'70s British gangster movies

London is such an expensive (practically unaffordable), flash metropolis now that its a real delight to re-visit that seedy city of the 1970s - which I remember from my 20s then - with its cheap rooms and jobs where spivs and various grubby lowlifes ruled - from Burton's gangster in VILLAIN - made the same year 1971 as Caine's GET CARTER, to essential thrillers like THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY. Here we look at VILLAIN, THE SQUEEZE, SITTING TARGET, HENNESSY, PERFECT FRIDAY, and a Trash 70s classic THE LEGACY - giving employment to a lot of our favoutires and stuffed with all those British character actors earning a crust here.   These are all as good as our '70s Brit favourites like Steiger and Lee Remick in the IRA drama HENNESSY or that amiable John Wayne western set in 70s London: BRANNIGAN. The seedy early 70s London is also caught in ALL COPPERS ARE - a recent discovery - all at London/Trash labels - along with GOOBYE GEMINI and cult trash classic DORIAN GRAY. 

VILLAIN,1971. Vic Dakin, a sadistic gang leader and a mother-obsessed homosexual modeled on real-life gangster Ronnie Kray, is worried about potential stool pigeons that may bring down his criminal empire. Vic, who enjoys playing at rough trade with his sidekick Wolfe, plans a payroll robbery and directs the blackmailing of Members of Parliament with a taste for unorthodox sex. Scotland Yard Police Inspector Matthews, playing Javert to Vic's Jean Valjean, is moving in on him and the gang. Gang-member Edgar is hospitalized for an ulcer, and Inspector Matthews might be able to make him sing. Will Edgar spill the beans to the coppers before Vic can silence him?
Richard Burton seems to be having a lot of fun here, Cathleen Nesbitt again plays his doting old mother (as in 1969's terrible STAIRCASE) whom he takes on day trips to Brighton, and there is a great gallery of supporting faces. Burton's boytoy Ian McShane also gets it on with '60s dolly bird Fiona Lewis (topless again) - though unlike the same year's SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY there are no intimate scenes between the men, Vic usually punches Wolfe, maybe thats their foreplay (below) .... Nigel Davenport and Colin Welland (a PC Plod type) are the cops closing in, Donald Sinden is ideal as the corrupt Member of Parliament, Joss Ackland and T.P. McKenna flesh out Vic's associates, as do James Cossins, Tony Welby and Del Henney - the rapist from that year's STRAW DOGS).  

VILLAIN holds its own in the violence stakes, the payroll robbery is botched and things start to go wrong for our beleagured Villain. Its a prime contender for a great 70s crime drama.  Michael Tuchner directs from a script by comedy writers Dick Clement and Ian la Frenais who later gave us their own more comic Swinging London thriller OTLEY in 1968 with Tom Courtenay and Romy Schneider and another gallery of supporting players, including yes Fiona Lewis again.  

SITTING TARGET, 1972, by contrast is nasty and brutal with no redeeming features - Oliver Reed is in his element as he snarls and seethes through this brute force crime thriller, ably directed by Douglas Hickox (ENTERTAINING MR SLOANE, THEATRE OF BLOOD). Olly is uber-thug Harry Lomart who easily breaks out of prison with his sidekick Birdy (Ian McShane again)  and they go on the run, Olly though wants to track down and kill his faithless wife (Jill St John) who has told him she wants a divorce and is pregnant by another man. 

This is all grimly realistic with authentic South London locations - those tower blocks around Battersea and Victoria (as in ALL COPPERS ARE) though St John is hilariously miscast here as the Battersea housewife, with June Brown (Dot Cotton from EASTENDERS) as her next-door neighbour. This is a role that cries out for Carol White or Billie Whitelaw who would be ideal here dishing up greasy breakfasts with a cigarette dangling from their lips. The violence and the shootups continue in this cold, drab London until the climax and the wife's secret lover is revealed .... Edward Woodward, Frank Finlay, Freddie Jones are able support.

