movie review – The Magnificent 60s

The Beekeeper (2024) **** – Seen at the Cinema Three Times

We’ve all felt that frisson, returning to a much-loved movie. Was your initial enthusiasm misplaced? Does what originally felt fresh and vibrant now revealed as tired and cliche? I’ve not seen this for over two years, not added it to my DVD collection, I noticed, so wondered if that in itself was a sign of misgiving. When it turned up last week on a streamer, I was definitely hesistant.

As it turned out, there was no reason for any apprehension. Below is my original review.

A franchise is born. John Wick may or may not rise again, Jason Bourne is dead in the water, so the gap exists. True, the new film certainly riffs on elements of that pair, the retired assassin, bare mention of whom elicits fearful reaction, who belongs to a secret government elite, and is jolted into action by someone stupidly preying on the sole beloved aspect of his lonely life.

Eqaully true, Jason Statham (Meg 2, 2023) is certainly viewed in many quarters as the poor man’s Bruce Willis, but, like Liam Neeson, he is one of the few action actors who you would not want to meet in person, on a dark night; he looks as though he growls in his sleep.

*Not an obvious candidate for Imax but then neither was “John Wick 4” and that was certainly an experience in the hi-hat format.*

But it touches on themes that will strike a chord – the data mining to which we all involuntarily subscribe and which governments and villains alike will employ for their own purposes; the computer nerd multi-millionaire; the politically powerful with overly entitled offspring; and those in control who discover not every annoying person can be easily swatted away.

And the beekeeping part turns out also to have meaning, not too much gobbledegook about hives, which is just as well because most people we encounter haven’t a clue how honey is made, least of all pay attention to the intricate structure of that insect’s lifestyle, or that there could be a Queenslayer (and this doesn’t originate from Game of Thrones) whose purpose is to remove a dis-functioning head bee. And just when that metaphor looks as though it’s going to run dry, it turns out to have a deeper meaning.

Just as well, too, that we’re not expecting much finesse from re-awakened assassins. Like John Wick, Adam Clay (Jason Statham) takes no prisoners, but whereas the former confined his murderous activities to the underworld, the latter downs anyone who gets in his way, though in fairness, many of the supposed righteous are in the involuntarily thrall of the country’s justice departments. It helps, too, that F.B.I. investigators, Agents Parker (Emmy Raver-Lampman) and Wiley (Bobby Naderi), while not incompetent, are certainly slovenly and bicker like billy-o, and that Parker is inclined to set aside civil liberties.

So, a scammer steals a couple of million from an elderly woman, who has taken a maternal interest in her beekeeping neighbor. Since she is only caretaker of the cash, which belongs to a charity, in shame she commits suicide. Initially, the number one suspect, Clay has dark forces on his side, too, able to access secret information denied both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A.

And he takes route number one to resolving any issues, turning up at the first scammer operation armed with a couple of cans of gas and proceeding to drench any employee not smart enough to scarper. That’s, of course, after he’s disabled any security guards so low down the pecking order they wouldn’t even be aware of the name that should strike fear in their hearts.

Luckily, we’ve got retired C.I.A. chief Westwyld (Jeremy Irons) to explain enough about the government’s secret beekeeping operation to keep us on our toes. But quite why he’s involved with said nerdy multi-millionaire Danforth (Josh Hutcherson) is cleverly kept from us until the twists begin to mount. But as in the High Table, he can call in top-level assassins to rid him of an irritant.

There’s some clever comedy, too, as Danforth’s equally geeky underlings don’t quite realize exactly what they’re up against, even while, like gameboys ramping up to participate in a computer game, they hire muscle. But, most of it is Clay daringly outwitting everyone in his path until he ends up at a Presidential hideaway and the extent of the corruption becomes clear.

There’s nothing desperately new here, there rarely is, and scarcely an ounce of sophistication (and who cares about that). Remember that even John Wick (before it developed into the High Table malarkey) was a bare-bones riff on Bourne. But who needs anything that original, a believable character is all, because there will always be murk that needs cleaned up, and a hero who can take on all-comers. John Wick One, as I recall, was not such a big initial blockbuster, finding a bigger audience on DVD, and it was only when the makers went back to the well, with a bigger budget and expanded the concept, that it really took off.

I can see the same thing happening here. The big surprise of the weekend was not so much the heavily-promoted Mean Girls doing better than expected, but the scarcely-promoted The Beekeeper doing way better than expected, and when it comes to the foreign markets, the latter will blow the former out of the water, because, overseas, action speaks louder than lyrics.

Not entirely sure why this is so heavily pickled with Brits, but as well as Statham, we have Oscar-winner Jeremy Irons (House of Gucci, 2001) with his silky steely tones, Jemma Redgrave (I’ll Be There, 2003) in her biggest movie role in two decades and Minnie Driver (Chevalier, 2002) as a hard-nosed slinkily-dressed top cat. I can see all three returning as the series develops.

I’ve a sneaky feeling the role of Parker, grieving daughter going all kick ass, was edited down as it became apparent Statham was going to kick all the ass any audience would need, but Emmy Raver-Lampman (graduating from the The Umbrella Academy TV series) brings a good dose of authenticity to the part, avoiding the usual glamor and potential romntic subplot.

It’s in very capable hands, director David Ayer bringing a Fury (2014) directness to proceedings rather than being swamped all-ways-up by character overload as in The Suicide Squad (2016). Kurt Zimmer (Salt, 2010) has all the correct experience to layer this with more than eternal action beats.

Let’s hear it for the bee-busters.

