movie review – Page 22 – The Magnificent 60s

The Untouchables (1987) *****

The greatest crime picture ever made, outside of The Godfather Parts I and II (1972/1974). A sledgehammer of a narrative that moves like an express train, only slowing down for a number of bravura sequences. Riddled with fabulous lines, built on great performances, and seeded early on with subsidiary characters who will later play significant roles. In any analysis it reads like a greatest hits.

The bloodied finger of Al Capone (Robert DeNiro) holding court to fawning journalists; the little girl’s plaintive cry of “Mister” before she’s blown to kingdom come; the love note included in the lunch of Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner); “poor butterfly” as the first raid goes wrong; the introduction of Malone (Sean Connery) “here endeth the lesson”; the trading of racist insults with recruit George Stone (Andy Garcia); Capone bludgeoning an associate to death with a baseball bat; in the safety of a church, Malone explaining “the Chicago way”; the first big cinematic sequence – the shootout at the border with meek accountant Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith) making his bones and sneaking a drink of beer; Malone “killing” the dead man; “touchables” smeared in blood in the lift; Malone’s fistfight with crooked boss Dorsett (Richard Bradford); Malone’s murder by hitman Frank Nitti (Billy Drago); the second, and greater, bravura sequence – the shootout on the steps of the railway station; Ness pushing Nitti off the rooftop; the disbelieving Capone sentenced.

And those are just the broad strokes. Peppered throughout is the issue of Capone’s tax evasion, the crime that brings him down, with virtually all Wallace’s contribution being reading from documents relating to this. Nitti appears in the second scene, leaving the bomb that will blow the little girl to kingdom come, and again at Ness’s house.

And this is so old-fashioned that not only are we rooting for the good guys but none of those involved has marital or alcohol problems. Cops like Malone may be disillusioned but they don’t take their disenchantment out on the bottle. Anyone who talks about marriage agrees it is a good thing.

Character introduction doesn’t go down the iconic route of The Magnificent Seven (1960) or The Dirty Dozen (1967). Chicago’s Finest sneer at Ness behind his back. Another director would have been tempted into a bolder entrance for Malone. But he’s a loser, still a beat cop in middle age, and on the late shift at that. He doesn’t just know his job, detects Ness is packing a gun, but he’s capable of a sardonic quip or two. Who’d claim to be working for the humiliated Treasure Dept is they weren’t? And he’s not so stand-up as he appears, playing with a key chain like worry beads, keeps a sawn-off shotgun in his record player.

And that’s before we go into the dialog. Screenwriter David Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross, 1992), revered as America’s greatest living playwright, turns on the style. “You can get further with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word”; “They pull a knife, you pull a gun”; “do you know what a blood oath is?”; “team!”; “brings a knife to a gun fight”; “all right, enough of this running shit;” “can’t you talk with a gun in your mouth?” “his name wasn’t in the ledger,” “did he sound anything like that?”

And that’s before we get to the score by Ennio Morricone, his best in terms of the consistency of theme (rather than just one standout tune) since Once Upon a Time in the West (1969). Or the rocking title sequence.

Turned Kevin Costner (Horizon, An American Saga – Chapter 1, 2024) into a star, a position, with dips here and there, he’s maintained for half a century. Andy Garcia (Black Rain, 1989), too, though for a shorter duration. Not everyone was impressed by Robert DeNiro’s (The Alto Knights, 2025) florid interpretation, but I wasn’t one of them. Brought Sean Connery (The Russia House, 1990) long overdue recognition for his acting, though it’s worth remembering that the Oscar voters who gave him a standing ovation could have handed him the gong a good time before for any number of excellent portrayals.

Director Brian DePalam (Carrie, 1977) was an Oscar shut-out. And when I look at the films that took precedence in the Best Film nominations, there’s only one, Moonstruck, that I’d seek out.

This is a thunderous achievement, and I can’t wait for 2027 when Paramount surely will bring it back to the big screen for a 40^th anniversary celebration.

Unmissable.

Satan Never Sleeps (1962) **

Of all the misguided sentimental anti-Communist drivel, this is a very poor swansong for triple Oscar-winning director Leo McCarey (Going My Way, 1944). A tone that’s awkward enough all the way through goes straight through the wringer when we are asked to accept without question the actions of a rapist. Such genocidal rape as the conqueror visits on the conquered would sit less comfortably with a contemporary audience.

Most of the problem is the set-up. Apart from those pesky Communists invading a Christian Mission, in other circumstances this would have settled into a verbal sparring match between about-to-retire old priest Fr Bovard (Clifton Webb minus trademark moustache), full of tetchy quips, and his younger replacement Fr O’Banion (William Holden) trying to shake off the unwelcome advances of even younger native Siu Lan (France Nuyen). There would be a servant or maybe a more high-flown doctor whom O’Banion could push Siu Lan onto.

