movie review – Page 46 – The Magnificent 60s

Sweeney! (1977) ****

The two-fisted trigger-happy cops that had changed the Hollywood landscape since Clint Eastwood burst onto the scene hadn’t found much correlation in the small-screen. Television producers were particularly averse to violence and even a new generation of sleuths were only a tad above the cosy crime of previous decades. Since James Bond easily covered the random killing aspect in British movies, there seemed little room for anyone else.

Sweeney! (1977), a speedy spin-off from a successful British independent television series, proved them wrong, the movie censor permitting considerably more leeway on the violence front. These cops are just itching to lay a hand on gangsters and, as if transplanted from Chicago, bring baseball bats and pistols to a fight.

The action only slows down when the subplot gets mired in delivering a political message about big business and corruption or when one of the characters has to take time out to explain the meaning of the title. Turns out there’s a sneaky high-end operator Elliott McQueen (Barry Foster) who runs a string of high-class sex workers to hook politicians like Charles Baker (Ian Bannen). When Baker’s girlfriend Janice (Lynda Bellingham) ends up in the mortuary – suicide the official verdict – McQueen applies pressure to get an oil deal done.

Baker’s gals are expert in what these days would be known as providing the “Girlfriend Experience” though the blokes they service aren’t the ones paying. But a police informant, soft on Janice, believes she was murdered and calls in Detective Inspector Jack Regan (John Thaw) to informally investigate.

When Regan treads on McQueen’s toes it triggers a spate of violence. First the informant is blown away by a machine gun from thugs disguised as coppers. Then a nosy journalist (Colin Welland) is blown up. Then Regan is stitched up and suspended from duty. Naturally, Regan persists with a surreptitious investigation. But the thugs aren’t so covert and he interrupts a gangland hit on Bianca (Diane Keen), another of the “girlfriends” who knows too much.

Not much detection required, really, when the criminals are so open about their criminality and even the most high-ranking politician or sanctimonious cop is going to find it hard to let machine-gun-toting gangsters roam through London. So there’s plenty bloody action and quite a clever pay-off.

The rampant violence in British cinema earlier in the decade had been confined to the gangsters of Get Carter (1970) and Villain (1971) and to pictures wrapped in halos of critical protection such as A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Straw Dogs (1971). Sweeney! ushered in a new era, when cops could adopt the same methods as criminals.

Regan was the rumpled cop, his sidekick Det Sgt Carter (Dennis Waterman) theoretically the more handsome, except his boss had as much success with women. What both were best at was riling superiors and arguing with everyone. You’d need a good grasp of the various policing departments to keep up – here we have Special Branch and The Flying Squad (The Sweeney) and ordinary coppers.

The predilection for selective use of Cockney rhyming slang was a feature of the British crime picture. Flying Squad translated as Sweeney Todd and was then truncated to The Sweeney. Oddly enough there was no rhyme for Special Branch and Scotland Yard, despite the advent of The Shard, has not made its way onto the rhyming dictionary.

British studios had increasingly turned to television as production levels tumbled, but generally in the comedy genre, Up Pompeii (1971), On the Buses (1971) and Steptoe and Son (1972), plus vaious sequels, registering the biggest box office.

John Thaw and sidekick Dennis Waterman proved to be long-term stalwarts of British television, the former heading up Redcap (1964), The Sweeney (1975-1978), Inspector Morse (1987-2000) and Kavanagh QC (1995-2001), the latter following The Sweeney with Minder (1979-1989) and New Tricks (2003-2015). Diane Keen starred in The Feathered Serpent (1976-1978), The Cuckoo Waltz (1975-1980), Rings on their Fingers (1978-1980), Foxy Lady (1982-1984), You Must Be the Husband (1987-1988) and various others. Lynda Bellingham, in a bit part as a naked corpse, would become a favorite through a long-running commercial.

By this time Britain had also produced a core of strong supporting actors, not of the quality of the previous generation of Laurence Olivier or John Gielgud, but with a considerable portfolio behind them, Barry Foster second-billed in Frenzy (1972), Ian Bannen Oscar-nominated in The Flight of the Phoenix (1966).

Directed with huge enjoyment by David Wickes in his movie debut from a screenplay by Ranald Graham (Shanks, 1974) and Ian Kennedy Martin (Mitchell, 1975).

Gotcha!

A Study in Terror (1965) ****

Excepting Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (1962), the world’s most famous fictional detective had been absent from the big screen for over two decades so it seemed an inspired decision to set him on the trail of the world’s most infamous serial killer. The result is high-class comfort food, classic deduction coupled with barbaric murders in a fog-bound London replete with cobbled streets, Dickensian urchins and sex workers apop with cleavage and corset. Throw in sensitivity towards the abject poverty of the period, female exploitation and a nod towards an upper-class cover-up and you have a movie with a surprisingly contemporary outlook.