The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die/Catacombs (1965) ***

Gordon Hessler (The Oblong Box, 1969) makes his directorial debut with this neat horror thriller. It starts with a twist exceptional for the times. Ellen (Georgina Cookson) is the shrewd and shrewish millionaire businesswoman, her husband Raymond (Gary Merrill), from whom she demands frequent sex, the eye candy, a kept man. “I married a lover, not a businessman,” she retorts when, bored out of his mind, he asks for the opportunity to play a role in her business. In a further twist on the norm of the damsels decorating 1960s movies by displaying cleavage or disporting themselves in bikinis, Raymond is often seen with his chest bared in all its hirsuteness. In a further gender twist her secretary is also male, Dick (Neil MacCallum), a former, unknown to her, jailbird.

Tall, beautiful, dominant and domineering Ellen appears to have occult power, able to read minds, which keeps the larcenous-minded Dick in check, and has command of her own physical frailty – she walks with a stick – and can put herself in a trance to overcome occasional pain from her injured hip.

*Conspiracy of fear: Raymond (Gary Merrill) and Alice (Jane Merrow).*

But when Raymond falls for Ellen’s niece Alice (Jane Merrow), an artist returned from a year in Paris, he puts into action a plan that had clearly only been a pipe-dream, blackmailing Dick into participating. It’s quite clever as murderous plans go. He hires an actress to impersonate Ellen, known to go off to Italy on her own for spa treatments and with a knack for reckless driving, various driving charges over the years. Meanwhile, he strangles Ellen, allows Alice at a distance from an airport viewing terrace, to see her aunt, complete with walking stick, climbing up the steps of a plane. Faked cables and postcards arrive from Italy purportedly showing Ellen enjoying herself, even visiting the famous catacombs. In Italy Dick fakes a car accident to kill the actress.

However, twist number one comes at the reading of the will. Raymond and Alice split the million-pound bounty but while the latter is given custody of the big house the former is condemned to live for life, on pain of forfeiting the inheritance, in the cottage, in whose potting shed Ellen’s body lies. Further twists naturally follow. The maid (Rachel Thomas) doesn’t quite so much smell a rat but adds to the killer’s incipient discomfort by proclaiming that with her hip problem and claustrophobia that Ellen would never descend into the catacombs.

*Entitled “Catacombs” in the U.K. after the novel by Jay Bennett on which it was based, it was retitled*
*“The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die” for the U.S. market.*

And Raymond might have lived happily ever after with Alice except for his guilt. Several creepy incidents, knocking, tapping, door handles turning, shadows, a depression the shape of a body in a bed, cigarettes smoking in ashtrays, lights going on and off indicate to the already nervous Raymond and the visibly frightened Alice that Ellen may not be dead after all. Virtually the entire third act is the pair of them reacting to real or imagined fears. Alice has a good line in looking scared witless. But Raymond, while trying to contain his inner demons, is equally rattled.

As you might expect there are further excellent twists to come. In fact, they are soon piling up and even at the very end the screen freezes on a final twist.

Georgina Cookson (The Picasso Summer, 1969) steals the show as the imperious businesswoman, with everyone cowering under her glare and not above stating the obvious, “I bought you body and soul,” she reminds Raymond. I’m not sure Gary Merill (The Power, 1968) is quite as good in the second half as he is in the first. Initially, he exudes charm, physical prowess, and, while under his wife’s thumb, still emotes a certain measure of confidence. He doesn’t appear to me to quite frightened enough in the second half as his plans go awry. Jane Merrow (The Lion in Winter, 1968) is excellent as the young woman caught in a mental trap and Neil MacCallum (The Lost Continent, 1968) is surprisingly effective.

But this is a low-budget B-picture that was destined for the lower half of a double bill so there was no particular reason why it should be as good as it is. Except for the Italian sequence, the action takes place on just two sets and for most of the time it’s a three-hander. But Hessler has a keen eye for composition and in a number of critical scenes makes bold choices. For Ellen’s murder, he concentrates on Raymond’s face rather than the victim’s, only showing her feet. There’s one super-shocker with a mirror. But mostly he is content to built up the tension, either by the various noises or by the reactions of Raymond and Alice.

An old-fashioned gem of a picture.

Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) ***

What with Jessie Buckley putting on her best Joker-style smile in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Looney Tunes version of The Bride (2026) and Oscar Isaac going as high-tech as the 19^th century would allow in Guillermo del Toro’s excellent Frankenstein (2025), Paul Morrissey’s Flesh for Frankenstein now appears tame in comparison though at the time its sexuality and gore came in for severe criticism. I’m guessing it’s the campiness that finds it rated so highly among the contemporary critics, but, apart from some poor acting, there’s little in this piece that would bring it down in your estimation or provide it with a free pass.

In terms of the thematic, there are connections to David Cronenberg’s Crash (1996), and in terms of trivia (although the version I saw lacked this) it was originally shot in 3D (though without, as was usually the way with such items, tons of things thrown into the viewer’s eyes) and included an early example of the imagination of SFX genius Carlo Rambaldi (Alien, 1979).

While you might recoil at the good doctor’s right-wing tendencies and his determination to bring to life a superior species, the rest of it is surprisingly good. There’s a determined stateliness to the camerawork and the score by Claudio Gizzi (he only did another two) is as far removed from the over-the-top menace that infected Hammer and AIP versions as you can get.

