movie review – Page 56 – The Magnificent 60s

Winning (1969) ****

Boasting more marquee firepower than Grand Prix (1966) but less throttle on the track, faces the same problem as all racing pictures, namely, what to do with the cast when the camera’s not watching cars hurtle round and round. The John Frankenheimer Cinerama epic brought audiences much closer to the actuality of the circuit, though it fell down at the box office because U.S. moviegoers were less interested in Formula One than their home-grown variety, and filled up the off-track narrative with a clever concoction of politics, romance and revenge.

Le Mans ‘66/Ford vs Ferrari (2019) is the acknowledged ace of racing pictures, with terrific speed action, detailed engineering background, and the true-life tale of the manufacturing kingpin of America trying to wrest a crown from the European monarch, and with romance kept strictly off screen; I’ve no idea if Carroll Shelby had a wife or kids, that’s how disinterested this picture was in moving away from the central situation.

So what you inevitably have here is, to use the football idiom, a picture of two halves. And from today’s perspective, oddly enough it’s the off-screen maneuvers that take center stage. For the time, the racing sequences would have been interesting, not in the Grand Prix league, but then that didn’t make as much money as MGM would have liked, so it made sense to try and back up the spinning around with a more interesting story.

And this one’s a zinger, and the only reason the picture doesn’t work as well as it should is because the racing keeps on getting in the way of two hard-nosed individuals. There’s nothing particularly unusual about race ace Capua. He’s not of the win-at-all-costs league of Charlton Heston in Number One (1969), there’s no dodgy dealings for example, but he’s got the standard winner’s mindset, everything, including wife, takes second place to achieving his goal which in this instance is winning the Indy 500 (a 500-mile race round the same circular track about 200 times, not the twisting-and-turning racetracks of Grand Prix).

Even when he does win he lacks the champagne’n’sex personality of rival Erding (Robert Wagner) who’s usually got a girl on both arms and both knees and knows how to party. You’re more likely to find Capua wandering alone and drunk through the streets late at night with an empty hotel bed awaiting.

That’s where he meets single mum Elora (Joanne Woodward) shutting up shop (the hours they work!) in a car rental outlet (Avis, if you must know, since presumably they paid for the plug), the type of gal who looks a lot more straight-up than she turns out. She’s happy to dump her son on her mother and hightail off with new lover and he’s so smitten it’s not long before they’re married and she has to come to terms with the fact that he’s a lot more monosyllabic as a husband than a skirt-chasing Romeo.

What should have upset the applecart is her son, Charley (Richard Thomas), but Capua’s taken a shine to the teenager and spends a whole weekend – mum packed off elsewhere – getting to know him. Movies of this era didn’t waste any time on father-son bonding, kids mostly getting in the way of either romance or family life, and played for comedic effect (The Impossible Years, 1968, etc) or already having flown the nest and getting stoned. So this is pretty unusual territory and it’s well done.

But the real twist is Elora. Setting aside that she’s the kind of woman that dumps her son when a handsome hunk hoves into view, she looks like your typical mom, happy to sit on the sidelines and wait for hubby to come home and console him should he be on a losing streak. But Elora’s not that kind of woman at all. She needs attention. And if she doesn’t get it from a husband too wrapped up in his work she’s going to look elsewhere.

There’s an absolutely stunning scene that has little place in a sports picture when said handsome hunk, sporting god, top dog, finds her in bed with Erding. This has got to be Paul Newman’s best ever acting. And cleverly directed. The movie’s been toddling along with a nifty romantic score and that music’s playing as Capua heads home. But it shuts off suddenly when he opens the motel door. Tears brim in Capua’s eyes. The wife reacts from shame. No words are spoken. It’s all in looks.

Consequently, Charley takes against the erring mom and in a fast-forward to contemporary complicated maternal relationships she wants him to be her “friend.”

