movie review – Page 82 – The Magnificent 60s

Vanishing Point (1971) *****

There always was an existential element to speed. Destination was another symbolic aspect. A “vanishing point” has an artistic meaning; relating to perspective it’s the place where parallel lines cross. But it also means something so diminished as to be unimportant, and you could argue this movie is a place where the figurative and metaphorical collide. Throw in a couldn’t-care-less driver and you have all you need for a cult film, a cross between the thoughtful paeon to speed of Easy Rider (1969), Sugarland Express (1974) and the camped-up chase characteristics of the later Smokey and the Bandit (1977).

It has less in common with the city-bound Bullitt (1968) and The French Connection (1971), whose protagonists had the excuse of being on the right side of the law. And where Easy Rider is majestically scenic, the route here is through Backwater U.S.A.

With a little bit more planning, Kowalski (Barry Newman), tasked with delivering a car from Denver, Colorado, to San Francisco, could easily have driven the 1250 miles (see Note) roughly within the 16.5-hour deadline he set himself – and very easily within the target set by his employer – without breaking the law. But he’s got no intention of easing his foot off the accelerator. Instead of pulling over, he sends the first pair of speed cops into the ditch.

And that sets the tone. Countless cops set out to stop him, countless cops are driven off the road, the authorities increasingly infuriated by constant humiliation. Kowalski is helped by blind DJ Super Soul (Cleavon Little), who has infiltrated police radio, and whoops up public support.

Director Richard C. Sarafian could have hit the existential mother lode by making Kowalski mysterious, akin to the western’s anonymous lone rider, or to a contemporary audience “the last American hero.” Or he could have dressed him up in more contemporary colors. But instead of being a long-haired drugged-up sex-mad hippie, he’s a decorated war vet, a stock car racer and a cop who exposed corruption and prevented a colleague raping a young girl. Unlike the drug peddlers of Easy Rider or the hostage-takers of Sugarland Express, he doesn’t start out as a law-breaker (setting aside his intake of Benzedrine) and the most he’ll be charged with is a misdemeanor.

Apart from a desire for the freedom of the open road untrammelled by petty rules, we don’t get much of an idea why Kowalski is so intent on risking his life, beyond a hint that an idyllic loved-up beach lifestyle had been shattered. There’s a fatalism that Ridley Scott ripped off for Thelma and Louise (1991).

The awe-inspiring driving across arid country is interrupted by episodes uncovering the underside of the American Dream and the nascent counter-culture. He is almost robbed by a couple of gay hitchhikers, encounters an old man (Dean Jagger) living off the land, trapping rattlesnakes and trading them for supplies, and a youth-oriented revivalist group who make music their mantra. He turns down free sex and marijuana offered by a beautiful nude motorcycle rider (Gilda Texter) while her boyfriend (Timothy Scott), with a stolen police siren, guides Kowalski through roadblocks.

Mostly, though, the focus is on the driving. Kowalski’s white 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T 440 Magnum, souped-up to reach 160 mph, leaves a Jaguar E-Type in the dust, and makes a mockery of the succession of wannabe cop speedsters.

He can leap over gaps, race off-road, charge through the desert, hide from pursuing helicopters, and could probably have hidden out till the heat died down except his blood is up and his eyes are starting to glaze over and he’s got a peculiar smile on his lips.

Even on a small screen the full-throttle driving hits the spot. But it scores on many other emotional and intellectual levels. It strikes a chord with the disaffected. It’s the ultimate in defiance of authority, innate skills belittling superior forces. The fastest man will always have an audience rooting for him. If you can’t win, choosing how this will end means you remain in control. Speed puts a man in the zone, where you are reduced to an essence of being.

On paper, this should hardly work at all. In the hands of director Richard C. Safarian (Fragment of Fear, 1970) it works like a dream. Barry Newman (The Lawyer, 1970) is superb with very little to go on, nothing but a buttoned-up driving machine. Cleavon Little (Blazing Saddles, 1974) on the other hand goes nuclear as the hippest of the hip disc jockeys. Oscar-winning Dean Jagger (Firecreek, 1968) makes his mark and you might like to know Gilda Texter went on to become a successful costume designer. Depending on what version (not the one I caught) you see, you’ll get a glimpse of Charlotte Rampling (Three,1969).

Stone cold classic. Gets the adrenaline going, but leaves you thoughtful.

The DVD is worth buying just for Sarafian’s commentary.

NOTE: That’s according to Google. Though estimates vary. One reference puts it at 15 hours of non-stop driving, another between 19 and 22 hours. Without breaking the speed limit of 70mph and allowing for not hitting any big cities necessitating curbing your speed, I reckoned he would only cover 1150 miles within his deadline but there are clearly plenty stretches of remote road where you would be able to crank up your speed without any bother. It’s noticeable that Kowalski sets off during the night but we never see him doing any night-time driving, he only attracts the attention of the cops during the day.

