sex – Page 2 – The Magnificent 60s

The Mind Benders (1963) ****

As far as Hollywood was concerned brainwashing was ascribed to foreigners intent on disrupting democracy as with The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Such inherent hypocrisy will come as no surprise since scientists at McGill University in Canada had been carrying out C.I.A.-funded sensory deprivation experiments in the 1950s. Where the John Frankenheimer paranoia thriller went straight down the political route, The Mind Benders, based on the McGill tests, is more interested in the personal cost, although ruthless politicians and unscrupulous scientists still abound.

The suicide of renowned scientist Professor Sharpey (Harold Goldblatt), possibly selling secrets to the Russians, sends MI5 agent Major Hall (John Clements) to Oxford to investigate sensory perception tests. The guinea pigs have all been volunteers, keen to expand knowledge of human mental endurance. The latest volunteer, Dr Longman (Dirk Bogarde), is on leave recovering from his participation. To avoid branding Sharpey a traitor it is proposed that he was actually brainwashed by long immersion in a water tank and subsequent sensory deprivation.

In order to prove the point, Longman, a driving force behind the research having shifted the focus from sub-zero temperatures to water, is the unknowing guinea pig, a jealous colleague Dr Danny Tate (Michael Bryant) who fancies his wife Oonagh (Mary Ure) suggesting that the experiment would be deemed a success if Longman was turned against his wife. It transpires that sensory deprivation has already had an effect on Longman, his wife complaining his lovemaking has grown rough.

The callousness with which this stage of research is undertaken, the disregard not so much for human life but emotion and love, in a country that prides itself on honor and fair play, sets up a different register to the Frankenheimer film where at issue is the assassination of the most important person in the United States. Longman, fed lies about his wife’s infidelity, becomes a different character, distrustful, aggressive, embarking on an affair of his own, putting in jeopardy the happiness he has constructed.

Ahead of its time in analyzing the importance of the hidden persuaders (as television advertising would later be termed) and lacking a thriller element to drive the narrative, nor devised as a self-indulgent experiment like the later Altered States (1980), nonetheless this achieves tremendous power through the deliberate dislocation of individual life, personalizing in a way that others in the paranoia thriller genre do not the dangers of tampering with the unknown.

And perhaps because it is so British, with the Longman family living in a big rambling house, the children involved in myriad games, the scientist a loving husband, that the outcome is so horrible. Brainwashing was seen as a form of torture, with subjects susceptible to ideas they may have once opposed, almost forming a new identity.

The structure here sucks in the audience. It’s ostensibly initially about spies, outing a traitor, a notion that every British citizen would go along with, the film especially relevant in the wake of the Kim Philby affair the year of the film’s release, when the idea of “spies among us” took root. Then we move on to a scientific account of the deprivation experiment, the first one taking place in the Arctic Circle, footage of a volunteer emerging in a fugue state. When Longman does another experiment, himself the guinea pig, to show what is involved, the various changes the body and mind undergo, it still seems far removed, captivating and intriguing though it may be, from any human horror.

*James Kennaway wrote the movie tie-in paperback based on his original screenplay.*

But when Longman becomes the unknowing victim, the audience becomes privy to the worst aspects of the brainwashing. The personal price paid would put every member of the audience off endorsing its use.

This is a very measured film, cunning in its construction, that puts the viewer at the heart of the story. Without spelling out the psychological terror, the implications are nonetheless clear, a nightmare from which there is no escape, no guarantee the process could be reversed, men turned into different personalities at the behest of government for who knows what end.

Dork Bogarde (Hot Enough for June, 1964) does this kind of role so well, the well-meaning person whose life is thrown into disarray. Mary Ure (Where Eagles Dare, 1968) is superb as the fun-loving wife, fighting for her husband, Michael Bryant excels as the sly friend, determined to win his wife by illicit means. Michael John Clemens only made two films this decade and his portrayal of the MI5 agent, as dispassionate as any scientist, putting country above individual, is almost as frightening as the experiment he provokes.

The idea came from an original screenplay by Scottish novelist James Kennaway (Tunes of Glory, 1960) who had come across the Canadian research. He was adept at placing stories within institutions in some respect with their own sacrosanct traditions and while the army barracks of Tunes of Glory could not be further removed from Oxford academe both reek of unchallenged hierarchy, of sacrifice to a cause.

Basil Dearden (Woman of Straw, 1964) directs this brilliantly, the attractive countryside location in contrast with the gloom of the experimental rooms, the warmth of a happy marriage evaporating in the face of insidious threat. He returned to the theme of identity in The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970).

This is one of these films that lives on in the mind long after the viewing has ceased and will strike a contemporary note where identity, and its shifting values, is such an issue.

Secret Ceremony (1968) ***

Few stars were as willing to trade their glamorous screen persona for a decent role as Elizabeth Taylor, here eschewing the trademark hip swivel, low cut dresses and elegant costumes for a clumping walk, frumpy look and eating with her mouth full. After a chance meeting on top of a bus with rich waif Cenci (Mia Farrow) middle-aged prostitute Leonora (Elizabeth Taylor) swaps a dingy bedsit for life in a massive mansion, cupboards stuffed full of furs, all her needs met. Cenci seeks a mother; Leonora, whose daughter drowned aged ten, seeks a child substitute.