Of course, with her out of the way, Capua can get down to the serious business of winning, but that still leaves an emptiness inside. You’ll probably remember the famous freeze-frame ending of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), perhaps it’s no coincidence that Newman and producing partner John Foreman were in charge of that as well, because here they resort to the same technique. While, theoretically, this leaves audiences on an edge, it doesn’t at all, it just, as in the western, stops short of spelling things out. Elora’s much more self-aware than Capua, she’s making no moves to welcome a second chance, and you’re pretty darned sure this marriage ain’t going to get over her betrayal.

All the noise and razzamatazz of seeing the Indy 500 on the screen obscured the fine acting. Coming at it now with the racing sequences not appearing half as exciting as they must have been back in the day, and the twisty character of Elora to the fore, plus the exploration of the father-teenage son relationship, this has got a lot more to offer.

My guess is it gets marked down because the racing isn’t up to modern day expectations but ignore that and watch the acting. Joanne Woodward (A Big Hand for the Little Lady, 1966) steals the show, and, except in that one scene, beats Paul Newman (The Prize, 1963) hands down but that’s taking little away from the actor. In his debut Richard Thomas (Last Summer, 1970) shows definite promise, Robert Wagner (The Biggest Bundle of Them All, 1968) better than I’ve seen him. James Goldstone (When Time Ran Out, 1980) directed from a script by Howard Rodman (Coogan’s Bluff, 1968).

That bedroom scene takes some beating.

Time for a reappraisal.

Blood Demon / Blood of the Virgins / The Torture Chamber of Dr Sadism (1967) **

Heavy on atmosphere but not much else, a gender-switch take on the Countess Bathory horror tale (made by Hammer as Countess Dracula, 1971), which sees Count Regula (Christopher Lee) as, oddly enough, being one virgin’s blood short of achieving immortality, thirteen being the vital number, when he is arrested. Condemned to die in traditional fashion, first of all face impaled on a golden iron maiden then body torn apart by a quartet of horses, but not before casting a curse on the prosecutor.

Thirty years later or thereabouts Roger von Marienberg (Lex Barker), son of the prosecutor, turns up seeking the family castle only to find no one will show him the way. And that when he does get going it’s through intermittent fog, past burnt-out buildings and a forest strung with corpses and, it has to be said, a countryside that occasionally takes on an artistic hue, such as one sequence where the coach rides through the countryside with the sky above solid red and the land below solid green.

Along the way he encounters Baroness Lilian (Karin Dor) – the daughter of the evil count’s intended victim number thirteen – and her maid Babette (Christiane Rucker) who go through a routine of being captured and rescued, captured and rescued. When finally, halfway through, we reach the castle, we find the count in a glass coffin awaiting rebirth.

And then it’s like a reality tv show as the visitors undergo a series of torturous obstacles, Babatte hung over a bed of knives while time runs out, Lilian encountering rats and spiders and potentially dropping into a nest of (rather disinterested) snakes, Roger taking a leaf out of the Edgar Allan Poe playbook and facing either the pit or the pendulum.

The count – his awakening shown in shadow the best sequence in the movie – looks like a survivor from A Quiet Place, face desperately white, and frantic to fulfill his quest, with Lilian designated the unlucky thirteenth. Of course, although it took an iron mask and four stout horses to bring him to heel three decades before, he’s not so familiar with the rules governing the undead and a crucific is all it takes to unhinge him.

Very much horror by the numbers without much pizzazz. Lex Barker (Old Shatterhand, 1964) looks as if he’s more worried about his quiff being out of place than anything else. Christopher Lee (The Devil Rides Out, 1968) isn’t in it often enough and, minus the fangs, hasn’t the wherewithal to drum up a scare. Karin Dor (Topaz, 1969), beautiful though she is, doesn’t quite make it as a Scream Queen.

Atmosphere is the best element here, from the opening march from dungeon to execution through long echoing corridors to the Hieronymous Bosch-inspired backdrop of the castle, and the bodies that appear to have dived headling into trees rather than merely dangling from them.

Lex Varker is the key that this is German-made, directed without requisite suspense or fright, by Harald Reinl (Winnetou, 1963).

