John Gregson – The Magnificent 60s

Tomorrow at Ten (1962) ****

Surprisingly hardnosed for a British crime thriller. Surprisingly stylish and when the sting in the tail comes, it’s an emotional one, adding a deeper level to one of the main characters. In most crime picture – wherever they originate, Britain, Hollywood, France, Italy – the detectives may well complain to their colleagues about their superiors but they never take them on head-to-head and again and again. For that element alone, this is well worth watching.

The opening has you hooked, way head of its time, you would be more likely to see this type of approach in a picture from a top-name director, Alfred Hitchcock for example. A man, Marlowe (Robert Shaw) enters a derelict detached house carrying three parcels. He climbs a flight of stairs. With a key he opens a locked door. It might be a bedsit it’s so scarcely furnished except for the child’s bed. He sits down at the table, empties out two bottles of milk and some food. He opens a long parcel wrapped in paper and takes out a stuffed toy. He flips it over on its stomach, cuts open its back, pulls out the stuffing and from his last parcel removes a small bomb which he places in the empty space.

(At this point I have to explain that the toy is a gollywog, an innocent enough toy at the time but which has different connotations now, so is rarely mentioned, but this particular type of toy has a bearing on the plot, so forgive me if I make further mention of it.)

Next time we see him he’s wearing a chauffer’s uniform, picking up a small boy, Jonathan, (Piers Bishop) to take to school. Only, as you’ll have gathered, he has another destination in mind, but takes care not to frighten the child, to keep him distracted to the extent of the child thinking there’s nothing untoward as he is taken upstairs. He’s delighted with the toy, and not, at this point, too worried to be left alone.

Meanwhile, at the boy’s house, nanny Mrs Robinson (Helen Cherry) receives a telephone call from the school asking where the boy is. Just as the perplexed widowed father Anthony Chester (Alec Clunes) is given the news, Marlowe, now dressed in a suit, and carrying a Gladstone bag, appears at the door. Anthony greets him by name.

In the study Marlowe explains he has kidnapped the son, requires £50,000 in ransom, has planted a bomb set to go off the next morning at ten o’clock (hence the title), but will only release details of the child’s whereabouts once he is out of the country. Chester, a millionaire, has no qualms about paying up. Marlow is as cool as a cucumber. He has come up with the perfect crime. He will get off scot-free, become instantly rich and no one will come to any harm.

Except the nanny is listening at the door and dials 999. The local cops call in Scotland Yard. Assistant Commissioner Bewley (Alan Wheatley) assigns the case to Detective Inspector Parnell (John Gregson) quickly revealed as a tough nut, threatening to turn a suspect in a jewel robbery loose so that his pals will think he’s squealed and exact vengeance.

By the time, he reaches the house, Chester has gone off to withdraw the cash from the bank. Inside, Parnell confronts Marlowe. And so begins a game of cat-and-mouse. Marlowe holds firm, believing that the cop will give in to save the child, Parnell searches for a psychological weakness in the criminal’s makeup that he can use to crack him. Each convinced of their own mental strength in a battle with an innocent life at stake.

Chester returns with the money and is furious to discover the cop. When Parnell refuses to play along with handing over the cash to the kidnapper, Chester pulls out his ace, the old boys network, calling up Bewley, asking for Parnell to be removed from the case. Bewley, happy to do a favor for a wealthy pal, agrees. But Parnell refuses to go.

Bewley goes in person to confront his insubordinate officer. Still, Parnell refuses to budge, verbally attacking his smug superior, threatening to go to the newspapers.

While the pair are arguing, Chester loses his rag, physically attacking Marlowe. In the struggle, Marlowe falls back, hits his head and falls unconscious. Bewley, who has reluctantly agreed to let Parnell continue, now responds with spiteful glee. The cop will carry the can if the child dies.

Chester, meanwhile, is calling in the top medical experts to save Marlowe, money no object. But Parnell can’t afford to wait and enlarges the inquiry, putting out a public appeal, Marlowe’s face on the front page of the evening newspaper. But every other investigation can’t be halted just for this case, so Parnell is frustrated when various beat cops, originally going door-to-door, are pulled off onto other case.

Meanwhile, we already know Jonathan has worked out something is wrong, But the window is sealed with steel mesh and the door is locked and eventually he goes to sleep cuddling the deadly toy.

