movie review – Page 13 – The Magnificent 60s

Lady in Cement (1969) ****

Frank Sinatra in cruise control reprises his Tony Rome (1967) private eye in a hugely enjoyable and vastly under-rated murder mystery with man mountain Dan Blocker of Bonanza fame and femme fatale Raquel Welch of pin-up fame. One of the actor’s greatest characterizations, albeit with little in it for the Oscar mob, this is one of the coolest gumshoes to hit the screen. Exhibiting none of the self-consciousness of latter-day Philip Marlowes or Sam Spades, Sinatra embellishes the character with more “business” than ever before, larding his dialogue with quips while he talks his way out of sticky situations and, as a big star, happy to be picked up by Blocker and dumped on a work surface. Can’t see Newman, Redford, McQueen, and Eastwood et al putting up with that kind of treatment.

Tony Rome is almost as much of a bum as he is a detective, betting on anything possible, wasting his time on fruitless quests for sunken treasure, lazing around in his yacht until in one of his deep sea forays comes across the naked titular damsel. Reporting the murder sees Rome co-opted by cop Lt. Santini (Richard Conte) to ID the woman. Sent to the apartment shared by Sandra Lomax and Maria Bareto in search for a potential client, Rome encounters Waldo (Dan Blocker) who hires him to find Lomax.

*The British release paired an action picture with a sex comedy, the idea being to catch different types of audiences rather than putting two action films or two comedies together which would*
later become the prevailing exhibition wisdom. *Although the two films had in common a star in bikini*.
*Note that the double bill went on general release at the same time as the two pictures*
*were, separately, playing at London’s West End.*

That takes Rome to Jilly’s go-go club where his conversation with dancer Maria (Lainie Kazan) is rudely interrupted by owner Danny Yale (Frank Raiter). Next stop is a swimming pool and who should emerge in a wet bikini than millionairess Kit Forrest (Raquel Welch) whose party Sandra attended. But a) she’s an alcoholic with memory issues and b) objects to snoopers so calls in neighbor and former hood Al Mungar (Martin Gabel) who sends Rome packing. When Maria is bumped off, Waldo is the prime suspect.

So we are enveloped in an interesting plot that soon involves blackmail and robbery and a suspect list that extends to Mungar and son Paul (Steve Peck) who has the hots for Kit, Yale and muscular boyfriend Seymour, and of course Waldo (whose reason for finding Sandra is revenge) and Kit. Despite the seeming light touch, inheritance is a theme, and the tale is character-driven, relationships complex, locales somewhat off-beat, a crap game in a mortuary, a nude painter’s studio, strip clubs, massage parlors and go-go dancing establishments abound, but with none of the moralizing that came with the territory. A racetrack is almost prosaic by comparison.

For most of the picture Santini and Rome have an antagonistic relationship until we find out, in a lovely scene, that Rome was the cop’s ex-partner, that the grumpy cop has a loving home life and that Rome is greeted with delight as “Uncle Tony” by Santini’s son. Rome is also very well acquainted with film noir and knows that a woman who appears too good to be true is in fact too good to be true so he’s sensible enough to steer clear of seduction (the bane of any film noir character’s life) unless he’s just pretending in order to glean information.

*Raquel Welch is more sedate in this poster.*

It’s a classic detective story, one lead following another, naturally a few contretemps along the way, some deception, and the laid-back Rome proves not as relaxed as you might expect, possessing a handy right hook and a neat uppercut. Interesting subsidiary characters include Al’s neglected wife, a bumptious beach attendant and a whining nude model.

Director Gordon Douglas – who handled Sinatra in Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964), Tony Rome and The Detective (1968) – brings out the best in the actor, keeps the action zipping along despite multiple complications and prefers a quip to a momentous speech.

Sinatra is just so at ease he oozes screen charisma. His shamus is no slick unraveller of truth, but a steady digger, accumulating information. You might think any tentative relationship with Kit stretches the age angle a tad but bear in mind at this stage Sinatra was married to Mia Farrow, 30 years his junior. Raquel Welch (The Biggest Bundle of Them All, 1968) is surprisingly good as a vulnerable mixed-up wealthy alcoholic and, except in her opening scene, manages to steer clear of a bikini for most of the picture.

Richard Conte (Hotel, 1966) is as dependable as ever but Martin Gabel (Divorce American Style, 1967) steals the supporting show as an apoplectic racketeer trying to go straight. You might like to know Lainie Kazan (Dayton’s Devils, 1968) is still working, The Amityville Murders (2018) and Tango Shalom (2021) among her recent output. It’s a shame Dan Blocker did not live long enough (he died in 1972) to build on his idiosyncratic performance.

The lively screenplay was written by Marvin H. Albert (A Twist of Sand, 1968) and Jack Guss (Daniel Boone: Frontier Trail Rider, 1966) based on Albert’s novel. Mention, too, for the jaunty theme tune by Hugo Montenegro (The Undefeated, 1969). You’ll find yourself humming it for days on end, it pops up often enough.