I wasn’t a card-carrying member of the avant-garde back in the day any more than I am now so didn’t rush out to see this on its first appearance and probably wouldn’t have been tempted to watch it at all except that the presence of Dalila di Lazzaro from Three Men to Kill (1980) piqued my interest. In truth, she has a small part as the female of the species in the monster department.

Here, Baron Frankenstein (Udo Kier) is aiming for the double whammy of not just creating male and female monsters but of getting them to procreate and provide him with a new master race. He’s handy with a set of garden shears, lopping off heads to suit his experiment, and stitching, molding cadavers to suit his purpose, and he clearly takes perverse delight in plunging his hands – and shades of David Cronenberg’s Crash (1996) – and other parts of his body into the innards for sexual satisfaction.

If I’ve read this correctly, we’re also in incest territory, his children the offspring of his sister. Or it may well be that she’s employed for her non-existent maternal skills rather than having played a part in their birth. It’s hard to see why he wants any more creations in his own image since the kids are as creepy as they come, voyeurs to the core, guillotining dolls, making off with any spare body parts, and with a malignancy that sets the tone for a stunning last scene.

His sister Katrin (Monique Van Vooren) has a degree in hypocrisy, taking a moral high tone with villagers she catches having sex while recruiting lusty local stud Nicholas (Joe D’Allesandro) for her own bed. The Baron’s assistant Otto (Arno Jurging) is from the Marty Feldman (Young Frankenstein, 1975) school of eye-popping. The only flaw in Frankenstein’s plan is he hasn’t taken into account sexual preference, since Nicholas’s buddy Sacha (Srdjan Zelenovic),selected to supply a head and brain for his male monster, is more interested in men than women, so despite the best efforts of the female monster (Dalila di Lazzaro) his experiment is doomed to failure.

Most movies in this subgenre exist in a moral vacuum, beyond someone taking vengeance on the horror-meister, but here Sacha not only has no interest in sex but he’s so appalled at what he has become thanks to Frankenstein that he wants to die and is so scandalized by the baroness’s attempts to seduce him that he suffocates her.

For the most part, this is restrained, although over-acting is endemic, and the science as convincing as in the Del Toro version. The gore and sex would scarcely trouble a contemporary audience.

The climax is just superb. With corpses littering the floor, including that of the Baron and his creations, and Nicholas hanging from the ceiling, the kids each pick up a scalpel and begin to lower the captive, leaving the audience to guess the rest.

Any inherent campiness passed me by and I suspect that impact has faded with time. What we’re left with is an intriguing well-directed entry into the canon.

Not sure why Joe Dallesandro (Lonesome Cowboys, 1968) takes top billing, aside from his beefcake potential and the central role he played in the Andy Warhol Factory, given he has a small part. Like Klaus Kinski, Udo Kier (The Salzburg Connection, 1972) has a cult following, and the freedom to overact as much as he likes.

Beside lending his name to the venture for publicity purposes, Andy Warhol played no part. The direction by Paul Morrissey (Heat, 1972) has, I thought, considerable distinction especially the camera movement and the music. He wrote the screenplay.

Surprisingly good.

The Unfinished Task / I’ll Give My Life (1960) ***

For completists only. Fans of Anglie Dickinson have responded to reviews of Jessica (1962) and several others. This should round off your Angie Dickinson collection with the bonus that it’s a long-lost number. Almost unrecognizable as a brunette, Dickinson carries much of the emotional weight of this tale about an outsider rejecting a chosen career.

Hollywood pictures about creative outsiders such as artists and writers relied on charismatic actors – Kirk Douglas in Lust for Life (1956), Charlton Heston in The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) – to bring the project to life. Similarly, you might think, in movies about another type of outsider, of the religious variety, having the likes of Gregory Peck (The Keys of the Kingdom, 1944) or Bing Crosby in Going My Way (1944) goes a long way to giving such ventures audience-appeal.

*This poster does not do the film justice. It’s nothing like as “heavenly” as that. Howco was an exhibition company that entered distribution in order to provide enough product for its cinemas.*

Here, Jim (John Bryant), the son of a successful construction tycoon, having completed a degree goes against the wishes of father John (Ray Collins) by becoming a minister instead. In due course he is sent overseas to a mission in New Guinea, and like Father Stu (2022) contracts a deadly disease. Jim is far from charismatic, just a plodding ordinary guy who has found “something more important than building skyscrapers.”

The story is instead told through the eyes of John, resentful of his son’s decision, and his girlfriend/fiancée/wife Alice (Angie Dickinson) who, expecting marriage to a wealthy engineer, instead has to set aside her own ambitions and go along with her husband’s wishes, this being post-WWII America, and independence hardly a prerequisite in a wife, never mind a woman.

But if this is a story of a conversion – as was the case in Father Stu – it’s about the conversion of the father and Alice and the bulk of the story hinges upon their reactions to the path taken by Jim rather than him taking center stage. So it’s cleverly done, and whether this is due to budgetary pressure, or creative decision, it proves the right choice. John is the kind of self-made man who would dominate any stage, forever making plans, spinning the world as he would like it to be. In Alice’s eyes we see nothing but her weighing up Jim’s choices, sometimes accompanied by shock, occasionally elation, but mostly resignation and infrequent resentment as she, too, is parted from family to follow her husband into an unknown in which she had considerably less faith.

Unlike Father Stu, conversion does not come easily. Jim is long dead, two-thirds of the way through the picture as it happens, before John comes to realize that his son’s demise should not be in vain and that he left behind “an unfinished task” for his father to complete, namely raising awareness of the power of missionaries to improve the lot of the miserable and poor in foreign parts. Bear in mind the era in which this was made, so there are some attitudes that will make you wince, but generally it is well done, not weighted down with platitudes and, in concentrating on the doubter, brings alive a difficult subject.