Arabella (1967) ***

Under-rated comedy, set in 1928 Italy, had me chuckling all the way through. An episodic structure sees Arabella (Virna Lisi) duping an Italian hotel manager, British general and an Italian Duke (all played by Terry-Thomas) out of their cash in order to pay off the mounting tax debts of her grandmother Princess Ilaria (Margaret Rutherford) while trying to avoid the attentions of the mysterious Giorgio (James Fox).

Her scams are quite ingenious, beginning with arranging for a public urinal to be erected outside a five-star hotel and, pretending to be the lover of Benito Mussolini, convincing the manager that, for a price, she could arrange its removal. There’s nothing particularly original about faking a breakdown to attract the attention of the general, a royal flunkey, but the blackmail trap she sets is elaborate.

But just as you think you know here this is going, it sprints off in another direction altogether, Arabella being the mark, and it’s one twist after another. She is rooked by Giorgio with whom she falls in love. The Duke, whom she sees as easy meat, instead uses her. Her grandmother’s ploy to burn down her mansion and claim the insurance money is foiled by a cat.

All sorts of sly observations come into play. The hotel manager and his pals siphon off a large chunk of the cash they have taken from the safe to pay her off. The general, operating incognito, has his cover blown by a piece of music. The Duke turns the tables on his domineering wife and his son has an exceptionally clever ploy to keep mama sweet while enjoying his sexual independence. And it appears that every time Arabella gives in to entreaty, she is exploited. In other words, show weakness, give a loser an inch and they’ll take you for all you’ve got.

*Terry-Thomas as a bumptious hotel manager with James Fox looking mysterious.*

There’s no desperate reason for it to be set in the 1920s and, beyond the Charleston and costumes, it makes little attempt to evoke the era except perhaps to make the point that the world was not full of submissive women. And you might find inappropriate the trope about using a sexy woman to turn a gay man straight. It’s a sex comedy in the Italian style where just about anything goes and the act, rarely consummated, instead involves humiliation.

But Virna Lisi (How To Murder Your Wife, 1965) certainly commands the screen, carrying the show, fashionably stylish rather than overtly sexual, a born comedienne. Terry-Thomas (How To Murder Your Wife), while initially appearing under his trademark persona, completes a transition for the Duke, almost another twist if you like, audiences expecting a similar duffer to his previous parts. Lisi and Terry-Thomas clearly have rapport, almost a synergy, not the charisma of a screen couple, as in romantic pairing, but work very well with each other.

Margaret Rutherford (Murder Ahoy!, 1964) and James Fox (The Chase, 1966) let the side down with such insipid portrayals you wonder why they signed up. It’s almost as if they couldn’t be bothered working on their characterisations. Cigar smoking and general ditziness is as far as Rutherford, in her final role, goes. Fox just looks fey and the one flaw in the narrative is why Arabella could look at him twice. As the Duke’s son, duping his mother, a pre-gaunt Giancarlo Giannini (The Sisters, 1969) is very entertaining.

To enjoy this you have to suspend your ideas about comedy based on the British and Hollywood tradition. It aims for farce, no attempt to make larger comment on life.

Mauro Bolognini (He and She, 1969) hangs this together in a decent enough fashion, confident enough of his material to lead the audience into a bait-and-switch. In his debut Giorgio Alorio (Burn!/Queimada, 1969) and Adriano Baracco (Danger: Diabolik, 1968) wrote the screenplay with British playwright Alan Hackney (Sword of Sherwood Forest, 1960) spicing up the English dialog. Ennio Morricone provided the score.

Cash on Demand (1961/1963) ***

Ideal crime B-picture. No femme fatale, but a tight one-location two-hander. Set a couple of days before Xmas in a rural English market town, while possessing sufficient twists to see it through, in the main it is a battle of wills between urbane thief Col Gore Hepburn (Andre Morell) and his victim, stuffed-shirt bank manager Harry Fordyce (Peter Cushing). Combines slick heist with An Inspector Calls mentality where the morally superior are taken down a peg.

Fordyce is the kind of martinet who makes his staff remove Xmas cards from display, nit-picks about the state of nibs (in the days when pens were dipped in ink) and threatens to sack chief clerk Pearson (Harry Vernon) over a minor error that he has worked up into potential embezzlement. So unpopular, he is not invited to the staff party.

Under the guise of carrying out a security inspection Hepburn sets up a robbery, tying Fordyce in moral knots, his unwilling collaboration ensured by threatening to stick electrodes to the bank manager’s wife’s head. Hepburn has done his research, aware of all aspects of security, but, more importantly, knows his man, how to exert pressure, how to keep Fordyce on edge. Hepburn reeks of self-assurance, Fordyce of insecurity, a friendless man who bullies his staff, living a life suffused with discipline and bereft of enjoyment.

