Reviews

This film is a b-film, but it's quite an entertaining one!

Yeah, it's true that Biff Elliot is a ham-actor and not ace in the facial expression department but when it comes to letting his fists talk for him he sure is great!

Other noir gumshoes like Marlowe or Spade, although ready to fight if necessary, usually hang back and use their wits in tense scenes but not Mike Hammer; he doesn't waste a second before punching the guy/knocking him down/slapping him around!

Witness for example the scene where he fetches his buddy's ex from a bar where she is sitting with two older fellows. When the latter get to their feet to protest, Mike knocks them BOTH clattering down with a shove so brutal and swift that it looks real. I wonder if those gentlemen were actually bruised in the fall..

Yes, the plot is more or less impossible to follow, but who cares when you have plenty of fights and a string of gorgeously dressed ladies along the way.

Also interesting for a film from the Hayes code period is the 'naughty' stuff that gets by here. For example the gentleman bad guy with his male 'friend' who Hammer witnesses afterwards through the window having an ornament-smashing tantrum.

Then there's the dancing class building where there are a row of private rooms with sexily dressed 'dancing teachers' available for hire.

In addition two scenes, each with a blonde and toothy nympho twin (played by real-life twins) who throw themselves in turn at a not wholly reluctant Hammer. These twins both like to play with a kinky little back-scratcher and Hammer, fending off one clinging girl, gives the instrument back to her, saying as he leaves: 'Scratch!' (Couldn't help but wonder if this had got by the censor if he'd said: 'Scratch yourself!').

Not to forget of course the classic final scene where the extremely attractive Charlotte Manning (Peggy Castle - imagine a face not unlike Grace Kelly with the body of, say, Jayne Mansfield) finds Hammer sitting waiting for her with a gun in his hand. Understanding that she's been sussed she tries to get round him by talking to him while stripping off her trenchcoat, letting her hair down and then unfastening the straps on her high-heels and kicking them off toward him one after the other.

Hammer gets to his feet and she steps quickly into his arms, meanwhile reaching for a gun hidden behind him in a flower pot. But in his customary pre-emptive manner Hammer doesn't wait until she uses it. A shot rings out.

'How could you Mike?' she says in disbelief as she slumps down.

Hammer's reply: 'It was easy..'

Some thoughts about Season One of this show.

I read through fifty or more of the reviews posted here and yet everyone seems to write basically the same: either they like the show or they don't. Either Kaley is great or she's not. Most people think that the theme of Cassie imagining/halucinating her communication with the dead guy is repeated way too often. And I totally agree, especially as I don't like the actor who plays that role. (Had enough of him already in that British series where he plays the smooth but nasty husband opposite Joanne Froggart in which he looks and acts exactly the same as here.)

The problem with Flight Attendant is not that Kaley is a bad actress, she is actually rather good and often very attractive with her enormous eyes. It's not really her fault that the screenplay is poor and that her character barely develops and that the plot is full of holes..

For example, why, when she is interrogated by the feds on returning to New York, and her colleagues have all implicated her, do the police not ask where she was at the time of the murder, who she was with, and does she have any witnesses that can corroborate her story? They simply let her walk...

How can this ditzy flight attendant have an apparently successful lawyer (annoyingly portrayed by a very mis-cast actress wearing extremely large and vulgar-looking false eyelashes) as her best friend? And how convenient that the lawyer's boyfriend suddenly turns out to be an expert hacker..

Another poor scene is where our heroine needs to investigate a private jet flight connected to the baddies who are against her. By a massive coincidence, the pilot is the same one who flies on her normal commercial routes so, even though there is shady stuff going on, the pilot is willing to let her come along, when he knows she is a mess and unreliable. Arriving at the destination she sees crates being unloaded. She disembarks and goes to the crates and is able to simply lift the lid of the top one and look inside at the contents (batteries). She is then able to memorise a very long product designation which she later googles and finds that the batteries are supplied for rocket launchers.