And although this was before questions were asked about the sexual corruption of priests and ministers, men who followed religion were still not as easily accommodated in the general community, seen as overly pious and, to the businessman, existing in a vacuum. The idea that the Church, of various kinds, had not done enough to ease global suffering, is continually raised and nobody here is giving themselves a pat on the back.

Alice is actually given more screen time than Jim, his father using her as a sounding board, and, while Jim is off in New Guinea, enjoying herself with the firm’s resident beau, Bob (Jon Sheppod), and finally taking on motherhood and coping with the premature death of her husband and still fighting to open the father’s eyes to the good being done.

Angie Dickinson (Jessica, 1962) gives a very good account of herself, especially as the narrative restricts her to the kind of wifely 1950s role rather than the frisky sexuality she exhibited in the 1960s. Her acting skill saved her from being lumbered with portentous dialogue since she could portray her feelings more easily with her eyes.

Ray Collins (famed for a running role in the Perry Mason series) is excellent as the father confused by his son’s decision, fighting him every inch of the way. John Bryant (The Bat, 1959), it has to be said, does not light up the screen, lacking the magnetism of a Peck or a Crosby but in some regard this kind of straight playing suits the film, since the character is not meant to be out of the ordinary.

William F. Claxton (Desire in the Dust, 1960) directed from a script by Herbert Moulton, better known as a producer of shorts. Although this film was released in 1960, it appears to have been made before that, some suggest as early as 1955. Given it was funded by the Lutheran Church, the script does not make heavy weather of the religious elements and John’s resistance to his son’s vocation reflected that of any father to a son embarking on as shaky a career as painting or writing.

You can catch this on YouTube, though it’s not a great print. And, yes, that is Angie Dickinson sitting demurely at a desk.

The Night Walker (1964) ****

Deserves its spot in the cult pantheon, hints of Spellbound (1945) and Vertigo (1958), mesmeric atmosphere of dream/nightmare held together by a hypnotic performance by Barbara Stanwyck, tonsils in overdrive. But no point screaming at the unseen, at the unknown, when it invades reality, no point trying to escape a dream when you’re trapped inside.

Except that there’s no sign of the demonic figure haunting widow Irene Trent (Barbara Stanwyck) on the poster it delivers on all other fronts, driving you to question our heroine’s grip on reality as much as she questions herself. If there’s such a thing as self-gaslighting, she’s in the vanguard.

Creepy rich blind husband Howard (Hayden Rorke) is an emperor of surveillance, microphones everywhere catching her every word, including what she utters in her dreams, which convinces him that she’s having or has had an affair. When he dies in an explosion, body eviscerated in the inferno, she can’t come to terms with her freedom, holing up in the tiny apartment at the back of her beauty parlor, relying on assistant Joyce (Judi Meredith) and attorney Barry (Robert Taylor) for moral, and perhaps in relation to the solicitor, physical support.

When the unreal invades her daily life and she begins to believe in her dreams and when the handsome lover (Lloyd Bochner) of her night-time imagination takes shape, she begins to doubt her sanity. But so convinced, on the other hand, that she must be sane, she tries to convince Barry that her dreams have basis in fact. She tracks down the apartment (No 341) she visited in her dreams and the chapel where she imagined she was married to said lover.

You wish director William Castle (Straitjacket, 1964) had continued exploring the theme of dreams vs reality, and how to cope when the imagination takes over. But instead, it twists into thriller territory, the old set-up, the gaslighting that could send Irene over the edge and straight into a sanatorium while her husband’s substantial wealth ends up elsewhere.

Even so, once it heads down this particular path, it’s still mighty tricky. Who could be in on the act? All the people she trusts – Barry, Joyce, even Loverboy? And if she’s going to let her suspicions run riot, how is she going to come out the other side, for surely that will tip her over into madness?

Exceptionally lean, barely 80 minutes once you exclude the treatise on dreams at the start that establishes the premise of the “Night Walker” – the person who lives through their dreams – and exceptionally clever. Irene is so given to screaming that you’d scarcely think there’s space left in her brain to to work out just what’s going on. And there’s no shortage of permutations.

Has her dead husband, half his face obliterated by burns, come back to haunt her? Is the Lover just a figment of her imagination? Why can’t she make do with someone as handsome as Barry?

We’ve got smoke issuing from under doors, recurrent bright flashes of explosion, mannequins that seem alive, all sorts of jiggery-pokery with guns, telephone wires cut, a blind man who can tell the color of your dress, eyeballs plucked from faces and squeezed until they pop, and the expectation all the time of a straight dive into madness. No escape in other words.

Even when it fast approaches a climax you might have guessed the outcome of, turns out you were wrong and there’s still a few more twists – and screams – to come.

The fact that it turns into a straightforward thriller at the time tended to diminish the emphasis on the demonic, but these will be more fully appreciated today when the line between reality and fiction is stretched ever thin.

Four-time Oscar nominee Barbara Stanwyck (A Walk on the Wild Side, 1962) might have been accused of slumming it in low-budget horror fare such as this, but, boy, in her final big screen appearance, (although she successfully switched to television as star of The Big Valley, 1965-1969) does she give it her best shot. If this was Stanwyck’s swansong, Robert Taylor (A House Is Not a Home, 1964) , a fellow relic from Hollywood’s Golden Age, wasn’t far behind, only a few movies left in him.