This is a tougher Holmes, handy with his fists, sporting a spring-loaded blade in his walking stick. The investigation draws in the Prime Minister (Cecil Parker) and the Home Secretary (Dudley Foster) as well as Sherlock’s pompous brother Myron (Robert Morley) and the ubiquitous Inspector LeStrade (Frank Finlay).

Pretty quickly it is Suspects Assemble. Due to a scalpel being the murderer’s instrument of choice, doctors are immediately implicated, the most likely candidate the philanthropic Dr Murray (Anthony Quayle) who operates s soup kitchen. Publican Max Steiner (Peter Carsten), with a sideline in blackmail, is another possibility. And there is the mysterious disinherited son of a lord, Michael Osborne, who has married sex worker Angela (Adrienne Corri).

As ever, the plot is complicated by red herrings and sleights of cinematic hand. But the highlight of a Holmes picture is the sleuth’s mastery of deduction based on clues missed by the ordinary mortal and every now and then the story grinds to a halt to allow time for the detective to demonstrate genius. Occasionally he dons a disguise. And thoroughly enjoyable these scenes are before he gets down to the main business of uncovering the killer.

A Study in Terror introduces social depth to the Holmes saga. When the crimes focus the media spotlight on Whitechapel Dr Murray draws attention to the constant “murder by poverty” ignored by the state. Female exploitation is of course the norm in the sex worker business and small wonder that such women are easy targets for the Ripper and although that is an overdone trope in this case a different angle comes into play.

Shakespearian actor John Neville (Oscar Wilde, 1960) handles the main character with considerable aplomb with Donald Houston (The Blue Lagoon,1949) as his often baffled sidekick Watson. Robert Morley (Genghis Khan, 1965) is a splendid Mycroft although Anthony Quayle (East of Sudan, 1964) fails to nail down his Scottish accent.

The considerable supporting cast includes Judi Dench making her second film appearance, Barbara Windsor of Carry On fame, John Fraser (Operation Crossbow, 1965), John Cairney (Jason and the Argonauts, 1963), Peter Carsten (Dark of the Sun, 1968), singer Georgia Brown (Nancy in the original stage production of Oliver!), Edina Ronay (The Black Torment, 1964), Corin Redgrave (The Girl with the Pistol, 1968), former British leading lady Kay Walsh (Oliver Twist, 1948) and future television comedy writer Jeremy Lloyd (Are You Being Served?, 1972-1985).

The picture was unusual in that it was not drawn from the existing Holmes stories but as an original devised by Derek and Donald Ford (The Black Torment), the former going onto a more extensive career as a director of British sexploitation pictures such as Suburban Wives (1972). Production company Sir Nigel Films had been set up to exploit the Holmes legacy.

Director James Hill (The Kitchen, 1961) had won an Oscar for the short Giuseppina (1960) and was a year away from his breakthrough Born Free. Given the low-budget this is a highly watchable picture.

Where Were You When The Lights Went Out (1968) **

Of the 25 million stories you could have chosen when New York and the surrounding area was hit by an electricity blackout in the mid-1960s, you could have elected for something more interesting than this farce-style comedy that after the opening sections resembles nothing more than a stage play. But that’s because, somewhat surprisingly, it is based on a play and one concerning not the great fracas in the Big Apple but a similar occurrence in Paris almost a decade before. Once you know that, the farce element makes sense, but not much else does.

The three constituent parts that eventually coalesce into little more than a collage of double takes and startled expressions are: thwarted businessman Waldo (Robert Morse) making off with a couple of million bucks; Broadway star Margaret (Doris Day) finding architect husband Peter (Patrick O’Neal) in a clinch with journalist Roberta (Lola Albright); and impresario Ladislaus (Terry-Thomas), the most English-sounding Eastern European you ever came across, terrified Margaret is going to quit his play.

The lights going out malarkey is an ill-judged MacGuffin so that all except Roberta can end up in a classy Connecticut apartment and get into a quandary about who loves who and who’s cheating on who and career choices to be made. It’s pretty hard work all round to make all the pieces misalign and then fit. Waldo’s car has broken down so he has no real reason to be there nor to gulp down a beaker of alcohol that knocks him out without noticing that Margaret is fast asleep on the same couch after imbibing the same concoction.

Cue not much hilarity when guilty Peter turns up hoping to win back his wife, not expecting to find her unconscious from booze and once he discovers her bed partner convinces himself that she is as much of a cheat as himself. Meanwhile, Ladislaus tries to keep the jealousy pot boiling in the hope that she will divorce her husband and be forced to continue working.

