London – The Magnificent 60s

Two Gentlemen Sharing (1969) ***

Shelved was a polite term for what happened to this picture. It was funded by Paramount but they didn’t like the look of the finished article. It could have gone straight into the bin, but it was reprieved, sold onto AIP which was looking to shift away from horror and biker movies into mainstream productions. But though it was made in Britain and therefore would qualify for both the Levy tax credit and the quota system, AIP couldn’t find a British distributor to take it on, not even after being selected as the official UK entry to the Venice Film Festival and impressing New York critics. It wasn’t shown on a British screen until 2017.

So what the heck was wrong with it? I had wrongly assumed that the title was a hint that the two gentlemen were gay, but that isn’t the case.

We open with a fellow with a plummy voice called Andrew Mackenzie (Hal Frederick) calling round London landlords looking for digs. He’s a solicitor, wears a bowler hat, was educated at Oxford University, even famously scored a century in a cricket match – and you can’t fit in any more than being a top-class cricketer. But doors which would open for anyone else with such a pedigree are closed to him.

Problem is – he’s Black. He’s of Jamaican descent. He’s not homeless, he’s got digs in Brixton, a noted Black community. Eventually, he finds accommodation in very posh Knightsbridge with ad man Roddy (Robin Philips).

Racism had been tackled in the movie world primarily through the aegis of Sidney Poitier. His three 1967 films – To Sir, With Love, In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, had all concluded on the upbeat. The Black man was accorded acceptance and respect.

That doesn’t happen here. The N-word is in common use. Andrew ends up being tossed out of the apartment by his landlady for essentially conforming to the cliché of being a “sexual degenerate,” i.e. for making too much noise while having sex. Eventually, he decides he’ll never fit in in Britain and returns to Jamaica.

But while the film deals bluntly with issues of endemic racism in British culture, it also tackles the problems facing the more socially aware, who tie themselves in knots trying to prove they are not racists. Although on the face of it accepting his flatmate’s color, Roddy has problems with his own beliefs. He’s certainly jealous of Andrew’s supposed sexual prowess, to the point of clearly believing he will enjoy more sexual freedom should he hitch up with a Black woman, and at various points exhibits inappropriate behavior towards them.

He also can’t come to terms with the fact that his girlfriend Jane (Judy Geeson) is not only very popular with Black men but has been brought up by a Black man after her own White father died when she was very young. To prove his liberal credentials once and for all, Andrew hosts a massive party in the apartment, inviting a crowd of Blacks, but when his drunken overtures to Black women are rejected, the party ends in disaster.

The characters are well drawn. Andrew is no saint. He’s misogynistic for a start, determining that his girlfriend Caroline (Esther Anderson) should do all the cooking and household chores. He’s arrogant and selfish, often grumpy. In other words, as human as the next guy.

Roddy is insecure. His job has none of the glamor we associate with advertising. His biggest decisions concern how many chips to have on a plate being photographed for an advertisement. Although coming from a wealthy background, his parents are now so impoverished they live in the squalid basement of a stately home. He has no understanding of women, tending to make too many of the wrong assumptions. So, just another young fella having problems growing up.

You’d think – and Roddy certainly thinks – that in the ad world he’d have a bevy of young women at his beck and call as does his colleague Phil (Norman Rossington) who, despite clearly taking advantage of his position in terms of seduction opportunities, is more enlightened – he has a Black girlfriend.

The movie’s very fair in determining when characters feel out of place. While Andrew struggles in the White world, Roddy and to a certain extent Phil struggle in the Black social world, bounding about awkwardly at a “jump-up”, the name given to a dance featuring Black music.

Given the actors are all primarily newcomers, showing promise is the extent of the acting. Reportedly Hal Frederick’s (Sandokan, 1964) plummy British accent was dubbed, but it is adequate for the task in hand which is to explore the minefield of the often unexplored aspects of British racism at a time when large-scale immigration was limited to certain cities and when the country still believed in “fair play” or convinced itself it did.

Robin Phillips (Decline and Fall…of a Birdwatcher, 1968) has a more complex part, needy, weak, his unformed unappealing character turning up at the edges. Judy Geeson (Three into Two Won’t Go, 1969) is better and Norman Rossington (Tobruk, 1967) throws himself into a peach of a part. Esther Anderson (The Touchables, 1968) is appreciated.

Canadian director Ted Kotcheff (Life at the Top, 1965) pulls no punches and certainly there is no sign of sentimentality or that, somehow, everything will all come good in the end. Screenplay by debutant David Stuart Leslie from the bestseller by Evan Jones.

Worth seeing if only to ask why we were kept from seeing it for so long. You can catch it on Amazon Prime at the moment.

Crossplot (1969) ***

Roger Moore – in his first movie in seven years – almost auditioning for James Bond with his lothario instinct, light touch for dialog, a nice side-line in double takes, and enough action to show that even in his early 40s he was still nimble enough. Not in the Charade (1963) or Arabesque (1966) league and over-reliant on the Swinging Sixties and other “Tourist Britain” clichés and a plot that takes far too long to get going, it takes all the actor’s charm to make it watchable.

After one of his staff Warren (Dudley Sutton) switches the photo of a model in his portfolio, ad-man Gary (Roger Moore) finds himself on the trail of Marla (Claudia Lange), a sometime fugitive hiding out on a houseboat. Meet-cute is prompted when she pushes him into the Thames. On leaving he is knocked out and framed on a dope charge and once he manages to get her into the photographic studio Warren attempts to throw her off the roof, the would-be killer himself eliminated by his boss Ruddock (Francis Matthews) who in a marvelous piece of quick-thinking throws his gun to Gary who instinctively catches it, further implicating himself.

