British – Page 16 – The Magnificent 60s

The Heroes of Telemark (1965) ****

Stellar World War Two mission picture, replete with tension and thrilling ski chases, told with some style, and with a conscience, probing the issue of civilian collateral damage. Sensibilities were not so inflamed at the time when the US, as demonstrated in Oppenheimer (2023), dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of non-military personnel. Here, at stake are the 6,000 townspeople who live around the plant housing the German experiments into heavy water, the alternative method for building an atom bomb.

When the safety of the entire world is in the balance, and death is doled out by remote bombers, thousands of feet up, with no close-up of the carnage, it appears far more acceptable than when you are planting a bomb on a ferry boat, knowing you are possibly consigning all the passengers to drowning.

That’s the climax of this well-plotted and well-constructed quite thrilling last picture from director Anthony Mann (The Fall of the Roman Empire, 1964) – he died during the making of A Dandy in Aspic (1967) so that cannot be fully ascribed to him and in any case this is a much better send-off.

Probably old-school British and Hollywood pictures were to blame for depicting scientists as stuffy individuals, allowing work to overrule romance. But as Oppenheimer demonstrated, that was not always the case and here we are introduced to top Norwegian egghead Rolf (Kirk Douglas) when he is stealing an illicit fumble with an employee in the darkroom.

The Germans are racking up production of heavy water, aiming to produce – drip by endless drip – 10,000lb of the stuff in double quick time. Norwegian saboteurs led by Knut (Richard Harris) hitch a ride by boat to Britain to inform the Allies of the danger. The obvious solution is to bomb the hell out of the factory, despite the impact on the civilian population.

But that fails. Plan B, dropping 50 highly-trained British commandos, into snow-covered Norway, comes a cropper when the plane crashes. A beautifully-filmed sequence, by the way, in extreme long shot, with one character at the front to provide perspective, a burst of flame at the far end of the white landscape.

So the saboteurs have to do it for themselves, the reluctant Rolf forced into action since he’s the only one, purportedly, who knows where to place the plastic explosive around the tanks holding the heavy water. The Norwegians shoot themselves in the foot by, in limiting the potential civilian casualties, only aiming to blow up the water tanks not the entire factory. Turns out the clever Germans have their own Plan B, other tanks already assembled which can be quickly fitted in the event of such sabotage.

Now with the plant more heavily guarded, access is impossible, and the only chance to stop the consignment of heavy water reaching Germany is to stop it getting there, by blowing up the train carrying the materiel as it crosses the fjord by ferry. Had this sabotage taken place in Germany, nobody would have given two hoots about the passengers, collateral damage be hanged. But this being Norwegians, Rolf feels duty bound to remain on board rather than escape, and formulate a plan to minimize the casualties.

I’m not sure how true that aspect is, it feels like something intended to present the main characters in a less ruthless light, although in reality the bombs were positioned and timed to help make survival easier.

Although told in semi-documentary style a la the same year’s Operation Crossbow, In Harm’s Way and Battle of the Bulge, with the aforementioned sensibilities to the fore, and the re-firing of romance between Rolf and divorced wife Anna (Ulla Jacobsen), the ruthless Nazi habit of executing hostages any time one of their soldiers is killed or even attacked, a traitor in the camp, open hostility between Rolf and Knut and stunning ski sequences that are the equal of anything in the James Bond canon, this is a riveting watch.

Must have been one of the cheapest music scores and screenplays on record given how often the director dispensed with both dialog and music during the lengthy sabotage scenes. When dialog was permitted, it was often sharp or humorous.

There was no stiffer upper lip in Hollywood than that of Kirk Douglas (The Brotherhood, 1968) though his hard-nosed demeanor is alleviated by romance and his efforts to minimise civilian casualties. Richard Harris (This Sporting Life, 1963) always seemed ready to explode. Ulla Jacobsen (Zulu, 1964) and Michael Redgrave (Assignment K, 1964) bring some class to the supporting roles.

Tremendous piece of direction by Anthony Mann, as adept at the action and building tension as handling the personality clashes between the principals and the intimacy of romance. Ivan Moffat (Tender Is the Night, 1962) and Ben Barzman (The Blue Max, 1966) wrote the screenplay based on a memoir by Knut Haueklid and the novel But for These Men by John Drummond.

A fitting last hurrah for Anthony Mann.

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A Town Called Hell / A Town Called Bastard (1970) ***

You think you’re in for something quite stylish when widow Alvira (Stell Stevens) rides into town asleep in a coffin in a hearse. Or when she turns up in a dream as an avenging angel. Or when a rebel, entrusted with funds to buy guns, squanders the cash on women and booze. Or when a Mexican general is so disgusted by informer Paco (Michael Craig) that he refuses to face him. But these are about the only highlights in a bloody, sadistic confusing affair.