Marlowe shows no sign of recovery and dies. Bewley ups the stakes against Parnell. A beat cop looks at the outside of the house in question but walks away. Parnell gets a tip-off that leads him to a nightclub called the Gollywog Club and encounters Marlowe’s parents who run the place. Their name is Maddow. They haven’t seen their son in several months and while they accept he’s a criminal, the mother reminisces about what a loving boy he was.

Eventually, Parnell finds the estate agent who rented the property to Marlowe. By now they have just five minutes to get to the property.

They arrive a few minutes after the deadline.

But Jonathan has inadvertently saved his own skin, and ironically the plan has backfired because of Marlowe’s insistence on hiding the bomb in a stuffed toy of sentimental value rather than secreting it in a cupboard or somewhere the child would not have looked, and even if he found it wouldn’t know what it was.

After waking up Jonathan has washed his face and hands and decides the toy could do with a bit of tidying up the same so dunks it in a sink full of water, thus nullifying the bomb.

Parnell goes home, welcomed by wife and – child the same age as Jonathan.

So, yes, much of the tale is par for the course, several twists to up the tension, but Parnell’s duels with his boss put this on a different level, and the realisation at the end that he has managed to set aside the feelings for his own child. And it’s also elevated by the direction of veteran Lance Comfort (Devils of Darkness, 1965) who takes time out – in an era when such features were usually cut to the bone – to add atmosphere. The first and last scenes are outstanding for different reasons and the two verbal duels make for a fascinating movie.

Stronger cast than most in this budget category – John Gregson (Faces in the Dark, 1960) and Robert Shaw (Jaws, 1975) bring cool steel to the affair.

Though little-know, Tomorrow at Ten has been acclaimed as one of the top 15 British crime pictures made between 1945 and 1970 and I wholeheartedly agree.

Another welcome revival from Talking Pictures TV.

Live Now, Pay Later (1962) ***

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.

Prophetic.

Faces in the Dark (1960) ***

Had his been tagged “From the Makers of Vertigo”, it might have immediately attracted a greater immediate audience and been treated these days with more critical reverence. But Vertigo wasn’t the cult film it is now, so the names of the authors of the source book, Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, would have no promotional value.

Throw in a stunning score by Mikis Theodarakis (Zorba the Greek, 1964) and a top-line cast including Swedish bombshell Mai Zetterling (Only Two Can Play, 1962), cult character actor John Ireland (The Ceremony, 1963) and an early role for Nanette Newman (The Wrong Box, 1966) plus a gender switch on the traditional gaslighting plot and you have makings of a classy little number.

When an experiment goes wrong, ambitious arrogant businessman Richard Hammond (John Gregson) is blinded. To help him recuperate wife Christiane (Mai Zetterling) flies him off to their luxurious Cornwall retreat where, to ensure is mind isn’t overloaded with business concerns, she switches off the phone. Along for the ride are his sponging brother Max (John Ireland), business partner David (Michael Denison), housemaid Janet (Nanette Newman) and chauffeur Clem (Tony Wright).

When things are not what they seem – the cat has suddenly lost its tail, a peach plant has disappeared from the garden, he smells pine, hears church bells – he believes he is going insane. Doesn’t take long before he realizes this is not a haven, but a trap. Sounds providing the greatest clues, he hears a giveaway clicking, indicating the presence of David, in his wife’s bedroom when the partner is meant to be a hundred miles away.

His brother has also disappeared, believed dead, and when his wife gives the help the night off and he is left in the house with the lovers is convinced they are trying to poison him and refuses to eat any food. Given sounds are so important, there’s one brilliant scene, where, having escaped, he discovers none of the locals can understand what he’s saying, and not because he’s gabbling either. But that’s such a clever plot point, I wouldn’t be a spoiler.

So you’ve got tension fairly climbing the walls .

The only downside is that Richard is such an unlikeable character – not a poor soul like Audrey Hepburn in Wait until Dark (1967) – that it’s hard to summon up the sympathy an audience requires for such a story to properly work. Theoretically, he’s just a driven man, whose genius is being blocked by the cynical bankers, but from the outset he’s full of bluster and nasty put-downs, and has everyone in the factory he owns on edge.

Anger at his condition and fear that insanity or failure lies ahead puts him in a constant rage and, heavily sweating for no particular medical reason, he’s not the most charismatic of screen characters. Even though his reaction would fit with a successful businessman failing to come to terms with the calamity, those elements, which might have evoked greater sympathy, are somewhat adrift when they get tangled up with the plot.

