movie review – Page 45 – The Magnificent 60s

Twisted Nerve (1968) ***

Another rich kid with mental health issues though without Orson Welles to offer expiation. The cause of this character’s illness is undetermined but it’s easy enough to spot the trigger to violence. The lad’s father is dead and his mother’s new husband, a wealthy banker, wants him out of the way, or at least out of the house, or at least, given he’s twenty-one, out working rather than mooning about the house all day.

And this was certainly the year for the movies exploring split personality – if such shallow treatment could be deemed investigation – what with Tony Curtis and Rod Steiger in serial murderous form in, respectively, The Boston Strangler (1968) and No Way to Treat a Lady (1968). And for movie fans it was an unexpecteldy speedy reteaming for Hayley Mills and Hywel Bennett after the humungous success of The Family Way (1967) in which the actress shed her child-star persona in no uncertain manner and the British film industry was, apparently, suddenly blessed with a duo with marquee appeal.

*A poster that gives the game away.* *And an apostrophe issue.*

This takes the Rod Steiger route of charming killer rather than a Tony Curtis puzzled and horrified by the demands of his ulterior personality. Given the emphasis on mental illness these days, Twisted Nerve is the hardest of the trio to take, since it’s effectively a play on an old gimmmick, deviousness concealed inside appeal.

Martin (Hywel Bennett) faced with expulsion from his house by overbearing substitute father Henry (Frank Finlay) pretends to scoot off to France but instead inveigles himself into the boarding house run by Joan (Billie Whitelaw) after tricking her librarian daughter Susan (Hayley Mills) into extending a sympathetic hand to his alter ego, the childish Georgie, whose behavior falls only a little way short of sucking his thumb and clutching a teddy bear.

Joan’s initial cynicism gives way to maternal feelings when he clambers into her bed in the middle of the night after a supposed nightmare. (And not with sexual intent.)

Occasionally, Martin cannot control his true feelings, despite Susan rebuffing his romantic overtures. Father is the first victim, substitute mother Joan the second and it’s only a matter of time before Susan becomes a target either for his stifled sexuality or his inner venom.

This would probably work just as well minus the schizophrenic element. In fact, there’s too much of tipping the nod to the audience. Eventually, Susan’s suspicions are aroused but director Roy Boulting (The Family Way) is no Alfred Hitchcock able to manipulate an audience. So, mainly, what we are left with is Hywel Bennett’s ability to pull off a double role rather than his victims’ susceptibility to his charms.

Hayley Mills’ character could do with fattening up, otherwise she’s just the dupe, bright, bubbly, self-confident and attractive though she is, although her mother, in passing, is given more depth, a lonely attractive widow prone to sleeping with her attractive guest Gerry (Barry Foster) and, unnerved to some extent by her daughter’s growing independence, wanting a son to mother.

It’s only un-formulaic in the sense that the director is playing with an audience who were not expecting anything like this as a story fit for their two newest adult stars so hats off especially to Bennett for considering a role that could as easily have typecast him for the rest of his career. As I said, setting aside the mental illness elements, Bennett is good fun, as he toys with both aspects of his character, adeptly dealing with those who would patronise him, and like Leopold and Lowe convinced he can get away with the perfect crime, whose planning and attention to detail is noteworthy.

As with the Chicago killers it’s only accident that gives him away, although the policeman here (Timothy West) is less dominant than his American counterpart.

Clearly filmmakers of the 1960s were beginning to grapple with mental illness but either lurching too far towards romance as a way of instigating tragedy as with Lilith (1964) or to the most violent aspects of the condition as with virtually anything else beginning with Psycho (1960).

Worth a look for Hywel Bennett’s chilling performance – template for Edward Norton’s turn in Primal Fear (1996) – and Hayley Mills fans won’t want to miss it. Strong performances by Billie Whitelaw (The Comedy Man, 1964), Barry Foster (Robbery, 1967) and Frank Finlay (The Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968) help enormously. There was quite an input into the screenplay. Along with Boulting, Leo Marks (Sebastian, 1968) doing the heavy lifting adapting work by Roger Marshall (Theatre of Death, 1967) and, in his only movie credit, Jeremy Scott. Great score by Bernard Herrmann.

Well done with misgivings.

The Red Tent (1969) ***

If you’re unfamiliar with the abortive Italian airship expedition to the North Pole led by General Umberto Nobilo (Peter Finch) in 1928, you’ll find this an absorbing tale. If you are familiar then you will probably appreciate the film-makers’ attempts, via an unusual framing device, to carry out a post-mortem and to apportion blame for the disaster. If you know your history, you’ll also be aware both poles had been conquered, American Robert Peary first to the North Pole in 1909, Norwegian Roald Amundsen (Sean Connery) claiming South Pole bragging rights two years later.

So you’re also probably wondering what was the point nearly two decades later of the Nobilo operation? But the sled-led efforts of Peary and Amundsen were feats of endurance i.e. man vs. nature. This was science vs. nature. The dirigible was the apex of aviation advancement and nations still battled for exploration glory. So to travel in some comfort and fly over the North Pole in a few days would be a demonstration of scientific supremacy. Conquest of one of the most inhospitable places on earth was almost a PR exercise. With no intention of landing it was also a glorified tourist trip.