And diversity rules. Not only do we have a deaf mute going by the apocalyptic name of The Spectre (Dudley Sutton), there’s also an unnamed blind man (Fernando Rey) who comes in handy because he can recognise people by fingering the contours of their faces.

We begin straightforwardly enough with the massacre in a church of the well-to-do by Mexican rebels led by two unnamed characters (Robert Shaw and Martin Landau). Turns out that’s only the prologue and we cut to a decade later to a town ruled by sadistic sun worshipper Don Carlos (Telly Savalas) who has a tendency to string people up at the drop of a hat. Keeping a low profile is another unnamed character known only as the Priest (Robert Shaw) who may always have been a cleric or who has turned to God after being involved in the massacre. Even so, religion doesn’t prevent him having a mistress.

Alvira is offering a $20,000 reward for the killers of her husband, Montes, a victim of the earlier massacre. To get the money, Don Carlos employs the typical wheeze of framing a couple of villagers, husband and wife, hanging them before their tongues run so loose they can confess it wasn’t them. In a bid to save his own skin, the husband blames his wife.

Don Carlos’s luck turns bad when his sidekick La Bomba (Al Lettieri) decides it might be fun to take over, beginning by shooting off his boss’s fingers before hanging him in the sun. But just when you might think you are getting the hang of what’s going on, the unnamed Colonel (Martin Landau) appears. He’s also looking for information, but not inclined to pay for it. He’s hunting for a rebel leader with, wait for it, an actual name, though this still sounds like a pseudonym, Aguila (Eagle, get it?). For no reason whatsoever, it takes the priest a little while to work out this is his former comrade from the church massacre.

*The Yanks were the ones who changed the title from the above. Interesting double bill, though, with Alain Delon as “Le Samourai.”* *Stella Stevens looks far more provocative*
*on the poster than she does in the film.*

It doesn’t take long for the Colonel to get a grip on the hanging malarkey and with as much relish as Don Carlos, determining to continue hanging the townspeople until they tell him where Aguila is. The two narratives don’t quite mesh, but then what do you expect, this is high on atmosphere, sweating bodies, raw emotions, blazing sun. The Colonel, equally obviously, has given up on being a rebel, presumably because as a government official, he can officially murder people any time he likes without having to round up a gang of rebels to do so.

Every now and then the movie dips into flashback or Paco appears to confuse matters further.

There’s an odd sensibility at work. Maybe this is intended to be one of those down’n’dirty westerns trying to show us how mean the actual West really was (although given it’s set in Mexico, we only need to go as far back as The Wild Bunch, in 1969, to get that point). It doesn’t fit so easily into the spaghetti western canon, either, despite the uniform malevolence.

The oblique tone reminds you more of something that could have been put together by Luis Bunuel, but that would be ranking it far higher than it deserves.

The cast are the biggest plus points, though you might be asking whether Robert Shaw (Battle of the Bulge, 1965) and Stella Stevens (The Mad Room, 1969) were sold a different film entirely. Stevens doesn’t have much to do, except look beautiful and soulful. But Shaw is about the only leading man you’ll come across who so puts his heart into a part that he doesn’t mind being seen actually drooling at the prospect of massacre. In fairness, Telly Savalas (The Assassination Bureau, 1969) and Martin Landau (Nevada Smith, 1966), while not exactly dripping spit, drool in different ways.

There’s enough brooding going on stylistically that you are almost willing it to turn into something not just better but more definable. Alas, no such luck.

Robert Parrish (In the French Style, 1963) does his best with a screenplay by Robert Aubrey (The One-Eyed Soldiers, 1967) and Benjamin Fisz, in his only writing gig, he was better known as a producer. My guess is they were more script doctors than anything else, the original damage having been done by the uncredited Philip Yordan (Battle of the Bulge).

Could a been something.

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File of the Golden Goose (1969) **

A dud. Not even Yul Brynner, whom I pumped up as under-rated yesterday in Escape from Zahrain (1962), can save it, nor a camped-up Charles Gray (The Devil Rides Out, 1968). Takes too long to get started, meanders all over the place while suspension of audience disbelief breaks new ground.

The first ten minutes or so via voiceover are wasted telling us stuff that one character could deliver in a single line. That is, there’s a worldwide counterfeit operation in place and London is the next target. Hence, American Treasury Agent Novak (Yul Brynner) being seconded to Scotland Yard where he is saddled with ineffective British sidekick Thompson (Edward Woodward).

For no particular reason, they head off to Liverpool where they attempt to infiltrate the gang. The mobsters are so dumb they fall for their lame story, though without first giving them routine warehouse work (cue montage of the pair falling asleep on the job and doing the wrong thing). Novak, it has to be said, is pretty slick at avoiding any traps, cleverly talking himself out of dodgy situations, pinning any blame on whoever is convenient.

But, eventually (thank goodness), they reach London. And if you have been waiting virtually the whole movie with bated breath for the appearance of female lead Adrienne Corri (Africa Texas Style, 1967) you can stand easy for now she turns up as ostensibly the gangster queen-pin.