There’s laffs aplenty if you’re easily satisfied with the likes of a servant (Burt Kwouk in an early role) who believes thieving is compatible with Christianity, O’Banion’s woeful attempts at cooking and his inability to shoo away the ardent Siu Lan, and the priests risking breaking a golden rule of their religion to enjoy a glass of wine before the clock strikes midnight.

The arrival of the Communists is not initially too tiresome, Bovard doing his best headmaster impression keeps them in line, Communist leader Chung Ren (Robert Lee), an ex-Christian, sweet on Siu Lan. Things get tricky when Chung Ren’s attempts to forcefully claim the woman are deterred by O’Banion who is tested several times on the old Christian principle of turning the other cheek before resorting to unchristian violence.

Chung Ren then rapes Siu Lan anyway. But when she stabs him in the back and the rapist is forced to ask O’Banion to go to another mission to fetch the necessary penicillin to prevent infection spreading, the older priest is inclined to ignore the request and let him die. O’Banion thinks he has struck a deal to free the old priest in exchange for fetching the medicine, but Chung Ren reneges on the agreement and the priests are tortured and stand trial.

Meanwhile, Chung Ren has a change of heart, or so it seems, after Siu Lan gives birth to his son. But, actually, this might be more to do with the fact that he has been demoted for not being a good Communist, inclined to enjoy the finer things in life rather than share them out with his comrades. And it’s only when he’s told he’s going to be sent away to some kind of Chinese Gulag that his principles make an appearance and he helps the two priests and Siu Lan and her baby to escape.

I could see maybe Siu Lan being forced into marriage by Chung Ren in the Communist state while he was in a position of importance; she would have no choice in the matter. But for her to show the same acceptance in a democracy outside China smacks of the worst kind of wishful thinking. Sure, the Christian God is all-forgiving and, technically, all Chung Ren would have to do was confess the sin of rape and equally technically he would receive absolution and therefore in the Church’s eyes be free to marry.

But O’Banion overheard the rape. He’s a witness. That’s no use in the Communist society, but in a democracy you would have thought he would have been seeking prosecution. As he was a witness and this was not something protected by the sanctuary of the confession, he would not just be perfectly within his rights but would have to seek out rule of law.

I have never heard of a rapist and the woman he raped living happily ever after and I doubt if it would ever have been considered conceivable even in the early 1960s.

That aside, William Holden (The Devil’s Brigade, 1968) and Clifford Webb, in his last picture, are good value as the squabbling priests, less so when they venture into dubious morality. France Nuyen (A Girl Named Tamiko, 1962) doesn’t get a fair shake, required to be the cliché happy grinning native and then provided with no opportunity to state her case against her rapist before she’s pushed, for the sake of a fairy tale ending, into marriage.

Written by the director and Claude Binyon (North to Alaska, 1960) from the bestseller by Pearl S. Buck.

A Dream of Kings (1969) *****

Sometimes great movies just disappear. Even if they pick up some critical traction on initial release, as here, they flop at the box office. And they are not revived because the production company goes bust or the rights are complicated. Or, more likely, they don’t fit into audience expectation. All three stars here completely play against type, outliers in career portfolios. We have become so accustomed to the attraction of stars according to their screen personas that unless they are known to completely change their screen characters with every outing anything that’s different to the norm becomes unacceptable.

Director Daniel Mann (Ada, 1961) was best known for producing Oscar-winning or Oscar-nominated performances from female stars. He was immensely skilled at making audiences sympathize with the most flawed women. Here, he does the same for Anthony Quinn, in a performance that should have had Oscar voters lining up but was dismissed for all the wrong reasons. Theoretically, one of the film’s problems is the dialog. We are so used to a script full of cut-and-thrust or witty putdowns that we fail to recognize a screenplay, that in much the same way as a stage play – but without that form’s inherent artificiality – lets characters live and breathe, explore depths that are just not possible except in fleeting moments in the normal construction of a movie.

Most scenes here begin one way and then move in all sorts of directions, sometimes ending up back where they started, but most often going somewhere unexpected, not in the sense of a sudden twist, but in digging deeper into relationships and understanding that marriages are built on shifting sands, and not all of them perilous. There’s a lot of dialog and when you get a lot of long speeches it can make the actors look as though they’re hamming it up when in fact what they’re doing is opening up the character.

We shouldn’t like Matsoukas (Anthony Quinn) at all. He’s a gambler, a womanizer, drinks, comes home at sunrise, has nothing you’d call a real job.

And yet.

In his company you enter a world of possibility. By sheer force of personality he lifts gloom, even when it’s his actions that have caused it. He can convince the most downtrodden weaklings that they have something of worth.