THE SQUEEZE from 1977, long unseen here, is however the real deal. I like this one a lot, and it will be due for a rewatch. Tough and brutal yes, but stylish too as a great cast go head to head, as directed by Michael Apted (TRIPLE ECHO, THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER and still directing now). This is back to 70s London with a vengance, that city of cheap clothes and cheap cars, and grubby rooming houses. Stacey Keach is terrific as Jim Naboth, the shambolic shambling alcoholic ex-cop whom we first see drunk falling down the escalator of the underground - he is as memorable as he was in Huston's FAT CITY. His sidekick who looks after him is, oddly, comedian Freddie Starr, playing it straight here.

A vicious gang kidnaps a woman and her daughter (plus dog) to extort money from her rich husband. He and her down on his luck ex-husband who's an ex cop, decide to try to deal with the kidnappers themselves.
The kidnap scene is nicely handled in the park. The seedy underworld is nicely served up by Stephen Boyd as a frightening mobster - this was Boyd's last main role, he died that year aged 45 and again when playing nasty (as in BEN HUR or GENGHIS KHAN) he ramps it up to the max. 

The main hood is oily David Hemmings, in a good late role too. Edward Fox for once is lively and the kidnapped wife is Carol White, that ill-fated one of the new British girls of the 60s who went from being a child actress (CARRY ON TEACHER) to hits like CATHY COME HOME, UP THE JUNCTION, POOR COW, a foray to Hollywood and dying aged 48 in 1991. The most difficult scene here is where the bored kidnappers force her to strip for their amusement, to a Stylistics song and we see the character's desperation and humiliation, and perhaps the actress's too, it is all brutally unerotic. Keach too is stripped and humiliated by Boyd and his henchman and has to return home stark naked, not even left his grubby underwear. 

The sleaze seems piled up here as the drama unfolds and of course all goes wrong. THE SQUEEZE remains an eye-popping revenge thriller capturing 70s London perfectly (gritty locations, a cigarette smoke-fugged London Underground, dismal pubs and Soho 'massage parlours', and a pre-gentrified Battersea and Clapham - expensive areas now) with a dynamic cast, with several of our favourites here.

HENNESSEY, 1975. A fascinating view now. This thriller was barely seen back in the ‘70s and not at all here since, dealing as it does with the IRA and 'the Troubles' in Northern Ireland. I imagine it was too close for comfort then, and the preposterous plot about blowing up the Houses of Parliament during The Queen’s State Opening ceremony, would hardly have been met with approval. This American-International title though keeps one engrossed, they certainly cast it well, from the opening riot in Belfast – scenes we were familiar with at the time, hardly “entertainment” though. 

The story – by actor Richard Johnson, playing a hard-boiled detective here – features Niall Hennessy, whom Rod Steiger plays in regular scenery-chomping mode, like where he sees his wife and daughter (young Patsy Kensit) killed accidentally in that riot as he falls on his knees in the street and howls like an animal. His revenge involves blowing up The Royal Family and the Houses of Parliament, as the IRA, led by diehard Eric Porter, begin to realise and have to follow him to London to stop him, as the consequences if he succeeds would be unimaginable. 

Enter Lee Remick in a thankless role as the Irish widow of a friend, who puts him up without realising what he is up to. Trevor Howard enjoys himself as the chief of Scotland Yard, and others involved include Peter Egan, Margery Mason. Don Sharp’s direction keeps it tight and engrossing as we watch Steiger preparing for his mission, as he impersonates a Member of Parliament. The State Opening is from an actual documentary cleverly intercut with the film, which almost convinces one it is the real thing. It is odd seeing a younger Royal Family here and real political figures like Ted Heath and Mrs Thatcher. It is all quite fascinating now and amusing too, apart from seeing Remick wasted in a thankless role - she and Steiger were a lot more fun in NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY in 1968..