Though there are a couple of red herrings, and an unexpected incident, what mostly endangers Hepburn’s bitingly clever plan is the unforeseen, that the cold-hearted bank manager will come apart under pressure.

Underlying the action is class conflict. But not the usual working- class vs upper class. Instead it is aspiring middle class vs assured well-educated upper class. Hepburn is the kind of well-dressed smoothie who could talk his way into any company and out of any situation. He puts everyone at their ease, knows how to enjoy himself, would make any party go with a swing, could flirt convincingly with your grandmother, and you would trust within an inch of your life. Fordyce, on the other hand, is one of life’s scrapers, everything by the book, creeping into management painfully slowly, and once acquiring a position of authority letting everyone know who is boss and terrified of losing his standing in society. It’s “class” of another kind too, that of the winning personality versus the eternal loser.

This plays against expectation. Normally, in a heist scenario, there’s one employee who’s trying to beat the baddies, some clever device or trick up their sleeve. That’s not the case here. Instead, we’re served up a character study, the supposedly upright pillar of the community revealed as a coward and moral bankrupt.

And the unexpected also comes in the casting. Both Peter Cushing and Andre Morell play against type. At this point they were best known as Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), an upright team on the side of the angels. Cushing, while often tight-lipped, generally exhibited a morally superior screen persona. Here, that trademark persona rapidly vanishes under pressure.

Quentin Lawrence (The Secret of Blood Island, 1965) directs within a very tight timeframe.

The movie had unusual origins. It was expanded from a short-lived series called Theatre 70 on British ITV, the number relating to time, the program running for 70 minutes rather than the usual hour. And it had just as unusual a release. Perhaps for copyright reasons, it didn’t see the inside of a cinema in the UK until December 1963 when it went out as the support to musical Bye Bye Birdie (1963) on the Odeon circuit. But it had already been released by Columbia in the US in 1961 as the support to Twist Around the Clock (1961).

M3GAN (2022) ****

Sharp psychological drama about attachment, abandonment and loss masquerading as sci fi/horror. Plays off riffs old – Ripley in Aliens and the elevator scene in The Shining – and new, the “Final Girl” trope aka last person standing of the horror film becomes “Final Child.” While not a slaughter-fest in the Halloween/Friday the 13^th vein demonstrates ingenious methods of bumping people off.

The starting point is not, as the trailers and adverts might suggest, the invention of a toy robot companion that evolves beyond initial conception, but a young girl, Cady (Violet McGraw) orphaned in a snow plough accident, who is sent to live with workaholic robotics engineer Gemma (Allison Williams), the least maternal woman on the planet.

In her own mind Gemma has good excuse not to prepare for this sudden onset of parenting by buying some new toys or child-friendly food or creating a playroom. She is on a deadline having spent $100,000 inventing a new doll called M3GAN that, unfortunately, doesn’t work. So tough luck for the poor little orphan until Gemma can enrol the little girl as the test pilot for the Megan experience.

And that’s a hell of a boon for Cady since the cutely dressed doll, about the child’s size, empathizes with her human companion, actually listens to her, can record and store the child’s memories and seems like it’s about to kickstart a toy revolution. That is, until it develops an exceptionally high protectionist tendency.

When its charge is whacked by an unruly boy or menaced by the dog next door, Megan steps in to deal out fitting punishment. Except the doll has no “stop” button and is inclined to go on meting out punishment until there’s no life left in the victim.

It’s not long before Gemma twigs that the doll is turning into one of those mad parents you find in thrillers, or even like Celia (Lori Dungey), the annoying woman next door who cares more for her dog than her neighbors. The signs are there when Cady starts to run amok. Well, not quite amok, but handing out slaps to adults, and reacting badly when deprived, like a child of its computer game, of the companion.

Gemma, whose idea of commitment is Tinder, takes a very long time before she can put the needs of the child ahead of her career, and when it comes to a showdown finds she is not the match she thought she was for her invention, which, like HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) or any other man-made monster since time immemorial, objects to being ended.

The grown-ups don’t come off well here, either idiotically bickering so much they cause the accident that renders the child parentless, or obsessed with dogs or work, and even social worker Lydia (Amy Usherwood) assigned to find out if Gemma is a fit mother seems unsuited for the work, inclined to take a rather robotic view herself of child engagement and certainly playing power politics.

Gemma’s boss David (Ronny Chieng) is a mean-minded insecure obsessive unaware an underling is quietly harvesting his ideas for sale to a rival. All the adults view the child as a doll, a necessary adjunct to show how well the robot works.

Gemma fails to understand, as spelled out by the snotty social worker, that a child who has lost parents will attach herself to the nearest sympathetic person. But Cady, dealing with abandonment and loss, is not the only one with attachment issues. The robot has them in spades, chucked aside on a whim when her creator takes against her or when all attention is transferred to the child.