Into the catchphrase hall of fame must go Blocker’s exhortation “Stay loose” just before he unleashes mayhem. And while we’re about it, what is it about the quality of actor or status of a star that permits hoodlum Al’s peeved “I tried to go clean and you dragged me down” to be ignored while a couple of decades later a similar line from The Godfather Part III (1990) uttered by Al Pacino is hailed as a classic. You know the one I mean: “Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.” Steven Spielberg is another who should have watched this picture for tips on how to deal with marauding sharks – Rome’s solution: kick them on the snout. By the way did Blocker fall out with imdb? Despite third billing, he’s not listed at all in the main credits and when you scroll down to the extended credits, he’s at the very bottom. Jeez!

Normal (2026) ** or (depending) – Seen at the Cinema

Say hello to the Algorithm Apocalypse. Or as we used to call it – a trainwreck of a movie. This would be a prime candidate for the Inaugural Thrash Memorial Award. Marketed as a “Sky Original” that’s somewhat misleading since it is closer to a Sky Cliché, although admittedly that doesn’t have quite the same ring.

A veritable off-piste cocktail of John Wick, True Romance, Assault on Precinct 13, and a crime version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, trade the Yakuza for the Mafia and all those films where the good cop has a nose for skulduggery.

Somewhat alleviated by a substantial side of quirkiness. We’ve got a moose on the loose, kindly bank robbers, a sheriff’s badge lifted from a corpse, an informal moustache appreciation society, problems telling pink from mauve, price gouging, and a diatribe against banks and billionaires ruining small business and small town main streets.

Cut to the violence, and there’s machine guns, pistols, shotguns and worse – flares and sticks of dynamite – and people are killed by nails, knitting needles and falling signs, and that’s before snowplows get in on the act.

Substitute sheriff Ulysses (Bob Odenkirk) takes on a temporary stint in Normal. Separated from his wife, he’s “dark inside” courtesy of shooting in cold blood a sex abuser. Not sure I quite fall in with his suspicions about the death of the man he replaced, who had the kind of extremely florid complexion you would associate with a heart attack.

Anyways, this is very much a humdrum small town with no crime to speak of and therefore a police force that verges on the acceptably incompetent until bank robbers Lori (Reena Jolley) and Keith (Brendan Fletcher), not realizing the bank doesn’t deal in much actual cash these days, demand to see the vault. Its opening alone is enough for the bank manager to kill himself, which is just as well because most likely he’d have been mown down in a hail of bullets delivered by…wait for it…the cops.

Yep, the town has a terrible secret. It’s the bagman for the Yakuza, gazillions in gold and cash stashed in the bank vault, and the whole town in on the deal, including the old lady who runs the knitting emporium and the middle-aged female barperson being set up for likely romance with the sheriff. But both are gun-toting evil wenches.

It would be one man against the mob except for Ulysses recruiting the bank robbers and the dead sheriff’s suicidal daughter Alex (Jess McLeod). So once we’re done with mystery it’s Anora all over again except with violence replacing sex. Once the Yakuza top brass fly in from Tokyo, it looks like Algorith Apocalypse is going to go nuclear except Ulysses has come up with a clever plan to settle the situation. Except it doesn’t.

I always wondered with the death of VHS and DVD and no television programs picking up the slack, how we’re ever going to find cult items. This will disappear in a year from Sky. Then where will it go? Nowhere. It’ll just vanish. You’ll never see it again. And even people who think this has cult written all over it will never be able to find enough showings of it in the future to stir the pot.

Some interesting pedigrees here – Bob Odenkirk (Nobody, 2021) proves a reliable stand-in for Liam Neeson or Jason Statham without the persona, Henry Winkler (Night Shift, 1982) shines in a supporting role and if you wondered what happened to Lena Headey after Game of Thrones (2011-2019) here’s your answer. John Wick creator Derek Kolstad doubles as writer and producer so I’m reckoning, excepting the rising gore count, there wasn’t much room left for director Ben Wheatley (Meg 2: The Trench, 2023) to put his own particular stamp on proceedings.

This comes over as a collision of two styles – a gentle quirky tale in the Fargo line that probably would have made a better mini-series and an action picture desperate for any narrative port in the storm where it could put in and without much elbow grease find a reason to embark on an orgy of violence.

Best described as the shoot-‘em-up’s shoot-‘em-up with an even higher corpse quotient than Thrash.

Somewhere between awful and highly entertaining.

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.

The Party (1968) ***

Had director Blake Edwards (The Pink Panther, 1963) stuck to his guns and followed his instinct and gone down the silent film route, this would have emerged in better shape. Blame star Peter Sellers (The Pink Panther) for deciding “brownface” had worked so well in The Millionairess (1960) that it was ripe for a repeat and that dialog was essential to the audience empathizing with his character.

On reflection, the fish-out-of-water concept would have been more acceptable with a character originating from anywhere but India which would have still permitted the star to adopt one of the zany voices that were his trademark.

The script was originally 58 pages long which would have delivered a finished product running just short of an hour. The extra time would have been made up by the actor’s improvisation.

His character probably didn’t need to be actor either to find himself at bigwig’s party in Los Angeles. When Sellers is at his inventive best this just purrs along. Some of the ideas are priceless – trying to retrieve a shoe from a pond, meddling with a electronics system, getting his tie stuck in an unlikely spot, spraying all with water. But when he opens his voice, it drags.