However, the science was flawed. Nobody had counted on the build-up of ice. The airship crashed and since this was a joyride nobody was equipped to walk their way out. Just surviving would be difficult enough. Loss of radio transmission (science) indicated a problem so rescue airplanes were deployed. But without a location to pinpoint the survivors, searchers had about two million sq km to cover. Luckily, a brilliant scientific deduction by expedition member Finn Malmgreen (Eduard Martsevich) saves the day and a ham radio user (amateur science) picks up the location. Game on!

Except airplanes are too easily thwarted by blizzards, fog and the inhospitable. Home base, set up simply to welcome home a successful jaunt, is not capable of organizing a proper rescue. A Russian ice-breaker joins the rescue attempt. Taking greater risks is aviator Einar Lundborg (Hardy Kruger), fired up by the promise of sex with desperate nurse Valeria (Claudia Cardinale), who happens to be Malmgreen’s girlfriend, and a bounty from Nobilo’s insurers. The redoubtable Valeria does not have to sell her body to persuade the more highly-principled Amundsen to join the rescue effort.

So it’s gripping clock-ticking-down stuff, action shown in considerable detail, almost over-populated in one sense as director Mikhail Kalatozov (The Cranes Are Flying, 1957) covers multiple storylines, the various disjointed rescue efforts, the survivors weakening by the day, imperiled by marauding polar bears and the ice cracking up beneath their feet.

In the main it’s a true story, Valeria the only fictional element, inserted for genuine cinematic purpose, to give the audience someone to emotionally root for back on land and for her character to guide us in an almost contemporary touch through the ghoulish carnival onshore as thousands gather to witness first-hand news of disaster.

What’s obviously patently untrue is the framing device, given that it shows the still-living Nobilo summoning up the ghosts of others involved in the event for a post-mortem, in which his guilt drives him into the position of sacrificial lamb. Although on first encounter it appears a bizarre idea, that, too, soon achieves dramatic purpose. Clearly there was intense discussion at the time and in the immediate aftermath by those who survived the disaster and there must have been high-level talks behind closed doors that usually excluded the main characters of the kind that was played out in a host of historic pictures made during the decade. Lawrence of Arabia (1963) and Khartoum (1965) had many such set-pieces where reputations were shredded.

This approach permits opportunity for all the principals to come together for confrontational purposes in the one room. Not all of that discussion follows the expected path and there is an interesting argument between Nobilo and Amundsen about leadership. From an audience perspective, it is, of course, quite satisfying to see Sean Connery (The Hill, 1965) facing off against Peter Finch (The Sins of Rachel Cade, 1961) with Hardy Kruger and Claudia Cardinale (The Professionals, 1966) embroiled in the debate.

There is the bonus of fabulous cinematography of the majestic Arctic, the icy waste, and breaking up of ice floes and collapsing icebergs has never been captured in such widescreen glory. Further pluses are in the performances, especially Connery as an aged Amundsen, Finch as the glorious pioneer bewildered the sudden turn of events and Cardinale as a woman willing to go to any lengths to save her lover. Ennio Morricone provided the score.

However, you are best going into this aware that while Finch has a goodly amount of time onscreen, Connery and Cardinale (the ostensible stars judging by the credits) are not seen so frequently. That said, the movie works well as an account of the disaster. The version I saw was just a shade over two hours – cut by about 30 minutes from original release.

Streaming channel Sweet TV has the longer version but I couldn’t find a workable link.

Kinds of Kindness (2024) *** – Seen at the Cinema

Wonder if director Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things, 2023) was tempted to go full tilt batshit arthouse boogie on this one and run it all as one big picture rather than setting it into neat episodes, the opposite of what Kevin Costner has done – and been lambasted for – in Horizon (2024). What a riot it would have been if critics had been set the jigaw of trying to work out what part the several main actors were playing at any given time. Am sure that would had had critics out of their seats at both ends of the appraisal syndrome.

As it is, the Dogma-esque notion of the the main actors each essaying three different roles doesn’t work. We all know they’re pretty good actors – Emma Stone (Poor Things) a two-time Oscar-winner. Willem Dafoe (Poor Things) a four-time nominee, Jesse Plemons (Civil War, 2024) nominated once – so they’re hardly needing to prove anything, least of all that they’re versatile. Would have been much better as an all-star (in arthouse terms) cast of nine actors and none of the episodic separation since the stories all take place in a similar disturbed Lantimos-esque world. In fact, you could have tucked the whole lot into Poor Things (2023) and not missed an artistic beat.

Sure, when you think of the episodes individually, it comes across as Twilight Zone-lite or Stephen King on an off day, with (except once) none of the satisfying resolution or alternately deliberating confusing endings. But when you run all the episodes together without any real differential it packs a lot more punch and the world is more fully delineated.

So you get a shipwreck survivor chopping a finger off to satisfy the mania of her husband and him preferring instead a whole leg though he’ll settle for a kidney. Same fella wants to check out old videos of his wife and they turn out to be wife-swapping ventures captured on film. A female jumps headlong into an empty swimming pool in order to facilitate some kind of superpower in her twin.