Director David Eady (The Verdict, 1964) does his best to compensate. The music, as mentioned, helps, throbbing piano rather than screaming violins. And there a couple of neat visuals, the swirling smoke of the credit sequence reappearing to devastating effect in one sequence. But, mostly, he lines up reasons for Richard to begin to question his sanity and believe he is being duped – he can’t read documents he must sign and as the only part of his handwriting that stands up is his signature suspects his impoverished brother will write a larger sum on a cheque he signs.

And since most of this unfolds through the mind of Richard, the director plays fair with the audience. There are no nods and winks about the nature of the relationship between wife and partner. Even though she confides in David that she’s planning to leave Richard, there’s no indication that it’s for the partner.

So this is more like a detective story and, as with Vertigo, featuring an obsessive character driven mad by obsession, both led on by the devious, and having to piece together a strange amalgam of clues.

John Gregson (The Frightened City, 1961), normally essaying more stoical characters, overacts, but the others do the opposite. Mai Zetterling is convincing and former British matinee idol Michael Denison plays against type (he wouldn’t make another movie for 30 years). Nanette Newman shows promise while John Ireland reins in the surliness. Ephraim Kogan (in his sole movie credit) and John Tully (who didn’t get another movie credit for the decade) wrote the screenplay.

Effective thriller ripe for a remake.

Catch it on Amazon Prime or DVD.

https://amzn.to/3RoBDfb

The Frightened City (1961) ***

Sean Connery in an early role as a gangster is not the only reason for watching this brisk British thriller about a London protection racket. Primarily told from the point-of-view of the bad guys, this explores how a ruthless Mr Big builds up a criminal empire. Waldo (Herbert Lom), a bent accountant, brings together the six major gangs involved in extorting money from pubs and stores into a democratically-run syndicate. He then moves on to demanding bigger sums from bigger enterprises such as construction businesses. However, when the gangsters fall out they go to war.

This film is way ahead of the game in presenting gangsters as displaying any intelligence. Generally, they were depicted as brutes who ruled by force. But criminality at the top level demanded as much organization as in a legitimate business. Personalities had to be harnessed to work together rather than shoot each other on sight. Such skills had to exist in order for gangsters to operate on any scale. This picture examines how this was done.

The cops led by Det Insp Sayers (John Gregson) are almost a sub-plot and the story would have adequately run its course without their involvement. Sayers sails close to the wind in hoping to “tilt the scale of justice in our direction for a change.” Paddy (Sean Connery) doesn’t appear until about 20 minutes as a karate-expert cat-burglar turned enforcer. Paddy’s involvement with the syndicate ends when his code of honor is breached and he turns on his employers. His code is not so sacrosanct that it prevents him cheating on girlfriend Sadie (Olive McFarland). But he does display the virility to fill James Bond’s shoes.

There’s far more violence that would be expected in a British crime picture of the era. Night clubs, shops and pubs are wrecked and there’s plenty of fisticuffs and when the gangsters go head-to-head they upgrade to grenades. There’s a bit more plot than the running time can deal with so director (and producer and co-writer, along with Leigh Vance of Crossplot, 1969, fame) John Lemont occasionally resorts to cliché devices like newspaper headlines. Canadian Lemont – most famous for writing the first serial on ITV, Sixpenny Corner – was an auteur of the old-fashioned (and unheralded) kind, and previously writer-director of The Shakedown (1960).

Top billing was a step up for Herbert Lom (Gambit, 1966) and he made the most of it, delivering a suave villain among the thugs. John Gregson (Night of the Generals, 1967) Table, 1959) was a solid British star and ideal cop material (he was later British television’s Gideon). Yvonne Romaine, as Connery’s new squeeze, a nightclub singer exploited by Lom more for her looks than her voice, was known to audiences after Curse of the Werewolf (1961). This was a sophomore outing for Scottish television actress Olive McFarland (So Evil So Young, 1961). Unusually, for a British picture at this time, the theme tune written by Norrie Paramour was covered by The Shadows and turned into a hit.

At this point in his career, Connery had already had two bites of the cherry without much success – romancing Lana Turner in Another Time, Another Place (1958) and Disney’s Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959). He would make another three films before his breakthrough with Dr No (1962) but the Pressbook showed signs that he was headed for the heights. Co-star Yvonne Romaine (and her distinctive body measurements) were accorded three separate stories in the Pressbook, compared to one each for Lom and Alfred Marks, at that point better known as a comedian. While no articles about Connery were featured, when it came to the advertising campaign Connery (and Romaine) outshone their co-stars.