Worst of all, in the showdown at the end, the fight scene is so clichéd. The ditzy girl is able to hold her own against the psychopathic hitman and end up pulling a gun on him and shooting him in the leg. Then, when she should kill him, in bursts her very un-macho flight attendant colleague and shoots him in the chest.

When sitting outside, by the amubulance, also a very clichéd scene, first the kind Italian guy who we thought was dead is wheeled out and he gives her a little wave, and she returns it. So it's like, well, he's all right then. Then the colleague comes and tells her 'I really work for the CIA'. This was so corny it made me laugh out loud. Then the bad guy is also wheeled past and he also waves and says 'hi Cassie'. I mean, WTF, the guy shot him in the chest! Was it only a blank, or did the bad guy have a bullet-proof vest on?

I actually thought the Miranda character was quite fun, especially when they gradually humanised her as the series progressed. Someone wrote that they were surprised that she had a Scottish accent. Well, the fact is that Michelle Gomez is Scottish. I like that when actors are not forced to pretend to be American in shows, because after all, there are loads of Brits in America.

They set it up at the end for a second season by making an opening for ditzy alcoholic flight attendant to start working for the CIA. Wonder how that will pan out?

Saw this movie now - finally..

I was 17 when this film was showing in my town but I never went to see it. Thought the title sounded like a porno movie at first, then found out it was a cop movie and didn't fancy it (although I did go and see Magnum Force).

This film is OK for one go - would most likely never watch it again. It has its moments but, as many have pointed out, the various scenes tend to drag and should have been reduced; especially the scene in the bar with John, Harve and Jolene, which could have been cut completely.

Have been reading through some of the other reviews here and was surprised that many found the ending 'came out of nowhere' and was a shock.. but come on, first John stops the camper and lets them go and then, for some trivial reason which I didn't quite understand, he gets on his bike to stop them again. Right there, at that moment, you just KNOW that something bad is going to happen, so when the shotgun comes out you're not really surprised...

This is not a straightforward anti-Easy Rider film, neither is it a straightforward pro-cop film. It has a jumble of elements so you can't really grasp whether the makers had any clearcut intentions. But if you see life as a jumble of good bad and ugly then this film is maybe for you.

This film starts - and ends - outdoors, with meek and mild artist and 'good husband', John Hamilton (Alan Ladd) sketching away. A bunch of friendly local scamps cluster around him, although the stiff and puffy Ladd doesn't seem to actually have an easy rapport with them.

Returning home he finds 'ogre', local sheriff Garretty, with his feet up on the table. Garretty starts belittling John as soon as he enters the room. He's waiting for John's wife Linda to come downstairs. When she does, the movie immediately kicks up a gear. Linda (Carolyn Jones) is alcoholic, unfaithful, vindictive and lying - she has no scruples about presenting an accidental bruise to a party of moneyed locals as being evidence that hubby is a wife-beater. Hubby, being stoic and self-effacing, says nothing to deny it.

Tired of the rustic scene and longing to return to the bright lights of the big city, Linda puts her energy into trying to persuade John that he is not a real artist and that he should take the art-teacher job offer - with guaranteed high wage - that she has brought about through her feminine wiles. Yes, Linda is 'bad wife' but she's still the most attractive and interesting character in the film. Pity then that she gets killed off pretty quickly and poor old John, returning from his visit to New York (where he's turned down the jobb offer) finds Linda missing and the community suspicious.

The film now presents us with a doubt-inducing scene where John finds a bill for cement, rings the supplier to query it and is told that he, Mr Hamilton, did indeed ring in the order some days ago. Going to the woodshed he finds fresh cementwork under a pile of logs. Hmm... is this film taking a dark turn; is he a split-personality, one persona being capable of murder while the other has no memory of the deed?