Soon Leonora is prisoner to a fantasist, her own identity swamped by Cenci’s needs, accepting the role of “mummy” as the price of a life of luxury until she learns that what appears so freely given can be as easily taken away. This cloistered life is creepy. Cenci has rape fantasies. To a pair of interfering and thieving aunts, Leonora pretends to be Cenci’s dead mother’s cousin.

The fantasy conjured is threatened by the presence of Cenci’s poet stepfather Albert (Robert Mitchum) who intends to become the girl’s legal guardian. He talks like a child molester, “the extraordinary purity of my longings,” but given the depth of Cenci’s fantasies Leonora initially discounts inappropriate behavior on his part especially when Cenci wishes to become inappropriate with her. If Leonora stands in Albert’s way it is only to have the girl – and her wealth – to herself.

A psychological drama that appears more like a stage play in structure, skirting around core issues in favor of later revelation, and in essence making a good effort at dealing with behavioral problems which would find greater currency today – inherited mental illness, PTSD, low self-esteem, abuse, and incest. Though the last area is hard to specify, on the basis that, technically, Albert is a stepfather rather than a father, underage sex would appear to be more likely.

In an era when permissiveness virtually ensured audience shock, director Joseph Losey makes a decent stab at presenting the impact of sex on the vulnerable, despite her apparent steely exterior Leonora damaged by life as a sex worker, Cenci pretending to be younger as if that can sustain her innocence, not realizing how appealing that would be to a predator.

At once hypnotic and impenetrable, this is director Joseph Losey (The Servant, 1964) at his best, a story that by its subject matter must remain obscure, a mother-daughter relationship that should be twisted but reveals nothing but tenderness, ending for a time the torment of the emotionally unfulfilled, but when bonds appear to be strengthened they are fragmenting. However, the film is let down by the script and the somewhat grand guignol setting. Losey is wonderful at times with nothing to say just a prowling camera, only two lines of dialog exchanged in the first 15 minutes. You would certainly file it under “eclectic.”

The two main performances are electric. This is Taylor at her powerhouse best, her profession not glamorized as in Butterfield 8 (1968) and no male to bring to heel, and her last scene with Cenci is extremely touching. This was a bold role, too, for Mia Farrow after the success of Rosemary’s Baby (1967) turned her into a box office star. She brings believability to a difficult role, especially as she is far from the spoiled child one might expect.

Robert Mitchum fans must have received the fright of their life to see their hero not just with uncomely beard but portraying a sinister character, not an out-and-out villain which would have been acceptable, but fast forward a couple of years and you can see evidence here of the kind of portrayal he would evince in Ryan’s Daughter (1970). Look out for Peggy Ashcroft (The Nun’s Story, 1959) in a smaller role, her first film in nearly a decade.

Check out the “Behind the Scenes” article for this film.

Death By Lightning (2025) ***** – Netflix Hits A Home Run, At Last

Streaming at its best. Take an obscure subject, a long-forgotten character, an incident that’s a mere blip in history, actors of less than middle rank in box office terms, and by breaking it down into easily consumable parts turn a history lesson that might be an indigestible three hours on the big screen into a riveting, enthralling drama of the highest quality that takes a no-holds-barred approach to politics

Small wonder you won’t have heard of U.S. President James Garfield (Michael Shannon) given he held office for around three months. Or of his misfit assassin Charles Guiteau (Matthew Macfadyen), less than a footnote in history for making the grave mistake of gunning down a President nobody had ever heard of.

Garfield shouldn’t even have been President. A mid-level politician on the verge of retirement, he wasn’t even in the running for the Republican nomination, which should have gone to Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant. But in one of those quirks of politics, the voters liked what they heard of Garfield and in a grass roots rebellion shooed him in. He won the Presidential election by a whisker.

And then his troubles started. He was too honest for the job. Unwilling to follow the standard corruption and hand out highly-paid posts to rank-and-file unfitting for the job, he found himself up against the New York political powerhouse headed by Roscoe Conkling (Shea Whigham) who controlled the bulk of the revenue entering the country. And the battles with Conkling would have easily made a House of Cards-style series in itself as the dueling politicians attempt to outwit each other.

But in the background, and weaseling his way into the foreground, is con man, thief, forger, misfit Guiteau with as much entitlement as could sink a battleship who, nonetheless, grasps the key essential of politics of the era which is that helping to grease the greasy pole is all you need to reap the benefits. Except his efforts to become anyone’s righthand man fall way short, as his ambition and lack of any relevant skills are widely mocked – he expects to be handed an ambassadorial role although he speaks no foreign languages – despite occasionally finding an opening.

Having been dismissed by the President himself, he decides Garfield is totally the wrong person for the highest position in the land and takes it upon himself to rid the nation of this burden. Even the assassination is ham-fisted and Garfield would have survived except for the efforts of the ham-fisted surgeon who killed him through septic poisoning.

That’s the climax to a thoroughly involving mini-series where no punches are pulled as far as politics are concerned. Conkling doesn’t mind being the man behind the throne as long as he gets credit for pulling the strings. Political wheeling-and-dealing has never been so ruthlessly exposed.

But it’s not as if Garfield is an innocent in that department. While not stooping to corruption, he pulls the legs from under Conkling by appointing Conkling’s righthand man Chester Arthur (Nick Offerman) as his Vice-President, a scheme that while initially backfiring eventually pays dividends. And it’s ironic that Conkling’s demise is down to a thwarted mistress.