After going all round the houses (including a stately home), evading pursuit via an antique car race and a wedding, Gary finally gets to the bottom of why Marla is in such danger – she overheard a conversation between her aunt Joe (Martha Hyer) and Ruddock. Only problem is – she can’t remember it. And it takes even more time for Gary to figure it out, (not realizing, how could he, that the clue is in the title, in fact two clues in a crossword puzzle). You can imagine how it goes from then.

*This poster takes the easy route by trying to sell the picture on the back of “The Saint.”*

On the plus side is mostly Roger Moore. “I come from a long line of hippopotamuses,” isn’t the sort of line you can deliver without some skill. But Moore’s performance lifts what is for the most part a shaggy dog story, and he’s game enough to do all the running and fighting required, even the heavy lifting (of his eyebrows), to keep the story moving. It’s far from as funny as it thinks and not as funny as it needs to be, but there are still some good stabs at humor, a pistol held to Gary’s head discovered to be a toy gun, Gary turning the tables in a shower on Marla, telling the bride that her groom is a bigamist, and a running joke about the Marla being perennially hungry.

The politics barely touches on the conspiracy aspects that Hollywood would have pounced upon and made a better fist of, although the idea that Britain could be undermined by civil strife was not far off the mark for the times. It needed some smarter thinking, though, for that element to work.

*A much better attempt at selling a thriller with scenes from the film,*
*including the toy pistol pointed at Roger Moore’s head.*

The rest of the cast are game enough. Claudie Lang (The Gatling Gun, 1968) is no Sophia Loren or Audrey Hepburn but nobody is pretending she is and she just about gets away with the dumb model approach. Martha Hyer (The Chase, 1966) delivers a glamorous villain and the suave Francis Matthews (Rasputin: The Mad Monk, 1966) her ideal match.

There’s quite a supporting cast: Veronica Carlsen (Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, 1968), Gabrielle Drake (Suburban Wives, 1972), Dave Prowse (Star Wars, 1977), Bernard Lee (You Only Live Twice, 1967), Alexis Tanner (The Ernie Game, 1967), Ursula Howells (BBC’s The Forsyte Saga, 1967) and Dudley Sutton (Rotten to the Core, 1965).

If Alvin Rakoff (The Comedy Man, 1964) is in charge of the material he doesn’t have enough material to work with. He does enough to keep it on course but would have benefitted from a a tighter screenplay from Leigh Vance (The Frightened City, 1961). Both had done better in the past, but it is easy to be seduced by the romantic thriller format, almost a mini-genre in itself, assuming it is easier to pull off than it looks. The likes of Alfred Hitchcock (North by Northwest, 1959) and Stanley Donen (Charade) made it look easy but they had the advantage of big stars in Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn who possessed the ability to make the lightest confection work.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) **

The word is that you can’t blame director (and producer and co-writer) Billy Wilder for this disaster because it was taken out of his hands by studio United Artists and drastically re-cut. But when you learn that Wilder’s version ran three hours and counting and even in the shortened version looks a preposterously bad bet, you can see why UA felt the need to take charge.

Wilder had been the poster boy for sexual identity after the frolics of Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon as cross-dressing musicians hankering after Marilyn Monroe in Some Like it Hot (1959). Whether Sherlock Holmes was a closet gay would have been a minor footnote to the author’s massive fanbase, and to put it so upfront looks, especially for a contemporary audience, like a massive misstep.

The first part of the movie largely consists of Dr Watson (Colin Blakely) being accused of over-mythification of Sherlock Holmes (Robert Stephens). Turns out (according to the Wilder version) that Holmes is a couple of inches shorter than Watson (his narrator in the Conan Doyle stories) had claimed and never wore the deerstalker. Blimey, lock that man up. Shock horror! Holmes’s other predilection, a regular injection of cocaine (I’ve no idea what a seven per cent solution would be in today’s money) is no invention, however.

But whether Holmes is attracted to the opposite sex forms the focus of the first section of this (even at just over two hours) unwieldy movie. A famous Russian ballerina Madame Petrova (Tamara Toumanova) wants to make him the father of her child. The only way Holmes can get out of this predicament is to pretend to be gay.

Eventually, after exhausting this joke (!), we get the proper mystery. Mysterious Belgian Gabrielle (Genevieve Page), just fished out of the Thames by a passing cab driver, turns up soaking wet at 221B Baker St and (eventually) Holmes is inveigled to find her missing husband.

In other circumstances this would have probably been a relatively straightforward case for the ace detective although there would have been, of necessity, ample opportunity for him to demonstrate his special set of skills. But this being of a more lumbering project, the investigation involves monks, midgets and the Loch Ness Monster. Yes, you heard right.

That should have killed off the project at the start. Like whether Holmes is gay or not, the Loch Ness Monster is another minor footnote. Apart from being a tourist attraction and keeping the conspiracy theorists going and competing with Roswell for public attention, it’s the dumbest of notions, even if, as the audience will expect, that it’s not the real monster (if there is such a thing) but a Macguffin of considerable dimensions.

I might have been happy to go along with a narrative that ran close to spoof except I didn’t take to either of the principal actors. I’ve no idea what made Billy Wilder believe that Robert Stephens (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 1969) would make a good Holmes. I’m not one of those traditionalists who believe a specific actor was the quintessential Holmes, but it’s a part that’s far easier to get wrong than get right. And I think Stephens with his wafting loose style got his characterization spectacularly wrong.