Part of the problem is that Hrundi V. Bakshi (Peter Sellers) lacks lines with any zap. He just mumbles along, repeating the same humorless drivel. And while other characters make fools of themselves through dialog, that’s rarely with incisive wit either, the audience just laughing at their inflated opinions of themselves.

Bakshi is an incompetent Indian actor who manages to blow up the expensive set on costume epic Son of Gunga Din movie set at the height of the British Raj. He should have been blacklisted, but instead elementary error sees him invited to the party of studio boss General Clutterbuck (J. Edward McKinley) where he encounters a drunken starlet, an alcoholic waiter determined to steal the slapstick high ground, pompous western star “Wyoming Bill” (Denny Miller) and French singer Michele Monet (Claudine Longet) trying to avoid the advances of movie producer Divot (Gavin MacLeod).

Although this was reputedly shot in sequence, the running order doesn’t really matter. Set Peter Sellers in his pomp down in any situation and chaos will ensure. Wigs will come off, shoes will rocket around a room, anything on a plate, bowl or tray will fall off, anyone in the vicinity will be drenched or battered. Tempers will rise until they are nicely cooking and set to explode.

Quite where a Russian ballet troupe and a painted elephant fit into this is anyone’s guess except that both were intended as cues for further hilarity. When guests aren’t tumbling into the pool they’re soaked in soap suds. Naturally, Bakshi’s ineptitude triggers gentle romance with Michele.

This would certainly have built up a good head of steam if seen in a cinema with an audience. But the cinema audience would have encountered the same problem as anyone watching it at home. For every sequence that hits a comedic bulls-eye, others just fall flat. When the movie relies on the star’s charm rather than his ineptitude it falls apart.

It’s almost a highlights reel and my guess is that if it was cut back to the original one-hour length we might well have a classic on our hands. As it is, padded out, it doesn’t come close.

While at one time it acquired cult status my guess is that the contemporary audience won’t find enough to compensate for the offensive Brownface.

Certainly there are moments of genius, the shoe sequence and the electronics section are huge fun. But too much just doesn’t work.

You might end up fast forwarding every time Sellers opens his mouth. He is a master at finding fun in the inanimate, less impressive when dealing with people. Didn’t do anything for Claudine Longet, no more movies after this. And that was not surprising. Everyone was just a stooge to Sellers.

I apologize for falling back on that old analogy of the curate’s egg – good in parts – but that pretty much defines it.

Lawman (1971) *****

Virtually every film by British director Michael Winner was either despised or under-rated. Sure, he appeared at the wrong time, when critics were in the thrall of such stylists as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Arthur Penn and Steven Spielberg, guys who couldn’t tell a story without adding something distinctive and individual. It didn’t help that Winner came across as cocky and arrogant and chewed on cigars as if he was Orson Welles. His copybook was eternally blotted after Death Wish (1974) and possibly before then for consorting with the likes of Charles Bronson who did not fit the critical palette in terms of a western hero.

So I’ve come out swinging big-style for this extraordinary number for its moral complexity and revisionism. It doesn’t exactly turn the genre on its head but it’s the most honest and realistic western you’ll come across and with rasping dialogue where every word counts. Sheriff Cotton Ryan (Robert Ryan) is a coward, bought and sold by local rancher Vincent Bronson (Lee J. Cobb). Old flame Laura (Sheree North) is willing to jump into bed with the titular lawman Jared Maddox (Burt Lancaster) to save her partner Hurd Price (J.D. Cannon) and just as likely to bed Maddox anyway out of pure lust. But then she’s just as likely to feel sorry for one Maddox’s captives, Vernon (Robert Duvall), and sneak him out a gun and endanger her old lover.

Price and Laura had such a miserable spread and are such poor farmers, hooked by a dream that needs more than dreaming to turn it into a reality, that any crops they raise only feed the weevils. On the other hand Bronson, unlike the ranchers in other westerns, doesn’t want to posse up and hunt down the lawman. His skill set errs on the side of negotiation, bribery and blackmail. The young gunslinger Crowe (Richard Jordan) doesn’t end up, as usual for the genre, as easy meat.

Whenever John Wayne set off to right a wrong he generally had the audience on his side. The injustice committed against him, or that was walking into, was clear.

There’s nothing clear about who murdered an old man in Maddox’s home town of Bannock. It was an accident, or the kind of accident you get when a bunch of drunken outlaws shoot up a town. No idea who fired the fatal bullet. It could anyone out of seven visitors. We don’t even find out anything about the victim. He’s little more than a MacGuffin.

And Maddox isn’t vengeance on a horse. He’s not out to kill anyone. He doesn’t know who to blame for the murder, his job is just to round up the suspects. However, the wanted don’t take too kindly to being on his wanted list and a couple of them, namely Vernon and Bronson’s son Jason (John Beck) are itching to put a bullet through the lawman’s head, by fair means or foul, via the traditional shootout in main street or as conveniently the bullet in the back or the trail ambush.

Maddox is implacable. “A lawman is a killer of men. That’s what the job calls for.” Even though he agrees his task is a murky one, and little chance of divining the actual killer, and even the possibility that for lack of such clarity the judge hearing the case will simply let everyone off, he’s still obsessed with doing what needs done, rounding up the suspects, killing them if need be if they oppose the rule of law.