The narrative switches on like a thriller, twists and turns every inch of the way. But as much as the riveting narrative, the joy of this is in the performances. Matthew Macfadyen, double Emmy award-winner for Succession (2018-2023), is rightly going to be considered to have landed the plum role, a fellow so much of a misfit that in a “free love” community nobody wants to have sex with him. But it’s a close-run thing. Michael Shannon (A Different Man, 2024) is outstanding, and Shea Whigham (F1, 2025) has immense fun especially with his eyebrows and dominating curl, while Nick Offerman (Civil War, 2024) in shifting from oaf to man of honor has a peach of a role, not forgetting Betty Gilpin (The Hunt, 2020) as the straight-talking wife of the President.

None of these are stars, not even of the indie persuasion, and yet it’s amazing what they can do with their characters.

Directed with effortless style by Matt Ross (Captain Fantastic, 2016) from a script by Mike Makowsky (Bad Education, 2019) adapting the bestseller Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard.

Outstanding.

Out of Time (2003) *****

The most tension-filled thriller this side of The Day of the Jackal (1973). Stone-cold classic in my book. Admittedly not a big box office success in its day nor critically acclaimed, but this nod to film noir with cop taking a stroll for his own convenience down the wrong mean streets and an old-fashioned femme-fatale male-dupe scenario coupled with witty dialog and terrific set pieces suggests to me this is long overdue for reappraisal.

This was really the start of Denzel Washington as action hero – Crimson Tide (1995) was more a straightforward drama albeit with characters facing the ultimate consequence – and it probably helps that I’m looking back at this through the prism of more than two decades of the actor whizzing along in the derring-do department especially in his turn as The Equalizer (2014) – and sequels – where he demolishes opponents in seconds. Apart from the occasional side hustle as a bad guy, he’s generally been a good guy, the sort of dependable hunk that Tom Hanks would aspire to if he wanted to add brawn to his guy-next-door persona.

Matt Whitlock is the top law enforcement officer in a Florida slumber town (pop 1300) but he’s not as clean-cut as he looks given his affair with married Ann Harrison (Sanaa Latham) who bursts his romantic bubble by announcing she has just six months to live thanks to a cancer so advanced that only some new-fangled treatment could save her. I smelled a rat, I have to confess, the minute she decided she was going to make him the beneficiary of her million-dollar insurance policy.

So what’s a decent guy to do but steal the $500,000 drugs money he’s holding in his police safe, that’s liable to sit untouched for years to come, in order to fund her treatment on the assumption that the insurance policy acts as his insurance. How dumb can you be?

So when Ann and husband Chris (Dean Cain) die in a horrific fire, his world unravels, especially as detective soon-to-be-ex-wife Alex (Eva Mendes) is in charge of the murder investigation and the Feds arrive out of the blue looking for the drugs cash. So basically he’s an old-fashioned “running man”, diving from one hole to the next, barely keeping ahead of the cops and the FBI, fingered twice by witnesses, discovering that the specialist who diagnosed the cancer is an imposter, and not just being made to look the biggest fool who ever fell in love with the wrong woman but liable to pay for his error with a lengthy jail sentence.

Alex begins to suspect he knows more than he’s letting on, he’s desperate to trace the bogus doctor, all the while, in a nod to No Way Out (1987), desperately trying to stop a tsunami of telephone evidence – arriving via fax and computer – that links him to the supposed dead woman.

There are verbal confrontations galore and a couple of physical ones, a chase through a hotel culminating in a brawl on a balcony, and possibly a second murder charge.

It’s not just a terrific tale, mostly consisting of twists and narrow escapes, I counted half a dozen twists in the last ten minutes alone, but offers some terrific dialog. In a diner, the relationship between Matt and Chris is spelled out in style: Matt recommends the crab, Chris points out he’s allergic to crab. “I know,” retorts Matt. The movie opens with some decidedly salty goings-on between Matt and his lover and the verbal duel between Matt and Alex has the underlying Tracy-Hepburn classic squabbling.

For all that Matt is smart enough to chase down the missing cash and hold the Feds at arm’s length long enough, he’s still, when you come down to it, only going from dumb to dumber and the shock when he realizes just how well he’s been duped is a cracker.

So, obviously, the key is that the audience wants him, guilty though he is of theft and stupidity, to get away with it or at least be thrown a get-out-of-jail-free card and that’s part of the hook, and that element is brilliantly done. I had no idea how he was going to get off with it, as one avenue of escape after another was rigorously shut down, until the very end.

There’s a whole stew of those reversals that screenwriters throw at audiences who think they are one step ahead of the game.

It’s a great cast. Denzel Washington is superb, Eva Mendes (Training Day, 2001) is an excellent sparring partner, Sanaa Latham (AVP: Alien vs Predator, 2004) as slinky as femme fatale as you’ll find. Look out for television’s Superman Dean Cain and especially character actor John Billingsley.

Director Carl Franklin (Devil in a Blue Dress, 1995) piles on the tension and kudos to screenwriter Dave Collard (Annapolis, 2006) for creating the blueprint.

I caught this on Amazon Prime but be quick about it because it’s in the section that the streamer calls “leaving in 30 days.”

An absolute classic.