For all this relied on William Castle’s directorial dexterity, the imagination behind it came from master of the macabre Robert Bloch (Psycho, 1960).

Cult doesn’t come much better.

Experiment in Terror / The Grip of Fear (1962) ****

For a modern audience any film that contains mention of “Twin Peaks” and “Tarantino” either shows amazing prescience and/or an indication of what is to come. This classy thriller does not disappoint. Part police procedural, part portrait of a killer, part clever heist and part women in peril, it has you wondering why director Blake Edwards did not stick to the genre. Set in San Francisco in an era when the F.B.I. was generally considered a good thing rather than the paranoia-inducing entity it would become a decade later.

Bank teller Kelly Sherwood (Lee Remick) is terrorized by an unknown assailant into helping him carry out a audacious $100,000 heist. F.B.I. agent Ripley (Glenn Ford), aware of the prospective theft, is drawn into the diabolical web as is Sherwood’s younger sister Toby (Stefanie Powers). The only clue to the thief is his asthmatic voice. Levels of forensic detection set a new bar with the F.B.I. employing telephone, personal and even aerial surveillance, commandeering of television cameras to scan a crowd, and analyzing a telephone conversation to identify the criminal.

Released in Britain as “The Grip of Fear,” exhibitors tried to pull a fast one on the public by using as the support “Operation Mad Ball,” a Jack Lemmon number from 1957, in a bid to convince moviegoers that this program would repeat the successful pairing of Remick and Lemmon in “Days of Wine and Roses.”

There are red herrings aplenty. Tension is racked up so adroitly that any character entering the frame automatically arouses suspicion. Edwards takes a leaf out of the Hitchcock suspense book by finding constant ways to remind Kelly – and the audience – just what is at stake, Ripley promising her a “reign of terror” and not, as you might expect, lying to her about the threat she faces.

As Ripley digs further into the robber’s past, he uncovers not only a catalogue of crime including rape and three murders, but also an unusual personality. Yes, as you might expect, a control freak, but also a guy capable of affection and of lavishing thousands of dollars on those worse off than himself. And, of course, he is exceptionally good at planning crime, outwitting the F.B.I., and picking the kind of vulnerable victim susceptible to intimidation. Every time, the F.B.I. thinks it is closing in, he remains one step ahead. Eventually, the F.B.I. has amassed so many clues, including his identity, a photograph and previous lovers, that you think it’s impossible for him to escape – until he does.

Kelly is so on edge, in following instructions, that she picks up the wrong man in a bar, the police so antsy they mistake a drunk for the assailant. Drenched in atmosphere and rich in subsidiary characters, there’s scarcely a dull moment, from a mannequin repairer (Nancy Ashton) with a roomful of dangling inert bodies, a karate class with (ironically) a woman well able to defend herself, to a small boy desperate to see a G-man’s weapon, an informant (Ned Glass) with a penchant (as did director Edwards) for silent comedies, and a bank manager who promises Kelly a promotion even if she has to steal the money.

On top of this there are some genuine creepy moments that up-end our expectations. What Ripley doesn’t tell Kelly is that she’s also bait and clearly has little concern that she might end up collateral damage – anticipating at the very least she will have a nervous breakdown when it’s over, if, in fact, she survives – in his bid to snare the criminal. A terrified kidnapped Toby strips down to underwear in front a man we know is a rapist. And the movie touches on the woman-who-loves-a-killer motif, a theme very much in the contemporary vein.

Blake Edwards (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 1961) delivers a directorial tour de force. The criminal is hidden for most the picture, drip-fed to the audience in glimpses, his mouth here, his back there, other times in disguise. Edwards establishes the F.B.I. as such a “very efficient organization” using the most up-to-date methods and involving a vast number of staff plus police that it seems impossible to fail – until it does. And there is an absolutely brilliant six-minute sequence at the outset, milking the best of film noir lighting, when the criminal surprises Kelly in her garage and spells out in detail her vulnerability and the basics of his plan. By keeping the criminal in the shade, and what little available light there is covering her face, Edwards makes the most of Lee Remick’s eyes – every bit as iconic as Audrey Hepburn’s outfits in Breakfast at Tiffany’s – and her acting skill.

Remick (Sanctuary, 1961) is superb, trapped by emotion as much as terror, placing her trust in an F.B.I. that lets her down time and again. This is an edgier role for Glenn Ford (Fate Is the Hunter, 1964) as he steps up from the trustworthy guy-next-door to reveal a more ruthless streak. Stefanie Powers (The Warning Shot, 1967) does well in a small role and there is sterling support from Ross Martin (The Ceremony, 1963), Patricia Huston (Synanon, 1965) and Clifton James (Live and Let Die, 1973). Gordon and Mildred Gordon wrote the screenplay based on their novel Operation Terror.

“Twin Peaks” in case you are wondering is the district in which Kelly lives. There’s a sign towards the end for Tarantino’s World-Famous Cocktails.

Obsession (2026) **** – Seen at the Cinema

Didn’t realize I was sitting in on a piece of history. I was conscious of enjoying an unusual experience but for a different reason – first time I can remember in all my years of moviegoing of each of the three films I had chosen to be full up, in fact for my last film I got the last seat. But Obsession will go down in the annals for a another reason – its box office increased on the second weekend. And now (in an update) also increased on the third weekend.

Now this won’t be the first time that’s happened but in the past it was only a trick of distribution. A film would be released in a few hundred houses and then next week a few thousand and to nobody’s great surprise there was an uptick at the box office. What was more common for hit movies was a slow tail-off, successive weeks showing a small percentage drop. That happened with Titanic (1997) and more recently with The Housemaid (2026).