But no, the film doesn't go down that road. Instead it goes down a patently fairy tale road where John, due to the sudden arrival of a Connecticut version of a western lynch mob, has to make a run for it and is rescued in the woods by small but resourceful Emily who literally takes him by the hand and leads him to a secret cave, which is presided over by another little girl, who is called Angel!

The woods are scoured by cops and posse but the cave must be magical because none of those locals know about it! Here John can hide out in relative ease (the pursuers thankfully having no tracker dogs) plotting meanwhile to find out who really did murder Linda and employing his elfin helpers in various ways to enable him to visit the house and find Linda's stuff and using his magical skills to engineer a trap to flush out the murderer and culminating - Columbo-style - in a complicated showdown involving a reel-to-reel tape recorder.

If it wasn't that the adults talk openly in front of the kids about Linda's murder and even carry out the (blanket-covered) corpse in front of them, one might be forgiven for mistaking this for a Hayley Mills-type Disney adventure!

The murderer turns out to be, somewhat unexpectedly, not obvious villain - older bossy British guy - but prince-like younger heart-throbby guy. With 'bad wife' dead and removed from woodshed, and 'bad husband' magically wafted away (prison/execution?) 'good wife' can now unite with 'good hubby' and enjoy a true fairy tale happy ending, featuring good hubby painting, good wife supplying, not only lunch to elfin helpers but newspaper article to hubby, showing that he has also won crock of gold, that is, the praise and recognition of the art world. Cue to scamps, now many more of them, happily whooping and playing - The End.

William Shatner's mannered acting style has often been mocked but here it fits perfectly for the role of Adam Cramer, a young white-suited racist who comes to a small southern town with plans to disrupt the legally ordained process of integration.

This film could just as well have been named 'The Rabble Rouser'. The word intruder could be interpreted as implying that the protagonist is someone from the outside who is different than the ones he intrudes upon. However, most of the white population of Caxton seem to need little encouragement when it comes to racism. Indeed, it is the hotel desk lady, not Cramer, who is the first to utter the 'n word' in this film. The tone of the movie is struck already there at check-in.

Cramer wastes no time in getting to work on his brief (is he really sent there by the 'Patrick Henry Society', as he claims, or is he a maverick working on his own agenda, the film never answers that question) by getting the town's most influential man onto his side and from this man's white-pillared porch he is soon delivering a fiery speech to a large gathering who are not slow to cheer and show their support. (I couldn't help but wonder how many of the crowd of local extras did actually share the racist views they were supposedly only pretending to support. Reminding me of Dennis Hopper's memories of shooting the diner scene in Easy Rider where actual local rednecks needed no lines fed to them but were able to deliver their own bigotted remarks about the hippy yankees!)

Getting back to the speech. Well, Shatner delivers. He captures the rhetoric, the physical gesturing and facial expressions, and is not afraid to go with his own voice quivering and breaking, as the voice naturally will if forced to scream over a sustained length of time.

(If someone is to deliver a long speech or lecture it naturally makes more sense to speak more quietly, in a gentler, more moderate tone, with occasional modulations for emphasis or dramatic effect. Demagogues, however, tend to favour the super-intense approach, sensing, no doubt, that a placid delivery might give too much opportunity for listeners to think for themselves and perhaps question the veracity or beneficence of the ideas being propounded.)

Several reviewers have written that the wife of seemingly simple-minded Sam the Salesman is more or less raped by Cramer. I sometimes marvel at the different ways of seeing that viewers can have of the same film; still, people do see differently cut versions of movies, even ones with alternately shot scenes, so it maybe isn't so surprising. Add to this the fact that people sometimes write about things they may have seen a long time ago - the memory is notoriously misleading. Be that as it may, in the scene that I saw, as recently as an hour ago, Vi allows the brazenly predatory Cramer into her room with little reluctance and it is she who runs her fingertips over his chest, puts her arms round his neck and gives herself to him in clearly mutual passion.