The Learning Tree (1969) ****

Director Gordon Parks made a big noise a couple of years later with Shaft (1971), Richard Roundtree shooting to fame as a slick and sexy private eye, memorable score by Quincy Jones. But The Learning Tree had possibly a bigger impact on the Hollywood consciousness, the first movie released by a major studio (Warner Brothers) that was directed by an African American. Although actors like Sidney Poitier and Jim Brown had smashed the Hollywood glass ceiling, directors lagged far behind. And this would have been an interesting tale in its own right of adolescence in 1920s Kansas had the leading character Newt (Kyle Johnson) and buddy Marcus (Alex Clarke) not faced such blatant racism.

Told today, the story would take a different route, concentrating on the dilemma of Newt in coming forward with the evidence that could convict Marcus’s father Booker (Richard Ward) of murdering a white man, not just the guilt at sending another African American to the electric chair but fear of the killing spree that must follow from enraged whites. Instead, that aspect comes at the tail end of a story that sees Newt and Marcus react in different ways to white supremacy. It’s not that Newt is spineless, toeing the line, but that Marcus, filled with venom, sees violence as the only way to establish any kind of equality.

When Newt, a reasonable enough scholar, though hardly in the genius class, is marked down by his teacher on the grounds that it’s a waste of time going to college when he will still end up a cook or a porter, the young man responds, “You hate us colored kids, well, we hate you, every one of you.” Marcus has a similar mantra, “this town don’t want me and I don’t want this town.” That underlying endemic racism contrasts with the more overt vicious bullying of local cop Kirky (Dana Elcar) who casually shoots any African American who sensibly runs away at his approach and who ends every sentence with the word “boy.”

What makes this so powerful is that for long stretches there’s just the ordinary coming-of-age tale of Newt falling in love with Arcella (Mira Waters), sneaking a kiss, finding their own special place among the daffodils, buying each other Xmas presents, the romance conducted among summer picnics, winter snow, rowing on the river, the young man showing his beloved every respect even given that he is not a virgin, having unexpectedly lost his cherry while sheltering from a tornado. He has a conscience, too, going to work voluntarily for a farmer whose apples he stole.

It’s not just Newt’s equable temperament that’s prevents him from reacting like Marcus to the unfairness of the white-dominated world. He has the ability to get the best out of situations. A born negotiator he manages to triple the reward offered by Kirky for helping bring up a dead man from a river, and, having been taught to box, earns good money in a match. Marcus goes to jail for beating up a white man who attacked him with a whip and this not being a sanitised version of the African American world on release ends up working in a whorehouse while his father steals a supply of hooch.

Even so this is a hierarchy even a prominent white person cannot overturn. When a judge’s son invites Marcus and Arcella into a drug store, the other two must take their drinks outside.

A staff photographer for Life magazine, director Gordon Parks, adapting his autobiographical novel, avoids the temptation to pack the movie with brilliant images, instead concentrating on core coming-of-age aspects to drive forward the narrative. He doesn’t have to do much to point up the injustice. That’s inherent in the material.

It probably helped that the three young principals were inexperienced, although at the time of course roles for African Americans, except in cliché supporting parts, were hardly abundant. Kyle Johnson (Pretty Maids All in a Row, 1971) was 16 when playing the 14-year-old, Alex Clarke (Halls of Anger, 1970) pushing 20 and making his debut as was Mira Waters (The Greatest, 1977). There’s no straining for dramatic acting effect. Everyone plays it straight.

Others involved are Estelle Evans (To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962), Dana Elcar (Pendulum, 1968), Richard Ward (Black Like Me, 1964) and Russell Thorson (The Stalking Moon, 1968). Not only did Parks write, produce and direct but he supplied the music too.

It’s an absorbing, if at times difficult, watch. It’s an accomplished picture for a beginner. And you can’t help but wondering how four decades after this story takes place little had changed for ordinary African Americans and another five decades after the film’s release the battle for equality has not been resolved.

Eden (2025) ****

By all accounts this should be a stinker. Colossal box office flop without little potential redemption in the form of critical accolades. Mis-sold as a horror survival thriller with too upscale a cast for that strategy to work. And yet it gives the likes of After the Hunt and Roofman an object lesson is how to make unlikeable characters appealing.

There’s no great secret. Just don’t hide anything. Make your characters upfront from the outset and let them roll the dice without artifice. Solve any puzzles. Set out your stall fairly and go with it. And you know what, put any random characters anywhere and you’ll trigger a battle for power.

This would be in the vein of Lord of the Flies (1963), Robinson Crusoe (1997 the most recent version) and Cast Away (2000), except the characters here are on a remote island by choice, sold on the notion of getting away from a civilization which is in a bad way, this being 1932 and the world in a spiral of financial depression and rising fascism.

Wannabe philosopher Ritter (Jude Law), determined to change the world, is narked when, three years into his sojourn on Galapagos, his hardly idyllic isolation with partner Dore (Vanessa Kirby) is interrupted by the arrival of fanboy Heinz (Daniel Bruhl), wife Margret (Sydney Sweeney) and ill son Harry (Jonathan Tittel).

Somewhat surprised at the unfriendly welcome, Heinz would be astonished to learn that Ritter suggests they go live in, unknown to them, one of the worst spots on the island, assuming they won’t survive and he can go back to peace and quiet. But the newcomers have come prepared for hardship and build a home and convert a spring into a home-made pool.