When nobody has anything good to say about old drunk Cicero (Sam Levene), Matsoukas tells him he has a poker dealer’s graceful hands and provides solace just by befriending him. He convinces a 72-year-old man that the loss of his libido is not down to the old guy’s age but because in four years of marriage he has lost interest in his 31-year-old wife because she’s the one who has aged, physically less appealing, and then he teaches the desperate soul the gentle art of seduction, how to win a woman’s heart by putting her on a pedestal, treating her like a goddess, kissing her softly on eyes and ears rather than pawing her in frantic passion.

Just what Matsoukas’s job is – on the door it says “counsellor” which would suggest something legal – but in fact he’s a male version of an old wife and provides solutions to odd problems, a mother worried that her teenage son masturbates, for example.

He is the sort of guy who can wring triumph from disaster. He has just lost a bundle of dough at poker but the way he tells it you’d think he’d won. Instead, he appreciates the drama of it all, the way it makes a great tale even if he’s the loser. Naturally, wife Caliope (Irene Papas) doesn’t see it his way. She’s on her knees with trying to feed her three children from the scraps that fall from his gambling. Though when he wins big, they live like kings.

Although he still has a lusty sex life with Calope, and can mostly coax her round, he has fallen for widowed baker Anna (Inger Stevens), attracted to her in part to alleviate her grief, pull her out of the darkness.

And he cannot face up to the potential loss of his young son who has three months to live and has it fixed in his own mind that the boy will be cured if Matsoukas can expose him to the sunshine and the ancient gods of his Greek homeland, though he lacks the $700 required for the air fare.

Each sequence is long, carefully calibrated, giving time for the exploration of a wealth of emotions. Outside of the three main narratives are two other stand-out scenes. In his sermon a priest rails against the evils of life insurance that makes people welcome death yet argues, ironically, that death is a great joy and should not be feared. And there’s a party where Matsoukas on the dance floor is a magnet for every woman in the room.

This is an Anthony Quinn (The Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968) devoid of all trademark abrasiveness, the loud voice gone, trying to gouge every ounce of joy from a forbidding world. He has a very tender relationship with his dying son, inventing a game with fake telephones to deal with the boy’s fears, and is very playful with his two daughters. He is constantly wooing his wife, in part to ease the pain he causes her, but mostly because he wants them to get the most out of life.

This is a different Irene Papas (The Brotherhood, 1968) too, not the fiery woman or dutiful wife of her screen persona. Whatever anger she feels is subsumed by sorrow and she is always willing to let her husband fire up her heart as in the old days. Actresses don’t get such complex roles these days.

And all the pent-up fragility of Inger Stevens (Five Card Stud, 1968) is suddenly let loose as she twists her entire screen persona of tough woman in a man’s world – usually a western – on its head. Her scenes with Quinn are breathtaking. Unfortunately, this was her final film – she committed suicide shortly after. But she could not have found a better swansong, one that extended her range.

As he always does, Daniel Mann doesn’t take his main character’s side, but while extracting sympathy for character predicament and perspective, still lets the audience make up his mind. This could easily have gone all maudlin, the child miraculously recovering, the flight to Greece to find a rare cure, all Matsoukas’s delusion revealed as nothing more than true faith, but it’s more hard-edged than that. At the end Matsoukas has his exterior carapace ripped apart, beaten up, ostracized for committing the worst crime of a gambler – cheating – in dire straits.

And yet.

Written by Ian McLellan Hunter (Roman Holiday, 1953) from the bestseller by Harry Mark Petrakis.

I just adored this.

The New Interns (1964) ***

Columbia had turned this series into a glorified New Talent Contest. It didn’t spend much cash buffing up the sequel in terms of narrative or characters, so it’s mostly enjoyable to see just how well the studio was at spotting talent. In that regard this outing was as profitable as the original. This marked the debut of George Segal (The Quiller Memorandum, 1966) who quickly became a major marquee name. Also brought into the mainstream was Inger Stevens (Five Card Stud, 1968). Receiving a welcome career boost was rising star Dean Jones, though Disney (The Love Bug, 1967) rather than Columbia took better advantage of his skills, and in the comedic rather than the dramatic vein.

Various stars reprised their roles including top-billed Michael Callan (You Must Be Joking, 1965), signed up to a long-term deal. But most of the others in this category made their names through television. Telly Savalas (The Assassination Bureau, 1969) was the cop Kojak (1973-1978); Stefanie Powers (Warning Shot, 1967) flourished as The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (1966-1967) and in Hart to Hart (1979-1984); and Barbara Eden went quickly into I Dream of Jeannie (1965-1970).

The upshot is that, depending on your taste, you might end up talent spotting yourself, shrieking with glee at spotting an old favorite, or perhaps so many of them, in what was, effectively, an all-star (of the minor kind) cast and paying less attention to the various storylines.