I’m not sure I really cared whether it all worked out or not. Sure, comedies often pivot on bizarre instance, but this is just awful. More to the point, the structure doesn’t focus sufficiently on Margaret. The Waldo scenario seems wildly out of place and not enough is made of the chaos of the blackout. More to the point, with streets completely jammed and traffic signals not working, just how all four manage to get out of the city is beyond belief.

Sure, Doris Day grew up fast in the decade; at the start we worry about her losing her virginity; by the end it’s whether she’s going to embark on an affair. She’s always on the brink of the kind of sophistication that might tolerate an affair before drawing back in shock at such a notion.

The laffs are thin on the ground, even Doris Day drunk – one of her trademark touches – seems to lack punch. The best written scenes are those between Ladislaus and his cynical psychiatrist

Doris Day does her best but it’s far from the sparkling form of Pillow Talk (1959) that kicked off her very own rom-com subgenre. The quality of her male co-star had diminished over the years, from the peaks of Rock Hudson and Cary Grant to the acceptable Rod Taylor and James Garner but Patrick O’Neal (Stiletto, 1969) acts as if he is curling his lip and about to belt someone in the harder-edged dramas with which he made his name. Robert Morse (The Loved One, 1965) looks as though he’s still trying to work out what his character’s doing there. However, Terry-Thomas (Arabella, 1967) exudes such charm he’s always a joy to watch. Lola Albright (A Cold Wind in August, 1961) isn’t in it nearly enough.

The original French play by Claude Magnier was a sex farce, but casting Doris Day meant the sex angle was played down, inhibiting the movie. An unlikely vehicle for screenwriter Karl Tunberg – Ben-Hur (1959) and Harlow (1965) – who co-wrote with producer Everett Freeman (The Maltese Bippy, 1969). Director Hy Averback (The Great Bank Robbery, 1969) doesn’t come close to demonstrating the lightness of touch required to make such a ponderous effort work.

File under disappointment.

Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (1967) ***

Hooray for hokum. What should have been termed Tarzan: The Next Generation takes our hero temporarily out of loincloth but equips him with a hefty Browning machine gun and rudimentary grenade launcher, not to mention the neat tricks of repurposing a giant Coca-Cola bottle and bringing stalactites down on the heads of pursuers. Hardly surprisingly he’s toting such weaponry given he’s not just, as was more common, wrestling pesky crocodiles and punching the living daylights of any villain stupid enough to get in his way.

Sadistic evil mastermind Vinero (David Opatashu), has raided the Army Surplus stores for a World War Two M5A1 Stuart light tank, an M3 half track and a Bell 47 helicopter to augment his battalion of 40-odd mean-looking mercenaries. Though he hardly requires them since his favored device is an exploding watch.

Vinero has kidnapped a small native boy Ramel (Manuel Padilla Jr. who reputedly knows the way to an ancient El Dorado complete with Aztec pyramid. Yep, we’re in Mexico, which, incidentally, should screenwriter Clair Huffaker so require, does boast crocodiles as well as jungle. Tarzan is called in to rescue the lad.

He only wears a suit long enough to dispatch an assassin who has dumped him in a football stadium. Once he smells the wild it’s into the traditional loin cloth. He teams up with a Dirty Quarter Dozen comprising chimp Dinky (recruited for his scouting skills, you understand, and his three wise monkeys impersonation), lion Major (specialty: human flesh) and the boy’s pet leopard who will lead our merry crew to the child.

Quite how Ramel was found wandering in the jungle is never explained though it’s perfectly believable that, once lost, he wouldn’t know his way back and would rely on that well-known human compass Tarzan to help him find the way.

There’s quite a lot of trekking one way or another, but, thankfully, that’s interrupted by spurts of sadistic behaviour, an entire village gunned down by Vinero’s henchmen and the big bad guy only too delighted to take time out to demonstrate his incendiary ability in despatching unworthy lieutenants.

To be honest, the jungle doesn’t provide much cover, helicopter ferreting out Tarzan with little problem, only to be downed by his inspired trick of throwing a home-made hand-grenade bolus at the aircraft.

You won’t be surprised to find there’s a fair maiden involved. Her task, unlike previous incursions into this kind of jungle, is not to be discovered deshabille swimming in a pool. Instead, she’s bait. It’s hard to get a precise fix on Sophia (Nancy Kovack) since for most of the picture she’s Vinero’s mistress. It’s taken her quite some time to become disgusted by his sadistic tendencies. Probably, her rescue is to demonstrate Tarzan’s inherently gentle nature, given he’s got to separate her from a deadly necklace that will explode, so we have been led to believe, by the slightest tremor.