A cult revolves around determining contamination by licking skin. Their devotees derive mystical loyalty from drinking water into which their cult chief has dropped his tears. Sexuality is fluid, not just the wife-swapping, but bisexuality abounds, and within what might appear to be sexual freedom is a lot of coercive control. But if anybody’s going to get slapped around, it’s the men.

Did I mention the dogs controlling the planet? And a vet who’s too dumb to notice that the cut on a dog’s paw is far too clean to have come from an animal? And, in a riff from Sommersby (1993), the ill-fitting shoes that suggest an imposter. And that a husband is feeding his wife abortion pills?

This is all pretty much standard territory for Lanthimos. But where Poor Things took place is an all too unreal world, here everything would be legit – business, cops – except for the behavior of the characters.

So you wonder if, presented with the script, the main actors couldn’t decide which part they wanted and so Lanthimos just said, heck, play them all. And it’s true you’d have a hard time deciding which part each is best at although as a rule each actor is dominant in only two sections and less important in one. Personally, I’d go for Emma Stone as the shipwreck survivor going along with her husband’s madness in order to save their marriage. For Jesse Plemons I’d choose the businessman under complete control of his boss, down to the clothes he wears each, what he eats and at what time he makes love to his wife. For Willem Dafoe, I’d go for his creepy cult personality.

Just like Horizon, the length (164 minutes here) didn’t bother me. There was generally enough going on, what with all the twists, to keep interest high.

This kind of has the feeling of one for Lanthimos rather than a more accessible one for a wider audience as instanced by The Favourite (2018) and Poor Things. The Academy might well respond to actors taking on more than one role though not quite in Alec Guinness/Peter Sellers fashion and if so the biggest nod should be in the direction of the under-rated Plemons.

Written by the director and regular collaborator Efthimis Fillipou (The Lobster, 2105).

Didn’t have me on the edge of mys eat, but I didn’t fall asleep either, and I certainly wasn’t fretting like some critics at the supposed waste of their valuable self-entitled time.

The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin (1967) ***

All studios believed in their brand name. That the sight of the MGM lion or the Twentieth Century Fox searchlight or the Paramount mountain represented a quality mark that would buffer expectation and reassure an audience they were not going to be rooked. That might have been the case decades before when the Warner Brothers logo might mean gangster pictures or socially aware movies or MGM, with more stars than there are in heaven, pictures with top-notch talent, or Universal determined to scare the pants of you with its horror catalog.

But that was no longer the case, most studios so desperate for survival that they would fork out for whatever trend seemed most likely to make money and the industry lurched from western to musical to adventure and back again whenever a big hit appeared. The only studio which still retained genuine marquee appeal was Disney. As studios dipped into more unsavory fare, according to the older generation, and the prospects of sending your children to the movies without having to check out the picture in advance diminished, a Disney film was a guarantee of fret-free entertainment.

Throughout the decade adults as much as kids swarmed to the Disney repertoire. In 1961 the studio scored a box office triple whammy when The Absent-Minded Professor, The Parent Trap and Swiss Family Robinson took three of the top four slots in the annual box office race. In the following years Bon Voyage (1962), Moon Pilot (1962), Son of Flubber (1963), In Search of the Castaways (1963), The Sword in the Stone (1964), The Misadventures of Merlin Jones and especially Mary Poppins (1964) kept the studio buoyant, not to mention the string of pictures starring Hayley Mills and a stack of animated classics it could reissue at the drop of a hat.

Disney ruled the lightweight world, its films often driven by a simple plot device. And as the rest of the industry coveted sex and violence, exhibitors relied on Disney to bring in the kids (and adults) during holiday periods. It would end the decade on a whopping high with The Love Bug (1969).

Here, the ploy is as old as the hills, a fish out of water, in this case an English butler. Disney had rung the changes on that particular sub-genre through the governess in Mary Poppins, steadfastly ignoring a trend towards more sinister servants as demonstrated by The Servant (1963) and The Nanny (1965). But Disney did have the ability to hook name actors for its child-friendly movies, here Roddy McDowall (Lord Love a Duck, 1966), Oscar-winner Karl Malden (Nevada Smith, 1966) and Suzanne Pleshette (A Rage to Live, 1965).

If you are expecting whiplashing escapades of the Indiana Jones variety, you will be in for a disappointment. Eric Griffin (Roddy McDowall) is the aforementioned butler escorting a child Jack (Bryan Russell) on a treasure hunt through the gold fever American West. When his charge runs away, Griffin finds the boy stowing away on a ship. The ever-genteel Griffin has skills that see him through any situation, working as cook on the ship, setting up his stall as barber on the mainland, and occastionally employing a devastating right hook to knock seven bells out of giant bully Mountain Ox (Mike Mazurki).

The plot, such as it is, revolves around recovering a treasure map stolen by swindler Judge Higgins (Karl Malden) and eventually when the movie needs some zap the feisty Arabella Flagg (Suzanne Pleshette), Griffin’s bankrupt employer who as it happens fancies the bulter, turns up.

There’s enough action to keep the picture on a steady keel, a storm at sea, a stagecoach hold-up, prizefight and a climactic town-wrecking fire. There are, perhaps surprisingly, a few choice lines.