PERFECT FRIDAY in 1970 seems tame and genteel by comparison, one of (Sir) Peter Hall's cinema forays at the time. A bank robbery caper, it captures the flavour of the era - particularly as Ursula Andress and Stanley Baker get out of their clothes. He is the timid deputy under manager of the bank where Lady Britt Dorset and her aristocrat husband David Warner require loans to prop up their lifestyle. Our deputy bank manager though has a plot of it his own and needs the impoverished toffs to carry it out, so who is going to doublec-cross who? Baker, Warner and Andress are all highly watchable - in our out of clothes - and it is an amusing forgettable trifle but pales in comparison with those brutal thrillers that came along later in the Seventies .... amusing now too to see that pre-"computer says no" world of banking with real managers who know their clients! 

and now for a 70s Trash classic: THE LEGACY. This schlock horror film from 1978 has it all - Katharine Ross (sort of reprising her STEPFORD WIVES role) and her real-lifre husband Sam Elliott as the Americans in England and being forced to stay at a spooky country pile, stuffed with odd characters: Margaret Tyzack as that creepy nurse, The Who's Roger Daltry as a rock star, Charles Gray and John Standing, Lee Montague, Hildegarde Neil and more .... what power is keeping them there?
SPOILERS AHEAD: (It turns out they are the descendents of a 17th century witch who was burnt at the stake and who are gathered at an English country house in the hope of receiving part of the family legacy, but why is Katharine included? We wonder until she sees that portrait of the witch from centuries before and she realises she is the chosen one... Then all those nasty deaths - one consumed by flames, another chokes on a chicken bone, a mirror shatters and the fragments impale another, and theres that fatal tumble down the stairs ... to say any more would be too much ! 

Sam too takes a naked walk to the shower where the water suddenly gets too hot to handle and he has to break the glass to get out, more blood ... This kind of thing (from a Jimmy Sangster story) was lapped up by audiences back in the 70s, usually as part of double bills, dabbling with the supernatural, or in this case a version of Agatha Christie and who gets killed next? 
(Pop star Fabian too choked to death in that 1965 version of Christie's TEN LITTLE INDIANS, a camp favouirite of ours, so Roger should have known where his part was going ...). Ross's unique glamour and all that hair are agan well used here, if only the material had been better, still its quite entertaining of its type. Still, I dare say they had a lot of fun making it. Directed by Richard Marquand.

More Brando: the Countess & Reflections ...

Two more Brando films from his great era in the '60s. After Penn's marvellous THE CHASE in 1966 (see below), its a return visit to A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG - Charlie Chaplin's last film which opened in January 1967 (I was in the crowd at the London premiere and saw Brando and the Chaplin family arrive, but no Loren ....). Being 20 at the time I did not like this one at all, it seeming hopelessly old-fashioned. Looking at it again now I have mixed feelings, it does not really work as a comedy or a romance, as there is so little chemistry between the two leads ....

Natascha, a White Russian countess, stows away on a luxury liner at Hong Kong, determined to seek a new life in America. Natascha hides in the cabin of Ogden Mears, a millionaire diplomat, thereby causing an endless stream of misunderstandings and complications; particularly when his wife, Martha, joins the trip at Honolulu, necessitating a 'marriage' to Ogden's valet, Hudson, a saronged-dive overboard and more subterfuge on the part of Ogdon and his associate, Harvey.

Loren & Chaplin by Eve Arnold

Brando and Loren did not get on at all, the early scenes are fitfully amusing as we are entranced by the old-fashioned feel of it all. We are obviously on a studio set for the ship's suite with all those doors and endless dashing in and out of rooms. Loren carries it all by herself and certainly worked hard, she apparantly had good rapport with Chaplin and was pleased to work with him. Brando though is the wrong leading man here, he had done comedy before but seems bored and ill at ease here, and looks fed up with it all by the end, but it seems he had to replicate exactly what Charlie wanted as Chaplin used to act out the scenes for them .... so it probably didnt give him any room to improvise. Someone like James Garner would surely have been more ideal