This all builds up to a tremendous climax when Megan cuts loose in the toy factory, slicing and dicing, and providing the kind of example of her prowess that would have sequel-makers salivating as they detect robot soldier opportunities. And when Gemma tries to bring her to heel finds that (to hell with the obvious pun) the boot is on the other foot.

You can see why this – and other horror thrillers like Barbarian (2022) or Black Phone (2022) that eschewed a conveyor belt of bloody thrills in favor of something deeper – has struck such a chord with the younger audience that makes up the bulk of the audience for Hollywood pictures. This is intelligent. Who hasn’t as a child dreamt of, or even invented, the ideal companion? Who as a child has not thought there must be a better way of being brought up than being left in the hands of parents with little aptitude or interest in the job.

None of these horror pictures has got the slightest chance of being nominated for Oscars while pictures with far bigger budgets, which have not the slightest chance of attracting an audience or are boring them to death, get all the critical hype.

I couldn’t make up my mind whether the doll, being so lifelike, was CGI or human and it turns out she was played by newcomer Amie Donald, though presumably either with a stunt double or a computer doing the crazy dancing. Whatever, the doll is very convincing. As it has to be said, are Allison Williams (Get Out, 2017) and Violet McGraw in her movie debut.

But the star of the show is undoubtedly director Gerard Johnstone, also a movie newcomer, who had the guts to opt for slow-burn rather than visceral fright and develop themes that would resonate with any adult. Screenplay honors go to Akela Cooper (Malignant, 2021) while director James Wan (also Malignant) cops the story credit.

Virtuoso thriller. Can’t wait for the sequel.

Pirates of Tortuga (1961) ***

In the absence of A-list swashbuckling talent like Errol Flynn (Captain Blood, 1935), Tyrone Power (The Black Swan, 1942) and Burt Lancaster (The Crimson Pirate, 1952) or spitfires in the mold of Maureen O’Hara (The Black Swan) and Jean Peters (Anne of the Indies, 1951) this sidesteps casting issues and in the kind of reversal that sent Pirates of the Caribbean on its merry way for the most part takes the comedic route of putting pirate moll Mg (Leticia Roman) center stage and twisting the usual blockade narrative so that it’s Privateer of the Century Henry Morgan (Robert Stephens) controlling the high seas.

Charge with stopping the pirate is sea captain Bart (Ken Scott). But most of the running in the first half is made by Meg, a thief turned stowaway, whose efforts to acquire the standing of a lady are initially mocked by the crew until they soften towards her, in part with seduction in mind and in part out of pity. But after landing in Jamaica, and mistaken for a Lady, she steps up to the plate, and manages to catch the romantic eye of the Governor before readjusting her sights and snaring Bart.

Bart and his crew infiltrate the buccaneer kingdom and spy out its flaws before arranging for a full-out attack. Boldly rewriting history, something of a surprise since Morgan the Pirate had appeared a year earlier, this Morgan is a shifty alcoholic. Once the action gets going, including a clever ambush of one pirate ship, it has enough swordfights to keep a regular swashbuckling enthusiast happy. There are some nice touches, Pee Wee (Dave King), the de facto fencing instructor, is lefthanded and wears a black glove whose use is historically accurate. The ships in full sail are impressive, the locations work well and it makes good use of Cinemascope color while Meg remains larcenous throughout rather than the good moll of previous entertainments. Though you might not be so impressed by the bear wrestling.

Ken Scott makes the best of a thin script, ignoring Meg’s wiles, and outwitting Morgan. Apart from Roman, who steals the show, British comedian Dave King (Strange Bedfellows, 1965), in his movie debut, is the pick, a jocular personality with lechery a stock-in-trade. I better point out you can spot John Richardson (One Million Years B.C, 1965) otherwise he is so insignificant a performer you would scarcely know he is there. Robert Stephens (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 1969) turns Morgan into a scallywag rather than a threatening villain.

Worth noting was just how long it took a graduate of the Twentieth Century Fox talent school to graduate – at the end of a five-year contract Ken Scott (Desire in the Dust, 1960) finally achieved leading man status. Leticia Roman (The Spy in the Green Hat, 1967) was a bit more savvy and turned down a Fox contract in favor of Hal B. Wallis who cast her instead in G.I. Blues (1960). Technically belonging to the European import category of actress so popular during the decade, she never worked in her homeland before being scouted by Wallis. Though she was born in Italy her father, a costume designer, had moved to the U.S. in the late 1950s.

Producer Sam Katzman, who had just signed a four-picture deal with Fox, made 239 films in every genre, including Tim McCoy westerns, the Leo Gorcey Bowery Boys series, Bela Lugosi as The Ape Man (1943), Jungle Jim (1948), Paul Henreid in Last of the Buccaneers (1950), Mysterious Island (1951), 3D Fort Ti (1953) and Rock Around the Clock (1956) as well as a slew of 1960s Presley musicals.