But there’s a misinterpretation at the center of the movie so it’s as well its made with kids in mind. The fish-out-of-water notion would play better if historically movies fielded idiot butlers rather than ones who tended to take command when things get tough, though it’s unliklely kids would be aware of previous entries in the sub-genre. So, theoretically, it’s a surprise when Griffin outfights the lummox and outwits the swindler.

If the kid isn’t cute enough there are compensations elsewhere, a decent support in Harry Guardino (The Pigeon That Took Rome, 1962) and Hermione Baddeley (Harlow, 1965). Roddy McDowall at least is in a movie that suits his screen persona and deceptively languid acting style while Suzanne Pleshette takes a feminist slant to the Wild West. Whether British comedian Tony Hancock – he was sacked during filming – would have added much to the proceedings is open to debate.

It’s worth remembering that, outside of Hayley Mills offerings, Disney comedies of this period revolved around adults coping with bizarre situation. This doesn’t quite have the gimmicks that drove Son of Flubber, The Ugly Dachshund (1966, also headlining Pleshette) and Lt Robin Crusoe U.S.N. (1966).

Adequately directed by James Neilson (Dr Syn Alias the Scarecrow, 1963) from a screenplay by Lowell S. Hawley (Swiss Family Robinson) drawn from the novel The Great Horn Spoon! by Sid Fleischmann.

I remember seeing this as a kid and feeling pretty content coming out of the cinema, so since it did what it says on the tin, I’m loathe from an adult perspective to take it to pieces.

A movie that says – lighten up!

Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1 (2024) **** – Seen at the Cinema

Unpacking Kevin Costner’s hefty portmanteau is a significant task since at times it veers into the unwieldy. But only once during the three-hour running time did I glance at my watch and that was over an hour in when I started to wonder when Costner in his capacity as star would appear. Anyone looking for anything heroic or iconic or in the vein of Dances with Wolves (1990) or even Wyatt Earp (1994) had better look elsewhere. This has more in common with the grimy westerns of the 1970s when heroes were hard to come by and the West was a cesspool of brutality.

There’s a heck of an arthouse sensibility to this ensemble piece, characters and situations appear with little preamble and often little consequential explanation, and we switch geographically and psychologically at the drop of a hat. Theoretically, I should be waiting until Chapter 2 pops into view in a few weeks’ time before attempting summation because it’s clear that some sections are unresolved here, assuming the ending is more of a trailer for part two than a speeded-up finale.

At $100 million – and same again for Chapter 2 – this would have all the makings of an over-the-top vanity project, especially after Yellowstone was thrown out with the bathwater. In some senses it’s closer to a series of vignettes puncturing the myth of the West. The wagon train section, for example, focuses on an over-entitled English woman who breaks several golden rules and encounters a couple of peeping toms while the wagon master (Luke Wilson) finds out just how powerless he is in trying to enforce discipline.

Virtually all the women are schemers. Ellen (Jena Malone) attempts to murder her husband and flee with their child, takes up with another fella who’s trying to run some kind of gold strike scam but unfortunately runs into the sons of the man she tried to kill. Her child, meanwhile, is being cared for by sex worker Marigold (Abbey Lee) who gets her hooks into prospector Hayes (Costner) but only as long as she can dump him for another man and dump the child on another family. By comparison Frances (Sienna Miller) is saintly, having survived an Indian massacre, but she makes no bones about making a play for married cavalry lieutenant Trent (Sam Worthington).

And the older ones are just as savage. Mama Sykes sets her sons out for revenge and an elderly lady in the fort batters two soldiers for trying to steal a child-sized bed. The latter is another vignette, the old woman, mourning the loss of one child, being maneuvered by a clever sergeant (Michael Rooker) into semi-adopting another, and that lass, in the most touching (or sentimental if you like) vignette, sending soldiers into battle wearing flowers she has cut from a quilt.

There’s not much point being a child here if you can’t fire a weapon. Native American kids are only too ready to aim arrows at white men and one young massacre survivor buys a pair of Colts to effect his revenge.

The main thrust of the tale is the land rush of the 1860s, when settlers dashed from east to west in the hope of a better life and in the expectation that the Army would take care of any Native Americans who got in the way. Lt Trent does his best to dissuade settlers from picking land that’s too far away from a fort to defend. The Apache chief tries his best to dissuade his son Pionsenay (Owen Crow Shoe) from attacking the settlers, pointing out (somewhat improbably) that his tribe can find enough sustenance in the mountains.

From my own reading on the subject, namely The Earth Is Weeping by Peter Cozzens, this was true to life, the younger braves more likely to wage war, the older chiefs prescribing restraint and fearing consequence, and the rivalry between different tribes is cleverly dealt with, even though it’s hard to understand at the time the point of a lone Native American being hunted down and killed by a band of other Native Americans.

The titular “Horizon” is the name of a large swathe of land being sold back east to settlers as presumably a land of milk and honey, said settlers harnessing similar entrepreneurial spirit as the Pilgrims who crossed the Atlantic in search of same. Every now and then a character pops up to provided a potted history, Col Houghton (Danny Huston) one such, predicting the bloody end to the encroachment of land.