Obsession has broken the mold. It knocked up $17.1 million in its first weekend in 2615 cinemas and $23.9 million in 2655 houses for week two, a spectacular result in anyone’s language, and unprecedented. And then in week three it went up another 10 per cent to $26.4 million. So with Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, as ill-conceived project as I’ve ever come across (keep the hero’s face hidden, have the puppet speak a la Minions and turn the action into a computer game), huffing and puffing at the box office, Obsession’s going to run off with the first honors of the summer.

So the question is: what makes it so special. Well, it’s not particularly unique – you might not get what you wish for – it is exceptionally well done. It sticks to the gory knitting and doesn’t let up until it has torn the audience up in a tension-ridden ride.

Turns the usual romantic set-up on its head, the nerdy fellow out of his league with a classier dame who soon comes to reverse her initial impression of the dunderhead. We’ve had women in the past turned into sexual objects by men in power – from The Stepford Wives to The Handmaid’s Tale – so we’re accustomed to the various ways females can appear to adore males. The old “wish upon a star” routine hasn’t been used, and certainly not for this purpose, in quite a while. It’s odd that Bear (Michael Johnson) has to stoop to magic to hook Nikke (Inde Navarette) because it he’d just paid attention and read the room he would not have missed the various invitations from her to make his move.

Instead, he finds a rackety “One Wish Willow” that makes his wish come true. Except he hasn’t counted on Nikke either revealing her true paranoid jealous self or being turned into something else because of the power of his wish. Either way, it’s not going to turn out well.

There’s no cure either, no antidote, no way of reversing the wish – and no way to escape. Once the movie is stuck on this single track, it doesn’t go anywhere, and why should it, this is a crazy enough concept as it is.

Whether it’s going to appeal as much to women is a good question. This basically posits the idea that behind every nice girl next door there’s an evil monster waiting to get her teeth into any nice passing male. Alternatively, it might well appeal for exactly that reason. Why should any upper-league lass have to put up with the dredges of the lower leagues just because he’s shy? Faint hearts, as everyone knows, are losers in love.

Budget restrictions – it cost just $1 million – will have played a part in their being no Act Three, but writer-director Curry Barker (Milk & Serial, 2024) in his sophomore outing delivers plenty bang for his miserly buck.

Inde Navarette, in her movie debut, is the scariest female this side of The Housemaid but I was less convinced by Michael Johnson (Endangered Species, 2021).

All hail Curry Barker and let’s hope this is the beginning a distinguished career.

The Other Side of Midnight (1977) ****

I was settling in for what I thought was an evening of high-class trash when the unexpected occurred. This wasn’t a mushy World War Two romance but a tale of revenge on a par with that wreaked by the legendary Count of Monte Cristo or by the more recent The Housemaid (2026). Except for throwing a romantic spanner in the work, this has little to do with the Second World War and everything to do with how a Frenchwoman drags herself from the gutter by dint of personality and guile to reach, by way of movie stardom, the highest echelons of society and use her wealth and power to extract vengeance.

The two women, Noelle (Marie-France Pisier) and Catherine (Susan Sarandon) who end up competing for the affections of charming pilot Larry (John Beck) may well begin with innocence on their side but pretty soon they toughen up. Noelle is given a brutal lesson in reality, effectively trafficked by her father to a dressmaker, sex part of her apprenticeship. Fleeing to Paris, her suitcase stolen by a taxi driver, she is rescued by the self-deprecating Larry, an American pilot stationed in France with the Royal Canadian Air Force on the eve of World War Two. He’s got a nice line in repartee. After he is recalled to Britain, he promises to return, telling her to have a wedding dress ready. But he doesn’t appear, and she aborts his baby. After a stint as a fashion model, having honed her seductive skills, she shifts into the movies.

Meanwhile, resourceful Catherine had made herself indispensable in the business sense to her PR boss Bill (Clu Gulager), who (in a move that should be appreciated in view of contemporary power politics) gently rebuffs her advances. Her meet-cute with Larry is well-managed but as the romance shifts towards seduction we realize that he’s using the same lines on her as he did with Noelle.

As I mentioned, the actual war doesn’t enter the equation and by its end Noelle is a huge star, but keeping tabs on Larry and delighted to discover that he hasn’t managed to translate being a war hero into a decent income, his wife Catherine the major breadwinner. Once Noelle has stepped up in society by hooking Greek millionaire Constantine Demeris (Raf Vallone) she sets her sights on humiliating Larry, using her lover’s cash to ensure he loses every job he has, even though he manages that well enough on his own account, given to abrasiveness towards any employer.

Slowly, Noelle brings Larry, literally, to heel, arranging for him to be employed as the pilot on her personal plane, humiliating him at every turn – he has to carry her luggage, not speak unless spoken to, and is hauled before Constantine. What with her transformation from almost a street urchin to one of the wealthiest most glamorous women in the world it takes him a while to make the connection.

Of course, they fall for each other all over again. Wife Catherine being now an obstacle, he plans to get rid of her deep in ancient Greek caves. When that doesn’t work, she drowns trying to escape the pair in a storm.

However, suspicions lurk and the pair are brought to trial in a Greek court. Initially, it looks like they’ll get off scot-free but Noelle isn’t the only one obsessed with vengeance and they end up facing the firing squad. There can’t hardly have been a more downbeat ending to an epic picture (it clocks in at 165 minutes).