On a miserly budget of just $675,000, the sea scenes were shot in the Fox water tank. Robert D. Webb (The Cape Town Affair, 1967) directed.

A harmless trifle with decent action and Leticia Roman turning upside-down the genre female lead.

No need to fork out on a DVD. You can catch this on YouTube.

Skidoo (1968) *

Hubris can only get you so far. Unfortunately, it’s all downhill. Whatever possessed Otto Preminger (In Harms Way, 1965) to believe he could deliver a contemporary satirical comedy beats me. And it beat him, too.

Despite the comedic input of Jackie Gleason (The Hustler, 1962) and Groucho Marx there’s nary a single laugh, except, sadly, at the director’s expense as he attempts to shine a coruscating light on social mores and instead ends up fluffing his lines. The highlights (!!) are gangster Tony Banks (Jackie Gleason) having a bad trip, his daughter Darlene (Alexandra Hay) falling in with a bunch of hippies and having her body painted, his wife Flo (Carol Channing) trying to seduce another gangster Angie (Frankie Avalon) and some attempted gags at the expense of technology.

There’s even the old one of kids making out beside a parking meter and when busted complaining they are not getting their allotted time. And there’s an ongoing “joke” of Flo tussling with various men for control of the television set through rival remote controls.

The story, if you can call it that, has Tony infiltrating a prison in order to bump off inmate Packard (Mickey Rooney) who plays the stock market, complete with ticker tape, inside. Flo and Darlene, trying to find his whereabouts, end up at Angie’s hi-tech pad. Then all the hippies go back to the family house where Flo washes their hair.

You can imagine where hippies come into all this, making with the hip talk, and trying to set up an alternative world to the Establishment.

*Carol Channing makes her feelings known by donning pirate garb.*

In the style of It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) the main attraction are the cameos, Peter Lawford (Ocean’s 11, 1960), John Philip Law (Hurry Sundown, 1967), Burgess Meredith (Rocky, 1976), George Raft (Five Golden Dragons, 1967), Mickey Rooney (24 Hours to Kill, 1965) and Frankie Avalon (The Million Eyes of Sumuru, 1967). But they will all cringe at their participation.

Channing, only just Oscar-nominated for Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) makes the worst career choice of her life, Alexandra Hay (Model Shop, 1969) not far behind, though with less marquee value to play around with.

Every acclaimed director has an off day, taking on a project through poor judgement or, more likely, financial necessity. But Preminger was still a Hollywood high-roller and this just looked like a dose of career suicide.

The Night of the Iguana (1964) ****

The eponymous reptile is a rather obvious metaphor for characters trapped by quixotic decisions. Regardless of the Rev Dr. T Lawrence Shannon (Richard Burton) being a defrocked priest, he was always going to lead a dissolute life, alcohol the least of his temptations. This heady drama begins with comedy about a man with ideas above his station ending up as an incompetent tourist guide.

And if his behaviour is not scandalous enough for current coach party, middle-aged Baptist ladies, he leads them to a hotel in Mexico run by former lover Maxine (Ava Gardner) who has two younger lovers on the go. And as is the way with author Tennessee Williams there’s a posse of fascinating characters, led by spinster Hannah (Deborah Kerr) who ekes out an itinerant living selling paintings while her aged grandfather (Cyril Devalanti) recites poetry. Raising the moral stakes is under-age Charlotte (Sue Lyon) who has taken a fancy to Shannon, partly in rebellion against her frosty chaperone Judith (Grayson Hall).

For a movie with no great narrative drive, there’s no shortage of drama, whether it’s the Reverend under constant attack from his charges, Charlotte making advances, Shannon succumbing or trying to fight his addictions, Maxine succumbing then rejecting his advances, and Hannah on the sidelines trying to work out why her entire life has been lived in the shadows.

A simple dramatic fuse has been lit, disparate group with secrets set to explode, and you just sit back and enjoy the ride. Exceptionally daring, even if in discreet fashion, for the time, not just the Lolita-style Charlotte, but the middle-aged Maxine cavorting with not one but two men young enough to be her sons, so effectively a Cougar (before the term was invented) in a threesome, a woman in full command on her sex life not at the whim of a male. There’s as overt a gay woman as you would find in this era. And that’s before we come to Hannah, one of whose two sexual experiences involved averting her eyes while her male companion masturbated on a piece of her clothing. That was taking it way beyond the limits of acceptable on-screen behaviour of the day.

Characters are either engulfed by their passions or weaknesses or trying to come to terms with them, sometimes both. Over everything hangs poignancy at the self-deception practised, redemption scarcely a possibility, communication a minefield, acceptance the best anyone can hope for. Quality acting prevents this disappearing down a sinkhole of self-pity.