When they reach the lost city – who am I to quibble that a pyramid that can be seen for miles around hardly qualifies as a valley – they discover it is of a distinctly pacific nature, the chief willing to give away all their gold rather than sacrifice a single life, the kind of attitude that conspires against the traditional Hollywood notion of collateral damage.

Chief’s not much trusting of Tarzan and Sophia either and locks them up. Oddly enough, there could easily be an exquisite zero-sum-game at work, a winners-take-all scheme where everyone is a winner, except Tarzan has no truck with the chief’s notion of letting the bad guys get away with as much as they can carry, and Vinero literally digs his own grave by insisting on taking more than he can carry (though I doubt if this is where the makers of Witness, 1985, found their silo death scene).

Mike Henry (The Green Berets, 1968) hulks up pretty well, Nancy Kovack (Marooned, 1969) – replacing Sharon Tate – adds to the scenery, David Opatoshu (Torn Curtain, 1966) underplays the villainy to good effect. Clair Huffaker (Hellfighters, 1968) sufficiently updates Tarzan to a James Bond world. Robert Day (She, 1965) – who had also directed Gordon Scott in the role – delivers the goods.

Enjoyable matinee fare.

Panic in the Year Zero! (1962) ****

While the release of Conclave and Juror #2 augurs well for the future of movies made for the more mature audience, it’s worth remembering that such fare was commonplace six decades ago, even in the lower-budget strata. Well-structured, well-acted drama was never hard to find. Since I stack my DVDs on their sides and make my selection based on the title on the spine, I rarely glance at cover art, and just as well here, because the poster, I realized, in the process of selling the movie, gave away too much.

Beyond a vague notion that it concerned the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust I had no idea whether this would lean towards the dystopian or the survivalist. And there’s little clue at the start. We open on a typical suburban family holiday scene – husband Harry (Ray Milland) flexing his fishing rod, wife Ann (Jean Hagen) complaining of being overburdened with the loading of the trailer, teenage daughter Karen (Mary Mitchell) and son Rick (Frankie Avalon) moaning about being dragged out of their beds at an unearthly hour.

Not long into the journey they see flashes in the distance and a mushroom cloud above Los Angeles. Harry is alerted to potential danger when he observes a pump attendant being slugged by a driver over four bucks’ worth of fuel. Harry’s clearly the reserved kind of businessman, happily married, still flirting with a wife who giggles at such overt attention. But when the roads are filled with cars speeding away from the disaster area and the radio clams up and telephone lines are down, Harry’s personality undergoes a dramatic change, much to the disgust of his wife.

If this had been made these days, it would focus on the kids as they came to terms with post-apocalyptic catastrophe and some militaristic domineering governing body getting in their way or trying to control them. Or it would be some musclebound jerk only too ready to battle his way out of trouble.

Instead we have a gentleman tugging on his inner tough guy. Harry knocks around a storekeeper (Richard Garland), gets the better of a trio of thugs, charges through a roadblock, carves a route through a busy roadway by setting fire to it, destroys a bridge on a rural road to prevent being followed, and is capable of shooting anyone threatening his family. He’s not gone rogue, though, careful to keep more trigger-happy son in line, warning against civilization going to ruin.

This is so well-constructed you don’t know what’s going to happen next, nor, despite ample warning, to discover that Harry is quite the adaptable survivalist, not just stocking up on supplies, but dumping the trailer in favor of holing up in a remote cave, not quite going back to nature given the quantity of provisions to hand. But, yes, they do wash clothes in a stream, cook on a camping stove, shoot game and sleep in uncomfortable beds.

It’s not an idyll because the storekeeper and the three thugs have chosen the same locale. The hoodlums murder the storekeep’s family, kidnap young women including Marilyn (Joan Freeman) and are always on the prowl for easy pickings, which includes Karen, triggering a climactic shoot-out.

Despite the poster promising orgies of various kinds, there’s no glorifying the violence, Harry more like the frontiersman or law-abiding citizen forced to take the law into his own hands. Ann, whose maternal instinct has focused on its gentler aspects, turns into a lioness defending her cubs. It’s a brutal awakening for all, except Rick who appears to thoroughly enjoy the experience even as his father is trying to steer him clear of such thoughts.

Made by American International on a minimal budget, Ray Milland, doubling up as director, shows just what you can do with a decent script and cunning choice of locale. British-born Milland, a big star for Paramount in the 1930s-1940s and Oscar-winner to boot for The Lost Weekend (1945), read the runes right for the following decade and excepting Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder (1954) and realizing his marquee value had tumbled, took to direction, beginning with A Man Alone (1955) and Lisbon (1956). He was top-billed in both, joined by Maureen O’Hara (The Rare Breed, 1966) for the second.

