Leslie Nielsen – The Magnificent 60s

Beau Geste (1966) ***

Two brothers battle inhospitable terrain, warring tribes and a sadistic sergeant major in a remake of the classic tale. The title translates as “noble and generous gesture” and is a pun on the name of hero Michael Geste (Guy Stockwell), an American hiding out in the French Foreign Legion in shame for being involved, innocently as it happens, in embezzlement. His attitude is markedly different to the “scum of the earth” who make up the battalion and his quick wit and refusal to kowtow make him a target for Sgt Major Dagineau (Telly Savalas), a former officer busted to the ranks.

Dagineau delights in imposing hardship and devising mental torture, making some recruits including Geste walk around blindfold at the top of a cliff. Geste’s resistance to his superior is almost suicidal and he even volunteers to take a whipping on behalf of his comrades. “It’s me he wants,” says Geste, “if not now the next time.” At another point he is buried up to his neck in the blazing sun.

Joined by his brother John (Doug McClure), the battalion sets out as a relief force for a remote fort but when commanding officer Lt De Ruse (Leslie Nielsen) is seriously wounded, the sergeant-major takes charge. Under siege from the Tuareg tribe, honor, treachery, mutiny, fighting skills and courage all come into play in a final section.

The action and the various episodes and confrontations are strong enough and Geste has a good line in witty retort, but blame the casting for the fact that it turns into Saturday afternoon matinee material. It was always going to be a stretch to match Gary Cooper, Ray Milland and Susan Hayward from the 1939 hit version.

Stagecoach, remade the same year, was able to rustle up a bona fide box office star in Ann-Margret (Viva Las Vegas, 1964) and a host of supporting players with considerable marquee appeal including Bing Crosby (Robin and the 7 Hoods, 1964), Robert Cummings (Promise Her Anything, 1965) and Van Heflin (Cry of Battle, 1963). Nobody in the cast of Beau Geste could compare. Apart from the Spanish-made Sword of Zorro (1963), Guy Stockwell usually came second or third in the credits, as did Doug McClure (Shenandoah, 1965) while Telly Savalas, despite or because of an Oscar nomination for The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), was viewed as a character actor.

But that was the point. Universal gambled on turning the latest graduates from its talent school into major box office commodities. The set pieces and the action are well handled and while there are excellent lines especially in the verbal duels between hero and villain, it’s not helped by the most interesting character being Dagineau, who, despite his failings, accepted his fall from grace, worked his way back up the career ladder, believing brutality the only way to control the soldiers, and in the end out of the two is the one who has the greater sense of honor, refusing to allow a lie to befoul the truth, rejecting the notion of when the legend becomes fact print the legend, And it’s a shame that the movie has to present his character in more black-and-white terms rather than invest more time in his background or accept his version of reality.

Telly Savalas (The Scalphunters, 1968) steals the show with a performance of considerable subtlety. Guy Stockwell (Tobruk, 1967) is little more than a stalwart, the heroic hero, with little sense of the irony of his situation. Doug McClure (The King’s Pirate, 1967) presents as straighforward a matinee idol. If you only know Leslie Neilsen from his later spoof comedies like Airplane! (1980) you will be surprised to see him deliver a dramatic performance as the drunken commander who still insists, in an echo of El Cid, in rising from his sick bed to lead his troops. Normally this kind of macho movie – The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Dirty Dozen (1967) prime examples – throws up burgeoning talent who go on to make it big. It’s one of the disappointments here that this does not occur.

This was the second and final movie of Douglas Heyes (Kitten with a Whip, 1964).

Dark Intruder (1965) ***

Sumerian demons, Siamese twins separated at birth, a serial killer, oceans of fog, the flower of the mandrake, a climax that revolves around “it’s in his kiss” and a picture so shorn of light it could easily have been titled Dark Fiancé or Dark Wedding. Thematically truncated, too, and you get the feeling that with a little bit more narrative expertise and budget this could have been spun out into something that fitted in with the decade’s later spurt of horror a la Rosemary’s Baby (1968). There’s the bonus of Leslie Nielsen (Airplane, 1980) in a straight part though one which allows him a fair quota of quips.

In San Francisco 1890, occult expert and straight-down-the-line man-about-town toff Brett Kingsford (Leslie Nielsen) is surreptitiously engaged by the cops to investigate a series of brutal murders. Beside each corpse, the killer has left a memento, a tiny statuette that is traced back to Sumerian times, a demon – similar to the larger kind that turn up at the archaeological dig at the start of The Exorcist (1973) – banished from Earth and which attempts to return by entering another person’s body though presumably none of the four victims coming up to scratch.

Among the dead is Hannah, who had been involved in an archaeological expedition and later adopted a mysterious child. She has a connection to Brett’s friend, antiques dealer Robert Vandenburg (Mark Richman) who is engaged to be married to Evelyn Lang (Judi Meredith), another friend of Brett. Though Brett consults Chinese expert Chi Zang (Peter Brocco) and is attacked by the titular intruder who leaves him with claw marks on his shoulder, the bulk of the detection falls to Robert, who exhibits odd behaviour, standing in a daze, sleepwalking, going off in the wrong direction, suffering from blurred vision, and with a strange scar on his spine. He encounters the mysterious Professor Moloki (Werner Klemperer), face concealed, who tells him all will be revealed on the eve of his wedding.