The biggest set piece is the massacre that interrupts another set piece, the kind beloved of John Ford and Michael Cimino, the local dance, that itself punctuated by other vignettes, the teenager too old to dance with his mother, another teenager playing with a loaded gun, until both teenagers are taught savage reality and this section ends with Frances hammering a shotgun through the earth to provide a source of air for her and her daughter trapped underground.

There’s a quirkiness here that would sit well with Robert Altman or the Coen Brothers or Yorgos Lanthimos. And the scene between Hayes and the younger Sykes gunslinger is pure Tarantino.

But there’s way too much hair. Authentic though it may be, the thickness of the beards makes it virtually impossible at times to identify the actor underneath. But despite the running time it’s also been brutally edited, hard to work out how Hayes goes from being hunted by the Sykes Gang to working on the railroad.

So this is a warning as much as a straightforward review. Don’t go in expecting the usual. This isn’t an exploration of the West in the manner of How the West Was Won (1962) with big stars and a ton of set pieces and Cinerama to pump up the action and roadshow to make the whole enterprise seem somehow more worthy.

The women steal the acting honors, especially Sienna Miller (The Lost City of Z, 2016) and Jena Malone (The Neon Demon, 2016). Directed with some style by Costner from a screenplay by himself and Jon Baird in his debut.

Plenty to see here that’s worthy of praise if you set aside expectations.

The Secret Partner (1961) ****

Curious about what happened to Haya Harareet, Charlton Heston’s leading lady in Ben Hur (1959), filmed in 70mm glorious color, I happened across this neat twisty British thriller filmed in standard ratio and black-and-white. Turned out to be put together by the Basil Dearden/Michael Relph combo and starring Stewart Granger, one-time star of MGM extravaganzas like King Solomon’s Mines (1951) and clearly now atoning for failing to hit the box office mark often enough for Hollywood’s liking.

Driven by a brilliant plot, whose resolution I defy you to guess, and climaxing with three stunning twists, the first story-driven but the others landing a no less effective emotional and human punch. I should warn you right away that Harareet is not in the picture as much as you would expect given that she took second billing. That’s no surprise, really, since on her first entrance, as wife Nicole, she walks out on husband John Brent (Stewart Granger) citing his illicit romantic liaisons.

Though driving a swanky car and living in a big house, Brent, a top-level shipping executive, is one harassed individual. What’s more he is being blackmailed by alcoholic dentist Ralph Beldon (Norman Bird). When the shipping company’s safe is robbed of £130,000 (equivalent to £3 million today), suspicion falls on Brent, one of only two employees with both keys and the combination. Enter about-to-retire chain-smoking Detective Superintendent Hanbury (Bernard Lee, shortly to achieve global fame as “M” in the Bond series).

Constantly wreathed in a cloud of smoke, Hanbury’s investigation leads to various suspects – the other keyholder Charles Standish (Hugh Burden) whose job is at risk, interior designer Clive Lang (John Lee) who is over familiar with Nicole, and friend Alan Richford (Conrad Philips) who is secretly in love with Nicole. All have good reason to be responsible for the theft, not least Nicole because of Brent’s habit of talking in his sleep and in trying to memorize ever-changing safe combinations constantly running them through his head, conscious or unconscious.

To add to the complications, Brent has a mysterious past. In addition, a masked gunman pops up from time to time. So, although Brent remains the prime suspect, Hanbury, with an investigator’s vigilance and attention to detail that Hercule Poirot would be proud of, uncovers clues that point elsewhere. Pretty soon, Brent is on the run, first to France, where he is arrested, and then, after escaping custody, through the murky streets of Soho trying to locate a girl to whom he might have given the combination while asleep. He, too, discovers some unpleasant truths far closer to home.

Basil Dearden (Victim, 1961) does a brilliant job of setting up the mystery, a dab hand, too, at serving up multiple red herrings, as well as a spot of sleight of hand, not least when the music intrudes too loudly in old-fashioned manner as if to point the finger, and the audience’s attention, in a misleading direction. Sure, it’s a low-budget affair by Hollywood standards and indeed by Dearden/Relph standards (big-budget roadshow Khartoum, for example), and the black-and-white photography is for financial rather than artistic reasons, but it is superbly done and keeps you guessing to the end.

Stewart Granger (The Last Safari, 1967) is at his suave best. Harareet, all fur coat and steely resolve, gives a good performance. Bernard Lee is an excellent British copper, hoping to end his career on a high note, patiently probing suspects, and there is a good turn from Norman Bird as the dodgy dentist and a fleeting appearance by Willoughby Goddard as an equally dodgy hotel manager. Written by David Pursall and Jack Seddon who went on to churn out MGM’s Miss Marple thrillers.

Barbarella (1968) ****

While sci-fi was being viewed through a serious glass darkly what with Fantastic Voyage (1966), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Planet of the Apes (1968) along came Roger Vadim’s little number to set up an alternative universe of camp fun. Had this been a box office smash in the nature of The Odd Couple ($18.5 million in U.S. rentals) rather than under a third of that there might have been less of the po-faced doomladen sci fi in the following decade.

But if you wonder where Star Wars got its vibe, setting aside the overt sexiness portrayed here, this is as good a place to start. Naïve adventurers, check. Ice planet, check. All sorts of weird creatures in strange otherworldly locales, check. A doomsday weapon, check.

