to take a bullet, but to be shot by a woman! That’s very close to taking the proverbial.
Also, westerns usually operate on fairly tight timeframes. If the situation takes place over a longer period that’s usually because it involves a journey. Here, there’s a split of six months between the opening section and the main action, and it does kinda defy belief that the bad guys don’t make the necessary hay while the sheriff is drunk and his main assistant has scarpered.
There’s hardly a word spoken here – between the good guys again for heaven’s sake – that isn’t an insult. Never mind The Magnificent Seven (1960) this is teed up as The Bickering Quartet. And I do have to point out a couple of elements that won’t go down so well with a contemporary audience, one character imitating a Chinese, and a scene where one of our heroes is constantly interrupted in the bath by females, a twist to be sure on the usual scenario of the female lead skinny dipping in a handy pool or river, but it’s like a lame comedy sketch.
This won’t have been influenced by the spaghetti western, the first Sergio Leone game-changer wasn’t screened in the U.S. until the following year, so it’s also worth pointing out that some of the action is pretty savage, both John Wayne and Robert Mitchum indulging in the kind of mean behavior that was usually the prerogative of the villains. Wayne even cheats when it comes to the traditional shoot-out. And while there’s none of the blood-letting that later became synonymous with the genre, director Howard Hawks does something else that is far more realistic than anything that has gone before and would count as a genuine shock to our senses. The gunfire is incredibly loud. Imagine that on Imax and you’d be jumping out of your seat every few minutes.
And just in case you think this is nothing more than a remake of Rio Bravo (1959) where a gunslinger and a drunken sheriff are holed up in jail, here the jail is mostly used as a base, the good guys racing out every now and then to pick someone off. That running, too, by older guys certainly prefigures later action pictures like Taken (2008).
We need the time gap to allow Sheriff J.P. Harrah (Robert Mitchum), one of the three best gunslingers alive, to disintegrate. He goes from tough lawman keeping an unruly town in order and holding back the worst instincts of land-owner Bart Jason (Ed Asner) planning to go in mobhanded against rival rancher Kevin MacDonald (R.G. Armstrong) in an argument over water rights.
Hired gun Cole Thornton (John Wayne), one of the three best gunslingers alive, turns up for a job with said Jason but is turned off the idea when J.P. gives him the lowdown on the situation. He dallies long enough to set up the notion that he’ll try to win back saloon-owning old flame Maudie (Charlene Holt) from J.P.
Thornton moseys off to the Mason spread to give the owner the bad news. On the way back, Luke Macdonald (Johnny Crawford), Kevin’s youngest son, on guard duty, mistakes Thornton for the enemy and shoots at him. Which results in his death. So Thornton does not get a good welcome when he arrives at the Macdonald farm toting a corpse.
Turns out the young whelp, although taking bullet in the gut, committed suicide because the pain was too much and Luke had been told by his dad that he wouldn’t recover anyway and just suffer a hideous death. While the father accepts this, his daughter Joey (Michele Carey) does not and ambushes Thornton, putting a bullet in his back. Said bullet is mighty inconveniently lodged close to his spine and needs more than the town quack to remove it. Despite sparking up old feelings for said old flame and the prospect of stealing her back from old buddy J.P., Thornton doesn’t dally longer than it takes to get temporarily fixed up, bullet still in place to cause later problems.
Now the tale takes a detour. Not only has six months passed and Thornton miles away from El Dorado, but we’ve got to hold up proceedings to introduce naïve youngster Mississippi (James Caan). Howard Hawks certainly hasn’t learned the knack of the compact introduction from John Sturges a la The Magnificent Seven (1960) so we learn that this young whelp is best with the knife and has spent two years tracking down the four killers of his foster father. The last man to die happens to be an employee of Nelse McLeod (Christopher George), one of the three best gunslingers alive, on his way to take up the job Thornton turned down, a task made a helluva lot easier because J.P is now the town drunk, having hit the bottle when spurned by a woman, not Maudie I hasten to add.
Thornton heads for El Dorado with Mississippi tagging along, armed with of a sawn-off shotgun. First task is to sober up the sheriff – by fistfight and awful concoction – and stop him becoming a worse figure of fun. On the evidence here Deputy Bull (Arthur Hunnicutt) was probably one of the three best riflemen – not to mention archers – alive. He also totes a bugle.