though the whole selling point is that this is Brando in a romantic comedy with Loren, written and directed by Chaplin, who did the music too, including that nice tune "This Is My Song". His script though may have been fine in the '30s and '40s (where there were lots of movie stowaways and runaway heiresses) but in the middle of the Swinging '60s seemed hopelessly old-fashioned. Margaret Rutherford has a delicious scene, English farceur Patrick Cargill has his moments, and our THE BIRDS favourite Tippi Hedren pops in to play Brando's icy wife. Questions remain unanswered: how does our  countess who has no money get the changes of clothes including the Hawaiian outfit to dive overboard in, and the scenes in Hawaii and on the beach are obviously studio too and rather clumsy.
That other older English director Alfred Hitchcock also did a film at that year TORN CURTAIN with another top two '60s stars (Newman and Andrews)  similarly ill at ease.  A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG then is fitfully amusing, but does not really work. Various Chaplin children pop up, including Geraldine, and the venerable Chaplin himself too.Its a pity Loren's mid-'60s two with Brando and Newman (Ustinov's LADY L, also fitfully amusing and good to look at) were not better films or better received. She didn't fare much better with Burton and O'Toole in the early '70s (1972's MAN OF LA MANCHA is certainly worth discovering now, as per review, Loren/O'Toole labels.)

REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE - Southern Fried Gothic!

In 1967 Marlon headed John Huston's drama, replacing Montgomery Clift (who died in 1966) initially cast in what would have been his 4th outing with Taylor .... we are back in that Deep South Gothic universe as created by Tennessee Williams or Carson McCullers or William Inge.  This is a McCullers tale and a very twisted bizarre one it is ...

On a U.S. Army post circa 1948, a major who is an impotent, latent homosexual is married to an infantile wife who never misses an opportunity to ridicule his masculine failings. He displaces his hostility by brutally flogging her horse and she retaliates by humiliating him before a houseful of guests, repeatedly slashing him across the face with her riding crop. She is also committing adultery with the officer next door, who's wife cut off her nipples with garden shears after the death of her baby, and has sought solace in the ministrations of her effeminate houseboy. The sixth character, coveted by the major, is a darkly handsome soldier, a voyeur and lingerie-fondler, given to nightly appearances as a peeping tom in the wife's bedroom and daily sessions of horseback riding in the middle of the woods stark naked.....

 I think that about covers it. Naturally it all climaxes in an outpouring of violence as repressed feelings come to the surface. The cast is the thing here ... Brando acquits himself well as the oddly gay major (Steiger was also playing repressed gay that year in THE SERGEANT, also set on a military base - in France - in contrast to his more flamboyant gay in '68's NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY, Steiger label); Elizabeth Taylor is over-ripe and note perfect in another of her Southern roles as the rather dim, rather coarse insensitive wife (her hilarious party food monologue is a career highlight), and the great Julie Harris is back in McCullers territory (as in THE MEMBER OF THE WEDDING) as the other wife, with her houseboy. Seeing Taylor and Harris together inevitably reminds one of Abra in EAST OF EDEN and Leslie Benedict in GIANT and how they both liked James Dean .... Brando shows what a fascinating actor he is when engaged in a role, he has some great moments here, the scene with Firebird the horse and his breakdown, his monologue on the enlisted men's lives and comeraderie "without clutter", and Taylor whipping him in her Alexandre of Paris hair creation! Brian Keith is solid as Harris's baffled husband, and Robert Forster is the naked solider. One can see too Huston's fascinating with the horses ....

Huston's film was originally meant to be shown in washed-out, desaturated golden tones, which certainly did not happen with the prints on general release, but the dvd now has the correct look. Good now to savour this again - it has long been unseen here, and this is in fact a Korean dvd issue I got. Key moments include Brando talking to himself and rubbing cosmetics into his face, and a supposedly naked Taylor (body double obviously) and all Julie Harris's scenes ... its all a weird mix of camp and drama, Southern Fried Gothic! - certainly one of Huston's most intriguing and under-rated, from his great '50s-'60s period (which included HEAVEN KNOWS MR ALLISON, THE UNFORGIVEN, THE MISFITS (see label), NIGHT OF THE IGUANA).  Must dig out his equally odd 1969 THE KRELIN LETTER again soon too.

Saturday Night Out - more early '60s dramas

SATURDAY NIGHT OUT from 1964 turns out to be a delightful variant on that old standby - the (mis)adventures of sailors on shore leave. It turns out to be a great London film too (see London label) capturing that early '60s vibe nicely (I moved here in 1964 myself, when 18). We see the Soho of the time, the clip joints and more ritzy establishments where scams are also rife. Directed by Robert Hartford-Davis in gleaming black and white, it assembles a nice cast too - some unheard of since (John Bonney, Inigo Jackson), others like Francesca Annis at the start of their careers. Produced by the Compton group usually associated the expolitation and European erotica but they also produced Polanski's British films and the equally interesting THE PLEASURE GIRLS (1965 label).