The journey to here is enlivened by hitman Smythe (Graham Crowden), as English as they come, bowler hat and all, whose weapon of choice is a blade embedded in a walking stick, and The Owl (yep, The Owl, played by Charles Gray) with every fetish under the sun whose presence seems to demand an orgy.

By the time you get to the final shoot-out you couldn’t care less. With a bit more care and attention to detail, this could have been a reasonably thrilling picture. Novak is two-fisted enough to cut the mustard, and naturally treats the English cops as dumb-as-they-come, what with their lily-livered aversion to weapons. Surprisingly, Thompson takes to mobster life and quite enjoys dishing it out in a most un-English fashion.

There’s quite a nice twist when the chief counterfeiter leads Novak into a soundproof vault because he can’t be overheard spilling the beans on his colleagues and seeking witness protection.

But the movie appears to have been not made for a contemporary audience. Given Lee Marvin has reinvented the movie tough guy in Point Blank (1967) and Clint Eastwood the hardnosed cop in Coogan’s Bluff (1968), Novak doesn’t come close, and since British gangsters are slick enough to pull off Robbery (1967) and The Italian Job (1969), it seems the criminals here have lived a very sheltered life.

There’s not even the old reliable comedic standby of American fish out of British water, such as occasionally helped along pictures like Brannigan (1975). In fact, all the humor rests upon the dry-witted Owl.

Television director Sam Wanamaker (Catlow, 1971) makes his movie debut. John C. Higgins (Impasse, 1969) wrote the screenplay along with Robert E. Kent (The Fastest Guitar Alive, 1967).

For Yul Brynner completists only.

Hard to find, but Talking Pictures has this, but only until Dec 10. Strangely enough, I can’t see any rush.

https://www.tptvencore.co.uk/Video/The-File-of-the-Golden-Goose?id=8a918a69-adf1-4db0-938c-921eaa6494e9

Prehistoric Women / Slave Girls (1967) ***

Can a dash of feminism rescue campy trash? Or even a genetics overload? Or is it enough to wonder what career hole Carol White (Never Let Go, 1960) found herself in to end up here? Or should we just sit back and watch the Pan’s People-style choreography and admire the astute re-use of all those bikinis left over from Hammer’s previous venture into this territory, the much more successful One Million Years B.C. (1966). Whatever, there’s no escaping the wooden acting and the one-note direction.

Dennis Wheatley (The Fabulous Valley, The Lost Continent, They Found Atlantis) and C.S. Lewis for that matter had the knack of transporting characters back in time or into other worlds. There’s usually some routine artefact, door or whatnot, that allows access to an amazing kingdom, or, in this case, queendom.

Here, big game hunter David (Michael Latimer), about to be sacrificed to some pagan African god, instead finds himself thrown back in time, chasing bewitching blonde Saria (Edina Romay), who, unfortunately is on the run, so when she is apprehended, so is he. Queen Kari (Martine Beswick) takes him as her lover. But he’s less keen, repulsed by her harsh rule. When one of her subjects rebels, the queen doesn’t delegate the task of bringing her into line but takes her on mano-a-mano. David, put to work with the other male prisoners, soon plots his escape.

Setting aside the expected mumbo-jumbo – the tribe worships a mythical white rhino (phallic symbol anyone?) for example – if you want to extract anything more from this, there are fresh fields to plunder. For example, brunettes, such as Kari, are in control, but only after rebelling against the blondes who had subjugated the black-haired women in similar fashion as Kari. As well as having a female ruler, the movie makes a relatively pertinent point that gender scarcely comes into it when a dictator imposes such harsh conditions on their subject, Kari, for example, making the blondes eat off the dirt.

I’m not convinced the irony is deliberate. David, scion no doubt of Victorian nobility who made their pile from scarcely paying their downtrodden peasants a living wage, and who goes around shooting leopards, is hardly in a position to ask the queen to cool it. When she even considers giving him some equality – a big role reversal right there – he wants her to treat everyone in a nicer fashion.

The movie had an unsual history. Made quickly after “One Million Years B.C.” it was released in the U.S. as “Prehistoric Women” in 1967 but flopped so it was heavily cut, re-titled “Slave Girls” and sent out in 1968 in the UK as the support to “The Devil Rides Out.” The new title is a bit of misnomer because her kingdom is as full of slave men. The girls refers to the blondes. *It was released in the U.S. in February 1967 by Twentieth Century Fox* and *managed a tie-in in one city with Cara Nome perfume.* Actually, U.S. grosses were not as bad as have been reported – a “good” $25,000 in first run in Detroit, second only to “Grand Prix” there for the week, and decent enough openings in Boston, Minneapolis and San Francisco.