The townspeople aren’t much help, up in arms at the prospect of a widow-maker in their midst, and not keen on the law being enforced when their own lawman takes such a different view. Cotton Tyan, at one point, was a good and feared lawman. But those days are long past. “Everyone remembers Fort Bliss,” he mutters ruefully before reeling off the list of his failures.

As I mentioned the dialog is superb. No room for banter or repartee here. Every word comes with a hammer behind it.

“I ain’t afraid of him,” remonstrates wannabe gunslinger Crowe. “You would be,” retorts Ryan, “if you had brains enough to spit.”

To prevent Hurd from leaving Laura pleads, “But Maddox promised nothing would happen to you.” Hurd snaps, “But what did you promise him?”

Saloon owner Lucas (Joseph Wiseman), with whom Maddox has history, challenges his approach. “You’re wrong here.” “Not from where I stand,” says Maddox. “You can’t see from where you stand.”

Although Winner is too fond of a recent technological innovation, the zoom shot, the rest of the filming, like the tale itself, is somber. There are some nice touches. We are introduced to Maddox as he towers above the camera. And it’s only when the camera changes angle that we realize the load on his packhorse is actually a corpse.

I’ve never seen a western where anyone, despite riding through endless barren plains, is covered in dust. But here, Maddox’s eyes have a patina of dust. Ryan uses a horseshoe as a paperweight. His town is largely crime free because it lacks a railhead. Like a Henry Hathaway western, we get a good idea of the makeup of the town from signs on buildings.

The action scenes are terrific. Killing a man’s horse in the wilderness is as good as killing the man. The only time Ryan chips in is to help arrest someone committing crime in his own town, and in that section he and Maddox work as a team communication through nods and gestures.

The ending, had it gone to plan, would have turned the genre on its head, Maddox deciding he’s done enough killing and planning to leave without making any further arrests. But that’s not good enough for Jason, who has something to prove and dies because of it.

Bronson, who’s done his best to avoid outright conflict, also dies, by his own hand, unable to deal with the death of his only remaining son.

Michael Winner (The Nightcomers, 1972) knows he’s dealing with a western icon in Burt Lancaster (The Professionals, 1966) and allows the actor to add another iconic character to his portfolio and trigger the more thoughtful screen persona he would evince in the next two in his “western trilogy” Valdez Is Coming (1971) and Ulzana’s Raid (1972), each successively nudging closer and closer to outright revisionism.

Inveterate tough guy Robert Ryan (The Wild Bunch, 1969) plays mostly against type as the worn-outlawman seeking an easy life. Sheree North (The Gypsy Moths, 1969) makes the most of an unglamorous, conflicted, role. Based on this performance, you wouldn’t figure Robert Duvall on turning into a quiet gangster’s lawyer the following year in The Godfather.

Making his big screen debut is Richard Jordan (Valdez Is Coming, 1971) and on his sophomore appearance is John Beck (The Other Side of Midnight, 1977).

What a debut by screenwriter Gerald Wilson (Chato’s Land, 1972).

Coming to this in reverse order after watching Lancaster in Valdez is Coming and Ulzana’s Raid (1972) and after reappraising Winner following The Nightcomers, I had no idea what to expect. Least of all that I would be so impressed I’d watch it twice straight through.

Superb.

Jungle Street / Jungle Street Girls (1961) ***

More social document than thriller. Two elements make it stand out. Critics pointed to the likes of kitchen sink drama Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) as exemplifying the British working class. Equally, when looking for a picture that identified the British criminal, critics and academics were more likely to point to Robbery (1967) and Get Carter (1971) where the villains demonstrated considerable intelligence, leadership and acumen.

Let’s get the social aspects out the way first. Petty thief Terry Collins (David McCallum) still lives with his parents. He argues with his father, is mollycoddled by his mother. There’s a fry-up for breakfast. The kitchen doubles as the dining area. Excitement is limited to winning the Pools (a football-based version of the current Lottery) and going to the cinema. His father (Thomas Collins) has worked all his life shifting sacks of potatoes (presumably in a market). But he’s not disillusioned with life. He’s brought up his family and can still spend time down in the pub.

Terry is a delusional gangster. But only a part-time one, making his living working in a garage, having chucked in his factory job. He thinks he can make a big score and run off to Europe to live the high life. He’s in love with stripper Sue (Jill Ireland) who doesn’t respond to his romancing. She’s taken to stripping because her lover Johnny (Kenneth Cope) is serving a one-year stretch for a jewel robbery.

People always seem to be laughing at Terry and he reacts violently. But he’s not the rough-tough dominant male he aspires to be. Three times he gets whacked about the face, twice by criminal colleagues, once by Sue.

Inadvertently, he’s killed an old man while robbing him. So the police are on his tail. Johnny’s been released from prison, reclaiming Sue, and wants to know what happened to his share of the loot from the jewel heist in which Terry was his partner. To compensate, Terry offers to set up a robbery of the safe at the strip club whose routines he has studied.

Once the safe has been opened, he clatters Johnny over the head, and scarpers with the cash, makes for Sue, and is astonished when she refuses to accompany him. Eventually, the police catch up and another deluded petty criminal bites the dust.