Most of the narrative energy revolves around various characters coming together in romantic entanglement – Dr Alec Considine (Michael Callan), while more inclined to play the field, ends up with Nurse Laura Rogers (Barbara Eden); despite initially being at odds Dr Tony Pirelli (George Segal) and social worker Nancy Terman (Inger Stevens) hook up; and various other romances are short-lived.

Outside of this, newlyweds Dr Lew Worship (Dean Jones) and wife Gloria (Stefanie Powers) discover he is sterile. The more powerful sequence relates to Nancy being sexually assaulted by juvenile delinquents who grew up in the same tough neighbourhood as Tony. As you might expect, the thugs end up in hospital and cause a fracas in which Alec is injured.

Tony has all the best lines. Invited to chance his arm with the nurses, he snaps that he didn’t come to the hospital to “learn to kiss.” Pushed out of the way by resident Dr Riccio (Telly Savalas) he retorts that he didn’t come to deliver messages. And so on, the most driven of the new intake, and the most surly, his initial encounter with Nancy has him upbraiding her for crying in front of a patient.

Decent soap opera as soap operas go, but without the more challenging aspects of the original. In an era when the series movie was beginning to take shape – primarily in the espionage arena – you can see why Columbia thought this might run and run and eventually the studio had another go at the concept, but this time as a television series.

Directed by John Rich (Boeing, Boeing, 1965) and written by big screen debutant Wilton Schiller from the bestseller by Richard Frede.

George Segal and Inger Stevens are the standouts.

The Canadians (1961) ***

You ever wondered what happened to the Native Americans after they wiped out Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Well, they scarpered north to Canada, which flew the British flag, being part of the very powerful British Commonwealth, and where they were, effectively, out of reach of any pursuing forces. Any legitimate forces, that is. Nothing to stop an irate Yank rancher crossing the border to claim back a herd of horses he reckons the Sioux stole during their escape.

Otherwise, the Sioux would be relatively safe. But that safety was conditional. The might of Canada would not bear down on them as long as they didn’t resort to violence against that country’s citizens, as long as a rifle wasn’t shot in anger or a cartridge found beside the body of a white man.

*Sure is a misleading poster, suggesting some kind of full-scale cavalry attack, when the grand total of Canadians involved is three.*

So that was quandary number one. Quandary number two was that the unit set on enforcing this rule was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. And though part of the uniform was a splendid leather holster, it was empty. They didn’t carry guns. They didn’t need to, as is sanctimoniously explained, because using weapons in law enforcement only caused more killing and, in fact, it was reckoned, there would be a lot less American outlaws if they had not been brought up in a society that worshipped guns.

And that lack of weaponry creates another predicament for the RCMP because rancher Boone (John Dehner) is going on the principle that killing a Native American is not a crime in his homeland and raids the Sioux camp, shooting people, including a two-year-old child, and kidnapping the child’s mother, an unnamed white squaw (Teresa Stratas). The kidnapping will justify any action he takes. Because if she’s been stolen from America, then it’s not a kidnap but a rescue, and that justifies any violence.

But RCMP leader Gannon (Robert Ryan), inevitably, in the only cliché in the picture, about to retire, reckons that’s up to a judge to decide. So with his two colleagues, the experienced McGregor (Torin Thatcher) and a rookie Springer (Burt Metcalfe) he’s intent on bringing them in. He’s helped in this enterprise by the Sioux acting as distant bodyguard.

Though naturally it’s only a matter of time before the Americans try to escape, especially as it soon transpires that Boone is lying when he says he knows the woman and has come north expressly to bring her back.

And this would be quite a curiosity, given the only real tension is how the RCMP can hold onto their captives for the week it takes to reach a town, and whether the Native Americans might reckon justice won’t be served and hand it out their own way.

You might remember the audience shock when Henry Fonda gunned down a young boy in Once Upon a Time in the West (1969), those baby blues turned steely. Well, that brutality has its unexpected precedent here, although, except for the mourning mother, not so much is made of it.

With the Canadians outnumbered – there’s three other Americans, all of the outlaw persuasion, Greer (Jack Creley), Ben (Scott Peters) and Billy (Richard Alden) – and unable to use weapons, you’re thinking how in heck is this going to last the pace. But, in fact, though presented as some kind of western, it’s a character-driven piece.

Gannon is an unlikely singleton, but he’s got too high hopes for a lawman and never found a woman he wanted to settle down with, and he’s got that principled look about him so he’s probably not one for one-night stands or creeping around brothels. The squaw’s child wasn’t the result of rape. Although initially trying to escape captivity, she fell in love with a Native American because he looked at her in a way no white man had, since she was so physically unprepossessing, and a bit like Lin in The Green Berets (1968) knows that she is likely to be ostracized by her own people if she returns to her home town.