Richard Burton (Becket, 1964) was on a roll, one brilliant performance after another either with or without Elizabeth Taylor, essaying a wide range of characters. This is one of his best. You should despise the sham he has become, relying on charm to dig himself out of a hole, relying far too much on the kindness of strangers whose sympathy is exhausted. Yet the loss of the only position, a clergyman, for which he was possibly suited, thrown out for committing unforgiveable sin while preaching sanctity, makes him a very relatable human being. This isn’t Days of Wine and Roses reborn, but someone trying to win the pinch of oxygen required to keep his soul alive, and stir the energy inside. And he would be furious if you ever made the mistake of feeling sorry for him.

Ava Gardner (Mayerling, 1968) is superb, staring age in the face, unrepentant, sex an acceptable substitute for love, underlying sadness admirably restrained. But Deborah Kerr (The Chalk Garden, 1964), brings a refreshing dash to her introspective character, a woman with practical solutions except to her own emotional emptiness. Sue Lyon (Lolita, 1962) is only briefly scandalous and the movie’s conclusion suggests she is capable of settling down and not giving into the base desires that afflict all the others.

Just as with The Misfits (1961), director John Huston allows his characters to breathe. It would have been very easy to allow Shannon to have a more heroic or stoic stature, instead of someone stumbling around. Tinges of comedy and wit lighten the load. Huston and Anthony Veiller (The List of Adrian Messenger, 1963) wrote the screenplay from the Tennessee Williams play.

Mozambique (1964) ***

Here’s a great idea for a movie. A pair of nubile young girls sign on for a yacht trip with a renowned Hollywood lothario. A couple of days in the star dies. Neither of the girls knows anything about sailing. The boat drifts. If this was a Hollywood movie there would be circling sharks and at least a squall. But it’s not, the girls are picked up 10 days later complete with festering corpse. Witness the sad end of Steve Cochran.

He never made it as a big star, Sometime top-billed in B-movies, but mostly supporting roles, so it was somehow ironic that producer Harry Alan Towers, on the look-out for any kind of name who didn’t mind spending a couple of weeks on location in a remote African spot, gave him his first starring role in six years as down-on-his-luck pilot Brad sent to infiltrate a smuggling gang in the eponymous country.

*In the German market, the Germans were the stars, Steve Cochran relegated below the title.*

And this would have been a fitting send-off because, in among the sleaze, there’s a decent story and some pretty good lines. But it really needed the dry delivery of a Rod Taylor to give those lines the zest they required.

There’s a sudden contemporary feel courtesy of former kickboxing champ and influencer Andrew Tate, arrested in Romania for alleged human trafficking, because the underlying story here is white slave trade. Or, put another way, the one-way ticket. The prospect of a job, any job, anywhere, is sometimes enough, no time, or need, to think how you will get back home. Here, a place of dreams for those running out of anything else that might fit the bill, might become home.

Christine (Vivi Bach) is one such dreamer, a singer. What she doesn’t realise is that in the club where she is employed the girls are part of the deal, a commodity. Her one-way ticket is destination human trafficking. What used to be called in those sensationalist times as the “white” slave trade, as if any other type of slave trade was acceptable or less worrisome. She is sold to an Arab sheik (Gert can den Bergh), to form part of his harem.

Luckily for Christine, Brad has taken a shine to her so when the Arab appears on his smuggling radar their paths converge. But trafficking is a sub-plot. Brad has been hired as a pilot for Col Valdez but he has died intestate so his wife Ilona (Hildegarde Knef), in this corrupt country, is also up for grabs and has to (literally) sing for her supper before segueing from black widow to femme fatale. Standing in Ilona’s way are her husband’s associate Da Silva (Martin Benson) and his one-time business rival Henderson (Dietmar Schonherr) and quickly those two guys are in Brad’s way too.

So it’s a solid old-fashioned tale, Brad digging up the dirt, pausing for a bit of romance, chasing the villains. Smashing the human trafficking isn’t part of his brief, so that’s put to one side, but a missing will, which could rescue Ilona from her impoverished situation, runs parallel to the plot.

The exotic locale was typical Harry Alan Towers. But this has a better plot than most of the ones reviewed so far in the Blog, it’s not rammed with cameos (Five Golden Dragons, 1967) or a star out of his depth (Bang! Bang! You’re Dead!, 1966) or a story that takes forever to come to the boil (24 Hours to Kill, 1965).

And, discounting the tribal dancers shaking their booty in a nightclub, it displays some finesse and comedic touches. Stonewalled by Da Silva on arrival, Brad insists on seeing his employer only to be led into a funeral parlor. A waiter knocks back unfinished drinks. “Nobody’s seen her since last night,” is followed by “then, we’d better stop looking for her, hadn’t we?” And did I mention the snake on the plane?