Colin Blakely (Alfred the Great, 1968) is one of those actors who generally knows how important it is to rein it in, because if the ham in him is given an inch he will most certainly take a mile and he’s so over-the-top you think he’s going to disappear over the nearest horizon.

This was a huge flop and no wonder. And Billy Wilder, given he wears the three hats vital to a film’s creativity, must take the blame. It’s a rubbish story badly done. Like any other great director, we tend to remember Wilder’s successes – Hollywood drama Sunset Boulevard (1950), media excoriation Ace in the Hole (1951), POW camp thriller Stalag 17 (1953), comedy The Seven Year Itch (1955), Some Like it Hot and sexual satire The Apartment (1960) – and we tend to forget that he often, especially in the 1960s, fell flat on his face. One Two Three (1961) and Kiss Me Stupid (1964) were colossal miscalculations, the result as much of miscasting as of script.

This stands as even worse than that pair. Wilder had got way too big for his boots and at a point where a studio had to cut him down to size. But even the truncated version isn’t much cop. And the only thing that keeps it from attracting a one-star review is that it’s better than Orgy of the Dead (1965).

Steer clear.

The Deadly Affair (1966) ***

Initially, much more of a character study than murder mystery or spy tale. And like the previous John Le Carre adaptation The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) directed by an American, there Martin Ritt, here Sidney Lumet. Although as repressed as the main character in Lumet’s The Pawnbroker (1964) and sharing with it remembrance of the Holocaust, master spy Charles Dobbs (name changed from George Smiley due to Paramount’s rights from the earlier film) is far more capable of expressing his feelings and taking action than the pawnbroker.

Dobbs sleeps in a separate bedroom, his wife Ann (Harriet Andersson) indulging in so many affairs she is considered a nymphomaniac. Although resigned to this behavior, he is nonetheless shocked when her latest amour turns out to be his old friend and colleague Dieter (Maximilian Schell) and even attempts to offer him advice, the politeness of the English at its best. “In any other country,” retorts Dieter, “we wouldn’t be on speaking terms.” This kind of betrayal Dobbs can manage, but the other kind, of a professional nature, has him rushing to the bathroom to throw up.

If you’ve come to admire the character of George Smiley (aka Dobbs) as played by Alec Guinness in BBC TV series Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979) and its sequel where he is generally a passive character you might get a shock when here the man springs into action.

Dobbs comes up against the Establishment when his boss (Max Adrian) refuses to investigate the suicide of a low-level agent Fennan (Robert Flemyng), a former Communist cleared of suspicion of being a double agent by Dobbs himself. Dobbs resigns in order to go his own way enlisting retired policeman Mendel (Harry Andrews), a pet lover and prone to falling asleep at inopportune moments. Although it is essentially a murder story, it’s Mendel who does most of the detecting, using his resources to track relevant pieces of information – typewriters, wake up calls, theatre tickets fall into his purview – and very much the old-school cop, not above a bit of burglary and beating up a suspect.

There are leaks within the secret service, Dobbs tailed, a blond man Harek (Les White) hovering into view long enough to tamper with witnesses, including dodgy car dealer Scarr (Roy Kinnear), a bubbly character with “two wives.” Key to the investigation is Fennan’s wife Elsa (Simone Signoret), a Jewish refugee from the concentration camps, and committing the cardinal sin of not offering Dobbs a cup of tea when he comes to visit, though pouring herself one. “I’m a battlefield for your toy soldiers,” she proclaims, another in le Carre’s stream of innocents unwittingly caught up in the “game.”

This is dingy rather than tourist London, Battersea power station on the horizon, rain prominent, a murky Embankment, the Thames a river of sludge, dubious pubs in unsavory locations, except for a very English spurt of theatre (a plot point) involving characters with very jolly accents. In The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, the spy’s downfall is “minor human weakness” i.e. falling in love and so it is here, Dobbs’ mental health taking a beating by not just his wife’s unfaithfulness but by remaining faithful to her. Of course, he wouldn’t be the first man to have married out of his league and be unwilling to surrender his prize.

Lumet’s gaze is anything but sentimental. In fact, as much as Dobbs is a master of the spy game, he is a dunce at the game of love, and Lumet does not let him off lightly. Any man who commiserates with his wife’s lover on the grounds that he (said lover) will be hurt when the woman ultimately abandons him, is straight from idiot school.

So this is a far more complex, and human, reflection on the spy game, and it’s not so much about paying the price of being a spy, as occurred with Alec Leamas, than the folly of marrying the wrong woman. You can see how easily Dobbs was seduced by the insane prospect that a beautiful woman had fallen in love with him, rather than, as he must have been trained to do, examining her reasons.

Of course, it’s not unusual for detectives to have miserable home lives and end up as loners, but this was part of a trend (see The Quiller Memorandum, 1966) to see spies not as bed-hoppers of the James Bond variety but as human beings with normal failings. One oddity is that, in line with the Paramount dictat on names, Dobbs’ boss is called “The Adviser” rather than “Control” (although apparently there was such a title in le Carre’s version of the secret service prior to this book).

James Mason (Age of Consent, 1969) is excellent as brilliant spy/bewildered lover. Harry Andrews (The Hill, 1965) has a ball in a change from his normal taciturn characters. Oscar-winner Maximilian Schell (Topkapi, 1964) is equally convincing but I found Harriet Andersson (Through a Glass Darkly, 1961) too much one-note certainly compared to the riveting performance by Simone Signoret (Is Paris Burning? 1966).