His last stab at direction was Hostile Witness (1968). But he only helmed five movies in all. While you wouldn’t say he was a natural stylist, Panic in the Year Zero! is something of a triumph, keeping audiences on edge with both narrative and character-led twists.

Apocalypse wasn’t even a sub-genre at this point, Eve (1951) the only previous example of any note. Timing didn’t help this picture, the Cuban Missile Crisis occurring a few months after its initial release.

Milland makes the most of his gritty characterization, pop star Frankie Avalon (The Million Eyes of Sumuru, 1967) surprisingly good. Written by Jay Simms (Creation of the Humanoids, 1962) and John Morton, in his debut, from source material by Ward Moore.

Rewarding.

A Twist of Sand (1968) ***

Initially promising, ultimately disappointing thriller that proves you should not go to sea without a big budget. Because he is the only skipper to have successfully negotiated the Skeleton Coast off Namibia in South Africa, smuggler Geoffrey Peace (Richard Johnson) gets roped into a scheme to collect stolen diamonds by Harry Riker (Jeremy Kemp) and Julie Chambois (Honor Blackman).

Peace knows his way around this area thanks to World War Two submarine exploits and that particular expedition is recalled both in a flashback and its repercussions form part of a plot. Also on board the boat are the goggle-eyed knife-wielding Johann (Peter Vaughn) and Peace’s shipmate David (Roy Dotrice).

Peace has to navigate through the treacherous waters of the Skeleton Coast before the team embark on a trek through the desert to find the diamonds, hidden in the unlikely location of a shipwreck, itself in imminent danger of being buried in an avalanche of sand that could be triggered by sudden movement or sound.

On paper – and it has been adapted from the bestseller by Geoffrey Jenkins – it has all the ingredients of a top-class thriller, but it doesn’t quite gel. For a start, the flashback, where Peace has to hunt down a new class of German submarine and not only sink it but make sure there are no survivors, gets in the way of the action.

The sexual tension you might expect to simmer between Peace and Julie does not appear to exist, the bulk of the threat coming from the villainous-looking pair, Riker and Johann, the former already known to be untrustworthy, the latter too fond of producing a knife at odd occasions. The trek into the desert takes way too long and rather than increase tensions slackens it off and there is no real explanation as to why the ship was lost so far into the desert without entering Clive Cussler archaeological territory.

Extracting the diamonds is certainly a taut scene, with the sand dunes threatening to collapse any moment but the climax you saw coming a long way off and although there is an ironic twist it is not enough to save the picture.

On the plus side, Richard Johnson (Deadlier Than The Male, 1967) shucks off the suave gentleman-spy persona of Bulldog Drummond to emerge as a snarly, believable smuggler. But Honor Blackman (Moment to Moment, 1966) is wasted and this is one of the least effective bad guy portraits from the Jeremy Kemp (The Blue Max, 1966) catalog. Roy Dotrice (The Heroes of Telemark, 1965) is better value while Peter Vaughn (Hammerhead, 1968), menacing enough just standing still, overplays the villain.

Set up as a thriller very much in the Alistair MacLean vein, this shows just how good MacLean’s material was, how great a command he had of structure and not just of action but twists along the way. A Twist of Sand wobbles once too often in its structure and never quite manages to build up the necessary tension between characters. Although the Skeleton Coast sea-scene falls apart due to defective special effects, the other two sequences at sea are well done, the opening section where Peace is chased by Royal Navy vessels, and the underwater attack on the German submarine where murky water manages to obscure the effects sufficiently they appear effective enough.

Don Chaffey (The Viking Queen, 1967) does his best with material that’s not quite up to standard. Marvin H. Albert (Tony Rome, 1967) doesn’t do as good a job of adapting other people’s work as he does his own.

A House Is Not A Home (1964) ***

While perhaps best remembered these days as the debut film for Raquel Welch (One Million Years BC, 1966), the rest of the film is worth a look.

Hypocrisy had its heyday in The Roaring 20s when prohibition made bootleggers millionaires, helped bankroll other criminal activities like prostitution and encouraged cops and politicians to seek their share of the loot. The biography of real-life madam Polly Adler (Shelley Winters) covers all elements of corruption.

Thrown out of her own home after being raped, she finds a knight in shining armor in the shape of bootlegger Frank Costigan (Robert Taylor) and is soon, at first apparently innocently, pimping out her friends. The reality of what becomes her profession is not ignored, the word “whore” bandied around, with one girl, Madge (Lisa Seagram), turning junkie as a result, another, Lorraine, committing suicide. Like Go Naked in the World (1961) Polly realizes that true love has no place in her world, a relationship with musician Casey (Ralph Taeger) unsustainable.