Initially, of course, the audience sides with our young lad, understands his need to escape the boredom of ordinary life that awaits. But, gradually, he provides little to root for.

Given the regular sequences of girls stripping, the running time is even leaner than usual. The heist has some considerable moments of tension especially when the watchman, bound hand and foot, inches along the floor to the alarm button, and then when Terry appears trapped before jumping out a window.

There’s nothing glamorous about the strip club either, Sue having to constantly ward off the unwelcome advances of owner Jacko (John Chandos) and every other customer who thinks a stripper is morally lax. Even though she’s kept herself for Johnny, he doesn’t believe her. Some girls know how to play the system, a new stripper not giving in to Jacko until he’s spelled out the financial benefits.

The seediness of the lower depths is depicted well and it’s not hard to see how young men and young women are easily snookered into this kind of existence when the alternative is so mind-numbingly boring.

David McCallum (Sol Madrid/The Heroin Gang, 1968) and real-life wife Jill Ireland (Cold Sweat, 1970) are both convincing, exuding surprising emotional depth. Kenneth Cope (Randall and Hopkirk Deceased/My Partner the Ghost, TV series 1969-1970) is on hand to show the young ingenue what it means to be a proper tough guy.

Charles Saunders (Danger on My Side, 1962) directs from a script by Alexander Dore (The Wind of Change, 1961) and Guido Coen (Baby Love, 1969).

More interesting as a character study than as a thriller.

A Man Called Sledge (1970) ***

It’s a risky business for an established star to change their screen persona. The only reason they’ve achieved stardom is because there’s something appealing and even comforting about the persona they’ve adopted. Audiences queue up to see a screen favorite because they know what they’re getting. That still leaves room for chameleons like Dustin Hoffman, whose appeal is the exact opposite, moviegoers don’t know what they’re going to get from one movie to the next.

James Garner (Buddwing, 1966) had a curious screen persona. Sure, he was laid-back and his delivery involved a drawl but his persona, drawn from the scallywag Maverick (1957-1962), also included an element of the sneaky. He wasn’t always as straightforward or heroic (The Americanization of Emily, 1964) as you might expect, but that made him comfortably different.

But it’s one thing to make minor changes to your screen persona, it’s another to dump it completely. Even his combed-back hairstyle is gone as well as the rest of his screen persona as he leans into the sneaky part. He’s an outlaw. And not charming like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and not hawking around a code of honor like The Wild Bunch (1969) and not a bad guy doing good for whatever reason. His only one redemptive feature is that he’s fallen in love.

On the other hand, if you’re going to play a villain, you better be a smart one, capable of shooting your way out of tricky situations, clever enough to outfox the authorities and able to come up with a plan to steal $300,000 in gold dust from the biggest and most secure safe ever build in the strongest stronghold you could find.

In short order, we are introduced to Luther Sledge (James Garner) robbing a stage, meeting up with girlfriend Ria (Laura Antonelli) and being ambushed in a saloon by gamblers who don’t like losing. Making good his escape, he comes across the Old Man (John Marley) who suggests the unthinkable, stealing the gold. The obvious method would be taking the gold when it’s being transported from the gold mine to the safe.

But it travels with a heck of a guard, more or less a small army, drilled to perfection, armed to the teeth. So, Sledge resorts to the inside job routine. Only problem is the stronghold is actually a prison with 500 prisoners and the safe is inside the maximum security section. Even so, the Old Man, whose done time there, reckons he has listened often enough to the tumblers on the safe being turned that they won’t need to resort to dynamite and the like.

Sledge gets his buddy Erwin Ward (Dennis Weaver) to act as sheriff taking him in as a prisoner, then once inside he plans to free all the prisoners to create a diversion and tie down the guards.

As you might expect this is achieved with a little hitch here and there to ratchet up the tension. But then when we expect an army of guards in hot pursuit and a massive shootout or Sledge to come up with some other clever way of escaping, it turns into The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and the tension just drains away, hampered by a cute unbelievable ending where Sledge chooses love over gold.

Somehow the third act robs it of what it had going for it, a tough guy devoid of sentimentality, in the vein of the Lee Marvin of Point Blank (1967). You might as well have inserted an old lady or a kid and be done with it as the reason for Sledge to change his ways and, unfortunately, it just kills off interest in the character. Redemption isn’t what we came for. You can get that any day of the week at the movies. But, ruthlessness, that’s a different story and you’d be surprised how well that can play.

Maybe there’s some unseen Hollywood code. If you’re a proper star, you can only be a tough guy if you don’t kill people (i.e. Butch Cassidy though not The Sundance Kid) or if your toughness is in pursuit of bad guys (True Grit, 1969).

There are some other interesting elements. There’s a second ambush, a street shoot-out, a la The Wild Bunch. There’s a banjo-playing deputy sheriff and a keen-eyed Sheriff (Wayde Preston) who can suss out a wrong ‘un. Dead men earn their keep, either on horseback providing cover or lying on the ground where their pistols come in handy. A small town is emptied by people attending a funeral, masked faces and all.

And there’s a good bit of sense – a Derringer has such a short range that a prison guard with the necessary keys for escape has to be passed cell by cell down a row until he can come within shooting distance for the gun to achieve its threat.