And she has the insecurity of Napoleon, needs to be loved, and not in mercenary fashion, and willing to attempt some form of rudimentary seduction if that’s what it takes to tempt the suddenly high-principled David into her bed. There’s an element of upending the Gentlemen Prefer Blondes trope, as though brunettes have always hankered after putting those ditzy blondes in their place.

Hammer lost sight of the fact that One Million Years B.C. owed as much to Ray Harryhausen as the statuesque temptations of Raquel Welch in a fur bikini and in its haste to cash in on that film’s big box office rushed into production a movie minus the battling dinosaurs. Although, of course, they could merely be making historical amends, since everyone knows dinosaurs and man (never mind women in fur bikinis) did not co-exist. And possibly ignored the fact that the puny Michael Latimer was no substitute for the brawnier John Richardson of the previous picture.

If you’re not so interested in gender politics, you can always enjoy the dancing, which appears to take up a disproportionate amount of time (well, all those bikinis, need to be used). I was disappointed to discover the choreography was not the work of Flick Colby of the legendary BBC TV Top of the Pops dance troupe, but by one Denys Palmer, an actor it appears, whose main claim to fame was appearing in a classic Dr Who episode.

This was triple-hyphenate job, so blame Michael Carreras (The Lost Continent, 1968) for the screenplay and the direction and for taking on the production duties, or praise him for seeding a campy knock-off with issues that register more strongly today.

This was intended to be a big step-up for Michael Latimer but he was so charisma-free that he didn’t score another movie credit until low-budget British B-picture Man of Violence (1970). Martin Beswick (The Penthouse, 1967) never got another shot at a top-billed role. Carol White did better, next up was Poor Cow (1967) and from there it weas a small step to Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting (1969), but she doesn’t stand out here the way she did in Never Let Go (1960). If anyone stole the show it was Edina Ronay, and much good it did her, her next outing was in the lamentable Three (1969).

A curiosity, half-rubbish, half-interesting.

Never Let Go (1960) ****

Under-rated British film noir classic. All the principals playing against type. Comedian Peter Sellers (The Millionairess, 1960) as the villain, British hero Richard Todd (The Dam Busters, 1955) comes seriously unstuck, pop star Adam Faith (Beat Girl / Wild for Kicks, 1960) tosses away his cuddly image. One of the earliest scores by John (James Bond) Barry. First grown-up role for Carol White (Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting, 1969). As much savage violence as the censor would allow at the time.

Down-on-his-luck salesman John (Richard Todd) has his car stolen. It’s uninsured. Without it he can’t get to his appointments on time. The police aren’t interested. So he has to investigate. That leads first to dodgy Teddy Boy Tommy (Adam Faith) who steals cars to order for supposedly legitimate businessman Lionel (Peter Sellers) and makes a play for Lionel’s young mistress Jackie (Carol White).

The interest lies not so much in the investigation as how those involved deal with pressure. John, hardly able to support wife Anne (Elizabeth Sellars) and two kids, has a history of failure, squandering money on get-rich-quick schemes, and apt to blow his top at clients who complain when he fails to keep appointments.

Doesn’t take long for him to lose his job. But instead of knuckling down and finding another, he stubbornly refuses to abandon his investigation, upsetting Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas (Noel Willman) who has much bigger fish to fry.

Lionel is a cocky gangster not afraid to lash out. In fact, he seems to enjoy battering people with his fists, feet and broken bottle. He treats Jackie with contempt, reminding her she’d be a sex worker if it wasn’t for him. He’s got a nice little empire and has kept his nose clean. He pays off corrupt cops.

But the last thing he expects is to be pursued by a loser like John who’s not cut from the John Wick template. Not does he possess the very particular set of skills that appear to be the prerequisite of anyone embarking on a mission of revenge.

If director John Guillermin (El Condor, 1970) hadn’t been obliged to tag on a happy ending, this would have been a downbeat tour-de-force, with the good guy losing everything in order to win back his self-respect.

It just sizzles with tension. Lionel belongs to the generation that spawned the likes of Harold in The Long Good Friday (1980) or the Kray Twins, a simmering, stewing piece of work, all gloss on the outside, a tinderbox on the inside.

There’s fabulous photography, eyes trapped in pools of light, overhead camera staking out victims, and seedy London picked out in detail. Newspaper vendor Alfie (Mervyn Johns), of pensionable age, the only witness to the crime, has his bedsit ransacked, the tiny terrapin he treasures crushed underfoot, when inadvertently he gives too much away.

Tearaway Tommy isn’t such a tough guy when Lionel comes battering on his door. Jackie is the only one who not so much stands up to Lionel as treats his idea of romance with disdain. Even when John fingers Lionel, Inspector Thomas bluntly tells him he’s too small fry and the cops aren’t interesting in chasing after his plebeian vehicle.

Lionel is the kind of gangster who is never going to realise he can’t always get away with it, that he might have to trim back his ambition until the coast is clearer. Instead, he batters on regardless, determined to terrify everyone into acquiescence.