But like the fog everything is too strung-out

Advise and Consent (1962) ****

Excoriating engrossing political drama in which the unscrupulous take the moral high ground and the principled are destroyed. In other words, the reality of power – gaining it and keeping it and all the skullduggery that involves. And it has resonance in today’s cancel culture for it is minor indiscretions from the past that bring down the most upstanding of the species.

Theoretically, director Otto Preminger (Hurry Sundown, 1967) broke one major taboo in touching on the subject of same-sex relationships. But in reality he took an even bolder step from the Hollywood perspective of giving center stage in the main to older players. Many had first come to the fore in the 1930s or earlier – Walter Pidgeon (Turn Back the Hours, 1928), Lew Ayres (All Quiet on the Western Front, 1930), Charles Laughton (Oscar winner for The Private Life of Henry VIII, 1933) Franchot Tone (Oscar nominated for Mutiny on the Bounty, 1935), Henry Fonda (You Only Live Once, 1937).

This was the kind of all-star cast you used to get in 1960s big-budget pictures filling out supporting roles. But in this ensemble drama, they all, at various times, hold the floor. And this approach lent the movie greater authenticity. Even if few viewers today recognize any, that, too, works in the movie’s favor, giving it an almost documentary feel.

Movies about politics are never heavy on plot, so if you’re looking for a thriller in way of All the President’s Men (1973) go elsewhere. It has more in common with The Trial of the Chicago Seven (2020) with multiple viewpoints and opposing perspectives. What the best movies about politics have in abundance is repartee. Virtually every exchange is a verbal duel, the cut and thrust, the slashing attack, the parry, sometimes the knockout blow delivered through humor.

Given politicians spend most of their lives making speeches, even the shortest of sentences, even the bon mots, have a polished ring. And that, frankly, is the joy of this picture, brilliantly written by Wendell Mayes (Anatomy of a Murder, 1959) from the Allen Drury bestseller. In some respects the plot is almost a MacGuffin, a way into this labyrinthine world, where characters duck and dive like a more elevated breed of gangster

A lesser director would have given in to the temptation of filming these duels in close-up. Instead, Preminger’s direction is almost stately, keeping characters at bay.

A seriously ill President (Franchot Tone), distrusting his feeble Vice-President Harley Hudson (Lew Ayres), decides to fill the vacancy for Secretary of State with highly-principled Senator Robert Leffingwell (Henry Fonda). This not being the beginning of the President’s term, he can’t just do what he wants, his nomination must go before a committee and then face a vote in the Senate.

The Senate Majority Leader Bob Munson (Walter Pidgeon) isn’t too happy with the idea, seeing Leffingwell as a dove, likely to appease the growing Soviet threat. Others on the committee, namely Senator Brigham Anderson (Don Murray) feel the same and the committee hearing has the tone of an interrogation. The fine upstanding Leffingwell parries well until Senator Seabright Cooley (Charles Laughton) introduces a witness Herbert Gelman (Burgess Meredith) who says Leffingwell belonged to a Communist cell, an accusation Leffingwell denies.

Twist number one: Leffingwell has lied on oath. He confesses this to a friend Hardiman Fletcher (Paul McGrath) who then stitches up the witness. The committee apologies to Leffingwell, which means he is a sure thing for the post, but Cooley smells a rat and starts his own investigation. Leffingwell tries to get out of the job but the President won’t allow this. The Majority Leader and Anderson are let in on the secret, the former willing to accommodate the President but the latter outraged and planning to thwart the nomination when it reaches the voting stage at the Senate. Anderson comes under pressure, phone calls to his wife about something that went on in Hawaii.

And so the stage is set. The pressure builds on Anderson. The President becomes more unwell, making the appointment of Leffingwell more crucial. Aware of Anderson’s intentions, the Majority Leader starts whipping up votes, with Cooley doing the same for the opposition. Machinations take over. And for a movie that was initially light on plot, and it ends with three stunning twists, and proving once and for all there is nothing quite so standard as the self-serving politician.