Here we have 5 sailors and a passenger alighting in London on their Saturday night out. The most interesting story is businessman Bernard Lee meeting suave conman Derek Bond in a Mayfair bar and soon he is set up as Bond's ladyfriend lush exotic Erika Remberg arrives and pretends to mistake him for someone else. Events pan out nicely but Lee manages to put one over on his blackmailers. Harry (Inigo Jackson) is less lucky, being taken to the cleaners in a Soho dive presided over by boxer Freddie Mills as 2 "hostesses" Caroline Mortimer and Vera Day mechanically part Harry from his wallet. Harry's naive pal Jamey (Colin Campbell, from THE LEATHER BOYS) fares better with the shy Jane (Francesca Annis) and their adventures include taking drunk Patricia Hayes home and getting a room for the night. 

Will our young lovers get together before the end as he has to get back to his ship to collect his things before they make a go of it in Scotland? We also get old timers David Lodge with a brassy blonde (Margaret Nolan) in every port, and Irishman Nigel Green who wants to drink a lot. There is also Australian Lee (John Bonney) who meets the very annoying vegan anarchist hippie Heather Sears - less of her role would have been nice. It all adds up to a fascinating package, fitting in pop group The Searchers too, and is like an early '60s remake of the 1950 POOL OF LONDON, and fits in nicely with those other early '60s dramas reviewed here: A PLACE TO GO, WEST 11, THE LEATHER BOYS. THE SYSTEM, FOUR IN THE MORNING etc, as per labels. SATURDAY NIGHT OUT has been too long unseen but now has a nice dvd release with informative booklet, like THE MARK below.

80,000 SUSPECTS - another of Val Guest's topical thrillers (like THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE) this 1963 drama sees the city of Bath coping with an outbreak of smallpox, as we centre on a group of professional people coping with the outbreak and their own relationships. Doctor Richard Johnson and nurse Claire Bloom are celebrating New Year despite their failing marriage, after his affair with Yolande Donlan (Mrs Guest, so good in Guest's EXPRESSO BONGO in 1959), the unfaithful wife of a medical colleague Michael Goodliffe. Wanda Godsell is brought to the hospital with the symptoms of smallpox got from her son, a sailor on leave. 

The city medical team headed by Basil Dignam try to contain the disease by finding all the contacts. Bloom also falls ill, but she - the good wife - recovers, aided by priest Cyril Cusack. The faithless wife however has run away with an old flame and also falls victim and has to isolate herself from the others .... it is all a very British drama, lacking the punch of the recent CONTAGION, but Bloom shines here, and would be teamed with Johnson again in that year's superior THE HAUNTING. Dependables Kay Walsh, Norman Bird, Ursula Howells lend good support, with good Scope and black and white photography. Bath is seen as a working city here not the heritage site it is now.

THE MARK, 1961, has never popped up anywhere here in the last 40 years or more, good therefore to see it on dvd with an informative booklet. It is also a good example of American studios financing films made in Europe.

A man who served prison time for intent to molest a child tries to build a new life with the help of a sympathetic psychiatrist.

This was actually filmed in Ireland, though set in England, and is a very topical subject now, featuring a child molester released back into the community, but will he re-offend or is he “cured”? Can nice Maria Schell trust him with her young daughter? He is the surprise casting of Stuart Whitman, quietly effective here in contrast to his usual contract fare at 20th Century Fox, like THE COMMANCHEROS. Rod Steiger too goes to town on the role of his psychiatrist, a role he attacks with relish. The good supporting cast includes Brenda De Banzie, Donald Wolfit, Donald Houston, Paul Rogers. We see Whitman after his 3 years in prison settle in a new town with a new position and fall in love with Schell. Things are fine until a child is molested and beaten in the town and the police pick him up for questioning. He has an alibi but a reporter who covered his former trial recognizes him,… can he re-gain the trust he has earned? Whitman earned an Academy Award nomination for best actor, but ironically lost to Maximilian Schell, the brother of Maria, his co-star here. Directed by Guy Green it is a good example of those black and white Cinemascope 20th Century Fox films of the time. Green of course photographed Lean’s GREAT EXPECTATIONS and the photography here is exemplary too. A downbeat drama that repays viewing and is surprisingly topical now with lots of child abuse stories in the media. 