You have to feel sorry for Boone, too. He’s not some kind of entitled whelp who inherited land and wealth. He saved up his hard-earned cash working as a ranch hand and bought one horse, then its mate, then started breeding, building up his herd the slow way, and he can’t afford to lose upwards of forty horses.

But the one you would extend most sympathy for is Greer. Being a legal outlaw – employed for gunslinging skills on a legitimate enterprise – is not his long-term goal. He repeatedly asks Boone for a job back at the ranch when this task is complete, only to be turned down with utter contempt. And he has a code. He won’t kill an unarmed man. Boone will, and an unarmed female to boot. Ben has no such code and reckons any woman is ripe for the taking and attempts to rape the squaw.

So the tension is mostly wondering how this is going to end, with the Canadians outnumbered and only able to call on their fists as weapons, and you soon work out there’s not enough time left in the picture to get to that destination and go through all the malarkey of a trial, or for the lonely Gannon to strike up a romance with the woman.

The Sioux come to the rescue once the Yanks have escaped and killed the woman. And it’s a peach of a solution. Remember, they can’t fire a shot. So they don’t. They get a herd of wild horses, for all we know the ones Boone is looking for, to do the dirty work. They stampede the horses and drive the bad guys over a cliff.

Very interesting debut for writer-director Burt Kennedy (The Rounders, 1965). Rare starring role for Robert Ryan (Ice Palace, 1960) who makes the most of it. Teresa Stratas was an opera singer so gets to sing. Otherwise, Jack Creley, who had a long-running role in the Marvel television series in the 1960s, is the pick.

Much better than I expected.

Unstoppable (2010) ****

Fitting swansong for director Tony Scott (The Hunger, 1983). Throwback to the disaster movie of the 1970s when something enormous is going to be decimated, and lives, in this case three-quarters of a million citizens, are put at deadly risk. Distant cousin to Speed (1994), which bears no comparison in the potential mayhem department, since an ordinary bus carries a fraction of the power of a train with 30-odd train cars (carriages to the English) filled with deadly toxic cargo barreling along at 60mph. Basically, “a missile.” And while other trains can be sidelined to get out of its way, it’s headed for an unavoidable obstacle, a piece of raised track in a major city which bends so sharply it can only be safely negotiated at 20mph or thereabouts.

And while said train is a wrecking ball when it comes to anything that happens to be on the track at the same time, the tail end of another train for example or a horse-box, it runs not so much on action as character. The various explosions are just there to remind us how dangerous the damn thing is and to raise tension by perilous degrees.

On board are two opposites, veteran driver Frank (Denzel Washington) and entitled surly know-it-all rookie Will (Chris Pine), who’s the train conductor and technically, I guess, in charge. Not quite open hostility but not far off it.

Frank’s a widower with two daughters who work, as he shamefacedly admits, in Hooters (look it up) while Will has been slapped with a restraining order from his wife and lucky not to be facing a jail sentence for pulling a gun on a cop. On top of that, in a money-saving ploy, Will’s the kind of employee recruited by the company to replace Frank, who, it turns out, is only three weeks away from enforced retirement. So that’s a twist on the gangster trope of the character planning one last big job.

I should point out that thanks to a lazy employee, this is a runaway train, no driver on board, air brakes unconnected, other safety elements unharnessed, nothing to stop it picking up speed and heading straight to hell. Luckily, it’s not full of passengers. I’m being a bit cynical here because a trainload of shrieking passengers and back stories to take account of would have dissipated, rather than increased, the tension.

But there’s also in the back office boss Connie (Rosario Dawson) trying to do her job in the face of the corporate greed, money-grabbing chief executive Galvin (Kevin Dunn) more concerned about the $100 million the company will lose if this goes belly-up, not to mention the catastrophic effect on the share price, so he’s full-on in on barmy schemes to stop the train, including parachuting someone onto the train and trying to bring it to a halt in a much smaller town which can be more easily evacuated than one with a 750,000 population.

Needless to say, none of these dumb ideas work, but it’s fun to watch the high-ups get egg on their faces and watch the cost of the collateral damage escalate. All the while, this being Tony Scott, we’ve got helicopters whizzing around, a huge flotilla of cop cars on blue light duty, uniforms everywhere, and that amazing technical trick that Scott has mastered of having the camera racing past characters who are stock still.

Frank and Will operate like a tag team when it comes to saving the day, Frank hopping from car roof to car roof having come up with the great wheeze of applying the brakes on each individual train car (carriage to you English) and Will at a lower level engaged on similar hazardous enterprise and then not just leaping from a train doing 60mph to a vehicle racing alongside doing 60mph but leaping back onto the train from said car going at an even higher speed.

Denzel Washington (Gladiator II, 2024) – who had been train bound the year before in Scott’s remake of The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009) – and Chris Pine (Don’t Worry, Darling, 2022) are on top form. As too is Rosario Dawson (Trance, 2013), for once given a decent role rather than just as a sidekick/love interest/femme fatale.