As the movie progresses, the more you learn about John, the less you sympathise. His wife has stood by him through mostly thin, and will stick by him even if unemployed, but draws the line at antagonising a gangster who doesn’t know when to draw a line. John isn’t Gary Cooper in High Noon. He’s not a principled defender of the law. He’s almost as bad as the gangster, in that he doesn’t know when to stop, regardless of the danger this places his family.

Understandably, Peter Sellers attracted most of the critical plaudits, but this is the role of a lifetime for Richard Todd, who detonates his screen image, battered and bloodied almost beyond recognition, not hiding behind a stiff upper lip. Carol White, too, is superb as the mistress who just about recognises that this is not a good deal, and that she’s a chattel, not a loved one.

John Guillermin’s direction is superb. Coupled with the insistent, jazzy John Barry score, this is British film noir (admittedly, that’s not large pool to draw on) at its best.

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The Assassination Bureau (1969) ****

A couple of decades before “high concept” was invented came this high concept picture – a killer is hired to kill himself. Ivan Dragomiloff (Oliver Reed) is the assassin in question and Sonya Winter (Diana Rigg) the journalist doing the hiring. So Ivan challenges the other members of his murderous outfit to kill him before he despatches them. The odds are about ten to one. Initially involved in shadowing Ivan, Sonya becomes drawn to his aid when it transpires there is a bigger conspiracy afoot.

Set just before World War One, the action cuts a swathe through Europe’s glamor cities – London, Paris, Vienna, Venice – while stopping off for a bit of slapstick, some decent sight gags and a nod now and then to James Bond (gadgets) and The Pink Panther (exploding sausages).

Odd a mixture as it is, mostly it works, thanks to the intuitive partnership of director Basil Dearden and producer (and sometime writer and designer) Michael Relph, previously responsible this decade for League of Gentlemen (1960), Victim (1961), Masquerade (1965) and Khartoum (1966).

Playing mustachioed media magnate Lord Bostwick, Telly Savalas (The Scalphunters, 1968) has a decent chomp at an upper-class British action. It’s easy to forget was one of the things that marked him out was his clear diction and he always had an air about him, so this was possibly less of a stretch.

Ramping up the fun is a multi-cultural melange in supporting roles: Frenchman Phillipe Noiret (Night of the Generals, 1967), everyone’s favourite German Curt Jurgens (Psyche ’59, 1964) playing another general, Italian Annabella Contrera (The Ambushers, 1967) and Greek George Coulouris (Arabesque, 1966) plus British stalwarts Beryl Reid (The Killing of Sister George, 1969) as a brothel madam, television’s Warren Mitchell (Till Death Do Us Part), Kenneth Griffith and Clive Revill (Fathom, 1967).

The action flits between sudden danger and elaborate set pieces. When Ivan announces his proposal to his board he promptly fells a colleague with a gavel just as that man throws a knife. Apart from folderols in a Parisian brothel, we are treated to a Viennese waltz and malarkey in Venice. There are disguises aplenty, donned by our hero and his enemies. Lighters are turned into flame throwers.

And there is a lovely sly sense of humour, an Italian countess, wanting rid of her husband, does so under the pretext of Ivan gone rogue. Oliver Reed (Hannibal Brooks, 1969) and Diana Rigg (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, 1970), adopting her best Julie Andrews impression, are in excellent form and strike sparks off each other. Their verbal duels are a joy to watch. Basil Dearden, in his second-last picture, invested the movie with considerable panache. It takes more skill to carry off this kind of movie, as much satire and spoof as anything else, than a straightforward action or crime picture.

Relph conjured up the screenplay based on an unfinished Jack London novel published posthumously in 1963 with the assistance of crime writer Robert L. Fish.

Shouldn’t work as well as it does. Surprisingly enjoyable.

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The Skull (1965) *****

I have no idea why this masterpiece has not been acclaimed. For virtually half the picture, there is no dialogue, the entire focus on camerawork and reaction. Even Stanley Kubrick in The Shining (1980) gave in to grand guignol and The Exorcist (1973) was filled with over-the-top scenes but here the psychological impact of possession remains confined.

Initially, it appears we are in familiar Hammer territory, a grave-robber detaching a skull from a corpse only to meet an untimely end. There is another flashback to the gothic where the presence of the skull drives an order man to murder. But this is an Amicus production and set in contemporary times where Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are once again in opposition, but this time only in an auction house bidding for demonic artefacts.

Exposition is straightforward. Dealer Marco (Patrick Wymark) sells Maitland (Peter Cushing) a book about De Sade bound in human skin. Marco may be a con man. He claims to possess the skull of the Marquis de Sade but his attitude towards it, kissing its head, plucking its nose socket, and the fact that he willing to halve his asking price, suggest otherwise. Sir Matthew (Christopher Lee), who once owned the skull, warns Cushing against it.