You can spot a string of future stars in a supporting cast led by Lynn Redgrave (Georgy Girl, 1966), Corin Redgrave (The Girl with a Pistol, 1968) and Kenneth Haigh (A Lovely Way to Die, 1968) among older hands like Robert Flemyng (The Blood Beast Terror, 1968), Roy Kinnear (The Hill) and Max Aitken (Henry V, 1944).

Paul Dehn (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold) wrote the screenplay based on John le Carre’s novel Call for the Dead, which was written before the book which made the author famous.

10 Rillington Place (1971) ****

We tend to view Anthony Hopkins as the bold game-changer when he switched from respectable upmarket leading man to Hannibal the Erudite Cannibal in The Silence of the Lambs, paving the way for a plethora of other stars to throw off the shackles of their screen personas. But, in fact, it was another Englishman, Richard Attenborough, equally well-known for exuding principle (and raffish charm when playing a con man in Only When I Larf, 1968), who broke that particular mold.

At the time, the impetus for the picture was the miscarriage of justice which saw innocent Timothy Evans hanged for the crimes of serial killer John Christie, a name that belongs in the British murderer premier league along with the likes of Dr Crippen and Jack the Ripper. The Ludovic Kennedy book on which the film was based was by now a decade old, but it had taken that long for the British censor to clear the subject for filming and to find a star who was not already a well-known screen villain and prevent the film tipping over into sensationalism.

So although Timothy Evans (John Hurt) is the unwitting dupe, the focus is more on the cunning of the killer Christie (Richard Attenborough) who manipulates the class system. Nobody would contemplate the notion of a well-spoken upright middle-class war hero being capable of the lurid killings. And the idea of repeat victims in a Britain still rejoicing in its notions of “fair play” was equally abhorrent.

So while we don’t quite get to the nub of why Christie was so obsessed with murder, he remains a fascinating character rather than a demonic villain. And this is grubby, not tourist, post-War London where poverty is endemic and workshy ill-educated rogues are apt to be taken advantage of and easily caught.

That Christie evaded suspicion, never mind capture, for so long – his crime spree began during the London Blitz of the Second World War – was a credit to his presentation of himself as much as police disinterest or ineptitude and public disbelief at the scale of the killings. That Christie remained free for so long was because Evans was such an idiot, caught out in countless lies and eventually confessing to the crimes. You can see the connection between Christie and Hannibal Lecter (in his control of fellow prisoners) in the hold they have over the less well-educated and easily-led.

Christie, literally, got away with murder simply because, to police eyes, Evans was a more obvious villain. The narrative obscures the worst part of his tendencies, implied necrophilia and sex with unconscious women. In another life he might well have been presented as the down-on- his-luck old codger who only required a break to right himself.

The wonder of Attenborough’s performance is that he doesn’t exude menace. Even as he’s trapping victims he comes over as trustworthy. His creepiness only grows on the audience once they are invited to see the part of him that his victims do not.

It’s a testament to Attenborough’s conviction in the part that you never notice how much he loathes the character. He only took on the role as part of a campaign to prevent the return of capital punishment. Critics clearly disapproved and their plaudits were reserved for John Hurt (Sinful Davey, 1969) in the more showy role. These days, thanks to Hannibal Lecter, audiences are more inclined to be more considerate towards actors playing irredeemable characters.

Director Richard Fleischer had been here twice before with Compulsion (1959) and The Boston Strangler (1968) and to his credit that he approached it in a low-key fashion eschewing the verbal gymnastics of Orson Welles of the former and the false nose of Tony Curtis and split screen of the latter. John Hurt is excellent and Judy Geeson (Three into Two Won’t Go, 1969) has a small part.

Most films about serial killers at this point in sub-genre’s history tended to follow an investigation or a courtroom drama – Psycho (1960) while initially focusing on victim and thence the killer quickly turned into an investigation. But this is primarily concerned with the actions of the murderer, who unravels as the movie proceeds, and is brought to justice when the general finger of suspicion, rather than the result of a detailed investigation, points to him.

Richard Attenborough created the template for the outwardly-respectable killer. Interestingly, Attenborough had previously played the more typical killer, the immediately loathsome gang-leader Pinkie in Brighton Rock (1948). Written by Clive Exton (Isadora, 1968).

Well worth it to soak up the creepiness that gently begins to subsume the character.

Behind the Scenes: Box Office Report, London March 2 1968

It’s impossible to imagine these days the impact of the roadshow. Yes, we’ve got Imax and the premium pricing that goes with it, and yes advance bookings can be awesome – witness Oppenheimer (2023) and the upcoming Dune: Part Three which has sold out signs up eight months in advance. But by 1960s standards these – in terms of length of run – couldn’t hold a candle to roadshow.

Take this week in London’s West End – The Sound of Music at the 1,712-seat Dominion cinema was coming up for its third full year (152 weeks and counting). David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago at the 1330-seat Empire was “rock steady” at £7,781 in its 95^th week. Because few people were just turning up on the off chance at the door, box office, thanks to advance booking, tended to hold steady.