Written by Mark Bomback (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, 2014). It’s worth noting that actors looking for career longevity could do worse than follow the example of Denzel Washington who, since he became a top-billed star, has worked consistently with three directors, Tony Scott, Ridley Scott and Antoine Fuqua.

A cracker.

Theatre of Death (1967) ***

Takes considerable brass neck to treat master of the macabre Christopher Lee as nothing more than a red herring. A very slow slow-burn with a pinch of the vampiric, quartet of characters with a mysterious past, Grand Guignol Parisian setting, some decided sleight of hand and a series of murders staged to huge audience delight (in the titular theater, you understand) turns this into a more interesting venture than you might expect. In more literary hands, the incident on which this pivots could well have turned into tragedy.

Impresario Darvas (Christopher Lee) has launched The Theatre of Death, a show comprising a series of highly realistic sketches in which characters appear to be brutally killed. At a first night party he hypnotizes neophyte actress Nicole (Jenny Till) into nearly burning star Dani (Lelia Goldoni) in the face with a branding iron during a sketch about witches, disaster prevented by the intervention of Dani’s boyfriend Charles (Julian Glover). He’s a police surgeon called in to help investigate a series of murders with vampire overtones. Just as sinister is hypnotism which apparently can be self-imposed.

Charles begins to suspect Darvas. And small wonder the audience does too. Darvas has a lair, trap doors, secret passageways, concealed voyeuristic viewpoints and the kind of cat that only a villain strokes. Darvas clearly believes Nicole is more than just a protégée but a tool in his hands who can be called upon to act “when your conscience is asleep,” and given his predilection for brutality, even if apparently only staged, you have to think she will be called upon to do more than act. There’s even a suggestion that he might be able to inhabit her body.

Everyone has secrets. Darvas’s father disappeared in mysterious circumstances, Charles can’t operate following an unspecified accident, Dani spent two years in a mental asylum and Nicole barely survived being trapped in an avalanche in the Alps. Darvas humiliates Dani and promotes Nicole.

The murders switch from a trio of young women to men. Inspector Micheaud (Ivor Dean) is baffled. Naturally, he doesn’t want to risk the public ridicule of announcing there is a vampire on the loose in Paris (though some decades later, as you will be aware, a werewolf, of American origin, was roaming free), setting aside the fact that the French capital had been the scene for various nefarious acts in locales as varied as the Rue Morgue, Notre Dame and the Opera.

Darvas remains the obvious suspect until director Samuel Gallu (The Limbo Line, 1968) pulls a Hitchcock – or should that be, after A Poppy Is Also A Flower/Danger Grows Wild (1966), a Terence Young – and kills off his star halfway through. Initially, Darvas is reported as missing, but his cloak is found covered in blood. Naturally, we are led to believe he is going to turn up, and be identified as the killer.

But nope, in a considerable coup de theater (or coup de cinema), he’s been done away with by the real killer who is cleverly covering their tracks by getting Dani to write a suicide note before killing herself.

It’s certainly a shock to discover that the killer is Nicole, who is very partial to blood after being fed the blood of her brother while trapped in the avalanche. Quite why she has managed to conceal her thirst for so long is never revealed. However, there’s an unforeseen ironic twist which prevents her terrorizing the Parisian citizens any further.

Christopher Lee (Dracula, Prince of Darkness, 1966) is in Hamlet mode, hair combed forward, eyes bristling with intensity. Julian Glover (Alfred the Great, 1969) doesn’t really have enough dramatically to do. Neither Lelia Goldoni (Hysteria, 1965) nor Janet Till (A Challenge for Robin Hood, 1967) does much to burnish their reputation. Written by Ellis Kadison (The Gnome-Mobile, 1967) and Roger Marshall (Invasion, 1966).

Works very well by playing with audience expectation

I Thank a Fool (1962) ***

One of those bonkers pictures whose nuttiness is initially irritating but ends up being thoroughly enjoyable once you give in to the barmy plot and overheated melodrama. Murder, suicide, madness, illicit sex, blackmail – and that’s just the start of this farrago of nonsense. And set in Liverpool before The Beatles made it famous.

Christine (Susan Hayward), a doctor, is jailed when she kills her married seriously ill lover in a mercy killing. She’s not convicted of the murder but of the lesser crime of medical malpractice, but after serving an 18-month sentence finds she is unemployable, even in more lowly professions where her prison stretch counts against her.

When she is hired by the attorney Stephen (Peter Finch) who prosecuted her to look after his mentally ill wife Liane (Diane Cilento), the audience will already smell a rat given that Christine has changed her name and therefore the lawyer must have made considerable effort to track her down. His argument is that since she is no longer a qualified practitioner, she cannot advocate to have his wife committed to a mental institute, as a proper doctor would be required to, since Liane is clearly a danger to herself and other people. Your immediate suspicion is that Christine has been hired to take the rap once Liane is bumped off.