The killings don’t stop, Brett no closer to catching the killer, and no further evidence forthcoming and the tale falls on the shoulders of Robert who is convinced from his own odd behavior that he is the killer. Eventually, he starts to work out the strange elements of his own life and the “invisible force” he is constantly fighting.

Turns out he was the Siamese twin separated at birth, and that Hannah had brought up the other, deformed, twin, who now wants his twin’s life – and wife. All we see of the creature is the claw, the rest of him hidden under a cloak or shuffling along behind curtains. The pair grapple in the darkness and it appears the bad twin is slain.

But is he? It’s Evelyn who gives him away, revolted by his kiss, and the matter is resolved. So really no more than the assembly of an interesting horror story. The claw is well done but as I said most of the detection comes from the mind of Robert rather than the occult detective working up the clues. But the dapper Brett is good value, keeping chatterbox Evelyn in check, and putting on his best Basil Rathbone impersonation.

As a bonus it’s insanely short, barely an hour long, which would have put it squarely in the B-feature category – but of two decades before, not of the mid-1960s. Turns out this was a pilot for a television horror series that wasn’t picked up by any of the three U.S. networks so was extended enough to be feature-length. The actors try desperately to add characterisation to their thin parts, Leslie Nielsen (Beau Geste, 1966) and Judi Meredith (Queen of Blood, 1966) best at that.

Harvey Hart (Bus Riley’s Back in Town, 1965) directed from a script by Barre Lyndon. The movie was released by Universal, who had Nielsen on an exclusive seven-year contract.

The sum of its parts without much else, but intriguing tale calling out to be extended – or remade.

Harlow (1965) ***

Harlow presents such a convincing picture of Hollywood abuse that I was astonished to discover that it was not entirely truthful where the title character was concerned.

Jean Harlow was a hugely popular star in the 1930s before her untimely death at the age of 36. This film depicts her as a virgin (not true) who turns neurotic (not true) after her impotent husband commits suicide (debatable) on their wedding night (not true) leading to her go off the rails and die from pneumonia (not true). But in terms of the Hollywood system a great deal rings true and if the Me Too movement had existed in the late 1920s the finger would be pointed at a huge number of men.

The film is at its best when dissecting the movie business. A five-minute opening sequence demonstrates its “factory” aspect as extras and bit players clock in, are given parts and shuffle through great barns to be clothed and made up, often to be discarded at the end of the process.

No sooner has this version of Jean Harlow (Carroll Baker) been given a small part than she encounters the casting couch, operated by a lowly assistant director, who bluntly offers five days’ work instead of one if she submits to his advances. When she turns him down, work is hard to come by and she resorts to stealing lunch before rescued by agent Arthur Landau (Red Buttons). After tiny parts that mostly consist of her losing her clothing, receiving pies or eggs in the face and displaying her wares in bathtubs, she geta a big break only for that producer to demand his pound of flesh – “I’ve already bought and paid for you.” Here she has “the body of a woman and the emotions of a child” and ends up choosing the wrong suitor which leads to a calamitous outcome.

However, the pressures of stardom are well-presented: she is the breadwinner for her unemployed mother Jean (Angela Lansbury) and lazy stepfather Marino (Raf Vallone) and soon box office dynamite for studio chief Everett (Martin Balsam) who sees in her the opportunity to sell good clean sex. The negotiations/bribery/blackmail involved in fixing salaries are also explored.

But the film earns negative points by mixing the real and the fictional. The agent and husband Paul Bern (Peter Lawford) existed but most of the others are invented or amalgamations of different people. MGM is represented as “Majestic” and among her films there is no Red Dust (1932) or China Seas (1935) but lurid inventions like Sin City.

Director Gordon Douglas was a versatile veteran, with over 90 films to his credit, from comedies Saps at Sea (1940) and Call Me Bwana (1963) to westerns The Iron Mistress (1952) and Rio Conchos (1964) and musicals Follow That Dream (1962) and dramas The Sins of Rachel Cade (1961) and Sylvia (1965) which also starred Baker. The opening scene apart, which is a seamless construction, he is adept at this kind of helter-skelter drama. John Michael Hayes (Rear Window, 1954) has produced a punchy script based on the book by Arthur Landau and Irving Shulman.

In the title role Carroll Baker (Sylvia) has probably never been better, comedian Red Buttons (Stagecoach, 1966) excellent in a straight role while the smarmy Raf Vallone (Nevada Smith, 1966) is the stand-out among an excellent supporting cast that also includes Angela Lansbury (In the Cool of the Day, 1963), Peter Lawford (Sylvia), Leslie Nielsen (Beau Geste, 1966), Martin Balsam (Seven Days in May, 1964) and Mike Connors (Stagecoach, 1966).

Except that virtually none of the movie is true, I would have given it four stars for its portrayal of Hollywood but I have come to expect that biopics, while moving facts around for dramatic purposes, are required to be good more faithful to their subjects than this.