A grudging truce is shattered by the arrival of the Baroness (Ana de Armas), her two lovers Rudolph (Felix Kammerer) and Robert (Toby Wallace), and her wildly ambitious plans to build a luxury hotel. Worse, she’s determined to seize power, forcing those further down the society tree to bend the knee, and if her sex appeal doesn’t achieve that purpose, then she’ll take the old-fashioned route. Heinz kisses her outstretched hand but Ritter refuses. She’s a particularly ruthless specimen and when her supply of food runs out just steals from Heinz’s horde then has the audacity to invite him to a meal featuring the stolen food.

Her plan to set Ritter and Heinz against each other, her barbed tongue a singular weapon, only results in them forming an alliance. While it’s obvious it’s not going to end well, three sequences in particular are distinctly brutal.

Along the way, facades are broken. The Baroness has invented her title. Hunger is all it takes for Ritter to shift from his avowed vegetarianism leaving Dore is appalled. Her beloved donkey is killed. Heinz has to face up to the fact that Margret only married him to get away from home. After Heinz and Ritter conspire against the Baroness, Margret and Dore conspire against Ritter.

It’s about 15 minutes too long, the seeming need to wrap up the tale unnecessary, but the rest of it is a joy to watch. There’s one absolute cracker of a sequence. While Margret is giving birth alone and threatened by feral wild dogs, the Baroness pointedly ignores her plight, not surprising since she has more important matters on her mind, namely her lovers looting of Heinz’s stores.

I had not expected much in the way of performances. Daniel Bruhl (Rush, 2013) would at least be solid, but after Black Rabbit (2025) I thought Jude Law would be way over the top and the two actresses, struggling for critical acceptance, way out of their depth. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Jude Law goes back to the quiet brooding intensity that made him a star in the first place. Ana de Armas (Ballerina, 2025) steals the show as the arch manipulator, her mind quick enough to rescue any dire situation. Sydney Sweeney (Anyone But You, 2023) turns her screen persona on its head, famed cleavage kept under cover, as the stalwart, almost puritanical, wife.

While this might seem a bit of a come-down for Oscar-winning director Ron Howard after box office and critical hits like The Da Vinci Code (2006) and A Beautiful Mind (2002) and making do with stars of a lower marquee class than Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks and in their day Russell Crowe, Mel Gibson and Jim Carrey, he’s tackled similar obsession before with In the Heart of the Sea (2015).

And he’s great with the cast, knocks over-acting on the head, so that every performance looks perfectly pitched and in keeping with the characters. The directing, too, is spot-on. Powerful scenes, such as the Baroness’s failed seduction of a millionaire explorer and a poisoning, are played in a low key. Written by Howard and Noah Pink (Tetris, 2023)

A shade too long, as I said, but several cuts above the likes of After the Hunt, Roofman and One Battle after Another.

What used to be called a sleeper.

Catch it on Amazon.

Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (1991) *****

I always approach cult with some unease. You never know why a film has fallen into the category. It could simply be awful and resurrected with glee because someone has cleverly constructed a sub-genre called So Bad It’s Good – check out Orgy of the Dead (1965) or Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humpe and Find True Happiness? (1969). Or it’s been a surprising flop first time round and discovered an audience through VHS and DVD – The Shawshank Redemption (1994) the forerunner in that field. But the plusses – well-made, great characters, some standout scenes – in the Stephen King adaptation were so obvious and the studio put a lot of dough behind re-marketing it to the at-home audience that it was not so surprising that it found a better response second time around.

But Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man did not, as with The Shawshank Redemption, come garlanded with seven Oscar nominations, and the stars had considerably less marquee appeal and peer acceptance than Tim Robbins (The Player, 1992) and Morgan Freeman (Driving Miss Daisy, 1990). Mickey Rourke (9½ Weeks, 1986) and Don Johnson (The Hot Spot, 1990) had not only mostly blown their status in the Hollywood hierarchy but only seemed one newspaper headline away from further notoriety.

That it works – and so well- relies on mix of several ingredients. In the first place it’s a throwback to the buddy movie, the easy camaraderie between Harley Davidson (Mickey Rourke) and the Marlboro Man (Don Johnson) has obvious precedents from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and clearly is some kind of homage to the Paul Newman-Robert Redford picture since it pinches three of the elements that made the western such a box office smash.

Secondly, our fellas do bad for a good – if somewhat lopsided – reason so aren’t true criminals and, in any case, earn a get-out-of-jail-free card because it turns out they’ve robbed from proper bad guys. Thirdly, there’s a terrific robbery and street shoot-out. Fourthly, it draws on the spaghetti western in the costume department, repurposing the top-to-toe dusters into black leather, an idea that would be snatched up by the likes of The Matrix and quintet of bad guys toting machine guns and dressed in black picked up not only by The Matrix but also by Men in Black (1997).

You could argue that a better director than Simon Wincer (Harlequin, 1980) would have done more visually with the leather-clad gangsters emerging from a vehicle and producing a solid wall of lead – perhaps through slo-mo or taking more time to concentrate on their sudden appearance – and made it a scene that might stand up to the ambulatory episodes in The Wild Bunch (1969) or Reservoir Dogs (1992). Even so, quite simply, it is a stunningly arresting piece of cinema.

But the real reason this works is that the two main characters are so human. Harley is given to philosophizing and wondering (in the manner, it might be said, of Butch Cassidy) and Marlboro loses out in love. While they fall into the category of endless drifters, an aversion to commitment, living easy, and more in love with their bikes than anything else, they are almost winsome in their innocence, as if everyone else will just fall into line with their world view.