Soon: more '60s stuff like TWO LEFT FEET and 1970's rarity THE BREAKING OF BUMBO, plus a Stephen Boyd double-feature THE THIRD SECRET and THE INSPECTOR (aka LISA), and more French and Italian features.

'60s comedy: The Loved One / Lord Love A Duck

Finally, Tony Richardsons's THE LOVED ONE - MGM's 1965 comedy "with something to offend everyone" that I never caught until now and I saw it on a Spanish dvd with Spanish sub-titles I could not remove. Fascinating stuff though - it may have opened briefly here in London at the time (it was reviewed in "Films & Filming" magazine) and then shoved out on release for a week,. but I somehow never saw it and it has never surfaced since as it seems MGM either forgot about it or locked it away.

Newly arrived in Hollywood from England, Dennis Barlow finds he has to arrange his uncle's interment at the highly-organised and very profitable Whispering Glades funeral parlour. His fancy is caught by one of their cosmeticians, Aimee Thanatogenos. But he has three problems - the strict rules of owner Blessed Reverand Glenworthy, the rivalry of embalmer Mr Joyboy, and the shame of now working himself at The Happy Hunting Ground pets' memorial home.

Richardson after the "kitchen sink" dramatics of LOOK BACK IN ANGER, A TASTE OF HONEY, THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER had that enormous success with TOM JONES in 1963 which (as per my previous post on him - that book on the Redgraves, Trash label, and the "Hollywood UK" tv series, TV label) gave him carte blanche for his next films. THE LOVED ONE has an impeccible pedigree: a Martin Ransohoff production, from Evelyn Waugh's novel satirising the American way of death, scripted by Terry Southern and Christopher Isherwood. Richardson, who despite being married to Vanessa Redgrave, was also gay or bi, juices it up with a great cast of cameos:

James Coburn, Roddy McDowell, Margaret Leighton, Dana Andrews, Tab Hunter as tour guide, Liberace as a casket salesman. We follow naive Englishman Robert Morse arriving in L A and staying with his actor uncle, John Gielgud (quietly hilarious), who is part of the English colony. We also get Robert Morley, Jonathan Winters in 2 roles and Rod Steiger does another outrageous turn as chief embalmer Mr Joyboy, looking after his grotesque elderly mother. Anjanette Comer is startlingly odd as the love intererst, the first lady embalmer with her unfinished home in 'the slide area'. If you are disturbed or offended by the funeral business, death in general, dead pets, or slightly veiled hints at necrophilia then you might want to give this one a miss. It is though a fascinating oddity now, and probably ahead of its time, as black comedy is much more acceptable now.

LORD LOVE A DUCK, 1966 - where writer George Axelrod treats one social sacred cow after another with amused disdain, skewering religion, motherhood, education, and matrimony, in gleaming monochrome images. Axelrod of course wrote plays like THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH and WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER, as well as scripting THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and BREAKFAST AT TIFFANYS, HOW TO MURDER YOUR WIFE among others, LORD LOVE A DUCK is his first as  director. Another under-rated '60s comedy then, this 1966 production was treated as a second feature here in the UK and also vanished without trace. I remember "Sight & Sound" raving about it though, particularly that scene where Tuesday Weld gets her father to buy her all those cashmere sweaters, its dizzylingly funny as she recites the names of the colours: 'Peach Put-On', 'Periwinkle Pussycat' etc, its a scene most actresses of her era just could not carry off . The following commentators describe it much better than I can:

Andrew Sarris in "The Village Voice" said:

"Tuesday Weld is Nabokov’s grown-up nymphet come to life in a cavalcade of cashmere sweaters, and closer to Nabokov’s original conception that Sue Lyon could ever be".