It’s kind of newsworthy to be rewatching this given that star du jour Sydney Sweeney (Anyone But You, 2023) is going to be donning the Barbarella costume for a remake next year. And who knows to what Oscar-winning fare that might lead, if she were to follow the Jane Fonda template, given it was La Fonda’s follow-up that brought her serious attention from the Academy.

But it would be remiss of me if I didn’t bring up the testy matter of director Roger Vadim’s uncanny obsession with getting his myriad girlfriends to shed their clothes for the movies, Fonda being the latest example, and in no uncertain terms, the striptease performed during the opening credits certainly rivaling Kubrick and Spielberg for the most jaw-dropping opening to a sci-fi movie.

Whether it was Fonda or someone else and whether it was Vadim or someone else you couldn’t get away from the fact that Barbarella as a sci-fi icon was most definitely on the sexy side as determined by her creator Jean-Claude Forest, sharing like British comic strip heroine Jane a predilection for losing her clothes.

Barbarella shares something of the same innocent abroad personality, the kind who gets into one unexpected scrape after another, after being despatched from peace-loving Earth to save the world by finding Durand Durand (the pop band making homage to the movie dropped the final letter of this character’s name) and his doomsday machine.

So mostly, it’s one imaginative character or scene after another, delivered in disconnected episodic manner, and it sometimes has the feel of a jukebox movie, of the greatest hits of the comic strip writer strung together, with an occasional comment on the problems created by sex and a climactic gender-spinning twist. You’d have to remember what Pop Art was to chuck it into that short-lived category but if you think it belongs on the same planet as the more earthbound Modesty Blaise (1966) and Danger: Diabolik (1968), think again.

The best sections are truly terrific. The sharp-teethed menacing robot dolls are exceptionally scary as they nip chunks out of our heroine’s flesh and leave her blood-soaked. There’s a homage to The Birds (1963) where our plucky heroine is trapped in a cage with a flock of sparrows. You’ve also got the The Catchman, performing the same function but considerably scarier than the same year’s Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. But no wonder the kids need caught because they are full of evil intent.

You’ve got a blind angel (John Phillip Law) who can’t fly, a problem mysteriously solved by sex with the ever-gracious Barbarella who, previously, has discovered, courtesy of The Catchman, the immense pleasure of the art of making love the old-fashioned way rather than just popping a pill. The angel also has no memory, permitting an ironic twist ending. You’ve got an incompetent rebel (David Hemmings). Sex is pretty much top of everyone’s agenda, even the villain (Milo O’Shea) who uses it to kill people via his own invention, which proves not much cop, since rather than murdering Barbarella with excessive pleasure, she makes it blow up.

Along the way there’s any number of interesting inventions: a manta-ray acts as the skis for a futuristic sailing ship, hollow robotic soldiers, a labyrinth.

Some of the special effects wouldn’t pass muster these days, but that’s a minor flaw compared to the rest of what’s on show. It’s not exhilarating in the real sense, but if you’re unfamiliar with the source material, it retains an endless fascination, more like a sexed-up version of the Ray Harryhausen world than anything that would have interested Kubrick. And, heck, just fun. What’s not to like.

Jane Fonda (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They, 1969) holds it all together, innocent rather than naïve, even her sexuality is innocent not exploitative, and possibly for a film deemed sexy makes greater comment on the dangers of lust than many a more self-important movie.

Great supporting cast with David Hemmings (Blow-Up, 1966), John Philip Law (Danger: Diabolik), Anita Pallenberg (Performance, 1970), Milo O’Shea (Ulysses, 1967) and Marcel Marceau.

Roger Vadim’s best film. Written by a huge squad of writers, nine in total, headed up by Vadim and Terry Southern (Candy, 1968).

Will probably be yanked out of circulation at the approach of the remake so now’s your chance to catch up on a fun sci fi.

Begin Again (2013) ***

Timely reminder that Hollywood could make decent coin from lightweight romantic froth. Imagine how many movies this year would be delighted to be walking away with $84.1 million (around $111 million in today’s money) from the worldwide ticket wickets, especially given the low budget. So you have to wonder: what was the magic formula that audiences responded to that they’re not responding to now. Because, to be honest, this is the most unlikely of unlikely concoctions.

After a previous fairy tale Once (2007) – whose real-life happy ending included being adapted for theater and turned into a Broadway hit – writer-director John Carney (following two low budget flops) tries again but drives a tank through credibility. At this point rumpled Mark Ruffalo, whose undeniable charm has saved many a picture, had apparently lost the last of his nine marquee lives so that he now fell into the category of American actor fawned over by British filmmakers because he deigns – even though relegated to second billing – to get involved. For the top-billed Keira Knightley (Atonement, 2007) it would prove to be her last hit.

Musician Adam (Dave Kohl), on the cusp of stardom, has been flown over to New York by his record company. His girlfriend Gretta (Keira Knightley), along for the ride, is an unsuccessful songwriter. After Adam has an affair, she dumps him, wandering the streets with a bag and a bike until, lo and behold, she bumps into (as one does in a city of 19 million people) old pal Steve (James Corden) busking on a street corner.