*Signed photo of Mickey Rourke in this piacture will set you back three hundred bucks.*
*That’s cult for you.*

Anyways, we are duped into thinking this is going to be a John Wick-Die Hard wild ride from the opening scenes where both dudes prove mighty handy with their fists, Harley preventing a gas-station robbery, Marlboro taking on poolroom cheats in a bar. The plot only kicks in when they discover that the bank is planning to foreclose on their favorite bar. Needing to get their hands on a quick $2.5 million, the boys decide to do a bit of foreclosing themselves, taking the required sum from the bank in question, organizing a neat heist only to discover they’ve not stolen money but drugs.

Being smarter than your average hood, they swap the drugs for the dough but don’t take into account that the villains are smarter than the average thug and aren’t in the business of donating to good causes. The gangsters hunt them down. Harley and Marlboro could just disappear, especially once they dispose of the hidden tracking device, because they are A-grade students in the art of hiding away. Instead, honor is at stake so they set up an ambush in an airplane graveyard.

Since you’re asking, the Butch Cassidy the Sundance Kid grace notes are: Marlboro is the equal of The Sundance Kid is the shooting stakes and, in fact, like his predecessor, Marlboro manages the same trick of shooting off a character’s gunbelt; in the gunfighting stakes, Harley is the equivalent of Butch, never killed a man, absolutely useless with a pistol; and, the piece de resistance, when trapped they jump off an exceptionally high ledge into water.

Mickey Rourke and Don Johnson take the opportunity to shift well away from their existing screen personas and are thoroughly engaging. Simon Wincer keeps to a tidy pace. Written by Don Michael Paul (Half Past Dead, 2002) in his debut.

The action is top-notch, all the characters are well-drawn, the women not just bed fodder, usually brighter than the men. Terrific roster of supporting cast including Chelsea Field (The Last Boy Scout, 1991), Tom Sizemore (Saving Private Ryan, 1998), Robert Ginty (The Exterminator, 1980), Daniel Baldwin (Mulholland Falls, 1996), pop star Vanessa Williams (Eraser, 1996), Giancarlo Esposito (Megalopolis, 2024), Tia Carrere (Rising Sun, 1993) and Kelly Hu (X-Men 2, 2003).

The kind of movie where you wish they would do it all over again. Had the movie been a success a sequel would have been a shoo-in. As it is, we’ve only got this, so enjoy it while you can.

Catch it (for the moment) on Amazon Prime.

Duet for Cannibals (1969) ****

Terrific twist-a-minute thriller. Forget its arthouse origins. The gap of half a century since its initial appearance has worked in its favor and you can now view it as exceptionally gripping entertainment. The Swedish setting doesn’t mean it’s drenched in angst and repression, and instead pivots on that other Swedish contribution to cinema of that decade of sex and nudity. Though power games these days tend to belong to the horror vernacular where innocents stray into the wrong location – Barbarian (2022), Heretic (2024) – outwith such business-set items as Working Girl (1988) and The Devil Wears Prada (2006), this belongs to an earlier version of the cycle which relies on sexual undertones.

This will most likely be touted as worth a look because it was one of the very few – less than a dozen – movies directed by women in the 1960s. While Swedish actress Mai Zetterling was the jointly the most prolific with four films beginning with Loving Couples (1964) and Frenchwoman Agnes Varda, also with four, the most acclaimed following Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962), American Susan Sontag’s debut – she also wrote the piece – was the most highly awaited. Through her writings she was something of an outspoken icon and an intellectual powerhouse.

*You can tell it’s arthouse because the poster is only altered minimally.*
*Instead of holding four figures in her hand the woman now holds on.*

Made in Sweden with a Swedish cast and while originally seen as Bergmanesque or perhaps Pinteresque, a contemporary audience is more likely to ignore the other influences and settle for the innocents walking willingly into a trap. Tomas (Gosta Ekman) goes to work for enigmatic political exile Dr Bauer (Lars Ekborg). His duties mostly involve curating the revolutionary’s life’s work, transcribing diaries and such, but occasionally he is called upon to do what appear to be simple acts of espionage, nothing dangerous just delivering a mysterious parcel.

Dr Bauer is pumped up with his own importance and expects employees at his beck and call – Tomas has to sleep there, in a made-up bed in the library – and enjoys the power surge of bawling people out when minor mishaps occur. But he also enjoys – if that’s the word – a peculiar marriage to younger Italian wife Francesca (Adrianna Asti) who while doe-eyed is far from docile. On her first encounter with Tomas, Francesca breaks a window and it’s not long until she exerts a sexual lure.

Tomas dreams of making love to her and would watch her making love to her husband in a car in the garage except Francesca obscures the windscreen with shaving foam. That scene in itself is one of the most intriguing. She has thrown an almighty sulk, locked herself in the car, ignoring her husband until she starts the engine and nearly mows him down at which point the tempo dramatically changes triggering for a bout of heavy sex.

*Nothing so common as a noveliization for Sontag. She gets the full screenplay treatment.*
*This appeared in 1970.*

Theoretically, Dr Bauer is dying from a mysterious illness. You get the sense he’s auditioning Tomas as someone to look after his wife when he’s gone, but all of that could just be part of the game.