Fred Zinnemann’s Oscar-winning A Man for All Seasons reported a “substantial gain” in its 45^th week to £4,754 at the 600-seat Odeon Haymarket; musical Camelot starring Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave in its 14^th week at the 1,565-seat Warner increased to £6,904 over the previous week and British crooner Tommy Steele in musical Half a Sixpence went up to a “smash” £10,434 in its ninth outing at the 1,350 Astoria. Julie Andrews as Thoroughly Modern Millie at the 735-seat Odeon St Martin’s Lane was also on the up – to £6,675 in the 19^th week and Julie Christie in Far From the Madding Crowd “advanced” to £4,984 at the 1,394 Metropole. Holding steady were Robert Shaw as Custer of the West, presented at the 1,127 Casino Cinerama, racking up a total of £6,561, and Joseph Strick’s controversial censor-baiting Ulysses with £1,991 in its 38^th week at the 556-seat Academy arthouse .

These days new films expect to show a steady or marked decrease after opening, so the idea of movies improving their box office late in a run might come as a surprise to seasoned observers.

Arthouses often enjoyed long runs. The double bill of Claude Lelouche’s Oscar-winner (Best Foreign Film) A Man and a Woman and Agnes Varda’s Le Bonheur at the 544-seat Berkely was in its 32nd week. Luis Bunuel’s Belle de Jour at the 546-seat Curzon registered its 15^th week. Sexploitation also tended to do well at the smaller West End houses – 15th week for Massacre for an Orgy at the 252-seat Cameo Moulin, 11^th for Seventeen/Sex Quartet at the 486-seat Continentale, ninth for Her Private Hell at the 399-seat Cameo Royal.

Among the non-roadshow pictures Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn-Sidney Poitier drama Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was “having a great run” at the 1,750-seat Leicester Sq Theatre with £8,734 in the third week. At the same stage of its run Paul Newman World War Two comedy The Secret War of Harry Frigg was not faring so well at the 1,994-seat Odeon Leicester Sq, “drifting” to £5,856. Lee Marvin in John Boorman’s existential thriller Point Blank had another good week – its ninth – with £1,615 at the 412-seat Ritz while Rod Taylor heading up The Mercenaries “eased” to £5,920 at the 1,186-seat Pavilion.

In its second week surfing bonanza Endless Summer “continued to shine with a handsome” £1,868 at the 660-seat Cameo Victoria while Disney’s The Jungle Book, after 14 weeks, continued to climb to £2,850 at the 556-seat Studio One. While Up the Junction with Suzy Kendall “continued to make a weighty return” with £3,433 in its fourth week at the 595-seat Rialto, Carol White as Poor Cow “moved lower” to £1,217 in its seventh week at the 414-seat Prince Charles. George Peppard as The New Face in Hell enjoyed a “very good” £3,414 in its first four days at the 1,159-seat Carlton.

In the London suburbs both Rank and ABC operated a two-tier general release system with films opening one week in North London and the next week in South London. In the north, ABC reported that Bette Davis chiller The Anniversary had “figures in the upper bracket” while the double bill of espionage endeavor Assignment K with Stephen Boyd and Camilla Sparv teamed with Eli Wallach as The Tiger Makes Out were “just about average.” South of the river, Valley of the Dolls was in a “strong position” in Rank cinemas while Smashing Time with Rita Tushingham “homed in on the right side of par.”

However, the long-runners had an adverse effect on the release cycle. With some of the major roadshow houses out of commission thanks to very extensive and still profitable runs, newcomers often jockeyed for position. Disney musical The Happiest Millionaire starring Tommy Steele had to wait five months after its New York premiere to find a berth in London’s West End. Given it had opened at the biggest cinema in the whole of the USA, smashing records at the 6,000-seat Radio City Music Hall, it was something of a comedown to find the only cinema available was one of London West End’s smallest, the 600-seat Odeon Haymarket where it was scheduled to launch on April 4. Disney softened the blow by pointing out that Mary Poppins had enjoyed a successful run there.

Other new movies due out included David Niven demonic thriller Eye of the Devil opening at the Ritz on March 3 and Burt Lancaster in western The Scalphunters at the Pavilion two weeks later.

SOURCE: Bill Altria, “Box Office Business,” Kine Weekly, March 2, 1968, p10.

Nobody Runs Forever (1968) / The High Commissioner ****

Character-driven intelligent thriller ripe for re-evaluation. And not just because it stands out from the decade’s genre limitations, neither hero threatened by mysterious forces in the vein of Charade (1963) or Mirage (1965) nor, although espionage elements are involved, fitting into the ubiquitous spy category. Instead, it loads mystery upon mystery and leaves you guessing right to the end.

And a deluge of mystery would not work – even with the London high-life gloss of cocktail parties, casinos and the Royal Box at Wimbledon – were it not for the believable characters. Rough Aussie Outback cop Scobie Malone (Rod Taylor) is despatched to London at the behest of New South Wales prime minister (Leo McKern) to bring home Australian High Commissioner Sir James Quentin (Christopher Plummer) to face a charge of murder.

*Probably a better title than either “Nobody Runs Forever”*
*or “The High Commissioner.”*

Unlike most cop pictures, Malone is not sent to investigate a case, he is merely muscle. While he may have his doubts about the evidence against Quentin, suspected of murdering his first wife, he resists all attempts to re-open the case. Arriving in the middle of a peace conference hosted by the principled Quentin, he agrees to investigate security leaks from Australia House and along the way turns into an impromptu bodyguard when Quentin’s life is endangered. But Quentin’s wife Sheila (Lilli Palmer) and secretary Lisa (Camilla Sparv) are not taken in by the deception and so Malone himself forms part of the mystery.