John Landis: 

"George Axelrod’s unclassifiable satire is one of the oddest Hollywood movies, which over the years has engendered passionate support and derision. For some it’s an incisively bizarre portrait of sixties America, for others it’s a sloppily made, undisciplined mess (with more boom mikes visible in full frame than even Play It Again Sam). However, nothing can dim the luster of the incredibly perverse scene where Tuesday Weld’s horny dad (Max Showalter) practically ejaculates while watching his sexy daughter try on sweaters."

Geoff Andrew (London):

"Axelrod’s patchy but often brilliant first attempt at direction: a kooky fantasy, very funny in its satire of contemporary teen morals and mores. McDowall plays a high school student of enormous IQ and fabulous powers, which he exercises in order to grant a pretty co-ed (Weld) her every heart’s desire, starting with the thirteen cashmere sweaters she requires to join an exclusive sorority, and ending with a husband whom he obligingly murders to leave her free to realise her true dream of movie stardom. Whereupon, realising he did it all for love, he ends up in the booby-hatch, happily dictating his memoirs. Taking in some delicious side-swipes at the ‘Beach Blanket’ cycle, Axelrod reveals much the same penchant (and talent) for cartoon-style sight gags as Tashlin, and coaxes a marvellous trio of variations on the American female from Tuesday Weld, Lola Albright and Ruth Gordon. Daniel Fapp’s stunningly cool, clear monochrome camerawork is also a distinct plus."

and Pauline Kael:

"This satire on teenage culture, modern education, psychoanalysis, and what have you was the best American comedy of its year, and yet it’s mostly terrible. The picture is bright and inventive, but it’s also a hate letter to America that selects the easiest, most grotesque targets and keeps screaming at us to enjoy how funny-awful everything is. Finally we’re preached at for our tiny minds and our family spray deodorants. Tuesday Weld has a wonderful blank, childlike quality as a Los Angeles high-school student who lusts after cashmere sweaters and wants everybody to love her. The director, George Axelrod, drew upon the novel Candy, which he beat to the movie post, as well as WHAT’S NEW, PUSSYCAT? and the Richard Lester movies; there is eating à la TOM JONES and there are other tidbits from all over, even from NIGHTS OF CABIRIA. Roddy McDowall plays a genie; Lola Albright is spectacularly effective as Tuesday’s cocktail-waitress mother; and Ruth Gordon does her special brand of dementia."

Quite a zany mid-60s double feature then - Tuesday is delightful and Lola Albright and Ruth Gordon are indeed formidable - and Martin West (above) as Tuesday's husband Roddy keeps trying to bump off, is eye-catching too. 

Advise and Consent, 1962, and that Sergeant ...

1962! - is it really 50 years ago? I was 16 and mad about movies, books and magazines and music; I see my 16 year old nephew now just as mad about his computer games and all his gadgets - he had his own laptop and internet since he was 15, I just had the radio and the two local cinemas and bookshops and library ... see 1962 label for other posts on that fascinating year - of course there is Marilyn's 50th anniversary too...

 One of 1962's big hitters, Otto Preminger's ADVISE AND CONSENT remains a fascinating re-watch now. Its from one of those important novels of the time by Allen Drury, purporting to take the lid off American politics and the inner workings of the Senate.  It was the ideal subject for Preminger after the success of ANATOMY OF A MURDER in 1959 (somehow his EXODUS in 1960 just does not do it for me), and is another great black and white film with good scope compositions and that fascinating cast: Henry Fonda as the proposed Secretary of State who may have communist leanings, Charles Laughton (his last role) as the wily Southern senator Seb Cooley trying to smear him, Walter Pidgeon has a good roles as the Senate Majority Leader, along with Peter Lawford, Gene Tierney (Otto's LAURA) as an elegant Washington hostess, Franchot Tone as the ailing President and Lew Ayres as the Vice President, Burgess Meredith and Don Murray as the blackmailed senator Brig Anderson with Inga Swenson as his uncomprehending wife.