James Garner is indeed excellent in his new disguise, drawl gone, hair flopping all over the place, not a quip in sight. There’s not much room for anyone else though Claude Akins (Return of the Seven, 1966) deserves a nod. Italian Laura Antonelli (The Innocent, 1976) as the hooker in love sparkles though I’m guessing she was dubbed. John Marley (The Godfather, 1972) is a scene-stealing role does his best to steal the movie from Garner.

Actor Victor Morrow directed this, his sophomore effort. He had a hand in the screenplay, too. He parlayed the fame he’s achieved from long-running television series Combat (1962-1967) in attempting to shift him from being cast as the bad guy on the big screen but, unfortunately, he’s best remembered not for this but for his tragic ending, when he died on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983).

Which is a shame because this is a decent enough effort.

Engaging enough when in heist mode, less so when it disappears down the Sierra Madre rabbit hole.

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) ***

You can usually rely upon Ray Harryhausen to rescue any picture. But he’s got his work cut out in this leaden enterprise weighed down by nepo kids. One nepo kid would be bad enough but some bright spark had the terrible idea of pairing the son (Patrick) of John Wayne with the daughter (Taryn) of Tyrone Power, only to discover that neither could act. That’s not usually necessarily a massive drawback in an adventure picture, but they have zilch to compensate in the way of screen personas.

To make up, rather than periodic interventions by Harryhausen, this time we’ve got two of his creations with us virtually every step of the way – a baboon and a minotaur. The baboon playing chess is the highlight in terms of technical advances of Dynamation. To keep us on our toes when the narrative gets lost in exposition, every now and then we cut to the minotaur single-handedly rowing a ship or taking time out from such routine activity to spear some unwelcome visitor.

Given Harryhausen’s output switches from the mythical (Jason and the Argonauts, 1963) to the prehistoric (One Million Years B.C., 1966), he’s decided to mix it up this time round, with examples from both sub-genres. There’s a battle between a troglodyte (cave-man with what looks like a rhinoceros horn sticking out of his head) and a Smilodon (a sabre-toothed tiger)- and the baboon is so large it counts as prehistoric. Fulfilling the mythical end of the bargain a trio of ghouls with bulbous insect-like eyes arise from a fire, reminiscent of the skeleton army of Jason and the Argonauts. Halfway in between there’s a giant seagull, giant wasp, a miniature human and a very nasty cat.

Sinbad (Patrick Wayne) travels to the Arctic with sorcerer Melanthius (Patrick Troughton) who knows how to break the spell cast by the evil Zenobia (Margaret Whiting) that turned Prince Kassim (Damien Thomas), heir to the throne, into a baboon. Accompanying are the necessary ingredients for a love triangle – Kassim’s sister Farah (Jane Seymour) and Melanthius’s daughter Dione (Taryn Power).

Reversing the spell involves a sojourn to the icebound waste land of Arismaspi where the doors of temples look as if they have been constructed out of leftovers from King Kong (1976). Luckily, Zenobia isn’t as powerful as she thinks and after her outing as a seagull the witch can’t shake off the magic and is left with a bird’s foot. Every now and then her eyes glow like a cat.

There must have been some optimism at Columbia that Patrick Wayne could step into the shoes of John Philip Law (The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, 1973) and that Bond girl Jane Seymour (Live and Let Die, 1973) could be the equal of scream queen Caroline Munro. And while Wayne had some form in the fantasy line via Beyond Atlantis (1973) and been acting since 1950 with routine appearances in his father’s westerns, in terms of quality roles he would be hard put to come close to Law whose portfolio included Otto Preminger’s Hurry Sundown (1967), and cult items Death Rides a Horse (1967), Barbarella (1968) and Danger: Diabolik (1968) and top-billed in admittedly more trashy ventures like The Love Machine (1971).

As you know being a Bond girl can be a curse as much as a blessing – Seymour had been offered little since. And although she would later make her mark, all that was on show here was promise, and not much of that. Taryn Power hadn’t capitalized on her starring role in the Spanish-made romance Maria (1972).

Nobody would accuse Errol Flynn of being a great actor but he more than compensated for any deficiencies with his screen charisma. Since neither nepo had much to offer in that department it was left to older hands like Patrick Troughton (Dr Who, 1966-1985) and Margaret Whiting (The Password Is Courage, 1962) to provide the gravitas. Even so, there’s not they can bring as the movie lumbers – and sometimes slumbers – towards its endpoint.

It’s as much as director Sam Wanamaker (The File of the Golden Goose, 1969) can do to keep the ship above water. Screenplay by Beverley Cross (Jason and the Argonauts).

On the other hand this movie is very much like the westerns I watched as a kid where I couldn’t wait for the grown-ups to stop quarrelling with each other or kissing and cuddling so that we could get on with the meat of the movie which was a gunfight or a battle between the Cavalry and Native Americans. Here, everything in between the Harryhausen elements just gets in the way.

Harryhausen rules – just.