Adler, in her many voice-overs, explains why vulnerable women become sex workers – poverty, lack of family and lack of hope is her take on it – and she professes to view it as a business and preferable to working in a factory for pitiful wages, but the movie is at its best in linking the nether worlds of infamy and showing that the woman is always the loser.

While any attempt to properly portray the period is hampered by lack of budget, it does provide an array of interesting and occasionally real-life characters, Lucky Luciano (Cesar Romero) for example. A brothel proves an ideal location meeting place for crooks and politicians, the latter easily bought by contributions to their campaign funds. Nor are cops shy about asking for donations to their Xmas funds, or using the facility.

The Adler operation puts a glossy shine on the shady business since all her girls are glamorous. But still the movie pulls no punches except in the case of the madam herself, presented too often as an innocent and as a person who never sold her own body and who saw nothing wrong in taking as much advantage of the vulnerable girls in her employ as the clients who paid for them.

Oscar-winner Shelley Winters (The Chapman Report, 1962), more often a supporting player at this point in the 1960s than the star, grabs the role with both hands and although unconvincing as the younger girl delivers a rounded performance minus the blowsy affectations that marred much of later work. One-time MGM golden boy Robert Taylor, pretty much in the 1960s reduced to television (The Detectives, 1959-1962) and low-budget pictures, shows a glimpse of old form as the smooth bootlegger.

Cesar Romero (Oceans 11, 1960) and Oscar-winner Broderick Crawford (All the Kings Men, 1949) head up a checklist of old-timers filling out the supporting cast. Future director Lisa Seagram (Paradise Pictures, 1997) as the junkie hooker makes the biggest impact among the girls.

A flotilla of wannabes made up Polly’s girls. Apart from Raquel Welch, the only one to break into the big time was Edy Williams (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, 1970). In the main they comprised beauty queens – Amede Chabot (Miss America), Danica d’Hondt (Miss Canada) and Leona Gage (Miss Universe) who had a small part in Tales of Terror (1962). Otherwise Sandra Grant became the most famous – for marrying singer Tony Bennett. Patricia Manning had the most screen experience, second-billed in The Hideous Sun Demon (1958), bit parts in television shows, and fourth-billed in The Grass Eater (1961). Inga Nielsen would later turn up as bikini fodder in The Silencers (1966), In Like Flint (1967) and The Ambushers (1967).

Director Russell Rouse (The Fastest Gun Alive, 1956) was better known for the screenplay of D.O.A. (1949) and had a story credit for Pillow Talk (1959). In fairness, although the film has no great depth, Rouse keeps it ticking along via multiple story strands although occasional lapses into comedy do not work. Written by Rouse and Clarence Greene (The Oscar, 1966) based on Adler’s autobiography.

Promise Her Anything (1966) ***

You ever wonder what William Peter Blatty got up to before he scared the bejasus out of everyone with The Exorcist (1973)? He was a screenwriter, churning out somewhat formulaic comedies like this. There were two approaches to this subgenre. The potential lovers hate each other on sight and spend the rest of the film annoying each other before they discover they are actually in love. Or, they are kept apart by the simple process of one of them being in love with someone else.

Here Michele (Leslie Caron), widowed single mother, is trying to get her hooks into boss Dr Brock (Robert Cummings), a child expert, because she thinks he would make a great father. So, largely, she ignores the seduction attempts of nudie film director Harley (Warren Beatty). What Michele doesn’t know is that Dr Brock hates children – though some of his concepts (mocked at the time) seemed quite prophetic such as “corporal punishment is an admission of failure by the parents.” But, basically, she offloads the kid onto neighbors, keeping him out of the way till she gets her man.

Meanwhile, her cute baby John Thomas (Michael Bradley) is doing all the work of bringing the couple together. He more or less adopts Harley as a surrogate father and filming him turns out to be the refreshing new idea the director needs to satisfy irate backer Angelo (Keenan Wynn).

This could as easily have been entitled Babies Behaving Badly for John Thomas is introduced to the audience escaping from his mother and wrecking a jewellery story and spends most of the picture getting into trouble, for which his cuteness provides the requisite get-out-of-jail-free card. (The child’s name probably was the only thing guaranteed to raise a chortle among British audiences).

You spend a lot of time waiting for Michele and Harley to get it together, during which time neither of the alternative narratives – the Michele-Dr Brock subplot and the filming of the child – offer much in the way of sustenance. Theoretically, Harley isn’t the standard seducer of the period, the well-off kind who lives in a cool or plush pad and does something financially or artistically rewarding for a living. He lives in a crummy apartment in Greenwich Village and struggles to make ends meet, blue movies not as remunerative as you might expect.