The rest of the film covers Maitland’s possession of the skull and the skull’s possession of him. There is a notable Kafkaesque sequence where Maitland is arrested, taken before a judge and forced three times to play Russian roulette before ending up in the house of the dealer where he steals the skull. What is less often commented upon is that this nigh-on 15-minute sequence including a 90-second taxi ride is conducted in virtual silence, the camera mostly on Maitland’s face, that silence only broken by the feeding of bullets not the barrel of the gun and the barrel being rolled round. It is not long before Maitland commits his first murder.

There is a famous scene in the Last Tycoon (1976) in which Robert De Niro explains to a truculent word-obsessed British writer why dialogue is redundant in the movies. All you need is camera and reaction. That sets up The Skull’s greatest scene, a 17-minute dialogue-free climax, where Maitland is effectively preyed upon and consumed.

The skull itself appears to have a point-of-view, various shots of Maitland through the skull’s eyes. The actual special effects are limited to what is imminently achievable, the skulls glows, it moves through the air. The impact of its presence is shown on Maitland’s face and by his action. It is just hypnotic.

Various directors have been anointed for the way they move their camera – Antonioni’s 360-degree turn in The Passenger (1975) comes to mind, large chunks of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the long wait for sunrise in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), the lengthy shots of James Stewart driving a car in Vertigo (1958). But I have never seen anything as innovative as the silent sequences in The Skull which would be a waste of innovation were the sequences not so effective, especially on the small screen. Freddie Francis (Nightmare, 1964) directed from a story by Robert Bloch (Psycho, 1960). Equally innovative is the jarring music by avant-garde composer Elizabeth Lutyens.

In the role of his career, Peter Cushing (Dr Who and the Daleks, 1965) turns on the style, his character virtually turning 360-degrees as he becomes enmeshed in diabolic terror.

A must-see.

Carry On Nurse (1960) ***

There was no greater divide between audiences and critics in Britain than the long-running comedy “Carry On” series (outside of an occasional satirical bulls-eye like Carry On Up the Khyber, 1968). And a similar gulf existed between the type of audiences the movies attracted in Britain and those in America. In Britain they were vastly popular general releases while in America their usual habitat was the arthouse as if they were seen as the natural successors to the Ealing comedies. And there was a third chasm – between the endearing risqué early comedies and the more lascivious later versions.

Carry On Nurse fell into the endearing camp. The humor was gentle rather than forced, the emphasis on misunderstanding and innuendo and smooth seducers like Leslie Phillips rather than exposed female flesh and the grasping likes of the ever-chortling Sid James. Perhaps you could define this earlier film as pre-nasal Kenneth Williams, his peculiar type of delivery not yet at full throttle. Here there is innocence rather than lust and the males quake in fear not just of the indomitable Hattie Jacques in brusque matron mode but of the other efficient nurses led by Shirley Eaton who have the measure of their rather hapless patients, although student nurse Joan Sims – making her series debut – is an accident-prone soul.

The action is mostly confined to a male ward. There are plenty of gags – alarms rung by mistake, boiling catheters burned to a turn, medication making a patient go wild, patients intoxicated by laughing gas and the famous replacement of a rectal thermometer by a daffodil. Wilfred Hyde-White as a constant complainer and obsessive radio listener Charles Hawtrey provide further ongoing amusement.

But the thrust of the story is romance. Journalist Terence Longdon fancies Shirley Eaton but his initial advances are spurned as she is in love with a doctor. In a role far removed from his later brazen characters, Williams plays a shy intellectual who finally comes round to the charms of Jill Ireland (later wife of Charles Bronson). Although Leslie Phillips is his usual suave self, he makes no designs on the female staff since he has a girlfriend elsewhere and his ailment – a bunion on the bum – makes him an unlikely candidate for a hospital liaison.

Hattie Jacques is in imperious form, Shirley Eaton shows what she is capable of, Kenneth Williams playing against type is a revelation.

British critics hated the “Carry On” films until late in the decade when Carry On Up the Khyber (1968) hit a satirical note. Critics felt the movies pandered to the lowest common denominator and were a poor substitute for the Ealing comedies which had given Britain an unexpected appreciation among American comedy fans.

It was a well-known fact the comedies did not always travel. Apart from Jacques Tati, the more vulgar French comedies featuring the likes of Fernandel were seen as arthouse fare. Unless they featured a sex angle or the promise of nudity, coarse Italians comedies struggled to find an international audience. The “Carry On” films were bawdy by inclination without being visually offensive

Carry On Sergeant (1958), the first in the series, had been a massive success in Britain. Distributor Anglo-Amalgamated was so convinced it would find a similar response in the U.S. that it was opened in New York at a first run arthouse. Although comedies were hardly standard arthouse fare, this was generally the route for low-budget British films. The picture lasted only three weeks and taking that as proof of its dismal prospects other exhibitors ignored it.