But Towers always got his money’s worth. Although making a (plot) point, there was another reason for Ilona singing. Knef had relaunched her career in the early 1960s as a singer, so her voice was a welcome interlude, and an improvement on that of Vivi Bach, married to Dieter Schonherr, so perhaps hired as a package.

Steve Cochran (The Deadly Companions, 1961) really only requires masculinity to see this through, though has a way with throwaway lines. Hildegard Knef (The Lost Continent, 1968) adds a touch of class but Vivi Bach (Assignment K, 1968) is merely competent.

Robert Lynn (Dr Crippen, 1963) directed from a script by Peter Yeldham (The Liquidator, 1965).

More topical than most Towers’ pictures and in fact one of his best.

Custer of the West (1967) ****

Far grittier than I expected for a portrayal of one of America’s greatest, if flawed, western heroes. Far darker, with a two-fisted take on the endemic corruption at the highest level that fuelled the Indian Wars. Revisionism with a punch. And bold enough to turn Cinerama tropes on their head.

We should deal with the last first because that reveals the extent of the bitterness that seeps through a biopic in which a soldier’s great skills are put to unwarranted use. You may recall that from its earliest days, Cinerama relied on thrills of a specific nature, one that like 3D put viewers in the driver’s seat, only to scare the pants off them. You were always racing towards danger, whether that be down the rapids in How the West Was Won (1962) or downhill along twisting roads in The Battle of the Bulge (1965). There always seemed a runaway train to hand. Whatever, it was just a thrill ride, occupants escaping unhurt.

Not so here. The men on the runaway wagon have been tied to it. It careens downhill all right, at one point from an upside down point-of-view, but it ends up over the cliff, no escape for the men. A soldier rides a log river to escape Native Americans. He manages that but is killed on dry land by an arrow all the same. A runaway train falls into a burning bridge. The normal thrills, then, with a realistic edge.

The reward for the great hero, Custer (Robert Shaw), gallant leader of sixty dashing cavalry charges during the Civil War, is a commission with the 7^th Cavalry in the Dakotas on a mission described by General Sheridan (Lawrence Tierney) as “plain robbery,” the blatant theft of land from Native Americans.

That’s virtually the first scene, a brutal analysis on the American West, greedy land-guzzling settlers requiring protection, a soldier in obeying orders tacitly agreeing to wage an unholy crusade, not a justified war against slavery.

And Custer doesn’t inherit your John Ford cavalry unit, where every drunk has redeeming features, if only to provide some comedy. His second-in-command, Major Reno (Ty Hardin) is an alcoholic, nearly an entire battalion of malingerers on sick parade. Although later spouting chivalrous nonsense about hating machines, it’s the cannon Custer brings to bear on the enemy that provides initial victory, permitting the boast that 255 men conquered the Cheyenne nation. But, of course, such triumphalism proves premature, the Cheyenne and Sioux taking revenge on defenceless towns.

Custer is presented with ambivalence, but granted something of a free pass given his intolerance of alcohol, antipathy to the war and whistleblowing that points the finger at government officials and corrupt businessmen. On the other hand he is the chief marketeer of his own image, vainglorious, not least in his determination to win the Battle of the Little Big Horn on his own, arriving a day ahead of other assigned forces.

He is both ruthless and comforting. Instead of upbraiding a mutinous soldier for stealing water during a trip over the desert, he tells him to wait till sundown when his thirst will be quenched. But, despite repeated broken treaties, he lacks sympathy for Native American chief Dull Knife (Kieron Moore) for failing to comprehend that a superior power will always win. There’s a bit too much crammed into a relatively short running time. A Russian appears to point out that the United States is negotiating to buy Alaska. Railroads enter the equation and an early version of a tank. An anonymous prospector has gold teeth because he likes “the taste of gold.” Robert Ryan makes a cameo appearance as a deserter.

All that is redundant when the venality confronting Custer is dealt with in one brilliant scene when gold prospectors start digging up the fort in the hope of finding the precious mineral.

I’m no expert on the historical accuracy but by and large whether this portrayal of the life and times of General Custer is actually true it certainly rings true.

British actor Robert Shaw (Battle of the Bulge), with his mean shifty eyes and trademark tight-lipped side-of-the-mouth delivery, doesn’t quite bring enough shade to the characterisation, but possibly that’s the fault of the screenplay, which has cast him, outside of the final calamitous engagement, as even more heroic in the political arena than on the battlefield. As his wife, Mary Ure (Where Eagles Dare, 1968) appears only fitfully and has little to do. Lawrence Tierney (Reservoir Dogs, 1992) is excellent as the self-serving Sheridan. Just like the later Cinerama epic Krakatoa East of Java (1968) this suffers from lack of recognizable stars.