And it doesn’t take long for Christine to work out that not everything adds up. Liane is given enough rope to hang herself, access to a car to cause an accident, access to a horse which could easily bolt or fall.

Liane has been told her Irish father died in an accident where she was driving, the incident that triggered her madness. But when we discover the father, Captain Ferris (Cyril Cusack), is very much alive that’s the cue for a slew of unlikely events. When Liane finds her father, he’s not in the least a candidate for canonization, but an alcoholic. That triggers further mental trauma. And another accident, self-inflicted. After Christine administers pills, the young woman is found dead.

*Bit of a stretch to compare it to the movies*
*mentioned in this poster.*

Naturally, an inquest brings up Christine’s past and suspicion falls on her. And that would be par for the course, and it would be up to the condemned woman to find a way to prove her innocence. But that takes us into even murkier depths.

There’s bad blood between Capt Ferris and Stephen and the inference that this was only resolved by the father offering his underage daughter to the lawyer to be followed by the unscrupulous father blackmailing Stephen. Then it turns out there’s no case to answer and that Christine is innocent because, blow me down, Liane committed suicide.

But what should have been a straightforward, if unlikely, murder plot comes unstuck because it can’t make up its mind what it wants to be. Too many ingredients are thrown into the pot and the result is a mess.

Even the queen of melodrama Susan Hayward (Stolen Hours, 1963) can’t rescue this. And the pairing with Peter Finch (Accident, 1966) doesn’t produce the necessary sparks. Despite a variable Irish accent, Diane Cilento (Hombre, 1967) comes off best as the wayward deluded young woman.

Robert Stevens (In the Cool of the Day, 1963) directs from a screenplay by Oscar-nominated Karl Tunberg (The 7^th Dawn, 1964) adapting the bestseller by Audrey Erskine-Lindop.

Had every opportunity to be a star attraction in the So Bad It’s Good sub-genre but fails miserably. Still, if you enter into the swing of things, remarkably tolerable.

The Gauntlet (1977) ****

Clint Eastwood the dumb schmuck. Never thought I’d be writing that. But our hero has parked his Dirty Harry persona and channelled much of his inner James Stewart or Tom Hanks, the upright fella who may be a bit of a jerk but is a decent guy underneath.

Our patsy, Phoenix, Arizona, detective Ben Shockley (Clint Eastwood), unshaven drunken bum, is dumb enough to imagine he’s been selected for a special mission because he’s the kind of cop who gets the job done, rather than because he’s the one most likely to fail. He’s sent off to Las Vegas to collect a witness for a trial. No big deal. Two-bit witness, two-bit trial. As soon becomes par for the course, people are apt to make fun of him, in this case a Las Vegas cop turning him away for asking for a guy by the name of Gus Mally. Guffaws all round till the cop takes pity on Shockley and informs him the witness is a woman (Sondra Locke), a feisty sex worker, who spends pretty much the whole of the movie making fun of him and every other sonova.

Shockley’s kinda disturbed to see that someone has made a book on Mally reaching Phoenix, the opening odds of 50-1 soon lengthening to 100-1. But he’s a trusting sort of fella (translated as dumb schmuck) so he thinks it’s a joke but everywhere he goes he gets ambushed and it takes a helluva long time – and only with Gus’s constant nudging – to realize that every time he phones back his position to his boss Commissioner Blakelock (William Prince) there’s awful consequence.

The firepower at everyone’s disposal – both Mob hoods and the cops – is so fearful that cars and houses are destroyed in a ferocious hail of bullets. The only time Shockley comes into his own, cop-style, is when he hustles some Hell’s Angels down and steals a motorbike. But guess what, the bad guys are still not just one step ahead, but in a different class altogether when it comes to pursuit, calling upon a helicopter armed with a sharpshooter.

Shockley even quails when another cop, co-opted into giving them a ride, starts making creepy sexual remarks to Gus, not realizing she can more than take care of herself as if she’s been dealing with hecklers all her life. Gus is quite a character. When she’s not screaming her head off to gain sympathy from Shockley, she’s trying to seduce him, or taking the piss out of him or just plain mocking his ineptitude and trusting personality.

She’s got better weapons at her disposal than he’ll ever have, a tongue that could strip paint, and a body she’s not frightened to use to get herself out of a sticky situation. Or in one particular instance, to save Shockley’s hide. It’s only after this that Shockley gives her any respect. And they come to more than a mutual understanding, as she begins to show genuine feelings for her escort, and we end up with the kind of relationship that’s always going to be raggedy around the edges because, as you’ve guessed, he’s one for keeping his emotions in check and makes do with a catchphrase, “Nag, nag, nag.”