There’s a marvelous scene where Tomas is encouraged to continue eating at the dinner table to the soundtrack of Dr Bauer throwing up in the toilet. When the doctor returns, he heaps food on his plate and continues eating.

Dr Bauer isn’t just paranoid – the cook’s poisoning him, his phone’s tapped, Tomas is a spy, his wife’s planning to kill him – but he’s also a narcissist, studying his face in the mirror, improving his appearance with wigs and a painted-on aesthetic beard. He encourages potential intimacy by having Tomas read poetry to his wife.

She’s the dominant one in her fantasy, rescuing Tomas from an enchanted castle, standing above him on a stool, bandaging his face so that as a mummy he can terrorize her in sexual fashion. She puts her husband’s perennial sunglasses on his eyes. Sometimes her husband’s head is bandaged.

Braun plans to kill his wife because “there’s no point keeping her alive.” Equally, she, apparently is intent on returning the compliment though she wants Tomas to do the dirty deed. Or it could be a murder-suicide pact.

She locks her husband in her bedroom closet so she can make love to Tomas while he listens but he also has key to the door and could let himself out at any time. When Tomas’s girlfriend Ingrid (Agneta Ekmanner) enters the equation Tomas is forced to watch her making love to Dr Bauer. And it’s not long before Tomas is chucked out and Ingrid sucked in. In one of the most erotic scenes you’ll ever witness husband and wife feverishly feed Ingrid with their hands and before you know it she’s sharing their bed.

Even within the confines and the mathematical possibilities of the power play, you still never know which way this is going to turn. You might quibble at the voice-over which attempts to play much of the goings-on through Tomas’s POV and the flirtations with left wing politics, but those are easy to ignore as you are carried along on the twists and turns. It keeps twisting till the very end when the stings in the tail come fast.

These days it would be played at a higher tempo, the melodramatic elements ramped up, but actually the lack of emotional heft works to its advantage. Terrific debut from Susan Sontag. The slinky Adriana Asti (Love Circle, 1969) steals the show.

Rare find.

Catch it on Netflix (great print) or YouTube.

Should you be interested YouTube has an interview with both Sontag and Varda.

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) ****

The one with the wife-swapping. Like Easy Rider released earlier the same year, a hymn to freedom, only this time of the sexual kind. Responsible thirtysomethings, well-to-do, married with children, jealous of the younger generation’s counter culture, seek guilt-free irresponsibility. They feel they’ve missed out, despite knocking back cocktails in their heyday, probably remained virgins until marriage. Like the recently-reviewed The Battle of the Villa Fiorita (1965), the problems incurred in marriage appear eternal, and decades later this holds up superbly, not just for taking a measure of its times, but for a screenplay setting up a bold series of reversals, character reaction you would never expect, that will have you in stitches even as it dissects universal truths.

Documentary film-maker Bob (Robert Culp) and housewife Carol (Natalie Wood) “find” themselves at a weekend retreat espousing naked yoga, primal screams, group therapy and emotional intimacy. Carol admits she finds her husband controlling. They return in evangelistic mode, desperate to pass on their new-found knowledge to their stuffier friends, Ted (Elliott Gould) and Alice (Dyan Cannon).

*The advertising campaign focused on the tease of wife-swapping.*

The film unfolds in a series of long sequences, each sparked by external incident. Bob confesses to his wife that while away on business he had an affair. To his astonishment she forgives him. Expecting this to be a prelude to some new way of tormenting an unfaithful husband, Bob remains skeptical until Carol convinces him that her world-view has changed following the retreat.

But Ted and Alice find it harder to accept. In a brilliant scene that exposes basic gender differences, he sees the problem as his revelation, she as the act of infidelity itself. High after meeting the other couple, Ted wants sex, but Alice, shocked by what she has heard, cannot contemplate it. He exerts so much pressure that she, deeply insecure, is almost on the verge of giving in. The dialogue not just marvelously encapsulates their marriage but sets out opposing views that, I am sorry to say, would probably be as prevalent today.

But the best scene, a superb reversal, occurs when Bob, spurning another night of illicit passion, returns home from a trip early to find his wife in bed with the tennis coach. Gender equality et al. The sequence turns completely on its head when, according to the couple’s new philosophy, Bob should not only accept and forgive, but help the tennis coach out of his predicament, calming his fears of facing an angry husband, in effect consoling his bedroom rival.

What appears to have been just a Ted fantasy, hooking up with a woman he met on an airplane, turns out to be true, creating a crisis in that marriage and when Alice is pacified, acknowledging a new truth, it is she who calls for an orgy. Now this is a revolution for Alice is by far the most repressed, although attractive almost matronly, and still using a childish word to describe her private parts. Her confessions to a psychiatrist reveal a tormented individual.

It’s a stunning debut from Paul Mazursky (An Unmarried Woman, 1978) who also had a hand in the screenplay with Larry Tucker (I Love You, Alice B. Toklas, 1968). He takes a story of endorsed immorality and stamps it as a morality tale. A movie that depended so much on dialogue concludes with a fabulous series of shots where the look on the faces of the characters tells you all you need to know.

Elliott Gould (The Night They Raided Minsky’s, 1968) and Dyan Cannon (The Murder Game, 1965) are the pick of the actors, both stepping up to the plate after less than stand-out performances previously. Both were Oscar-nominated but more importantly here created screen personas that would define their futures. Natalie Wood (This Property Is Condemned, 1966), in her first picture in three years, revitalized her career after a string of flops. Robert Culp, in a step-up from the I Spy television series (1965-1968), initially takes center stage but cedes ground to the superior acting of the others.