The follow-up Carry On Nurse (1959) took an entirely different route when launched in America in 1960. This time New York would be virtually the last leg of its exhibition tour. Instead it opened on March 10 at the 750-seat Crest in Los Angeles. Away from the New York spotlight, the little movie attracted not just good notices but decent audiences.

Instead of being whipped off screens after a few weeks, it developed legs. In Chicago it ran for 16 weeks in first run before transferring to a further 50 theaters. Within a few months of opening it had been released in 48 cities. In Minneapolis it was booked as a “filler” at the World arthouse, expected to run a week and no more. Instead, it remained for six weeks and when it shifted out to the nabes out-grossed Billy Wilder’s big-budget comedy The Apartment (1960) with a stellar cast of Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine.

In its fourth month at the 600-seat Fox Esquire in Denver where it opened in May, it set a new long-run record for a non-roadshow picture. It had been taking in a steady $4,000 a week since opening.

SOURCES: “How To Nurse a Foreign Pic That’s Neither Art nor Nudie: Skip N.Y.,” Variety, Aug 24, 1960, 3; “British Carry On Nurse A Sleeper in Mpls With Long Lopp Run, Nabe Biz,” Variety, Aug 24, 1960, 18;

Note: by and large this blog follows American release dates so although Carry On Nurse was shown in Britain in 1959 it did not reach America until 1960.

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Triple Bill of Duds: “May December” (2023) * / “Saltburn” (2023) / “A Forgotten Man”

The selection process for my weekly Monday visit to the cinema has sorely let me down. I never refer to reviews in advance, not wishing to learn anything, however inadvertently, about the story. So, I went into this arthouse trio – all showing I hasten to add at my local multiplex – with high hopes.

May December

I find it impossible work out how anyone, least of all a brace of Oscar-winners like Natalie Portman (here listed as producer) and Julianne Moore, could seriously consider making a movie about someone convicted of child sex abuse. In this case, I guess, the excuse is that because it’s a woman it’s either a) understandable or b) excusable. But if the subject was a male sex abuser I doubt if he would be given the same latitude.

This is one of those films that would have been far better dealt with as a documentary where the facts can be treated more straightforwardly rather than deliberately clouded by fictional elements and sympathetic treatment. Supposedly, the audience is provided with perspective since the movie revolves around an actress Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) doing preparatory work 20 years after the event as a prelude to playing the character in a television movie.

The fact that Gracie (Julianne Moore), the married woman convicted of having sex with a 13-year-old boy, denies that she committed any crime, maintaining a) that it was true love and b) that she was the victim, that the boy was “in charge” and the seducer, seems a very deliberate attempt to muddy the waters. Especially, when it becomes clear that the boy, Joe (Charles Melton), now of course a man, has been forced to bury his true feelings about the subject.

With the usual showbiz entitlement, Elizabeth sees nothing wrong with disrupting what is, on the surface at least, a reasonably happy family, forcing the children of this relationship to come to terms with the fact that at least one of them was born from an illegal coupling.

Not to mention the damage this will do to the innocent children of the couple on whom the story was based, Mary Kay Letourneau (since dead) and Vili Fualaau. That Elizabeth turns out to be pretty creepy herself – explaining to a shocked teenage audience that she gets aroused during sex scenes and seducing Joe – seems to be an attempt at mitigation (oh, look, we all do crazy things once in a while!).

Saltburn

Brideshead Revisited Meets Carry On Downton Abbey. Wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the way it was actually pitched, it’s just so uneven, veering through several different styles without ever finding a target. The shock elements are, unfortunately, just risible. Via the trailer this appeared to be a moody, atmospheric picture about entitlement, the downside, if you like, of Downton.

Instead, it’s just plain barmy, which might well have worked if its take on the bizarre had been consistent, but, really it’s a contender for the coveted So-Bad-It’s-Good Award with Rosamund Pike odds-on to nab a gong for Best Maggie Smith Impression. .

Oliver (Barry Keoghan) is supposedly a scholarship student at Oxford, coming from a sinkhole estate in Liverpool, parents drug dealers etc etc. Out of his depth, by chance he latches on to sex god Felix (Jacob Elordi) and is invited to spend the summer at the latter’s stately home complete with sneering butlers and demonic family all graduates of the Over-Acting Academy.

Turns out we’ve not been watching Downton Abbey at all, but The Usual Suspects, Oliver not an innocent little bookworm but an extremely malevolent character who manages – in the absence (luckily) of post-mortems – to bump off the entire family in order to inherit (don’t ask!) Saltburn in order to, in a bizarre nod to Risky Business, dance naked through it.

The only reason it gets any points at all is Jacob Elordi, who exhibits tremendous screen charisma, and because the barmy extremely self-centred and out-of-it Rosamund Pike does elicit a few laughs and maybe, courtesy of Richard E. Grant, has a haircut to enter some kind of Hall of Fame.