Michele’s character is stuck in the 1950s more than the more liberated 1960s, with the ideas that a child needs a father, that you should marry for security, and that there’s nothing wrong with snaring a man by devious means. She’s pretty uptight and old school.

Warren Beatty’s career was on a distinctly shaky peg. Since his breakthrough in Splendor in the Grass (1961) he had been bereft of a commercial hit and not found critical acclaim, though there were some takers for Arthur Penn’s Mickey One (1965). Like other actors had before him, he had fled to Europe in the hope of finding better opportunities, but all he managed was this (though set in New York it was filmed at Shepperton Studios in Britian) and heist picture Kaleidoscope the following year, neither of which solved his marquee issues.

Leslie Caron hadn’t quite found her niche either. Nothing she had done had topped Gigi (1958) and though Father Goose (1964) had been a commercial success it put her in the comedy category whereas her more interesting work of the decade had been in the drama genre – Guns of Darkness (1962) and The L-Shaped Room (1962). In fact, as a Hollywood leading lady, this was pretty much her swansong.

Robert Cummings (Five Golden Dragons, 1967) is good value and the cast includes Keenan Wynn (Point Blank, 1967), Hermione Gingold (The Naked Edge, 1961), Lionel Stander (Once Upon a Time in the West, 1969), British television actor Warren Mitchell (The Assassination Bureau, 1969), Margaret Nolan (Goldfinger, 1964) , Viviane Ventura (Battle Beneath the Earth, 1967) and a blink-and-you-miss-it role for Donald Sutherland (Riot, 1969). Directed by Arthur Hiller (Penelope, 1966).

Tame stuff.

Die Hard (1988) ***** – Seen at the Cinema

Kiss goodbye to your suicidal small town banker helped by a passing angel who had dominated the Xmas reissue horizon for half a century. There’s a new Xmas sheriff in town and he doesn’t play by any merry rules. Some marketing whiz has hit upon the notion that an action picture with a pretty vague Xmas background would be a better bet for the contemporary audience than James Stewart in the snowbound It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) that owed a great deal of its popularity to the fact that it was out of copyright and could be played on extremely inexpensive terms – a better Xmas present a cinema owner could not expect.

This is one of these moves that cries out to be revisited on the big screen. I saw it on Monday this week and was astonished to find that it had attracted a full house. You forget how much of a revelation this was, a complete rethink of the action hero. Sure, it owed something to the muscular heroics of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, but they always seemed like they were looking for trouble. Albeit that he’s a cop, Bruce Willis was a throwback to the kind of movie where a relatively innocent character gets caught up in mischief.

And it’s surprisingly contemporary in its attitude to romance, New York cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) left behind by careerist wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), who reverted to her maiden name when she headed out to Los Angeles with the kids. He’s made the trip to try and stitch back their marriage, but only comes to terms with his failings as a careerist cop once he’s battered and bloodied in the Nakatomi tower where his wife and 30 other employees are being held hostage by heist merchant Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), posing as a terrorist in order to steal 600 million bucks from one of the most secure vaults in the world.

This isn’t one of those robberies where we’re told in advance of the plans, instead as the strategy takes shape we can only marvel at Gruber’s brilliance and ruthlessness. He’s not, as would be the norm, trying to hijack cash on the quiet, but instead needs the “assistance” of the FBI to complete his program.

Bruce Willis had been struggling to establish a big screen persona that took him away from the smirking quip-slinger of Moonlighting (1985-1989). Blake Edwards romantic comedy Blind Date (1987) and the same director’s Hollywood drama Sunset (1988) had signally failed to advance his marquee credentials. Donning a vest, losing his shoes, picking glass from his feet, blasting away at all and sundry, and using brains as much as bullets to outwit the robbers, set him on a new career path.

Director John McTiernan was a rising star having helmed Predator (1987) but this was a different kind of actioner to the Schwarzenegger sci-fi malarkey. There’s nothing trim about the timing – it comes in a just under two-and-a-quarter hours – but that allows not just for a proper three-act set-up and several twists, but, more importantly, through a series of clever devices, permits the character to breathe. Through intermittent contact with street cop Sgt Powell (Reginald VelJohnson), we learn a good deal more about McClane and, critically, his change of heart about his marriage.

Unusually, for an action picture it’s riddled with interesting characters, not just bureaucratic nincompoops and FBI gunslingers fully conversant with acceptable collateral damage, but two kings of smugness, one a television reporter (William Atherton), the other a high-ranking executive who has his eye on Holly.