Where a whole bundle of films by new directors flopped that year and the next by targeting the younger generation, this was a success by painting a wry picture of a slightly older generation, not yet tipping into middle age, but terrified they might be missing out on something.

On Swift Horses (2025) *** – Seen at the Cinema

Authentic story stymied by unlikely plot. Set in a post-Korean War American when the United States is still a land of opportunity even for blue collar workers but sexuality and other forms of self-expression are stifled and the homosexual world is only accessible through secret codes. Married Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones) hankers after something of the wilder life apparently enjoyed by the brother Julius (Jacob Elordi) of her staid husband Lee (Will Poulter). Truth be told she hankers after an illicit relationship with Julius.

Muriel harbors two other secrets. Firstly, she wants to gamble, a notion that would never gain approval from her husband, who accounts for every penny in his bid to own his own home and thus move up in society. Secondly, she has lesbian tendencies and gradually, encouraged by the self-confidence generated through successful betting at the racetrack, she assumes a different persona, surprisingly capable of making the first move.

Lee is aware of his brother’s proclivities, though these, too, are measured in guarded tones. Julius lives “in another world”, not just the low-down hustling and gambling and earning a living as a gigolo and card cheat. His homosexuality is repressed but his barriers are broken down by Mexican hustler Henry (Diego Calva). But while Julius is willing to settle for a life of energetic sex with Henry, his lover has greater ambition and plans to move up in society via the scam route.

Muriel’s affection for Julius is not hampered by the fact that he constantly steals from her, pocketing the cash she sends him for a bus fare home, burglarizing their house while they sleep. And while she is happy to indulge in a casual affair with gay neighbor Sandra (Sasha Calle) she’s not whole-heartedly committed to that lifestyle. And it’s hard to see just how committed she is to Lee – the horde of cash she wins at the racecourse she keeps hidden from her husband even though it would miraculously ease their upwardly mobility.

While Muriel negotiates the hidden world with some care – gay people of both sexes meet at a certain hotel or come together under the guise of a book club – Julius is less wary and is beaten up and robbed a couple of times.

This isn’t quite the lush America of 1950s Hollywood with women bedecked in colorful dresses and enjoying cocktails, but there’s still satisfaction to be had in hauling yourself up and owning a tract of land and your own house. And it’s still down’n’dirty. Casinos spy on customers through two-mirror mirrors set in the ceiling and beat the life out of anyone caught cheating.

What wins your heart is the yearning. Muriel is caught in a half-world, even when she finds a willing lesbian partner she still aches for a heterosexual whirl with Julius. And Julius who believes he has found a safe sexual haven with Henry discovers that the latter’s naked ambition will destroy their tryst.

What doesn’t work are the fairy tale aspects. Julius isn’t a particularly good card cheat, a hidden ace or a partner at another table providing him with illicit advantage at the poker table. You’d expect he’d be rumbled quite easily. But the plot says no.

Similarly, Muriel enjoys an unbelievable good run on the horses, able to turn tips overheard from customers in the diner where she works into winning bets. Pretty quickly, and without a stumble, she has amassed a stash of $20,000. As if.

The ending doesn’t work either, Julius galloping on a horse (yep!) from San Diego to Las Vegas – a distance of some 350 miles (that’s some horse!) – after he realizes that, in fact, his heart belongs to Muriel, whose marriage has at last broken up, and she’s decided to follow her heart and become a gambler.

It leaves you wondering what kind of relationship they would have, a lavender marriage, where both are free to indulge in other aspects of their sexuality, no doubt living high on the hog from her racetrack winnings and his cheating at cards.

It looks to me like the director has bottled out of the third act, the one where supposedly they are the person of each other’s dreams and manage to make a life together as happy gamblers, until one or other decides that a person of their own sex is more fulfilling ultimately than a person of the opposite sex.

You didn’t need the barmy plot for this to work. And in fact it’s the barmy plot that gets in the way of it working. Both Julius and Muriel are entirely believable in looking for a love that dare not speak its name but can yet be easily located if you can follow the codes or if your gaydar is sufficiently developed.

Oddly enough, the most heart-breaking scene is the one before the barmy galloping. On the message board inside a gay meeting place are notes revealing the heartbreak caused not just by the dashing of love’s hopes but the destruction of marriages by men unable to conceal their secret desires.

The acting is uniformly good, though Jacob Elordi (Saltburn, 2023) thanks to his vulnerability, wins by a nose from Daisy Edgar-Jones (Twisters, 2024). But Will Poulter (Warfare, 2025) and Diego Calva (Babylon, 2022) also score points. Movie directing debut from Daniel Minahan from a script by Bryce Kass (Lizzie, 2018) based on the novel by Shannon Pufahl.

While you have to admire the actors for taking a gamble on this project – Elordi and Edgar-Jones are down as executive producers so they might also have taken pay cuts. But it has been an unmitigated financial bomb. Even the leanest movies these days appear to cost upwards of $10 million and this has barely touched the $1 million mark in global box offices. I attended the only daily screening at my local multiplex and there was only one other person in the audience. It probably deserves better and might have an afterlife on a streamer.

Enjoy the performances and ignore the plot.