A Forgotten Man

This wants to say something important about the neutrality stance of Switzerland during the Second World War. But unless you live in Switzerland, you won’t have a clue what it’s trying to say. And if you thought The Crown was off-the-wall in summoning up the ghost of Princess Diana, wait till you start counting the number of ghostly apparitions here of young Swiss chap Maurice (Viktor Poltier), whom the protagonist Henrich (Michael Neuenschwander), while Swiss Ambassador to Berlin during the war, failed to prevent being executed.

I’ve no idea if this aspect is based on a true story. Either way, fictional or not, it’s a preposterous central conceit. Supposedly, Maurice had been arrested for trying to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Theoretically, we should all be applauding his actions. He should get a free pass for trying to rid the world of a monster. But, in reality, how would you expect an Ambassador to go about pleading clemency for one of his citizens who tried to murder the ruler of Germany?

There’s clearly some angst about the fact that Switzerland managed to emerge unscathed after a war which left the rest of Europe in turmoil. But it’s pretty hard to summon any sympathy for anybody, least of all the director because whatever point he’s trying to make is made so obliquely it fails to register. That it gets any points at all is due to its brevity and that, as the first movie in my self-selected triple bill, I came out of it in a far better mood than the other two.

A Question of Suspense (1961) ***

Only a streamer could have a film designated as released in 2023 when it was made 60 years earlier. I wonder if that’s one of those deliberate streaming errors where an old movie is classified as a new one just because it’s appearing on a streamer for the first time. You might think someone might have wondered how a director who died in 1996 ctually managed to make a movie in 2023.

The British had another word for the B-film. They called it a “quota quickie.” By law, 20 per cent of the films shown in cinemas in Britain had to be home-grown. Bear in mind that except in London’s West End, movies shown in first run only lasted a week, and small neighborhood houses, requiring to screen double bills, might get through five or six pictures a week. There was no way the British industry could produce that number of quality films.

So movies made on tiny budgets came in to fill the gap – and fulfil the quota. This is one of the better ones. It didn’t last long – barely an hour – and in Britain went out on the Odeon circuit as the supporting feature for John Ford’s Two Rode Together (1961).

*Above and below: the absence of any poster featuring the movie I’m reviewing has forced me to compensate with two others top-billing the star.*

Smarmy rich company owner Jim (Peter Reynolds) expects employee and childhood buddy Frank (Norman Rodway) to go along with a fraud involving £30,000 – equivalent to over £500,000 today. When Frank refuses Jim kills him, burying him close to a childhood haunt. As far as the cops are concerned, Frank has just disappeared, in their eyes hardly surprising when the fraud comes to light.

Turns out, to Jim’s surprise, Frank has a wife, Rose (Noelle Middleton), and partly to keep tabs on her and stop her investigating further, and partly because he was sweet on her when he was a teenager, and partly, I guess, because he’s the type of man who thinks all women should fall at his feet, he starts to romance her. He’s a bit of a swine in the romantic department because it’s quite obvious that he’s being having an affair with his secretary Jean (Yvonne Buckingham).

Rose is suspicious of his ardor and when other clues come to light suspects Frank was actually murdered and she determines to act as bait to catch him.

When I say this film had a tiny budget, it might have well have been shot in a week or ten days. So it’s instructive how French director Max Varnel makes clever use of what must have been very limited location and studio space. Jim drives a Jaguar and lives in a posh house. Everything about him is spacious. His office is very long, the rooms in his house very big, so that instead of the claustrophobia of film noir, you get the opposite. And why would you waste any time on atmospheric lighting when you can create that with quick snips of music. And it’s not one of those Hollywood pictures where villains knock back whisky in quick shots. Jim likes his booze, but mostly he sips it, and from the balloon glasses he uses it looks like brandy.

The cops aren’t from the American tough-guy template either and if a guy disappears having stolen a huge amount of money they are liable to settle for the obvious – that he’s done a runner – rather than assume foul play.

The beauty of this kind of picture is that most of the time you expect the villain to get away with it. He’s so smart, one step ahead, and everyone else is so dumb, and a relatively plain girl like Rose should be delighted he’s paying her any attention at all and showering her with gifts – he rents her a flat and a car, takes her out to expensive restaurants.

Peter Reynolds (Spare the Rod, 1961) is impressive as the cocky villain but in terms of screen charisma Yvonne Buckingham (The Christine Keeler Story, 1963) takes precedence over Noelle Middleton (Bafta nominated for Court Martial, 1954) and the picture suffers when she disappears about one-third of the way in. Max Vernal (Part-Time Wife, 1961) does a good job with limited resources. Roy Vickers (Rebound, 1959) and Lawrence Huntingdon (The Vulture, 1966) dreamed it up.

But, as I said, it’s pretty short (just 63 minutes) so no need to worry about sub-plots or be drowned in self-justification, self-pity or backstory. A bit more fleshing out and some more money spent and it would be pretty good. As it is, it’s way better than two-star but possibly only nudging into the three-star category.