The Christophers (2026) ***

Britain has an unusually large quota of national treasures in the acting department. Manage to put the ageing Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, or Ian McKellen (Meryl Streep would be the only American contender and look at how she’s been re-born at the box office in The Devil Wears Prada 2)) in front of a camera and you’re pretty much guaranteed funding, media interest and at least an arthouse-style release. But given the dearth of interesting pictures – even though we are apparently in the midst of a mini-boom – such movies are just as likely to run up at your local multiplex and might even be given an advance screening – a “secret screening” was where I came upon this.

I’m a big fan of films about artists of all kinds, writers, musicians but especially the artists who paint – La Belle Noiseuse a big favorite as is Red (2018) – so I didn’t expect a picture where there’s no virtually no painting.

The beauty of this is its main drawback. Ian McKellen gets to talk – and talk and talk instead paint, and paint and paint. There’s hardly an actor alive who can hold the screen so well just by talking. And I suspect the Oscars will come calling. So it makes sense I would guess to just let him do that. It would be a two-hander except most of what Lori Butler (Michaela Coel) does is listen, her main task at the beginning to pick him up on lapses of modern etiquette, even though he’s gay he’s still not allowed to lounge around with his pyjama top open, reminded of the power dynamics of employment etc etc. But fair’s fair, when she does get to talk, she’s also allocated a lengthy monologue – and the only one that’s actually about the process of painting. The plot matters a lot less.

So, like Tar (2022), this has a lot to say about art and only latterly about how art infuses the emotions.

This would have been better if it had followed a simpler narrative instead of saddling the plot with Julian’s inane greedy children Barnaby (James Corden) and Sallie (Jessica Gunning) who have roped in penniless forger Lori to complete a set of famously unfinished portraits – “The Christophers”. But the sub-plot sets off too much improbability not to mention terrible acting.

It would have been better from the outset to set up what eventually takes place anyway, that somehow the presence of Lori inspires Julian to take up his brush again.

Most of Lori’s character, beyond being a poster person for woke sensibilities, is backstory. She was inspired to become an artist after seeing one of Julian’s most renowned works, “Boy Under a Cloud,” completed when he was only six. But then her confidence was destroyed when in some bizarre version of a television art talent contest her work is derided by Julian. Quite why she took to forgery is unclear and even less obvious is why she failed at that given she’s working shifts in a food truck.

There are some interesting nods to social media. Julian keeps the wolf from the door by despatching birthday greetings electronically and by delving into the internet finds out more about Lori than she wishes to reveal, including that she has excoriated his work. There’s not enough of the cut-and-thrust – think the play Art or even Sleuth (1972) – necessary to make this fly, although there are enough twists of a minor nature to keep it afloat.

But given that the wokeness has been a key element of the sorry it’s a shame it suddenly resorts to sentimentality including Lori giving Julian the kind of almighty hug that could have resulted in court proceedings had it been the other way. And even though the end has the kind of twist a film like this needs to survive, I wasn’t at all convinced that suddenly Lori had transformed herself into a multi-media artist given her work so far had been more straightforward.

Fans of Ian McKellen (The Critic, 2023) will revel in the latest in his series of louche characters, by virtue of age permitted to speak his mind without (as with the Meryl Streep character in The Devil Wears Prada 2) fear of censure. The frailties of old age are also to the fore. But given the lashings of dialog/monologue it’s worth noting that some of the best moments are devoid of wordplay, facial expression carrying hidden emotion.

For all that we learn about Lori, her part is remarkably underwritten. Michaela Coel (Mother Mary, 2026) is a rising star so best to cut her some slack. But Jessica Gunning (Baby Reindeer, 2024) and James Corden (California Schemin’, 2025) are truly awful, their characters little more than cut-outs.

Director Steven Soderbergh (Black Bag, 2025) is still in his I’m-cleverer-than-you phase and seems to want to deny his intelligent audience the intelligence to pick holes in the absurd plot. The over-wordy script is written by Ed Solomon (Bill and Ted Face the Music, 2020).

Despite my gripes I did enjoy this, primarily for Ian McKellen rather than anything else who proves why, like Meryl Streep across the pond, he is to be accorded the elevated status of national treasure.

Blue (1968) *****

Easily the most underrated western of all time. Few people saw it on release and precious few since. If remembered at all, it’s for reasons of movie trivia. Robert Redford got into a legal fight with Paramount when he pulled out of the starring role. And it was what was being shot in the background of the Burt Reynolds movie Fade In (1968).

Decades before cultural appropriation was a major no-no, Americans didn’t take too kindly to Brits taking on top-billed roles in westerns. Audiences sniggered at Dirk Bogarde as a Mexican bandit in The Singer Not the Song (1960), John Mills proved an obstacle to audience acceptance of Chuka (1967) and Shalako (1969) starring Sean Connery, the world’s biggest box office draw at the time, would become a huge flop Stateside.

Yet there are some extraordinary moments here. Some, frankly, I’m astonished never rated a mention at the time nor since. The director’s use of natural sound is ground-breaking. For a start, there’s very little music, none of the triumphal brass that generally accompanies hordes of cowboys racing across plains. Often, here, all we get is hoofbeats. In terms of the aural Hitchcock would have applauded one scene, where a man is hunted through tall grass. All we hear is the crackling sound of the pursuers as they stalk him through the dried-out terrain.