Producers were contractually bound in relation to the size of credits that appeared on any advertising. But there were no such regulations regarding the visuals of an advert. Although top-billed, Lom is not shown on any of the adverts. Given greatest prominence was Yvonne Romaine. There were thirteen different ads and she appeared in them all. Although Connery was third-billed and she was two rungs below in the credit stakes, he was the junior partner when it came to the artwork. While, Connery appeared in eleven in only one did he overshadow Romaine and in another they were visually-speaking accorded roughly the same status. But otherwise, she hogged the adverts.

The Pressbook was small by American standards, consisting of six A3 pages, the bulk of which was given over to adverts. But what it lacked in pages it made up for in taglines – of which there were six main types.

The picture was not seen much in the United States, sent out in first run as the lower half of a double bill in only a handful of big cities, so there’s a fair chance it’s completely unknown except to Connery completists. It later appeared on the reissue circuit when Connery was a bigger name.

Worth a look as an example of the British crime movie trying to break out of the confines of the genre, and even more so as an early example of the Connery screen charisma.

S.O.S. Pacific (1960) ***

There’s a whole book to be written about poster deception. But this plays with audience expectation in an unusual manner. Here it’s a case of duping by billing. The top-billed Richard Attenborough (Only When I Larf, 1968) disappears in the last third, John Gregson (The Frightened City, 1961) spends most of the time out of it and the bulk of the heavy lifting is done by fifth-billed Eddie Constantine (The Great Chase, 1968).

That’s no bad thing because Constantine, self-deprecating tough guy in the Lee Marvin mold, does pretty well in this survival picture, airplane crashing in the Pacific, a motley bunch stranded on an island. And with the bonus of Attenborough and Gregson, typically of the English stiff-upper-lip persuasion, playing against type.

Alcoholic Jack (John Gregson), piloting a seaplane on its last legs, is ferrying wanted smuggler Mark (Eddie Constantine), handcuffed to cop Petersen (Clifford Evans), along with shifty witness Whitey (Richard Attenborough), stewardess Teresa (Pier Angela), physicist Krauss (Gunnar Moller), sparky spinster Miss Shaw (Jean Anderson) and the “loaded with sin” Maria (Eva Bartok).

When Mark attempts to put out an electrical fire on board he accidentally kills co-pilot Willy (Cec Linder) and with Jack out cold the plane heads for the drink. Luckily, there’s a deserted island nearby. Unluckily, it’s next door to a nuclear test site.

Meanwhile, Mark, emerging as the hero, is soon fighting off the attentions of Maria and Teresa, Jack’s girlfriend. Whitey, who pointed the finger at Jack and not wanting to be stranded on the same island as him, steals the cop’s gun, puts a hole in one of the two dinghies and sets off to sea on the other. On discovering lead-lined housing, Krauss is able to work out the nuclear issue. With barely five hours to detonation, Mark elects to swim two miles in shark-infested water to the tiny island housing the nuclear device, armed only with a few rudimentary tools.

There’s a surprise waiting for him of course. Should he succeed in his enterprise, there’s reward too because Jack, in best Scott of the Antarctic form, has sacrificed himself to the sharks to give Mark a chance.

There’s some good stuff here, namely seeing Attenborough as a snivelling spiv complete with dangling cigarette, and Gregson as a self-pitying drunk, killing his career one bottle at a time, an airsick cop, the doughty Miss Shaw still fancying herself as a femme fatale, some well-scripted dialog between bad guy Mark and bad girl Maria, and a host of twists.

Contemporary audiences will feel let down by the ending. If only it was as easy to prevent nuclear catastrophe. But on the other hand it is one of the first films to take the issue of the atom bomb seriously, Jack’s self-destruction the result of witnessing at first hand the devastation of Hiroshima.

Yank Eddie Constantine, hightailing it to France to improve his career prospects in the 1950s, and becoming a B-movie star, was still largely an unknown quantity. He had top-billed in French and German pictures and was the male lead to Diana Dors in Room 43 (1958). This should have kick-started a Hollywood career or at least a British one.

A potential inheritor of the Humphrey Bogart mantle, the tough guy with a soft centre, snappy with the one-liners, in this outing willing to go with the flow, confident he will end up back on his feet, if not at least enough appeal to have dames falling at his feet. But, probably, he would have had to work his way up again, which might be a slow business, whereas in France scripts were being written to suit his screen persona. If you’re interested check out his turn as Lemmy Caution in Your Turn, Darling (1963) and his outings as secret agent Jeff Gordon and private eye Nick Carter.