This was the first movie for several years for Henry Fonda (Broadway and television his refuge) and for society hostess Gene Tierney (Laura, 1945) who suffered from mental health problems and the last screen appearance of Charles Laughton. The acting is uniformly excellent and the direction confident and accomplished.

A slow-burner for sure, but a fascinating insight into the less savory aspects of politics and the human collateral damage.

40 Guns to Apache Pass (1967) ***

Spent most of the time watching this wondering what depths Glenn Ford and Inger Stevens would find in this interesting script in which relationships come asunder through situation. Instead, we’ve got war hero turned movie actor – I hesitate to say star because his marquee was virtually always of the B-movie brigade – Audie Murphy (Bullet for a Badman, 1964) in his last starring role looking as wooden as ever and in a superbly-written conflicted role the equally ineffective Laraine Stephens (Hellfighters, 1968).

That there was still a market for the kind of western that refused to embrace the revisionism expressed by Cheyenne Autumn (1964) or Hombre (1967) was odd in itself. In fact, by this stage most of the best westerns steered cleared of the Native American issue, preferring subjects like the Civil War (Shenandoah, 1965), errant gunslingers (Cat Ballou, 1965) or standard western tropes with standard villains (The Sons of Katie Elder, 1965, El Dorado, 1967, The War Wagon, 1967).

The title plays around with the more famous Battle of Apache Pass which took place in 1862, seven years before this movie was set. Despite the indifferent playing, the script by Willard W. Willingham and wife Mary (one of the exceptionally few female screenwriters plying their trade in Hollywood at the time) is lean and interesting. Apache chief Cochise is on the warpath and settlers have to abandon their homes and be brought to the safer environs of Apache Wells.

Ramrod stiff Captain Coburn (Audie Murphy) is in charge of the operation which includes bringing his romantic interest Ellen (Laraine Stephens) and her family to safety. There’s not much trouble doing that except rebellious Corporal Bodine (Kenneth Tobey), the kind of subordinate who’s always insubordinate, picks a fight with the officer. Against the ostensibly much tougher opponent, Coburn wins the tussle and beats the living hell out of his underling. But Ellen is of delicate stock and doesn’t take kindly to her potential husband’s violent streak.

At the makeshift fort Col Reed (Byron Morrow) is driven to desperation by the lack of weaponry, awaiting a long-promised supply of the newest model of repeating rifles. The scouts delivering the titular 40 weapons refuse to risk taking the supply wagons so close to the Apaches so Coburn is designated to undertake the “mission” to secrue them, taking a team of ten men including two of Ellen’s brothers Doug (Michael Burns) and Mike (Michael Blodgett) and Bodine. Doug falters under fire and is responsible for his brother’s death.

Bodine steals the guns, planning to sell them for $1,000 each in Mexico, an enterprise that gains the support of the remaining troopers bar the captain and his sergeant. With a piece of exceptional cunning, Bodine plans for those two to be blown up in a manner that will look like they have sacrificed their lives rather than surrender the weapons. And it’s an equally clever trick indeed that allows Coburn to escape.

This section brings unexpected depth, character revelation the key. Bodine turns out to be a Johnny Reb, joining the Army, wearing the dettestable blue, as an alternative post-war to imprisonment. And he’s not going to ride over 1,000 miles to Mexico when he’s got potential purchasers, the Apaches, hardly any distance away at all. Cochise doesn’t take too kindly to a traitor, though he’s willing ostensibly to do business.

Coburn, it turns out, is anything but the ramrod straight officer he effects to be. He came up the hard way, mostly been a loser all his life, and knowing that he’s blown this chance for future promotion. Back at the fort, not only does he face court martial, but Ellen blames him for the loss of her brothers, one dead, the other heading towards summary execution should he be captured as a deserter.

So, naturally, the only way out of this pickle is for Coburn to steal a couple of horses and attempt to recover the weapons. He’s again got a clever plan, holding off the bad guys by placing a bunch of repeating rifles at crucial points in his retreat so he doesn’t need to stop and reload.