With a preference for cold beer to expensive champagne, you might expect Malone to be a bull in a china shop. Instead, dressed for the part by the solicitous Quentin, Malone fits easily into high society, taking time out from his duties for a dalliance with the elegant Madame Chalon (Daliah Lavi). The background is not the gloss but the passion the Quentins still feel for each other, she willing to do anything (literally) to save her husband, he losing the thread of an important speech when worried about his wife.

While there is no shortage of suspects for all nefarious activities, red herrings abound and cleverly you are left to make up your own mind, rather than fingers being ostentatiously pointed. There is some delicious comedy between Malone and Quentin’s uptight butler (Clive Revill), enough punch-ups, chases and clever tricks to keep the movie more than ticking along but at its core are the relationships. Malone’s growing respect for Quentin does not overrule duty, Lisa’s evident love for Quentin cannot be taken the obvious further step, Sheila’s overwhelming need to safeguard her husband sends her into duplicitous action.

The politics are surprisingly contemporary, attempts to alleviate hunger and prevent war, and while there was much demonstration during the decade in favor of world peace, this is the only picture I can think of where a politician’s main aim is not self-aggrandisement, greed or corruption. There are some twists on audience expectation – the dinner-jacketed Malone in the casino does not strike a James Bond pose and start to play, he is seduced rather than seducer, and remains a working man throughout.

Rod Taylor (Dark of the Sun, 1968) and Christopher Plummer (Fall of the Roman Empire, 1964) are terrific sparring partners, red-blooded male versus ice-cool character, their jousts verbal rather than physical. The rugged Taylor turns on the charm when necessary, a throwback to his character in Fate Is the Hunter (1964). Thoughts of his wife soften Plummer’s instinctive icy edge. Lilli Palmer (The Counterfeit Traitor) is superb as yet another vulnerable woman, on the surface in total control, but underneath quivering with the fear of loss. Two graduates of the Matt Helm school are given meatier roles, Daliah Lavi (The Silencers, 1966), as seductress-in-chief is a far cry from her stunning roles in The Demon (1963) and The Whip and the Body (1963) – and it still feels a shame to me that she was so ill-served in the way of roles by Hollywood. Camilla Sparv (Murderers Row, 1966) has a more low-key role.

Clive Revill (The Double Man, 1967) has another scene-stealing part and look out for Calvin Lockhart (Dark of the Sun), Burt Kwouk (The Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968) and, shorn of his blond locks, an unrecognizable Derren Nesbit (The Naked Runner, 1967) and in his final role Hollywood legend Franchot Tone (Mutiny on the Bounty, 1935).

Ralph Thomas (Deadlier than the Male, 1967) directs with minimum fuss, always focused on character, although there is a sly plug for Deadlier than the Male in terms of a cinema poster. (Speaking of posters, I couldn’t help notice this interesting advert at an airport for a VC10 promoted as “10derness.”) Wilfred Greatorex (The Battle of Britain, 1969) made his screenplay debut, adapting the bestseller by Jon (The Sundowners) Cleary. This may not be quite a true four-star picture but it is a grade above three-star.

CATCH-UP: Rod Taylor films reviewed in the blog so far are Seven Seas to Calais (1962), Fate Is the Hunter (1964), The Liquidator (1965), The Glass Bottom Boat (1966), Hotel (1967) and Dark of the Sun (1968).

Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) ****

Otto Preminger (Hurry Sundown, 1967) returns to his film noir roots (Laura, 1944; Whirlpool, 1950) for this crisply-told tale, mixing police procedural with psycho-drama, of a missing child who may the figment of her mother’s imagination. It’s beautifully filmed and for anyone brought up on modern cinema of short takes and the camera bouncing from one close-up to the next, it will be a revelation, as Preminger favors classic Hollywood style, long takes, in a single shot the camera often following a person in and out of several rooms, and equally classical composition, scenes containing three or four characters where everyone acts within the frame.

Single-mother Ann (Carol Lynley) turns up to collect her four-year-old daughter Bunny from her first day at a London nursery only to discover not just the child gone but nobody has any recollection of the child being there in the first place. That is, apart from the school cook (Lucie Mannheim), who promised to look out for the child but who has subsequently disappeared. Ann is anxious anyway because she is moving house and in her new apartment has an encounter with her creepy landlord Horacio (Noel Coward), a master of the innuendo and the casual stroke of the arm.

It’s a very English school with stiff-upper-lip not to mention snippy teachers. “We mustn’t get emotional,” school administrator Miss Smollett (Anna Massey) warns the distraught mother. Ann’s brother Steven (Keir Dullea), a journalist, kicks up more of a stink, arguing with staff, and with a very threatening manner. Things get creepier still. Upstairs, they hear voices but it’s just the school’s founder Ada (Martita Hunt) who records children talking about nightmares. Steven seems over-protective towards his sister, which is understandable, and somewhat over-affectionate, which is not.

Detective Superintendent Newhouse (Laurence Olivier) and sidekick Sgt Andrews (Clive Revill) investigate. He is an unusual cop. A university graduate but not of the excitable Inspector Morse persuasion for one thing, and reasonable to an irritating degree in that he keeps all his options open. But the cops are thorough, descriptions of the missing child issued, search of the premises and surrounding area undertaken. But it turns out there is no record of Bunny in the school ledger, no sign of her existence in the flat, and it transpires that as a child herself Ann had an imaginary companion called Bunny.