As for the social commentary, this is very much a white film. Yes, it does take on some issues, but the black students, though presented as upright and dignified, are not given all that much screen time. There is an early scene in the black neighbourhood, where a family is shown interacting, and we are led to believe that this line will be developed, and run parallel with the white action but this does not happen. Instead, the black people are only presented in relation to the white people around them - walking to school, their paths being intentionally crossed by whites in order to remind them who takes precedence; a family in a car surrounded by an aggressive mob of whites; the instances where they are supported or defended by more decent citizens, again whites.

This of course was the state of things in the south at the time of this film and one has to agree that Cormon was brave to depart from his usual schlock in order to make it. Part of Cramer's speech hinges on his warning that the south, if it didn't fight back, would one day be like the north, with black people in positions of authority. It gives optimism therefore that, despite the many problems still to solve, there are today in the south: black policemen, black judges and lawyers and black doctors and surgeons.

It was easy to read through the other reviews of this film, as there are only five! One of them seemed to have some kind of handle on the plot, although I still feel confused - where, from whom, did perky Eva the au-pair pick up her STD?

Can anyone help? Was it from old-enough-to-be-her-father Elliot?

There is, quite late in the film, a scene where he forces his attentions upon her in the street but it is brief and interrupted by a passing bobby who fails to catch the fugitive Elliot. He takes her to the station where she is interviewed and subsequently tested by medical staff and found to have syphilis. Does this mean that the scuffle in the street was actually a full-on rape? She is then given a note to give to the other boys she has had relations with. Both these boys, when they go for check-ups, are found to have contracted syphilis.

So... if she contracted the disease from Elliot, how could she have already given it to the other guys?

Oh well, maybe I missed something.

As for the film itself, it's not a bad snapshot of its time, although at this point I feel the need to point out that several of the other reviewers seem to harbour some misconceptions when they say that this film takes place at the height of the 'swinging sixties'. First of all, this film is from 1963. The swinging sixties did not really get going until at least 1964, started to swing in 1965 and was really swinging (in London that is) by 1966.

Before this, Britain was still locked in a sort of post-war drabness where young people wore pretty much the same clothes as their parents and had basically similar values.

The few who did not conform gravitated, according to this film, to idealistic 'ban the bomb' marches, or hung out at 'groovy' coffee bars or 'beat clubs'. But films about young people were not made by young people in 1963. They were made by an older generation, whose 'rebellion' had been, and still often was, listening to jazz.

This is borne out by the fact that, although the kids in this film are continually shown dancing the twist, they're not dancing to pop or rock 'n roll, but to jazzy music. Even when Janice tells her visiting boyfriend Keith that she has some "new records", a bunch of 45's (in other words pop singles) and she puts one on the record player, the music that we hear is not the Beatles, who were just emerging that year; not the Dave Clarke Five or the Searchers, nor even Cliff and the Shadows; no, the music is the same blaring orchestrated jazz that they play at the beat club.

The CND demonstrators are portrayed in this film as either childishly naive or pretentiously intellectual. Note the happy-sappy soundtrack music which accompanies the marchers as they are shown wending their way through a village.

Who is actually the "that kind of girl" in this film? Is it blond and leggy but initially virginal au-pair Eva (is she naughty or naive?) or is it prim and proper girl-next-door Janice, who consistently asks Keith to wait but finally 'gives herself' to him in an excruciating angst-ridden scene which is rather martyrdom than pleasurable discovery.

Yes, this film is a strange concoction of semi-permisiveness, chauvinism, conventional values, anti-casual sex invective with an old-fashioned romantic ending.

It's worth one viewing. However, if you want to see a REALLY GREAT British film that deals with somewhat similar issues then check out "Billy Liar" that came out that very same year.

Let's begin with a pertinent issue. Some reviewers say that you need to have read the book before seeing this film. Some say the opposite, and some haven't read the book, so they are unable to draw comparisons.