Director Robert Siodmak (The Crimson Pirate, 1952) creates a literate, revisionist, western that ensures intelligence is not swamped by action. Bernard Gordon (Krakatoa East of Java) and Julian Zimet (Circus World/The Magnificent Showman, 1964) are credited with the screenplay.

A worthy attempt to use a legend to explore the greater issues of the day.

The Enforcer (2022) *** – Seen at the Cinema

After pulling double worthy duty with Empire of Light and Till as the starting points for my Monday multiplex triple bill it was something of a welcome relief to finish with an unpretentious pretty serviceable actioner that traded on Taken, The Equalizer and The Mechanic.

Ex-con Cuda (Antonio Banderas) has taken up his old job of debt collector/enforcer for bisexual mob boss Estelle (Kate Bosworth). Through happenstance he acquires streetfighter protégé Stray (Mojean Aria). Cuda’s daughter won’t speak to him so he’s partial to coming to the aid of homeless 15-year-old Billie (Zolee Griggs). To get her off the streets he puts her up in a motel. But, of course, no good deed goes un-punished and the motel manager arranges for her kidnap by Freddie (2 Chainz), a rising gangster who threatens Estelle’s dominance.

Meanwhile, Stray falls for dancer/hooker Lexus (Alexis Ren) who works for Estelle and may well be her main squeeze, though the consensuality of that relationship may be in question.

There’s none of the pavement-pounding hard-core detective work or even nascent skill undertaken by the likes of Taken’s Bryan Mills before Cuda tracks down Billie’s whereabouts and it doesn’t take long for the various strands to coalesce, resulting in a variety of fights and shootings. Given it’s a perky 90-minutes long, there’s very little time for subplots anyway or to find deeper meaning. That’s not to say there aren’t patches of clever dialog – Estelle compares the blood in her veins to that of the marauders in ocean depths whose blood has evolved to be extremely able to withstand parts of the sea where the sun never shines. (She says it a bit neater than that).

And there’s no time wasted on sentimentality either. Neither Cuda’s ex-wife or daughter want anything to do with him and thank goodness we’re spared a scene of him emerging from jail with nobody to greet him. The movie touches on the most venal aspects of modern crime, paedophilia, webcam pornography, kidnap, sexual violence, and of course Freddie bemoans the fact that Estelle is so old-fashioned she wants her tribute paid in cash not cryptocurrency.

It’s straight down to brass tacks, Cuda not seeing the betrayal coming. Thanks for bringing me fresh blood, Cuda, says Estelle, would you like one bullet or two with your retiral package. The only element that seems contrived at the time, that the battered and bloodied Stray can fix Cuda’s broken down car, actually turns into a decent plot point. And where Bryan Mills seems to be living on Lazarus-time, here it’s clear that the ageing Cuda is not going survive these endless beatings and shootings, so if there’s going to be a sequel it will be on the head of Stray.

I had half-expected Antonio Banderas (Uncharted, 2022) to sleepwalk through this kind of good guy-tough guy role but in fact his mostly soft-voiced portrayal is very effective, and his occasional stupidity lends considerable depth to the character. Kate Bosworth (Barbarian, 2022) has been undergoing a transition of late and is very convincing as a smooth, if distinctly evil, bisexual gangster.

I’ve never heard of Mojean Aria though if I’d kept my ear closer to the ground I might have ascertained he was a Heath Ledger Scholarship recipient. He had a small role in the misconceived Reminiscence (2021) and took the lead in the arthouse Kapo (2022). Judging on his performance here, I’d say he is one to look out for. He has definite screen presence, action smarts and can act a bit too.

And just to show my ignorance I was unaware that Alexis Ren is one of the biggest influencers in the world. This is her second movie and she doesn’t really have much of a part beyond compromised girlfriend. Zolee Griggs (Archenemy, 2020) is another newcomer. But you remember that old Raymond Chandler saying that when the plot sags have a man come through the door with a gun. Well, here, there’s a different twist – it’s a woman, in fact both these women turn up trumps when it comes to rescuing the guys.

This is the directing debut of Aussie commercials wiz Richard Hughes and, thankfully, there’s none of the flashiness than would have drowned a tight picture like this. He keeps to the script by W. Peter Iliff who’s been out of the game for some time but who you may remember for Point Break (both versions), Patriot Games (1992), Varsity Blues (movie and TV series) and Under Suspicion (2000).

Undemanding action fare, for sure, but still it delivers on what it promises. It doesn’t have a wide enough release or a big enough marketing budget to even qualify as a sleeper but I reckon it will keep most people satisfied. I had thought this might be DTV but that’s not so. Although it’s not been released in the States it’s had a wide cinema release in Europe. However, this looks like it’s already on DVD but been thrown into cinemas to coincide with the launch of Puss in Boots.