As Steven becomes more obstreperous and the intense Ann verges on the hysterical, not helped by the unwanted attentions of the landlord, a BBC performer with a melodious voice he believes irresistible to women and more than a passing interest in sadism, the case appears to be heading in the direction of a quick visit to a psychiatry ward. The usual anchor in these situations, the policeman, is not as definite as normal, Newhouse not pushing the investigation in a direction the audience will find acceptable, but largely standing back, as if yet to make up his mind, which adds to the sense of mystery.

*Carol Lynley with the potential landlord from hell Noel Coward.*

Preminger isn’t in the business of piling twist upon twist, but as these arrive in due course, the options they offer are even more psychologically damaging. And from setting off at a steady pace with everything apparently settled down by the steady superintendent, the minute he departs the scene, the story takes on a different dimension and there are three superb chilling scenes, one in hospital, another in a doll’s hospital and the last in a garden as the question of just who is unhinged becomes more apparent. There is certainly madness in the movie but it comes when you least expect it and from a direction you may not have considered. On another level, the world of children is entirely alien to the adult and the reconciliation between the two worlds impossible to bridge.

Preminger extracts a performance from Laurence Olivier (Khartoum, 1966) that cuts the character to the bone, eliminating many of the actor’s tropes and tics, but at the same time making him perfectly human, unable to resist, for example, a traditional school pudding, and finding ways to curb Steven’s excesses while comforting Ann. By controlling the actor who always exerts screen presence, Preminger makes him come across with even greater authority. It’s an achievement in itself to ensure that Olivier never raises his voice.

Carol Lynley (The Pleasure Seekers, 1964) is excellent as the distraught mother, one step away from losing her mind and Keir Dullea (The Fox, 1967) constantly raises the stakes. Noel Coward (The Italian Job, 1969) possibly does the best job of the lot, his normal high levels of sophistication eschewed in favour of the downright creepy. In supporting roles look out for Clive Revill (Kaleidoscope, 1966), Finlay Currie (Vendetta for the Saint, 1969), Anna Massey (De Sade, 1969) and Adrienne Corri (The Viking Queen, 1967). Pop group The Zombies featuring Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone put in an appearance.

Husband-and-wife team John Mortimer (John and Mary, 1969) and Penelope Mortimer (The Pumpkin Eater, 1964) wrote the screenplay from the besteller by Evelyn Piper. But it is most assuredly an Otto Preminger production. He has a surprisingly good grasp of British custom and character, shot all the movie on location, but in black-and-white so it is not dominated by the tourist London of red buses or red pillar boxes, and his probing camera and long takes are a marvel for any cinematic scholar.

The Penthouse (1967) ****

Visceral home invasion thriller that ignited the genre and triggered later more controversial offerings like The Straw Dogs (1971) and A Clockwork Orange (1971). Made virtually on one set for the indescribably minute sum of £100,000, it is charged with Pinteresque dialog and aberrant philosophy. The genre splits into those pictures where the occupants have more than a good chance of avoiding their fate, the focus on the invaded pitting their wits against the invaders – classic examples being The Straw Dogs or more recently Panic Room (2002) – and those where the victims are mercilessly tormented, such as, in grueling detail, here.

As one of the perks of his job cocky married real estate agent Bruce (Terence Morgan) takes advantage of an expensive unoccupied apartment on his company’s books – “in the happy position to take advantage of my clients’ generosity in their absence” as he puts it – to enjoy an illicit tryst with mistress Barbara (Suzy Kendall). But when she answers to the door to two men coming to read the gas meter, their lives are turned upside down.

Tom (Tony Beckley) and Dick (Norman Rodway) are, of course, bogus and armed with a knife quickly take control, trying up Bruce and pouring alcohol down Barbara’s throat. As part of the overall creepiness, there is a sense that this is no casual visit, but that it has been planned, as if someone somewhere is familiar with the set-up, and there a debt, if only a moralistic one, to pay as a deterrent to the era’s permissiveness. Minus the knife, they would have passed as harmless. But never was their such difference between word and action, except for what they are capable of you could easily be persuaded that are in fact camp and bitchy.

The bound Bruce’s is spun round in a chair and can only watch as the men begin to strip Barbara. His only defence is verbal, trying to set the two men against each other, suggesting that Tom treats Dick as his assistant. But the relationship between the two criminals constantly shifts as if they were in passive-aggressive relationship. You don’t learn much about them until the end, so basically you have to rely on what they say about themselves, which is very little. They are prone to philosophic observation or interrogate Bruce about his possessions or extract from Barbara an unexpected ambition to be a painter.

One of the oddest pieces of promotional material ever produced. Studios were keen on this kind of jokey cartoon in the hope that it would be picked up by newspaper editors who might be less inclined to run a still from the picture. But it is completely out of touch with the tone of the movie.

The men take it in turns to torment Bruce while the other is in the bedroom with Barbara. Where Bruce resists verbally, Barbara gives in almost right away, but there is never the sense that this is in any way consensual, just that she is too drunk to defend herself – the first drink is a full glass of whisky forced down her throat – and the men have a knife. The invaders make constant reference to a character called Harry. That person’s eventual appearance provides a whole new range of twists.