In better hands this would have been a cracker. The duty-bound Coburn undone by duty, Ellen undone by placing her trust in the wrong man, Bodine undone by thinking he could outwit the clever Cochise.

Director William Witney (Arizona Raiders, 1965) had over 100 directoial credits, virtually all low-budget movies or television series, so he knew how to get the job done. A better director would have better use of the situation, characters and physical setting – those enscarpments go to waste for sure.

Calling out as much for a Budd Boetticher as a Glenn Ford and Inger Stevens.

Divorce American Style (1967) ***

Not so much a comedy about a failing marriage as a guide to the American divorce laws, taking place in a world where the everyman is represented not by the likes of James Stewart or at a stretch Glenn Ford but Dick Van Dyke. It’s possibly only the fact that Van Dyke lacks dramatic chops without the innate vitriol of a Rod Steiger or Lee Marvin that keeps the movie from drifting into black comedy. That, or the filmmakers’ determination to find a happy ending.

When the ever-squabbling Harmons, Richard (Dick Van Dyke) and Barbara (Debbie Reynolds), break up after 17 years and two kids, the chips seem to fall heavily against the husband, the wife walking off with all assets, the husband landed with all the bills and little more than 80 bucks a week to get by on. Such is the supposed injustice of the American divorce laws at a time when most wives did not go out to work and so relied on their husband, married or otherwise, for support.

The only way out of this unhappy financial state for Richard is for his wife to get married again, so a second husband can pick up the tab for her upkeep. Another divorced couple, the Downes, Nelson (Jason Robards) and Nancy (Jean Simmons), is in the same pickle so Nelson spends his time acting as some kind of pimp for his ex-wife, serving up potential suitors, such as Richard, on a platter. But since Richard is impoverished, a helping hand is needed to even things up, so Nelson arranges for Barbara to fall into the arms of rich and single car dealer Al Yearling (Van Johnson).

There is a big male-female divide, for the most part the guys concentrating on material things like money and what money can buy, the gals leaning more towards emotion, conversation, genuine intimacy. Richard has given his wife everything she wants, so why can’t he have a few things his own way? Or as Barbara succinctly puts it, it’s a case of supply and demand, the women are in good supply while the men demand. Even after separation, while from the Richard and Nelson perspective the wives are living in the lap of luxury and the men understanding the meaning of penury, female thoughts turn to questions of loneliness, commitment and (not again!) emotion.

While there are moments of observational comedy – an excellent montage of Richard and Barbara opening and closing all sorts of doors while preparing for bed, cleaning out bank accounts before the other can get to them, the problems of accommodating the blended/hybrid family that divorce or multiple divorce can entail – there are not many laugh-out-loud moments.

And probably just as well because without the drama-lite presences of Van Dyke (who still can’t shake off those double takes and involuntary limb functions) and Reynolds, it would have been a much tougher watch. Reynolds is capable of expressing her feelings verbally because, as a female, she is used to expressing feelings verbally, so we know that Al Yearling does not quite hit the spot. But Van Dyke, without resort to the verbal, has his best scenes of emotional loss when he takes his kids to the ball game only to discover that his wife’s new suitor has more treats to offer.

Van Dyke (Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N.) and Reynolds (The Singing Nun, 1966) do a decent job without plumbing any dramatic depths, but Robards (Any Wednesday, 1966) and Simmons (Spartacus, 1960) have more to offer as the conspiring couple, while one-time MGM golden boy Van Johnson (Battleground, 1949) proves that his four-year absence from pictures was premature Hollywood retirement.

More a cautionary tale than an outright laffer, this Norman Lear (Come Blow Your Horn, 1963) screenplay without missing many targets provides a more palatable dissection of modern marriage than something as full-blooded and expletive-ridden as the previous year’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Director Bud Yorkin (Come Blow Your Horn, also) shows a nice grasp of building up situations until they go out of control.

While, certainly, many of the attitudes, are out of date, you can be sure that male self-pity is not one of them.