The sober J.P. strolls into the saloon and arrests Bart Jason and sticks him in jail, and to avoid being in a complete siege situation, the quartet, sometimes as a group, sometimes a pair, sometimes alone, venture out, as I mentioned, to pick off the enemy. This allows Mississippi a meet-cute with Joey who’s planning a short-cut to justice by shooting Jason. Maudie re-enters the frame.
The bullet in the back sporadically paralyzes Thornton and J.P. is wounded in the leg so eventually the pair are hobbling around on crutches. Maudie also turns out to be a liability, taken hostage, ensuring Thornton goes to the rescue. But the bullet in the back plays up at exactly the wrong time and Thornton’s also captured, trussed up like a hog (what, John Wayne?) then traded in for the prisoner.
Having by now reduced the odds and not wanting to be caught in a siege, the quartet take the battle to the enemy, ambushing them front and back in the saloon, Thornton ridding Nelse of the notion that he and Thornton will enjoy a winner-takes-all shootout by killing him with a rifle while lying on the ground.
While it could be trimmed – television screenings generally eliminate the racist Chinese impersonation – the action when it comes is blistering. There’s a terrific scene in a tower when Bull targets the bells to disorientate the enemy with their horrendous ear-jarring clanging. And the final shoot-out is exceptionally well done.
In ways not usually gone into, the quartet are experts in their fields. Thornton backs up his horse to get out of a difficult situation, J.P. detects a man hidden behind a piano in the saloon, Mississippi stalks a potential lone assassin, Bull uses bow-and-arrow when silence is required.
Theoretically, Robert Mitchum (Five Card Stud, 1968) steals the show as the drunken sheriff, but that’s only if you are taken in by the surface. The sight of John Wayne with his useless twisted right hand harks back to the arm in The Searchers (1956) and his one-armed rifle action predates True Grit (1969). James Caan (The Rain People, 1969) tries to steal scenes but what chance does he have with these two stars at the top of their game and past master at the scene-stealing malarkey Arthur Hunnicutt (The Cardinal, 1963). Charlene Holt (Red Line 7000, 1965) and Michele Carey (The Sweet Ride, 1968) come out honors even as do Edward Asner (The Venetian Affair, 1966) and Christopher George (The Thousand Plane Raid, 1969).
I don’t put this in the same bracket as Howard Hawks’ Red River (1948) and Rio Bravo, but it’s certainly one of the best westerns of the decade. Written by Leigh Brackett (Hatari!, 1962) from a novel by Harry Brown.
First film to deal with U.S. Army war crimes. Though here’s it’s tabbed as abuse of power but amounts to the same thing when it relates to the wanton killing of innocents. Not the first film to examine a commander totally unsuited to command – The Caine Mutiny (1953) would be your first port of call for that, although that was a career officer rather than a conscript. But the blistering under-rated Oscar-ignored performance by James Stewart (The Rare Breed, 1966) is easily comparable to the Oscar-nominated Humphrey Bogart.
And director Daniel Mann (A Dream of Kings, 1969) is helluva sly. He dupes the audience into thinking this is a mission picture, blowing up a massive ammunition dump to prevent it falling into enemy hands. And if you’re one for the easy action of explosions, this is for you, the kind of fireworks not seen till MCU entered the equation.
And here’s a line that’s going to knock you for six. “China and America are friends.” Say again? You what? As far as I can remember in all my decades of moviegoing, China has always been the enemy, either providing a succession of nefarious villains, or on the brink of starting a nuclear war, or just totally ungrateful for all the efforts the West has made bringing to the country Christianity and the western idea of civilization.
But it’s true. Before Communist China reared its ugly head, the U.S. and China were allies against the Japanese in the Second World War. But towards the end of that conflict, the Japanese had invaded and the Yanks were pulling out. Not wanting to leave anything behind for the enemy – like a huge arsenal or thousands of gallons of diesel – is the trigger for the story.
Except it’s not. Major Baldwin (James Baldwin) doesn’t have to go on any mission. His job is just to blow up a much smaller ammunition dump that’s easily accessible without the need to go on a long trek through the mountains. It’s his choice to take on the bigger job. There’s not even any pressure to do so. It’s entirely at his “discretion.” And you can see in the tone of his superior’s voice that it’s not such a good idea. He can just complete the small job and high-tail it out of there.