"Films & Filming", October 1962 -
click to enlarge

What is fascinating now is that Anderson, as President of the Senatorial sub-committee considering the nomination of Leffingwell (Fonda), is being blackmailed [by Cooley's minions] over a gay relationship during his youth in wartime Hawaii - will the ambitious young senator crack under the pressure? Instead he goes to New York and tries to reason with his old army buddy, so we get that gay bar - maybe the first in a mainstream American film? - with those shadowy denizens of this strange underword; we see the senator recoil in horror and flee in a taxi, leaving his ex-pal lying in the gutter ... we soon realise due to the music and shadowy camerawork that the senator has only one solution open to him, and that involves an open razor ...

Cooley and the others are left to sort out the mess as the film shows the workings of U.S. politics and seems to be shot in the real locations.  It is a very ambitious and entertaining work with a large cast, and certainly one of the best of that great year 1962. (see label).

The advertising tried to make it more sensational ...

More '60s gays: by 1967 Marlon Brando was giving us his closeted army major deep in the American south in Huston's REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE where he is married to deep south gal Elizabeth Taylor but hankering after that soldier who goes horseriding naked in the woods .... then Rod Steiger as another frustrated sergeant in, yes, THE SERGEANT, is that lonely man in an army base in France who does not realise how much he yearns for soldier John Philip Law until he fumbles a pass at the horrified soldier, so he has to go and shoot himself. Getting back to critic Pauline Kael again, as she said at the time: Rod Steiger chases after John Philip Law so long that when he grabs him and kisses him its the climax of the picture. Then Law slugs him and Steiger goes out and shoots himself, and that's it. If Steiger had grabbed Law and been rebuffed an hour and a half earlier, he could have said "All right, so I made a mistake", and maybe the picture could have gone on and been about something. Everyone is so "normal" here that only a monster could have such aberrant impulses. Except for the Sergeant's there is no passion or sexuality of any kind in this sterile movie (directed by John Flynn) .... A repressed homosexual seems to be outside his (Steiger's) range; he keeps his face prissy, with his lips pursed - does playing a homosexual paralyze him as an actor? He gives such a tense, constricted performance its almost as if he didn't want to convince anybody. He never looks at Law with love (he looked at Poitier with more affection in IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT) ... THE SERGEANT is so insufferably "tasteful" that ironically it has less homosexuality in it than many movies have had unconsciously due to casting or indifference ...

ADVISE & CONSENT

Frank Sinatra too as THE DETECTIVE in 1967 goes after that murderer of a swishy guy picked up in a luridly depicted (no black and white shadows here, but Fox scope and colour) bar - the malicious gay guy of course taunts the repressed married man who goes berserk and bashes him with an ashtray; the other gays are all lonely oddballs whom the cops despise and treat like dirt.  By 1968 though Steiger had loosened up enough to have fun with his gay hairdresser in NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY - one of the many disguises he used to murder lonely widows (Rod Steiger label). Its a hilarious treat and George Segal and Lee Remick are a perfect late '60s couple, as were Steve and Faye in THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR. Then '69 gave us the dreadful STAIRCASE where Donen, Burton and Harrison were way off key - it was quite a good play on stage actually.

[Law too, who died aged 70 in 2008, had his 10 good years from the mid 60s - with Faye in Otto's HURRY SUNDOWN and Euro-fare like DANGER: DIABOLIK and of course Pygar the blind angel in BARBARELLA ... and trash classic THE LOVE MACHINE in 1970 (Trash label)].

The gals didn't fare so well either: Shirley McLaine as Martha Dobie in THE CHILDREN'S HOUR (or THE LOUDEST WHISPER), Wyler's second film of Hellman's THESE THREE, has to hang herself when she realises she really does love Audrey Hepburn - while in '67's THE FOX Keir Dullea's woodman comes between Anne Heywood and Sandy Dennis, also with fatal results ... but the '70s and liberation were just around the corner. Vito Russo's book and the film of THE CELLULOID CLOSET has all the details and lots more ....

ADVISE AND CONSENT remains a fascinating movie - THE SERGEANT played on TCM here a while back but I couldn't bring myself to look at it again, and Preminger's next one, tackling religion, THE CARDINAL from 1963 gets a re-run this Saturday - it could be another rainy afternoon movie here, not least of its attractions being Romy Schneider in one of her early American films as The Cardinal's love interest ...