Eddie Constantine played by far the most interesting character here, and except for Jean Anderson (Solomon and Sheba, 1959) the women were underwritten, Pier Angeli (Battle of the Bulge, 1965) and Eva Bartok (Blood and Black Lace, 1964) there mainly to polish the hero’s ego.

Robert Westerby (Dr Syn, Alias the Scarecrow, 1963), television writer Gilbert Thomas and Bryan Forbes (Station Six Sahara, 1963) had varying hands in the screenplay.

Director Guy Green (The Magus, 1968) does a good job of marshalling his box of tricks, keeping tensions – whether romantic, criminal or survivalist – high especially as he had to find a way round the unexpected climax, and once you accept that neither Attenborough nor Gregson are going to leap to the rescue quite easy to get on the Eddie Constantine wavelength. Not in the class of The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) or Sands of the Kalahari (1965), and lacking their character complexities, but not far off.

The Frightened City (1961) ***

Sean Connery in an early role as a gangster is not the only reason for watching this brisk British thriller about a London protection racket. Primarily told from the point-of-view of the bad guys, this explores how a ruthless Mr Big (Herbert Lom) builds up a criminal empire. Lom, a bent accountant, brings together the six major gangs involved in extorting money from pubs and stores into a democratically-run syndicate. Lom then moves on to demanding bigger sums from bigger enterprises such as construction businesses. However, when the gangsters fall out they go to war.

The cops led by John Gregson are almost a sub-plot and the story would have adequately run its course without their involvement. Gregson sails close to the wind hoping to “tilt the scale of justice in our direction for a change.” Connery doesn’t appear until about 20 minutes as a karate-expert cat-burglar turned enforcer. Connery’s involvement with the syndicate ends when his code of honor is breached and he turns on his employers. His code is not so sacrosanct that it prevents him cheating on his girlfriend. But he does display the virility to fill James Bond’s shoes.

There’s far more violence that would be expected in a British crime picture. Night clubs, shops and pubs are wrecked and there’s plenty of fisticuffs and when the gangsters go head-to-head they upgrade to grenades. There’s a bit more plot than the running time can deal with so director (and producer and co-writer) John Lemont occasionally resorts to cliché devices like newspaper headlines. Canadian Lemont – most famous for writing the first serial hon on ITV, Sixpenny Corner – was an auteur of the old-fashioned (and unheralded) kind, and previously writer-director of The Shakedown (1960). Triple-hyphenates, while rare in the movie business, were generally of a high calibre such as Billy Wilder and Joseph L. Mankiewicz, so Lemont was in good company, and clearly, in consequence, the movie that appeared reflected his own vision.

Top billing was a step up for Lom and he made the most of it, delivering a suave villain among the thugs. Gregson (The Captain’s Table, 1959) was a solid British star and ideal cop material (he was later British television’s Gideon). Yvonne Romaine, as Connery’s new squeeze, a nightclub singer exploited by Lom more for her looks than her voice, was known to audiences after Curse of the Werewolf (1961). In only her second film Scottish television actress Olive McFarland was Connery’s dumped girlfriend. Unusually, for a British picture at this time, the theme tune written by Norrie Paramour was covered by The Shadows and turned into a hit.

At this point in his career, Connery had already had two bites of the cherry without much success – romancing Lana Turner in Another Time, Another Place (1958) and Disney’s Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959). This was three films before his breakthrough with Dr No (1962) but the Pressbook showed signs that he was headed for the heights. Co-star Yvonne Romaine (and her distinctive body measurements) were accorded three separate stories in the Pressbook, compared to one each for Lom and Alfred Marks, at that point better known as a comedian, but none of Connery. But Connery (and Romaine) outshone their co-stars when it came to the advertising campaign.

The Pressbook was small by American standards, consisting of six A3 pages, the bulk of which was given over to adverts. But what it lacked in pages it made up for in taglines – of which there were six main types. Of course, Connery would become an “Untouchable” in the later Brian dePalma film.

The picture was not seen much in the United States, sent out in first run as the lower half of a double bill in only a handful of big cities, so there’s a fair chance it’s completely unknown except to Connery completists. But it’s certainly worth a look. New 60th anniversary edition has come out in April 2021 – that’s the top DVD, the previous one is below.