Marooned (1969) ****

The forgotten one. Left out in the cold by audiences and critics alike in the late 60s sci fi boom by the more audacious 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Barbarella (1968) and Planet of the Apes (1968). And that’s a shame because it’s by far the most realistic (to the nth degree) of the space movies. Audiences growing up with astronauts saving their own skins with ingenious maneuver – sling shot and whatnot – in Apollo 13 (1995) and The Martian (2015) might be shocked by the harsh reality of space travel as evidenced here. Astronauts are little more than helpless creatures in a tiny box with ground control in obsessive control. It’s salutary that escape was the audience mindset even after the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster of 1986.

Nobody thought to tell audiences to buckle up because they were in for a hell of a ruthless ride back in the day, but this one really should come with a warning.

Casting makes this work – when it shouldn’t. It’s full of those kind of actors who scarcely move their lips and rarely engage in extraneous facial movement. You can hear director John Sturges issuing instructions: to Gregory Peck, keep those brows knitted; to David Janssen, keep your head lowered and keep with the muttering; to Richard Crenna, don’t move a muscle; to Gene Hackman, limit that trademark chuckle to just once. Why this shouldn’t work is because the big star isn’t in the goldfish bowl of the shuttle cockpit, and since there’s none of the get-to-know-the-crew backstory of The Right Stuff (1983) or Apollo 13 there’s nobody to really root for, especially as the crew is just siting there, doing (by instruction) nothing and awaiting their fate. Which, by the way, which is constantly spelled out, is to suffocate from lack of oxygen.

But there’s a reason Gregory Peck’s on the ground and not in space. Because he’s the one making the life-and-death decisions.

This is by far Gregory Peck’s toughest role. He pulled out of Ice Station Zebra (1968) because he didn’t like the slant of the character, and since then he’d been in typical upstanding heroic mode in The Stalking Moon (1968), Mackenna’s Gold (1969) and The Chairman (1969). Here he’s the king of data management and crisis control, the most ruthless, heartless sonofa you’d ever encounter, not willing to take a risk on greenlighting a rescue mission because the computer says no. The weaselling PR-speak that’s all about saving the space program and making allowance for collateral damage is nothing compared to his terrible delivery of news to one of the wives that her husband is dead. She collapses with emotion, he puts the phone down.

If you’re geek-minded, you’ll give this five stars because there’s information overload. “Go” and “Mark” are the most commonly used words. And in case you can’t judge from the visuals what’s going on, there’s usually some television commentator voice-over to help you out.

So, the Ironman One mission hits trouble when its retro rockets refuse to ignite for return to Earth after several months in space. They’ve got 40 hours or so to effect a rescue before the oxygen runs out for crew members Jim Pruett (Richard Crenna), Buzz Lloyd (Gene Hackman) and Clayton Stone (James Franciscus). The crew are forbidden to try any stunts themselves because any exertion will use up valuable oxygen.

Plan by chief astronaut Ted Dougherty (David Janssen) to mount a rescue operation via an untried spaceship XRV (smaller than a helicopter, by the way) is vetoed as too risky by NASA boss Charles Keith (Gregory Peck) until the President, terrified of public reaction, overrules him. With time running out the impending launch is hindered by an approaching hurricane. But then, in the only nod to ingenuity, someone suggests taking off in the eye of the hurricane, when wind force will be zero.

Meanwhile, up in space, the three stalwarts are slowly coming apart. Buzz, the toughest-looking of the trio, is worst affected, screaming his head off as the prospect of dying looms. Then they are faced with a terrible decision. With the rescue delayed, there’s not enough oxygen to see them through, so one has to sacrifice himself.

I told you it was brutal stuff. About the last 30 minutes are not about whether they can be saved, but who will die and how, the impact of asphyxia on the brain spelled out by resident boffin Clayton. By this point anything they do will almost certain sabotage any rescue and they’re in cloud cuckoo land as Keith tries to keep them in line.