But Major Baldwin wants to experience command in action. He’s not a glory hunter in the normal sense but there’s definitely something off in a backroom soldier who’s got that on his wish list. It never occurs to him that there’s more to command than ordering about grunts, many of whom he considers “slobs,” and that the position comes with the task of making difficult decisions.
He’s got a very small team, chief among whom is Sgt Michaelson (Harry Morgan) and translator Collins (Glenn Corbett). Chinese officer Col Kwan (Frank Silvera) is meant to smooth his path and the widow of a Chinese general, Sue Mei (Lisa Lu), is thrown his way, initially you would guess to sweeten the load by becoming a love interest, but actually to become his conscience.
Just to fill you in on the background. China and Japan had been at war since 1937. After Pearl Harbor China became critical to US operations in the Pacific by tying down Japanese forces and after the fall of Burma the US airlifted supplies over the Himalayas.
Baldwin soon discovers that leadership equates to callousness. He has little sympathy for the refugees swarming over the mountain roads seeking sanctuary from the invading Japanese. He blows up a bridge and creates an impasse on the road to delay the Japanese without giving any thought to how that will endanger the natives.
He’s pretty inhuman in his treatment of one of his men, suffering, it later transpires, from pneumonia and might be taking all his cues from General Patton who hated all wounded soldiers. While he’s trying to convince the soldier to get back on his feet all the grunt can do is whimper, “Milk! Milk” like a child. Baldwin even sees little problem in stacking the ill man beside a corpse on the back of a lorry.
It would help if Baldwin had been trained in command, in making decisions, rather than picking faults everywhere and letting the pedantic side of his nature run wild. Sei Lei to some extent tries to rein him in, accusing him of blatant racism, treating the Chinese as if they were a lower form of humanity.
When he does relent and orders surplus food to be handed out one of his men is killed in the stampede. The last straw is Chinese bandits who kill and strip three of his men. So he leads a raid on a Chinese village, rolling a barrel of fuel stacked with dynamite down a hill to destroy the village and innocent villagers.
Up till then things were going along nicely on the romantic front, Sei Lei clinging to him when the massive ammunition dump goes up, and kissing on the cards. She’s westernized after all, spent a lot of time in America, well educated, and so easily a contender for marriage. But she tries to stop the barrel-rolling, telling him this action is unjustified, pure revenge.
He thinks she’ll accept an apology, that some madness came over him, he was consumed by power. But she’s having none of it.
Mission accomplished but human flaws exposed.
This isn’t the James Stewart you’ve come to expect, far from it. There’s certainly times in his career when he’s been mean or ornery and in his Hitchcock excursions a bit creepy, but he’s never been so awful as here, the guy desperate for power without knowing how to use it or draw the line. Purely in a technical capacity, working out where to plant explosives and plan a demolition, he’s in his element, but let him loose on human beings and he’s a loose cannon trying to rein himself in, stuck in a mess of his own making, unable to understand consequence. But sometimes even guilt isn’t enough.
This was an unlikely role for Stewart because, after his own experience in World War Two, a pilot in Bomber Command flying missions over Europe, he had turned down every war picture. Perhaps this movie reflected the guilt he felt of dropping bombs and knowing there would be civilian collateral damage, that sense of power over the powerless might equate to the feelings Baldwin has over the Chinese.
This is by far the most human character Stewart ever played, doing away with both the aw shucks everyman and the commanding often truculent cowboy, and instead portraying someone who’s way out of his comfort zone.
Ace scene-stealer Harry Morgan (Support Your Local Sheriff, 1969) is the pick of the support though Lucy Lu (One Eyed Jacks, 1961), being the conscience of the piece, has all the best lines.
Just as with A Dream of Kings, Daniel Mann takes a flawed individual and doesn’t hang him out to dry. But in retrospect, the war crime, of blowing up the innocent civilians, would not have received such a free pass, which puts a different slant on Baldwin. Alfred Hayes (Joy in the Morning,1965) wrote the script from the Theodore H. White bestseller.
