User Reviews

"Crime is so stimulating!" So says Shirley Booth as a very chatty American tourist, traveling through the Italian countryside, involved in a very bizarre situation when she witnesses the stabbing of a French man she's taking a giant crate for to the castle of the prickly Kurt Kasznar. With an almost Igor like sidekick (Michael J. Pollard), Kasznar welcomes Booth and niece Carol Lynley into the castle, involving them in a strange adventure that an oh too friendly American like Ms. Booth can tell her canasta partners back in the states about.

Fresh off of "Hazel", Booth is an always delightful presence, but she's got herself involved in a real convoluted mess with this one. It's a TV movie with a few good location sequences but a plotline that seems to have been written after too many glasses of chianti. One rather shocking scene has Lynley witness Kasznar smothering a bird that somehow got into the castle as easily as if he was squashing a bug.

This is trying to be a light-hearted adventure comedy, but the plotline really makes no sense, and the characters are all just too bizarre to really hold interest. Booth get some really funny lines, but that doesn't necessarily make for a good film. The relationship between Kasznar and Pollard is also questionable, with the seemingly half witted Pollard none too pleased by the presence of the two women. Gayle Hunnicutt as a bizarre vixen wears a wardrobe that combines the fashion sense of Elvira and Joanne Worley. This seems to have been released in theaters overseas, which explains the fact that it does not look like your average American TV movie.

I'll sit through anything with Shirley Booth in it. To prove my point, I sat through The Smugglers, a silly 1960s drama with a European background that hardly shows the scenery.

While on vacation in Europe with her stepdaughter Carol Lynley, Shirley get suckered into a smuggling scheme by Charles Drake. He completely pulls the wool over her eyes, making up a story about a festival and a goddess statue, and she agrees to smuggle his item across the border in her car. Then, when she and Carol drive away, they reveal to the audience that they're experienced smugglers! Shirley thinks it's great fun. "Nobody ever suspects me of anything!" she giggles.

The bad guys in this movie are strangely ominous. One is mentally deficient, one is elderly, and one barely speaks English; but don't underestimate them. Before long, they're killing and scheming just like normal villains. They take up a lot of screen time, too, which is unfortunate since I was really only interested in Shirley Booth's adorable warble. If you're like me, you might want to just stick with The Matchmaker.