And that’s before we come to the villains. For Gruber, British actor Alan Rickman was drafted in from the stage, no movie credentials at all, and created a silky supervillain every bit as memorable as those who challenged James Bond. In fact, in other circumstances his sidekick, former ballet dancer Alexander Gudonov, should have stolen the show as he had threatened to in Witness (1985). Perhaps the most surprising casting was Bonnie Bedelia. She’d been a female lead or top billed (The Stranger, 1987) for more than a decade, and what she brings to the role is the quiet skill of not over-acting.

If you weren’t particularly interested in the well-drawn characters, you would be more than happy with the extensive action sequences which set new highs for the genre. This should have revived Frank Sinatra’s career since he had first dibs on the character, a sequel to The Detective (1968). And Clint Eastwood for a time had the rights. Screenplay by Jeb Stuart (The Fugitive, 1993) and Steven E. de Souza (48 Hrs, 1982) from the novel by Roderick Thorp.

But yippee-ki-yay, it sure made a star out of Willis.

Top notch.

Le Samourai / The Godson (1967) ****

The current trope for giving assassins nicknames – viz Day of the Jackal (2024) – doesn’t stem from Jean-Pierre Melville’s spare picture, the title here more suggestive of the idea of killing as an honorable profession. One of the most influential crime movies of all time, it resonates through Michael Winner’s The Mechanic (1972) – though few critics would give that the time of day -Walter Hill’s The Driver (1978), John Woo’s The Killer (1989), Anton Corbijn’s The American (2010), Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive (2011) and David Fincher’s The Killer (2023). Even so, few acolytes can match the opening scene of a room empty except for a whiff of smoke in a corner that indicates the presence of recumbent killer Jef (Alain Delon).

There’s none of the false identity malarkey of Day of the Jackal and no high-echelon ultra-secret secret service figures involved in tracking him down. In fact, one of the delights of the movie is the police procedural aspect, with the top cop, here known only as the Commissaire (Francois Perier), insisting on dragging in at least 20 “usual suspects” from each district. Though living a Spartan existence, Jef at least has the sense to acquire an alibi from the lover Jane (Nathalie) he shares with a wealthier man. Nor is he killing public figures. Instead, more like someone from Murder Inc., rubbing out other gangsters.

*Shameless attempt to cash in on “The Godfather” after U.S. distributors held off for five years from releasing it.*

The witnesses provide conflicting information on the man they saw, but the Commissaire does not entirely trust Jef’s alibi, putting pressure on Jane to recant. Her paying lover Weiner (Michel Boisrond) provides a pretty accurate description of Jef. While the cops bug his apartment and start to shadow him, Jef falls foul of his anonymous employer who is alarmed at the attention the assassin has attracted and to avoid the possibility of being implicated sets an assassin onto the assassin.

Wounded, refusing to accede to Jane’s demand that he acknowledge he “needs” her, he tracks down the assassin’s boss, Oliver Rey (Jean-Pierre Posier), who happens to be the lover of Valerie, a nighgclub singer Jef takes a shine to. It’s worth noting that there’s an innocence – or perhaps an honor matching that of the samurai – in the police behavior. The Commissaire exists in a world where rules are not bent or broken, where suspects are not beaten up, and where often the cops are hamstrung by procedure and must take special care in arriving at a conclusion. To convince himself that Jef is indeed the correct suspect, the Commissaire makes him swap hat and coat with others in a line-up, only for the witness to identify the coat, hat and face that he believes he saw. It’s only Jane’s unbreakable alibi that keeps Jef safe.

Most of the picture is pure bleak style. You never enter the assassin’s head. There’s no background or backstory to shed any light on action. Even the most appealing characters, Jane and Valerie, occupy moral twilight. I’m not sure Melville’s in a mood for homage, though Robert Aldrich was in the Cahiers du Cinema hall of fame, but the ending comes close to replicating that of Aldrich’s The Last Sunset (1961), not just for the climactic action but for the inherent self-realization of unavoidable consequence.

Despite sparseness of the style, there’s enough going on emotionally and action-wise to keep an audience enthralled. While his outfit echoes the Humphrey Bogart private eye of the 1940s, and while walking the same mean streets, Jef is the antithesis of that untarnished hero.

Melville belonged to the hard-boiled school of cinematic crime, summoning up the gods of noir, and providing a new breed of French star with tough guys to kill for. He died young, just 55, and left behind 14 pictures, at least three or four considered masterpieces including Army of Shadows (1969) and The Red Circle (1970). You might have thought his minimalist style would appeal more to critics than moviegoers but in his native France, in part because stars queued up to be in his movies, he was highly popular.

When you compare the Delon of this to Once a Thief (1965) or Texas Across the River (1966) you can see how much acting goes into the restraint of the character here, producing one of Delon’s best performances. His wife of the time, Nathalie Delon (The Sisters, 1969) shines but briefly.

Recommended.