Easy credit led to a boom in the standard of living but also created global recession after the sub-prime mortgage scandal. Back in the day you couldn’t borrow money except from a bank and they only lent to people with money. To get a mortgage you needed to prove you could save, you required at least a 10 per cent deposit before any bank would loan you money for a mortgage, and you needed to go through a stiff criteria test. Even then, you were at the mercy of inflation. If you were absolutely desperately you could go to money-lenders and pay back inflated sums, the notorious “vig” of the Mafia.
But then someone invented the notion of buying on credit from largely unlicensed brokers. You could live the dream – television, white goods, carpets, furnishings, a car – even if you couldn’t afford it and you didn’t have to go through any kind of procedure to qualify. Of course, you ended up paying two or three times the original price but the payments were spread over years so, theoretically at least, affordable. These days, credit cards lure people into the ease of purchasing and giving no thought to repayment. You don’t have to repay at all – or only a very small fraction – if you don’t mind your debt accruing exponentially.
In Britain it was called “hire purchase” or more colloquially the “never-never.” Nobody was called to account for selling goods to people who were inherently unable to afford it, were clearly incapable of managing money or, just as likely, were apt to get carried away.
While on the one hand this is one of the saddest movies you’ll ever see, lives crushed by debt, the tone is so mixed the reality gets lost in the characterization of the kind of chancer who would later be epitomized by the likes of Alfie (1965). But whereas the Michael Caine character has oodles of charm and eventually comes good, here equally charming ace salesman Albert (Ian Hendry) never sees the error of his ways.
One of the dichotomies of the tale is that despite his earnings and his financial wheezes on the side Albert never has enough money to fund his lifestyle – snazzy sports car, great clothes – and lives in a squalid flat while ostensibly living the dream, string of women on the side. Like Werner Von Braun (I Aim at the Stars, 1960), he can’t face up to consequence much less take responsibility for his actions. But he’s not the only one using easy credit as a means of moving up in society, his boss Callendar (John Gregson) has taken up golf with a view to rubbing shoulders with estate agent Corby (Geoffrey Keen), whom he views as rising middle class without being aware that Corby also has unsustainable delusions of grandeur, hosting dinner parties for local politicians, ensuring his house is filled with desirable items.
Without doubt Albert is a superb salesman, adept at not only overcoming initial customer reluctance but persuading them to invest in far more than they ever dreamed. He is so good that his boss is more than willing to overlook his various pieces of chicanery.
But too often the comedy gets in the way. The idea that Albert can weasel his way out of any difficult situation – twice he dupes the man coming to repossess a car on which he has evaded payments for years – take advantage in unscrupulous fashion of any opportunity (he takes over an empty flat, steals the orders of rivals) and even offers advice on how to outwit, legally, bailiffs, sets him up as the kind of character (the little guy) who can defeat authority. But cheap laughs come at the expense of more serious purpose.
He leaves a trail of destroyed lives in his wake. He abandons his illegitimate daughter, fruit of a supposed long-term fling with Treasure (June Ritchie). One of his many married lovers, Joyce (Liz Fraser), wife of Corby, commits suicide – and he then proceeds to blackmail the husband. Albert’s boss is on the verge of losing out to a bigger rival.
For women, he is at his most dangerous when being kicked out, at his most persuasive and charming when trying to weasel his way in. He always finds some new woman and generally has a few on the go at the one time. The only time he appears to have any standards is when he walks away from one lover on discovering that her husband is a scoutmaster and therefore the seduction has required little skill.
But all Albert’s charm can’t disguise the brutality of debt. The arrival of the bailiffs strikes terror in hearts. A dream can turn to dust in an instant. Consequent shame unbearable. And there are no shortage of characters pointing out to Albert how heinous his actions are.
Ian Hendry (The Hill, 1965) captures the smooth-talking salesman. June Ritchie (The World Ten Times Over, 1963) has a meaty role as does Liz Fraser (The Family Way, 1966). John Gregson (The Frightened City, 1961) is unrecognizable while Geoffrey Keen (Born Free, 1966) essays the kind of grasping businessman that would become his forte. Nyree Dawn Porter (The Forsyte Saga, 1967) has a small part.
Directed somewhat unevenly by Jay Lewis (A Home of Your Own, 1964) from a script by Jack Trevor Story based on the bestseller by Jack Lindsay.