At an open mic gig, she is pestered to do a number. The minute she starts singing the entire audience starts chatting amongst themselves. But wait, just-fired depressed alcoholic record producer Dan (Mark Ruffalo) in the audience recognizes her “talent,” immediately envisaging the string and percussion arrangement that could magically transform the number. Except, she doesn’t want fame, she wants purity. Initially, rejecting his (artistic) overtures, she agrees to his world-beating notion of recording an album in the streets, Steve having miraculously accumulated sufficient recording equipment. Cue umpteen shots of cute New York (Brooklyn Bridge, Greenwich Village) and no hummable songs.

There’s kind of a will-she-won’t-she romantic subplot with Dan but he’s still smitten with estranged and acidic wife Miriam (Catherine Keener). Another subplot involves his daughter Violet (Hailee Steinfeld). Sparks never fly and you start wishing for the next best thing – a speedy resolution. No such luck. Dan makes said album, complete with (would you believe) 24-page glossy booklet. Gretta rejects a record deal out of supposed purity, but in fact greed, wanting more than a 10% cut of the pie.

The disc sells 10,000 copies in a day on the internet. Rewind. It sells that amount because (purity be damned) one of Dan’s buddies is Mos Def and he is a God of Twitter and enough of his millions of followers obey his every command. There is but one subtle scene, when Knightley intuits her boyfriend’s betrayal and without a word slaps him in the face.

A few more slaps would have done this film good. Knightley gushes like one of the Famous Five, the film itself like a 1940s movie where rejected theatrical nobodies put on a show in a barn. The central theme of artistic purity and refusing to give in to an over-commercialized business scarcely rings true, but somehow it provides the movie with the kind of innocence that the more romantically-inclined among the audience would vote for in a world of wishful thinking.

And, actually, precisely because it refuses to give the audience what in one way it’s demanding – a proper romantic movie – and goes down the other route of artist fighting for integrity, it comes off with something of the rare feel of a movie being true to itself.

Of course, since then, Ruffalo’s career has occasionally soared, both artistically (three more Oscar nominations, most recently for Poor Things) and commercially (long-running role as The Hulk). Conversely, Knightley’s career has plummeted. Outside of The Imitation Game (2014) in which she had a supporting role and a bit part in the final Pirates of the Caribbean adventure, each successive movie in which she has been top-billed has made less than the last. From a $14 million haul for Colette (2018) we’re now down to $1.9 million worldwide for Misbehaviour (2020) and $400,000 for Silent Night (2021). After her breakthrough in True Grit (2010), Hailee Steinfeld’s career had also been wayward, big budget flops including Bumblebee (2018) and The Marvels (2023).

If the movie’s box office sounds like a Hollywood fairy tale and you maybe recall it as not doing much business Stateside, that’s because, in one of those anomalies that occasionally shine on a movie, it proved an absolute sensation in South Korea. Just under half of its entire worldwide revenue came from South Korea. Go figure.

Even without that, a $43 million haul for an improbable lightweight semi-romance mainlining on artistic purity would have had the backers rubbing their hands with glee.

The Pigeon That Took Rome (1962) ***

Netflix would know how to sell this. Append the “based on a true story” credit and you’ll attract a global audience. I’ve no idea how true this tale is though I assume that at certain points in war using a pigeon may have been the most efficient method of communication. If this had been under the Netflix aegis there would surely have been a scene to explain that you can’t just point the bird in any old direction but that it automatically returns to its home, that aspect being pivotal to the movie, the reason it was made in the first place.

That is, if you believe in the rather fanciful notion, as shown in what appears to be an official newsreel, of said pigeon being presented with a medal for its part in the Allied invasion of Rome in World War Two. Luckily, there’s more to this picture than the intricacies of homing pigeons.

Not much more, I hasten to add, because the other significant plot point, which I suspect has a more substantial basis in truth, is that passing American soldiers had a tendency to impregnate (and abandon) Italian women. If you were to argue that Elsa Martinelli (who had just put John Wayne in his place in Hatari!, 1962) is what saves the picture you wouldn’t be far wrong. But you can’t complain about Hollywood churning out lightweight movies in the 1960s since a chunk of the current output falls into that category.

For no apparent reason, no espionage experience for example, Yank soldiers Capt MacDougall (Charlton Heston) and Sgt Angelico (Harry Guardino) are delegated to sneak into Rome, disguised as priests, and spy on the Germans. They are put up in the household of Massimo (Salvatore Baccaloni), an underground figure, but his daughter Antonella (Elsa Martinelli) takes against the pair since they are extra mouths to feed and if only the Americans would hurry up and enter the city the populace wouldn’t be starving. However, she makes nice when her sister Rosalba (Gabriella Pallotta) reveals she is pregnant by a previous Yank (whether he was the espionage business, too, is never revealed) and is desperate need of a husband.

The sergeant is quite happy to romance the girl since a couple smooching in the park makes good cover for him transmitting messages by radio. And when that form of transmission becomes too dangerous, the Americans rely on pigeons. Soon Angelico realises his feelings for Rosalba are real and proposes to her, even after she reveals her condition. But that means celebration to announce their forthcoming nuptials.