Male humiliation appears to be the theme. Larry’s meet-cute with Catherine spins on his humiliation and Noelle has no qualms about humiliating her rich husband in public. It’s not money that provides the leverage, it’s sex.

I’m assuming the title is a perverse twist on the Cinderella story. While Larry starts out Prince Charming, later on he’s revealed as an entitled brat.

You’ll maybe be wondering why I’ve selected this. Well, it was seeing John Beck in Blue (1968). I remembered that he’d become something of a leading man in the mid-1970s and could never work out why. He always seemed to be too stolid. But, in fact, he does great work here, humble, reticent, witty, and with a gentle touch in the seduction department.

In acting terms, of course Marie-France Pisier steals the show. A new name to American audiences she had a decent French track record, stretching from Trans-Europ Express (1966) to Cousin Cousine (1975). Not given to over-acting, except when making men feel good, it’s her quiet obsession that determines the movie.

Susan Saradon (The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 1975) makes good on her earlier promise, with a fine performance as a woman who grows in confidence but is still rattled by emotion. Clu Galager (McQ, 1974) and Raf Vallone (The Italian Job, 1969) provide interesting support.

While there’s lushness aplenty, it’s also lean in narrative terms, action speaking louder than words, almost as if silence and secrecy are a prerequisite of vengeance.

Directed with in parts considerable style by Charles Jarrott (Anne of the Thousand Days, 1969) from a script by Herman Raucher (Can Heironymus Merkin etc, 1969) and Daniel Taradash (Hawaii, 1966) based on the Sidney Sheldon bestseller.

This is the kind of movie on which critics and the public are sharply divided and it tends to be the former that gains the greater sway. Only eight critics saw fit to comment on Rotten Tomatoes and they ranked it an outright dud, with a rating of 25%. The public, on the other hand, have responded in droves, over 500 of them so far, and they take the opposite view in terms of rating – a more than healthy 73%. Go figure.

I’m in the general moviegoer camp and think it well worth a viewing.

Whispering Smith Hits London / Whispering Smith vs Scotland Yard (1952) ***

“In a change to the advertised program” is probably the best place to start, since in writing nearly 2,000 reviews I’ve only, from memory, dipped into the pre-1960 era a couple of times. So let me explain. First of all when I was diving through my trove of Pressbooks, deciding what to select for the new movie exhibition in the book shop I run – Abbey Books in Paisley, Scotland – I came across a Pressbook for this. I noted it was produced by Hammer which I had always associated with horror so I was intrigued to see what the company had been up to long before it made its name mainlining on Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy.

By coincidence, I spotted the title on the listings for British streamer Talking Pictures so decided to have a look.

The first point of note, I guess, is the cast. It was par for the course in the 1960s for producers to trawl many countries in the world to make films with an international, sometimes all-star, cast, as they had worked out that it was easier to sell a movie outside the U.S. if you could pin your publicity efforts on big names from France, Italy, Scandinavia, Britain and Australia.

Here, Hammer, maybe in the vanguard of that policy, took this to the extreme. Among the three top-billed names, there isn’t a single Brit. We’ve got American Richard Carlson (The Creature from the Black Lagoon, 1954), Norwegian blonde bombshell Greta Gynt (Soldiers Three, 1951) and Czech Herbert Lom (A Shot in the Dark, 1964).

All this might have been grist to the trivia mill had the movie turned out not to be so damned entertaining, well above par for a B-movie. Not only, visually, does it take on aspects of film noir, slats of lights penetrating the darkness, but there are distressing overtones relating to the insanity business, where once an inmate enters a sanatorium unscrupulous staff can do anything they want, make them worse or kill them if that’s on the agenda.

There are plenty twists and a cracker of a climax, but, as importantly, Yank sleuth Whispering Smith (Richard Carlsen) and his client Ann Carter (Rona Anderson), thanks to sparkling repartee, create genuine screen charisma.

When the celebrity cop arrives in London for a vacation he is door-stepped by publisher Ann tasked with investigating the apparent suicide of her American employer’s daughter Sylvia and the mysterious disappearance of her friend Louise. Although initially rejecting the case, he changes his mind when Ann is victim of an attempted hit-and-run.

Interviews with Sylvia’s fiancé Roger Ford (Herbert Lom), a part-time puppeteer, and her lawyer Hector Reith (Alan Wheatley) throw up impressions of the dead girl as wild, strange, jealous and a gambler. The missing Louise turns out to be rather glamorous, not easily fooled, and in the mood for a taste of seduction and with a nice line in put-downs, “I like a working man,” she tells Smith.

However, a creepy sanatorium run by goatee-bearded Dr Talen (Daniel Therry) appears to be a cover for a criminal organization and Smith soon uncovers a blackmail ring. But none of the victims is willing to talk and when they do are bumped off. Smith eludes various traps, including a showdown in a tunnel and a booby-trapped boat. When Sylvia’s corpse turns up it’s unrecognizable after spending too long in the Thames.

Ann and Smith make a great team, especially when she turns snappy. “You can keep your whispering for someone else,” is one of her better retorts. She’s a surprise in other ways, a dab hand at safe-breaking, for example. It’s not clear how far he is seduced by Louise, so the issue of romance remains inconclusive.

Three standout sequences: the chase in the tunnel: Dr Taren’s disquisition on how easy it is to trap the innocent through psychiatric gobbledygook; and a murder scene where the victim is forced to turn up the sound of a succession of wirelesses to disguise the noise of the imminent gunshot.

Whether it’s the introduction of the slick American or the Scandinavian beauty, or the general pacing and twists ladled out, this is a notch above the usual British B-movie.