As if John Wayne hadn’t endured enough directing The Alamo (1960), he took on an even weightier task with this Vietnam War picture which, from the start, was likely to receive a critical roasting given the actor’s well-known stance on the conflict and his anti-Communist views that dated back to the McCarthy Era of the 1950s. Wayne had enjoyed a charmed life at the box office with three successive hit westerns, Henry Hathaway’s The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) with Dean Martin, Burt Kennedy’s The War Wagon (1967) co-starring Kirk Douglas, and best of all from a critical and commercial standpoint Howard Hawks El Dorado (1967) pairing Robert Mitchum. Outside of box office grosses, Wayne’s movies tended to be more profitable than his box office rivals because they were generally more inexpensive to make.
Columbia had been the first to recognize the potential of the book by Robin Moore and purchased the rights pre-publication in 1965 long before antipathy to the war reached its peak. A screenplay was commissioned from George Goodman who had served in the Special Forces the previous decade and was to to return to Vietnam on a research mission. But the studio couldn’t turn out a script that met the approval of the U.S. Army. Independent producer David Wolper (The Devil’s Brigade, 1968) was next to throw the dice but he couldn’t find the financing.
In 1966 Wayne took a trip to Vietnam and was impressed by what he saw. He bought the rights to the non-fiction book by Robin Moore (who also wrote The French Connection) for $35,000 plus a five per cent profit share. While the movie veered away in many places from the book, the honey trap and kidnapping of the general came from that source, although, ironically, that episode was entirely fictitious, originating in the mind of Robin Moore.
Universal originally agreed to back The Green Berets with filming scheduled for early 1967 but when it pulled out the project shifted to Warner Bros. And as if the director hadn’t learned his lesson from The Alamo, it was originally greenlit for a budget of $5.1 million, an amount that would prove signally inappropriate as the final count was $7 million. Wayne turned down the leading role in The Dirty Dozen (1967) to concentrate on this project. Wayne’s character was based on real-life Finnish Larry Thorne who had joined the Special Forces in Vietnam in 1963 and was reported missing in action in 1965 (his body was recovered four decades later).
As well as John Wayne, the movie was a platform for rising stars like Jim Hutton (Walk, Don’t Run, 1966), David Janssen (Warning Shot, 1967) and Luke Askew (Easy Rider, 1969) who replaced Bruce Dern. Howard Keel, who had appeared in The War Wagon, turned down a role.
Wayne holstered his normal $750,000 fee for acting plus $120,000 for directing. But it turned out The Alamo had taught him one important lesson – not to shoulder too much of the responsibility – and Ray Kellogg for the modest sum of $40,000 was brought in as co-director. It was produced by Wayne’s production company, Batjac, now run by his son Michael. But neither Wayne nor Kellogg proved up to the task and concerned the movie was falling behind schedule and over budget the studio drafted in veteran director Mervyn Leroy – current remuneration $200,000 plus a percentage – whose over 40 years in the business ranged from gangster machine-gun fest Little Caesar (1931) to his most recent offering the Hitchcock-lite Moment to Moment (1966).
But exactly what LeRoy contributed over the next six months was open to question. Some reports had him directing all the scenes involving the star; others took the view that primarily he played the role of consultant, on set to offer advice. Even with his presence, the movie came in 18 days over schedule – 25 per cent longer than planned. Unlike the later Apocalypse Now (1979), it didn’t go anywhere near South-East Asia so the location didn’t add any of Coppola’s lush atmosphere, though the almost constant rain in Georgia, while a bugbear for the actors, helped authenticity.
It was filmed instead on five acres of Government land around Fort Benning, Georgia, hence pine forests rather than tropical trees. President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Department of Defense offered full cooperation. But that was only after the producers complied with Army stipulations regarding the screenplay. James Lee Barratt’s script was altered to show the Vietnamese involved in defending the camp and the kidnapped was switched from being over the border. Also axed, though this time by the studio, was Wayne’s wish for a romantic element – the studio preferred more action. Sheree North (Madigan, 1968) was offered the role of Wayne’s wife but she also turned it down on political grounds. Vera Miles (The Hellfighters, 1968) was cast but she was edited out prior to release.
The Army provided UH-1 Huey helicopters, the Air Force chipped in with C-130 Hercules transports, A-1 Skyraiders and the AC-47 Puff the Magic Dragon gunship and also the airplane that utilized the skyhook system. Actors and extras were kitted out in the correct jungle fatigues and uniforms. Making a cameo appearance was Col Welch, commander of the Army Airborne School at Ft Benning. The sequence of soldiers doing drill was actually airborne recruits.