Short of any food, Antonella slaughters the pigeons, convincing MacDougall that the meal consists of squab. To cover up, the Italians steal a bunch of pigeons from the Germans. Of course, as you’ll have guessed, that means the pigeons will return to the enemy. But once MacDougall works this out, he starts sending the Germans false messages that prove (apparently) pivotal to the Germans hightailing it out of the city (hence the medal awarding).

Pretty daft and inconsequential sauce to be sure, but Antonella keeps matters lively, knocking back MacDougall at every turn, taking every opportunity to condemn men for starting wars, and presenting herself as something of a conniver, possibly willing to lead on the Germans in return for food (MacDougall when burglarizing a German villa comes across her naked in the shower). Her occasional swipes give the picture a harder edge than you’d expect, but, her fiance killed in the war, she leads MacDougall a merry dance in the manner of the romantic comedies of the day. Otherwise, the comedy is for the most part lame, the old hitting your thumb with a hammer one such moment.

Despite co-starring with Wayne and here Heston and later Robert Mitchum (Rampage, 1963), Martinelli didn’t fit into the Hollywood pattern of taking European stars and slotting them into the female lead opposite a succession of top male stars. Think Sophia Loren with Heston in El Cid (1961), with Gregory Peck in Arabesque (1966) and with Marlon Brando in The Countess from Hong Kong (1967) and headlining a few pictures on her own. Gina Lollobrigida led Rock Hudson by the nose in Come September (1961) and Strange Bedfellows (1965) and Sean Connery a merry dance in Woman of Straw (1964).

Martinelli seemed to fade too quickly from the Hollywood mainstream which was a pity because she’s the glue here. Charlton Heston (Number One, 1969) spends most of the time looking as if he wondered how he managed to allow himself to be talked into this. You want to point the finger, then Melville Shavelson’s (Cast a Giant Shadow, 1966) your man – he wrote, produced and directed it.

Worth it for Martinelli.

No Way to Treat a Lady (1968) ****

Sly, cunning highly original drama hugely enjoyable for a number of reasons, top among which would be Rod Steiger’s serial killer. As the wealthy and cultured Christopher Gill, the actor employs disguise to enter the homes of the unsuspecting. These range from Irish priest, German maintenance man, camp wig salesman, a woman and even a policeman knocking on doors to advise people not to admit strangers.

Clearly Steiger has a ball with these cameos, but, more importantly, his character pre-empts the celebrity status accorded the modern-day mass murderer. This is a killer who wants everyone to know just how good he is at his self-appointed task, who desperately wants to be on the front pages, who revels in a cat-and-mouse taunting of the police. To be sure, an element of this is played as comedy, but from our perspective, half a century on, it is a terrific characterization of the narcissistic personality, and far more interesting than the psychological impulse that causes him to kill in the first place.

The hapless detective (George Segal) on the receiving end of Gill’s brilliance is named Morris Brummel which means that he is met with laughter anytime he introduces himself since he that is invariably shortened to Mo Brummel, too close to Beau Brummel, the famous dandy, from whom the cop could not be further removed. And Brummel is not your standard cop, stewed in alcohol with marital problems, feuding with his bosses and close to burn-out. Brummel would love marital problems if only to get out from under his nagging mother (Eileen Eckhart) , with whom he lives.

He is dogged, but respects authority and takes his demotion like a man. Not coincidentally, killer and cop are linked by mother issues. Although Gill is angry when ignored he does not taunt Brummel the way his mother does. She is ashamed he is a cop and not wealthy like his brother.

Even less standard is the meet-cute. Kate Palmer (Lee Remick) is a useless witness. She can’t remember anything about the priest she passed on the stairs. When the cop arrives, she is hungover and just wants to get back to sleep, and without being aware that Brummel is in fact Jewish praises his nose. Gill is a bit ham-fisted in the seduction department and it is Palmer who makes the running. But although appearing glamorous when first we see her, in reality she is a mundane tour guide. Their romance is conducted on buses and a police river launch, hardly the classic love story.

Although the trio of principals boasted one Oscar and two nominations between them, their careers were at a tricky stage. Winning the Oscar for In the Heat of the Night (1967) did not trigger huge demand for Steiger’s services and he had to skip over to Italy for his next big role. Both Remick and Segal, in freefall after a series of flops, had been working in television. Whether this picture quite rejuvenated their careers is a moot point for the picture was reviled in certain quarters for bringing levity to a serious subject and it was certainly overshadowed in critical terms by The Boston Strangler (1968) a few months later. But all three give excellent performances, especially Steiger and Segal who subjugated screen mannerisms to create more human characters.

While Jack Smight had directed Paul Newman in private eye yarn Harper (1966) the bulk of his movies, regardless of genre, were tinged with comedy. While he allows Steiger full vent for his impersonations, he keeps the actor buttoned-down for most of the time, allowing a more nuanced performance. Violence, too, is almost non-existent, no threshing of limbs of terrified victims. John Gay wrote the screenplay from a novel by William Goldman (who had written the screenplay for Harper) so short it almost constituted a movie treatment.

In reality, the comedy is slight and if you overlook a sequence poking fun at the vertically-challenged, what remains is an examination of propulsion towards fulfilment through notoriety and the irony that the murders elevate the mundane life of the investigating officer.