While there’s certainly information overload and a few questionable scientific decisions (can you really open a hatch straight into space?), the reality of the drama more than holds the enterprise together. The realpolitik, the callous use of the wives to go along with the company line as they watch their husbands suffer before their very eyes, the management of potentially bad news, was perhaps a shock for audiences back in the day but would be accepted more easily by contemporary moviegoers.

The acting is first class. Gregory Peck never attempts to lighten his load, to make his character less unattractive and appease his following. David Janssen (Warning Shot, 1966) is as solid as ever. Gene Hackman (The Gypsy Moths, 1969) is the pick of the crew but Richard Crenna’s (Midas Run, 1969) less showy disintegration packs a punch. Lee Grant (The Big Bounce, 1969) is the standout among the wives.

Much as Sturges lets the computerspeak run away with itself, he doesn’t flinch when it comes to the really tough scenes. Written by Mayo Simon (I Could Go On Singing, 1963) from the Matt Caidin source novel.

Under-rated. Worth a look.

The Beach Girls and The Monster (1965) ***

Interesting curiosity. Peak year for the genre, a dozen films from majors and indies alike, so by now full of alternative scenarios. But let’s start with Jon Hall. In the annals of actors turned director – Kevin Costner, Frank Sinatra, Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, Jon Favreau, Laurence Olivier – there’s nary a mention of one-time Hollywood superstar Hall. You’d never recognize the slim athletic actor in the Errol Flynn mold from the more rounded star of this picture.

Of Tahitian descent, he was a big noise in the 1930s/1940s, not just hot box office alongside Dorothy Lamour in The Hurricane (1937) and Aloma of the South Seas (1941) but a western star (Kit Carson, 1940), swashbuckler (The Prince of Thieves, 1948) and jungle hero after switching to television (Ramar of the Jungle, 1952-1954). But his movie career ground to a halt in the 1950s, and this was his debut as a director.

Tossing a few genres – beach party, noir femme fatale, and horror – into the blender, he comes out with quite an entertaining movie, in part because you don’t know which way it’s going to turn next. One minute the screen’s awash with jiggling and dancing, next minute there’s a monster on the loose, and before you know it we’re treated to some quite astonishing (for the period) surfing footage – a year before The Endless Summer – and a puppet (big hand for Kingley the Lion) plus a climactic car chase.

There’s a creepy stepmother Vicky (Sue Casey) making eyes at stepson Richard (Arnold Lessing) and heading out on adultery binges after telling scientist husband Otto (Jon Hall) that he got what he paid for. There’s a creepy limping sculptor Mark (Walker Edmiston), who hankers after Vicky, and whom you wouldn’t let any prospective model near, the limp a constant reminder to cocky Richard that he should have taken more care driving and not crashed his car.

And while the monster is laughable, actually there’s good reason for that, in a twist you may have seen coming. Pickled through this concoction is plenty family drama, the son who wants to get away from his science-obsessed father (and unspoken guilt for the accident he caused), the girlfriend Jane (Elaine DuPont) who fears he won’t, the sculptor whose relationship with the family is a shade too close, and the wife whose favorite pleasure is to see men wilt when she rejects them.

And this is an equal opportunities monster, victims male and female alike, and, despite the title, not concentrating on murdering innocent beach girls scarpering around in bikinis.

And this not being a haunted house movie, there’s even a cop involved, investigating the murders, who is detective enough to take a plaster cast of the strange footprints found around the corpse.

And it’s not full of simpering girlfriends either. Jane ain’t no walkover and the monster’s first victim Bunny (Gloria Neil) keeps her boyfriend in his place with her teasing. There’s the usual atomic-growth-spurt nonsense spouted by Dr Otto who contends the murderer is a monster fantigua fish. Monster is responsible one way or another for the deaths of surfer Tom, Vicky, Mark and Otto.

Worth noting: surf footage by Dale Davis (The Golden Breed, 1968); the surf-style score by Chuck Nagle; the dancers were recruited from Whisky-a-Go-Go; and Walker Edmiston did his own sculpting and created the puppet and the monster head. Actress-turned-screenwriter Joan Gardner (A Man for Hanging, 1972) dreamt it all up. Directorial debut for Jon Hall didn’t lead to much, just The Navy vs the Night Monsters (1966).