The attack on the camp is based on the Battle of Nam Dong in 1964 when the defenders saw off a much bigger enemy unit.
This set was built on a hill inside Fort Benning. The authentic detail included barbed wire trenches and punji sticks plus the use of mortar fire. While the camp was destroyed during filming the other villages were later used for training exercises. .
The pressure told on the Duke physically – he lost 15lb. But the oppressive heat and weather of that location – it was mostly shot in summer 1967 – was nothing compared to the reviews. It was slated by the critics with Wayne’s age for an active commander called into question, never mind the parachuting, the gung-ho heroics and the dalliance in an upmarket nightclub.
“In terms of Wayne’s directorial career,” wrote his biographer Scott Eyman, “The Alamo has many defenders, The Green Berets has none.” That assessment, of course, would be to ignore the moviegoers around the world who bought tickets and put the picture into reasonable profit.
Wayne was clear in his own mind about the kind of movie – “about good against bad” – he was making and accommodated neither gray areas nor took note of current attitudes to the war as exemplified by nationwide demonstrations. Co-stars David Janssen, Jim Hutton and George Takei were opposed to the war. Takei, a regular on the Star Trek series, missed a third of the episodes on the second season; his lines were written to suit the character of Chekov, who went on to have a bigger role in the television series. Composer Elmer Bernstein turned down the gig as it went against his political beliefs. “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” heard over the opening credits was not composed for the film, having been released two years earlier.
Most critics hated it – “Truly monstrous ineptitude” (New York Times); “cliché-ridden throwback” (Hollywood Reporter); “immoral” (Glamour). Even those reviews that were mixed still came down hard: “rip-roaring Vietnam battle story…but certainly not an intellectual piece” (Motion Picture Exhibitor). Not that Wayne was too concerned. At the more vital place of judgement – the box office – it took in $9.5 million in rentals (what’s returned to the studios once cinemas have taken their cut) – $8.7 million on original release and a bit more in reissue – in the U.S. alone plus a good chunk overseas.
It was virtually impossible to examine a movie like this without taking a political stance. Other movies covering the same topic were allowed greater latitude regarding authenticity, audiences and critics like appearing to accept that creating watchable drama often took precedence over the facts. Both The Deer Hunter (1978) and Apocalypse Now, considered the best of this sub-genre, clearly ventured away from strict reality. With over half a century distancing the contemporary viewer from those inflammatory times, it’s worth noting that it still divides critics. Or, rather, critics and the general public take opposing views.
Although Rotten Tomatoes deems it “an exciting war film”, the critics voting on that platform gave it a lowly 23 per cent favourable report compared to a generally positive 61 per cent from the ordinary viewer. That contrasts, for example, with a more even split for the likes of Exodus (1960) – 63 per cent from critics and 69 per cent from audiences. However, The Green Berets attracts twice as much interest, collaring 9,000 votes compared to just 4,300 for Exodus.
After this, Wayne’s fee went up to a flat million bucks a picture. “He wasn’t a guarantee of success,” explained his son Michael, “he was a guarantee against failure.” At this point in his career, he was gold-plated. Where other stars in his commercial league suffered the occasional box office lapse – Paul Newman’s career in the 1960s, for example, was riddled with flops like The Secret War of Harry Frigg (1968) – he did not. Especially with a global following, his pictures never lost money.
SOURCES: Michael Munn, John Wayne, The Man Behind the Myth, Robson, 2004; Scott Eyman, John Wayne, The Life and Legend, Simon and Schuster, 2014; Brian Hannan, The Magnificent 60s, The 100 Top Films at the Box Office, McFarland, 2023; Robin Moore, Introduction, The Green Berets, 1999 edition, Skyhorse Publishing; Laurence H. Suid, Guts and Glory, University of Lexington Press, 2002; The Making of The Green Berets, 2020; Review, Hollywood Reporter, June 17, 1968; Review, Motion Picture Exhibitor, June 19, 1968; Renata Adler, “The Absolute End of the ‘Romance of War’”, New York Times, June 30, 1968; Glamour, October 1968; “Big Rental Pictures of 1968,” Variety, January 8, 1969.
The Magnificent 60s 