Just what her purpose is in said trial you couldn’t care less about, she’s just a Maguffin to bring opposites together, soften her hard edges and toughen up his unsuspicious nature. There’s a heck of climax as they ride into town in an armor-plated bus and straight into the same kind of fusillade as they previously endured until between them they manage to nail the corrupt bad guys.

This is a hell of a ride, great concept, terrific believable characters, she’s sharp and sassy, and he’s toned down the arrogance. There’s genuine charisma between Clint Eastwood (Coogan’s Bluff, 1968) and Sondra Locke (The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, 1968), helped by the fact they were already in an adulterous relationship, and in between falling into difficult situations it’s a blast watching them getting out of them.

Despite the virtual non-stop action, it’s a change of pace for Eastwood, a shift away from the screen persona on which his commercial attraction was built, and in some senses, even counting in the violence, it owes more to the dynamics of the screwball comedy than anything else, especially when the more practical woman is called upon to save the out-of-his-depth man. Written by Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack (they teamed up again for Pale Rider, 1985).

Ably directed by Eastwood, a belter.

Of Love and Desire (1963) ***

As contemporary as you could get with the core theme of a sexually independent woman picking and choosing her men. Otherwise, a smorgasbord of talent. Star Merle Oberon (Hotel, 1966) hadn’t appeared in a movie in seven years, for co-star Steve Cochran (Tell Me in the Sunlight, 1967) the screen absence was two years, Curd Jurgens (Psyche 59, 1964) was still very much a jobbing actor restricted to playing good and bad Germans, and director Richard Rush (Psych-Out, 1968), in his sophomore effort, was as erratic in the early part of his career as he would be in his later (six years between Freebie and the Bean, 1974, and The Stunt Man).

Of course, this being a somewhat mealy-mouthed decade, psychological mumbo-jumbo was required to explain the woman’s actions rather than the notion that a woman could enjoy being sexually unrepressed and free of desire for marital security. So if you manage to separate the actual movie from the required fitting-in to moral standards, it’s a darned interesting examination of the kind of free spirit later exemplified by Darling (1965) or Modesty Blaise (1966).

Mining engineer Steve (Steve Cochran) on a job in Mexico begins an affair with wealthy Katherine (Merle Oberon), half-sister of his employer Paul (Curt Jurgens). There’s nothing of the usual will-she-won’t-she in this romance, she virtually flings herself at him. Not only that, the morning after, she arranges for all his belongings to be shipped to her splendid mansion, proof of who is usually in control. Just as, more traditionally, males are instantly aroused by beautiful women, she is excited in the presence of an attractive man and makes no bones about it, not too bothered about consequent scandal even though she does her best to keep her activities discreet.

Paul isn’t so happy with the affair. He clearly prefers her unhappy and dependent on him for emotional support. And a bit like Julie in Steve Cochran’s later picture Tell Me in the Sunlight, there’s certainly an assumption that she jumps from man to man, though out of boredom rather than financial security.

So Paul sets out to sabotage the affair by putting in Katharine’s way previous boyfriend Gus (John Agar) who feels he is owed some sex and is determined she repay the debt. Although she almost succumbs and is subsequently ashamed of how easily her desire is inflamed, she resists and after he has had his way with her attempts to commit suicide.

But the question of rape is never raised and to Steve it appears she has merely resorted to type, falling into bed with the closest man. And in the time it takes to resolve the situation, we are treated to the psychological mumbo-jumbo which falls into two parts. In the first place, there has clearly been a strong sexual attraction between Paul and Katharine, and the strength of their emotional bond is in some ways a substitute for not indulging in incest. Secondly, her fiancé, a fighter pilot, was killed in the Second World War. Based on no evidence whatsoever, she has convinced herself that he committed suicide because she refused to have sex with him before marriage. To make up for that, she gives herself to any man who comes along. Yep, claptrap with a capital C. Which somewhat torpedoes the picture, which had been heading comfortably towards a feminist highpoint.

Merle Oberon almost turns the clock back a couple of decades to Wuthering Heights (1939) and her role there in physically expressing forbidden desire. You can almost feel her quivering with pent-up sexuality and she is unexpectedly superb, in what is essentially a B-picture, especially as the opportunity to tumble into melodrama – which she can’t escape in the final act – so obviously beckons. That the first two acts work so well is primarily down to her believable characterization. And Steve Cochran is no slouch either, shaking off the coil of his pervious incarnation as a tough guy. Curt Jurgens is creepy and sinister.

Director Richard Rush manages to hold his nerve until the end and then it all runs away from him into turgid melodrama. Screenplay contributions from the director, producer Victor Stoloff, Jacquine Delessert in his debut and Laszlo Gorog (Too Soon to Love, 1960, Richard Rush’s debut)

Nearly but not quite a feminist breakout.