I should point out the alternative title is misleading, suggesting Smith is some kind of maverick cop besting Scotland Yard when in fact they work in tandem. And, for the record, he doesn’t whisper either. You might catch a glimpse of Stanley Baker (Zulu, 1964) as a reporter.

Veteran director Francis Searle (The Marked One, 1963) makes the most of the cast, the narrative and the ambience. Written by John Gilling (The Pirates of Blood River, 1962) and Steve Fisher (Rogue’s Gallery, 1968) from the bestseller by Frank H. Spearman.

Worth a watch.

The Birds (1963) *****

Years ago I was asked to write a book on the six best Hitchcock films and from those choose the one I considered his very best. My choice was The Birds (1963). And it is for these reasons.

Firstly, unusually in the master’s work, there is a proper meet-cute. In most of his films, the couple are either already together (Rear Window, 1954; Torn Curtain, 1966) or when they get together it is for a hidden reason, one is on the run, or being pursued by the other, and the getting together is a convenient way of reaching an ulterior goal. When Melanie (Tippi Hedren) and Mitch (Rod Taylor) meet in the pet shop it is a certainly a precursor for the future and ensures that Mitch gets in a stickier jam he would otherwise likely have avoided but in the true sense it is the traditional Hollywood boy-meets-girl.

Secondly, and now cutting more to the chase, this is where the modern action film was invented. You might think that honour rested with Dr No (1962) or any other of the Bond pictures or even as late as Bullitt (1968) with its epochal car chase. But although the Bonds are filled with derring-do and escape, there is nothing to match the scene when the birds attack the town, wave after wave, as if they were World War Two bombers. There is even the point-of-view from the air which Hitchcock also invented and has been repeated in airplane war films ever since, most famously Pearl Harbor (2001).

But the way in which full-scale disaster, with everyone rendered helpless, unfolds is a true first. People in the café can see the river of petrol and the match about to be discarded and can only observe as the river of flame reaches the petrol tanker and in a perfectly ordinary town setting – rather than a military base – there is an almighty explosion. It is terror for the sake of it. And there is no escape, no one racing to the rescue, just pure devastation,

Lastly is the ending. It is apocalyptic. In every other Hitchcock when the hero/heroine escapes from dire peril, that is the end of the matter, there is no final twist as with a film like Carrie (1976). But although the birds are now silent and the couple can pick their way through their lines, you know full well this is not the end and that the birds will soon be as inexplicably massing somewhere else.

That’s three reasons but there are many more. For a start, in other films where the hero/heroine is in danger, the peril is not relentless. And often it is the threat of danger or of being captured that provides the narrative spring. And if there is physical threat in that era it was not unrelenting. And it is with another character whom you can fight or at least attempt to outwit. Not just, later in this instance rather than sooner, realize that there is no way to defeat these marauding creatures, no way at all. So, compared to his other films, when attacks of one kind or another punctuate a film, here it is like a battery of machine-guns and not episodic but virtually non-stop for over 30 minutes.

The storyline since it is after all a meet-cute is excessively simple. Melanie and Mitch meet, trade remarks, she leaves him what would easily be interpreted as a love token, and they link up after she is attacked by a gull. Wherever they go now, there will be no escape. Gulls attack children playing outside. The same day sparrows invade Melanie’s home. There is another attack on children. In town the gulls swarm in wholesale, wreaking the devastation mentioned above. All his is just a prelude to the final overwhelming siege. Except in modern horror pictures where a body is dispatched every ten minutes or so, there is nothing to match the unremitting attacks. It is as though Mitch and Melanie are in the front line of battle, under siege, Zulu (1964) with birds perhaps, but with no hope of salvation. Unlike Zulu, there is no sign that in raising the siege, the birds are hailing their bravery.

Unusually, too, for a Hitchcock film, there is considerable back story that informs current action. Mitch has an overbearing mother who seems to hover over his life attempting to scare off any woman who comes near. Annie has been left behind precisely because he needed to escape his mother. For her part, Melanie’s mother ran off with another man and she is a spoiled socialite with a habit of getting into trouble, possibly attention-seeking behaviour as a result of abandonment issues. Full to the brim with sophistication. Melanie is the least likely candidate for motherhood, yet her maternal feelings rush to the fore when she has to care for a terrified child.

Tippi Hedren’s career when south when she parted company with Hitchcock so we only have this and Marnie (1964) to consider her worth as a star. This is easily her best performance, shifting from icy cold to playful to romantic to maternal and of course no one has quite emoted such shock and terror. This is Rod Taylor (Dark of the Sun, 1968) coming into his stride as a leading man. He always had the charm and certainly the brawn, but rarely displayed both in the one picture. You would not have picked the Rod Taylor of Seven Seas to Calais to lead a squad of mercenaries in Dark of the Sun but he might well be first pick after this performance.

Hitchcock got so many of his effects by laying on the tension, a man or woman on the run, an innocent framed, a man displaying dubious morality (Rear Window, 1954, and Vertigo, 1958) nonetheless being presented as hero, the question in every instance being whether they will escape their fate. Here, the barrage of devilry is so intense it is almost inconceivable that anyone could get out alive. That they sneak out by the skin of their teeth, watched by their silent conquerors, for me was only the prelude to The Birds Part Two.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Birds-Tippi-Hedren/dp/B00I953TVA/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1M01BG775O41C&keywords=the+birds&qid=1657318569&sprefix=the+birds%2Caps%2C71&sr=8-1