Most times when in other films we see a bunch of cowboys charging along, it’s filmed from the front or the side. Reason being, shoot it from the back and you’ve got to deal with all the dust churned up by the hooves. Not so, here, bring on the dust. Let’s have something new.

There’s even a nod to The Searchers (1956), the famous doorway scenes, but here the main character is neither coming nor coming but cannot make up his mind whether to do either and so slouches against the doorframe.

The opening sequence is The Wild Bunch (1969) in reverse. It’s the good guys in the town, and the bandits who create the ambush and, minus Peckinpah’s obsession with bloodletting, treat their captives ever bit as brutally. Even here, there are two notable scenes. In the first, our hero Blue (Terence Stamp) has been sitting napping under his hat when a troop of Mexican soldiers arrive. Once they hunker down inside the saloon he throws a huge red scarf in the hair, signal to the watching bandits. Then, after the soldiers have been routed, and their leader is still trying to make a stand, Blue races up behind and whips away first his upraised gun, then his hat, then the man himself.

And these are not ordinary bandits. You might think they are given our post-action introduction to them shows them whoring, gambling and fighting. But actually they are revolutionaries and leader Ortega (Ricardo Montalban) has a strategic brain and realizes that they have to take the fight across the river to the Americans – on their most important day of the year, July 4^th, Independence Day – and get them so riled up they do something about the inequities in Mexico.

And he has his work cut out to rein in his rebellious son and the concerns raised by his number two that the life, hiding out in the hills and sleeping in caves, is losing its appeal to his followers. So, intelligent bandits.

The Americans might not be particularly bothered by their neighbors, but still they’ve got a stuffed mannikin hanging from a noose with the word “Greasers” written upon its chest. The bandits break up the party, rob the Yanks, but for some reason leave the enemy with all their weapons, allowing the farmers to form an immediate posse and set off in pursuit.

Blue is shot but makes his way to a farmhouse where, luckily for him, he is tended by farmer’s daughter Joanne (Joanna Pettet) whom he previously saved from rape. It’s a bit of a tip-off that the fugitive goes by the name Azul (the Spanish word for “blue”) to the Mexicans given, I’m assuming, all Mexicans are brown-eyed. So he must be an outlander. And so he is, brought up by the Mexican bandits.

At first he appears to be of the Clint Eastwood persuasion, monosyllabic to the point of dumbness, but, eventually, in a quite brilliant scene, forced to utter a word before Joanna cuts his throat with a razor, an idea that found its way, as I recall, into Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning (1988).

And if ever action carries more meaning than words, it’s in the scene where Joanne discovers Blue has apparently fled only to spy him ploughing the fields. As you might expect, whether an American male or female is brought up by Native Americans (Hombre, 1967) or as here Mexicans, they find it hard to be accepted. The issue is forced upon his new countrymen when the bandits return, and Blue has to choose a side.

Blue was an orphan thanks to racism against his American parents when they settled in Mexico. And he suffers, unfairly you would say given he was born in the U.S., from racism again when he crosses the border.

The sex scene is brilliantly handled, relying both on sight and sound. It’s Joanna who has to instigate it, instinctively knowing that he won’t make any move in case it is wrongly interpreted. The father, noting her bedroom is empty, begins to walk along the corridor to Blue’s room. Hearing his footsteps, Joanna turns out the light. Seeing the light go out, the father retreats – on tiptoe.

There’s also the best demonstration of pistol shooting this side of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid the following year. And without taking anything away from the Robert Redford scene, it’s remarkably similar.

And Blue proves himself to be a brilliant tactician. He sets up a stunning ambush and the bandits are slaughtered from both sides of the river when they attempt to cross. His leadership, unusually, sets up emotional issues. When Joanne reacts against this new tough side of him, it’s her father that calms her. But that isn’t the peach. Blue confesses that he enjoys killing, it “pleasures” him.

I’m afraid to say the ending of Butch Cassidy also has remarkable similarities to this. There it’s the freeze frame that encapsulates the death of the heroes. Here, the camera draws back and back into the sky as Joanne holds her dead lover in the river.

Terence Stamp (The Collector, 1965) doesn’t quite have enough going on behind the eyes to become a top-class actor so sensibly director Silvio Narrazino (Georgy Girl, 1966) avoids going in too close on the baby blues and allows the actor freedom of movement to reveal his feelings, the slouching in the doorway one example, another being Blue’s slow realization that much of what he sees in the farmer’s house is familiar. Stamp acquits himself well in the action scenes.

But Joanna Pettet (The Best House in London, 1969) is the revelation. We’re quite used to spunky or feisty females in westerns. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen one who takes control with subtlety. Her father Doc Morton (Karl Malden) can’t get a word out of Blue no matter the threats uttered and violence threatened. But when Joanna takes up a cut-throat razor for the first time in her life and begins to trim his stubble, deliberately making a hash of it, that’s as novel a meet-cute as you’re going to find as well as one of the best definitions of female character that you’ll see in a western.

Written by Meade Roberts (The Stripper, 1963) and Ronald M. Cohen (The Good Guys and the Bad Guys, 1969).

One of the most stylish and innovative westerns you’ll ever see and you need to watch it with your ears attuned to sound.

A true find.