It’s a film full of menace. Sexual tension, mind games, claustrophobia and the threat of physical violence never dissipate. Because it is rationed out, the brutality is all the more shocking. But it is brilliantly directed. In his debut British director Peter Collinson (The Italian Job, 1969) uses the camera to suggest we are in anything but an enclosed space. In one long sequence the camera does not move, in another scene it turns 360 degrees – Antonioni’s use of this device in The Passenger (1975) was credited as innovative – and at other times it twists and turns as if turning the characters inside out, suggesting some of the dizziness, the dramatic speed of change of feelings, that the stunned victims are enduring. At times it feels like an arthouse movie. At other times like a deranged B-picture.

The cast are all excellent. Tony Beckley (The Lost Continent, 1968) makes the best of a role of a lifetime, Norman Rodway (Four in the Morning, 1965) the more quietly psychotic sidekick. Terence Morgan (The Sea Pirate, 1966) has less to do but Suzy Kendall (Fraulein Doktor, 1969) is superb as the enigmatic girlfriend. Look out for Martine Beswick (Prehistoric Women, 1967) in a small part. Collinson wrote the screenplay based on a play The Meter Men by Scott Forbes.

Cultural note: “Tom, Dick and Harry” are considered such quintessentially British names that anyone familiar with this would understand immediately that they were a) pseudonyms and b) intended as a twisted kind of joke.

No sign of this being available on Amazon. Ebay is probably your best bet. There’s a copy on YouTube but it ain’t a good print.

Brannigan (1975) ***

File under guilty pleasure. And bear in mind in the early 1970s there was no such thing as the police procedural, certainly not as we know it today, when cops have the benefits of DNA, increased forensics and computer technology. Hollywood in this era didn’t waste time with endless knocking on doors or collecting massive amounts of minutiae in the hope of uncovering a clue.

Generally speaking, cops of this period had two things in common. They were mavericks and they constantly fought authority usually represented by some dumb superior. Normally the narrative consisted of the character taking on the persona of a bull in a china shop and thundering towards a main objective, the more set pieces to demonstrate said bullish tendencies the better, and if in the course of apprehending a criminal he can deliver a catchphrase such as “make my day” or, as here, “knock, knock,” so much the better.

John Wayne had made eight westerns in a row and having turned down Dirty Harry (1971) ventured into the cop genre with McQ (1974) and came straight back for seconds here.

Brannigan (John Wayne) has been shipped over to London to bring back under the extradition treaty Mob gangster Larkin (John Vernon) which would be pretty straightforward except the Brits don’t keep such prisoners in custody – Larkin swans around in a white Rolls Royce – and in any case he’s in custody of another kind, having been kidnapped by some British hoods.

In terms of authority Brannigan battles the sappy Brits who won’t allow him to carry a gun and do things the Chicago way. Luckily, for the picture, top cop Commander Swann (Richard Attenborough) is not the standard stiff-upper-lip buffoon but as likely to pitch in when the fisticuffs begin. There are a couple of excellent car chases and one stunt of French Connection (1971) quality when two cars go sailing over the gap in a raised Tower Bridge. This is a London mixing glory and grit, posh residences and ancient buildings share screen time with rundown docklands. And the movie has the sense not to go all May-December on us and while a certain affection builds up between the U.S. cop and his driver Jennifer (Judy Gesson), it doesn’t teeter into unlikely romance.

The plot’s clever. While in a sauna having a massage Larkin is knocked out cold and bundled into a sweatbox by two apparent delivery guys and then smooth attorney Fields (Mel Ferrer) acts as the go-between, delivering Mob ransom money to the kidnappers, the price increasing with every failed rescue attempt, until the kidnappers are sitting on a cool million. Naturally, there’s some double-crossing and the cops have one tiny magic bullet to use to their advantage.

So mainly the fun is watching Brannigan charge around in a British china shop, mostly bypassing British rules. There’s a subplot involving a hitman hunting Brannigan and even when in a normal cop movie you might think, fair’s fair, the policeman should be able to defend himself with a weapon, that doesn’t equate with the British rules, so you have our hero able to point out that if he wasn’t armed to the teeth Jennifer would be dead, while Swann does his best to insist that it would be better for the young lass to end up on a mortuary slab than British cops go rampaging around with guns.

There’s some gentle fun in poking at British tradition – the obligatory wearing a tie in certain upmarket establishments – and in Swann having to translate to a waitperson Brannigan’s breakfast order.

Except when standing up for rules, Swann is great value, a good match for the American, both in tempering his ruthlessness, and matching him punch-for-punch in a brawl.

Apart from the action sequences, John Wayne is permitted to grow old gracefully, his dialog rarely filled with barbed retorts or salty words and there’s quite nice acting on the Duke’s part when he’s called upon to demonstrate his special skill, which is “reacting”.

Richard Attenborough (Only When I Larf, 1968) has a ball, and not before time, able to let some of the usual repressed intensity burst out. Judy Geeson (The Executioner, 1970) must have been delighted to find a part that didn’t involve her taking off her clothes and she’s afforded some of the best lines. John Vernon (Topaz, 1969) is his usual hardass but Mel Ferrer (The Fall of the Roman Empire, 1964) has a good stab at a bad guy.

Not in the same league as director Douglas Hickox’s Sitting Target (1972). Written by Christopher Trumbo (The Don Is Dead, 1973), William McGivern (The Wrecking Crew, 1968), Michael Butler (The Gauntlet, 1977) and William Norton (The Scalphunters, 1968).

Erroneously tabbed as a box office disappointment, this was made on a budget of $2.6 million but cleared $7 million in rentals (the studio share of the box office) plus another $1.5 million from television.

Obviously, if you’re in the Clint Eastwood camp this falls short, but otherwise it’s enjoyable stuff.