One of those films that, for sure, it would be far easier to laugh at if it wasn’t for the noir, femme fatale, surfing, and all the other elements that really should have no place in a beach picture.

Kept me entertained.

Tobruk (1967) ****

Occasionally ingenious action-packed men-on-a-mission picture that teams reluctant hero Major Craig (Rock Hudson) with Captain Bergman (George Peppard) who heads up a team of Jewish German commandos (i.e good guys). Arthur Hiller (Promise Her Anything, 1966) directs with some skill and to increase tension often utilizes silence in Hitchcockian fashion. He meshes innate antagonism between the two principals and stiff-upper-lip British Col Harker (Nigel Green), two subplots that have a bearing on the final outcome, and explosive battle scenes. In addition, in supporting roles is a Sgt Major (Jack Watson) unusually solicitous of his troops and a grunt (Norman Rossington) with a fund of one-liners.

Craig is liberated by frogmen from a prisoner ship and flown into the Sahara on the eve of the Battle of El Alamein to guide a strike force 800 miles across the desert to blow up Rommel’s underground fuel tanks in Tobruk, Bergman’s outfit providing the perfect cover as Germans escorting British prisoners. “It’s suicide,” protests Craig. “It’s orders,” retorts Harker.

Most action pictures get by on action and personality clashes against authority, but this is distinguished as well by clever ruses. First off, hemmed in by an Italian tank squadron on one side and the Germans on the other, they fire mortars into each, convincing the enemy units to open fire on one another. Craig, on whose topographical skills the unit depends, goes the desert version of off-piste, leading the group through a minefield, personally acting as sweeper with a bayonet as his rudimentary tool, his understanding of how the enemy lays its mines allowing him to virtually explode them all at one. But, ironically, their cover is so complete that they are strafed by a British plane, and equally ironically, have to shoot down one of their own.

Along the way they pick up a stranded father-and-daughter Henry (Liam Redmond) and Heidy Hunt (Cheryl Portman) who are on another mission entirely, to help create a Moslem uprising against the British in Egypt. Their arrival reveals the presence of a traitor in the camp. Naturally, this isn’t the only complication and problems mount as they approach Tobruk and, finding it vastly more populated with German troops than expected, they now, in addition to tackling the virtually impenetrable fuel dumps, have to knock out the city’s radio mast and neutralize the German big guns protecting the beaches.

So it’s basically one dicey situation after another, ingenuity solving problems where sheer force is not enough, and twists all the way to the end.

All the battles are particularly well done, pretty ferocious stuff, flamethrowers especially prominent, but they are also adept at hijacking tanks, and in another brilliant ruse capturing one without blowing it up. The screenplay by Leo Gordon (The Tower of London, 1962) supplies all the main characters with considerable depth. While Craig isn’t exactly a coward, he is not interested in laying down his life for a cause. Although Harker seems a typical officious British officer, he, too, has surprising depths. But it is Bergman who is given the weightiest part, not just a German seeking revenge against his own countrymen for the treatment of Jews but a man looking to a future when Jews will fight for their own homeland in Israel.

Hudson had begun his career in action films, mostly of the western variety, before being seduced by the likes of Doris Day and Gina Lollobrigida in romantic comedies and this is a welcome return to tough guy form. George Peppard made it two Germans in a row after The Blue Max (1966) but this is far more nuanced performance. There are star turns from Nigel Green, Guy Stockwell (Beau Geste, 1966) as Peppard’s sidekick and the aforementioned Jack Watson (The Hill, 1965) and Norman Rossington.

This was pretty much dismissed on initial release as a straightforward gung-ho actioner and one that tipped Rock Hudson’s career in a downward spiral, but I found it both thoughtful and inventive and had much more of an on-the-ground feeling to it, with nothing going according to plan and alternatives quickly need to be found.

Under-rated and well worth a look.

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.