Well, I have read the book (a few years ago, so I must admit I don't remember all the details very well) and it was a long read, which, like the film, starts off intriguingly enough but tends as it progresses to become more and more unbelievable. I did however read right to the end, and the end is quite different from in the film. The book does lead to something of a conclusion where the protagonist is subjected to a kind of occult judgement, and ends with a scene in Regent's Park where a meeting is engineered in which Nicholas gets to meet and talk to his former lover. This return to London is missing from the film and it finishes merely with him smiling to himself as we again hear the quote from Eliot about returning to where we begin.

As several reviewers have pointed out, the cinematography in this film is often gorgeous and makes you feel as if you are there. But, having read the book, it's immediately difficult to accept Michael Caine as being Nicholas Urfe. Now, I'm a huge Caine fan, but he just doesn't feel right for this part. He's too blond and tall and has too much presence. I was trying to imagine who (from this era) could have played him and I came up with Alan Bates and Tom Courtenay - and rejected them both. Now I read a reviewer who suggested David Hemmings and yes, he would have been perfect, not too tall, and with the combination of intelligence and intrepidness and weakness and charm that seems to typify Nicholas Urfe.

Another casting mistake was the role of Julie. It seems obvious to me that Candice Bergen is here little more that a poor-man's Julie Christie. They are so similar in looks, and they make her speak with an English accent, so I very much suspect that they really wanted Christie, but couldn't get her.

Again, the lovely Anna Karina seems wrong for the role of the jilted girlfriend. Honestly, who would want to leave Anna Karina to run away to a Greek island to teach English at a boy's school? Unless you were a bit, shall we say, weird..? (This is not obvious in the film, although I seem to remember that Urfe expresses derision for his pupils in the novel and indeed I read that Fowles once said that he had caned boys in school and derived gratification from it!). No, Australian Alison, in the book, is not presented as such a beauty as Anne in the film.

Then we have Conchis. My impression of him in the book was of a far less prepossessing figure than Anthony Quinn, who we can't help but associate with his many larger-than-life character roles. He is a dynamic actor but not a very subtle one, as can be seen here by the rather amateurish way that he does the shifty looks that are, I suppose, intended to convey that he is being a trickster.

One of the big questions that arises when you read the book, and again when you watch the film, is: why would anyone go to so much trouble in order to stage the many scenarios with which Urfe is presented? These involve a large number of operatives and presumably huge expense. In the novel, these extend even to England; we learn, for example, that the newspaper report showing Ann's death has been faked. Furthermore, how do Conchis and his minions know about Urfe and his history?

It must be said, at this point, that the book delivers a great deal of information, in the form of Urfe's own thoughts and memories, which supply us with the background to his personality, including the morally questionable actions of his past.

This all leads to the question, is all of this just a sort of dream in the mind of Nicholas Urfe? Or is it a sort of hermetic mysticism, such as is openly presented in Hermann Hesse's novel, "The Journey to the East", where the narrator, after losing his faith and falling into a mundanity in which he denies the very existence of the wonders in which he had previously participated, finally finds his way back to the mystical world and is then led to a building where he is judged and found wanting.

Seeing the dream sequence/drug-induced halucination that Urfe experiences (which, by the way, happens for real in the book) there are, for me, clear parallels to the denouement of Hesse's novel. Urfe is also put on trial, but the scene is very different. Where in Hesse the judge is actually the simple, kind and gentle servant, Leo; for Urfe, who is first tied to a cross, and then tempted to whip the figure of Julie, the judges are a large and intimidating motley of grotesques and soldiers with the complicated figure of Conchis at the forefront.

All in all, despite its drawbacks, I would recommend seeing this film, even if only once. As for the book, well, that's up to you; maybe the film is enough.

This film is a low-budget "crime thriller" (absolutely NOT a spy story as one reviewer wrote) with a lead actor who is supposed to be a tough, charming, playboy but who unfortunately lacks looks or charm and who speaks his lines with toneless wooden phrasing.

Add to this a clunking plot, gratuitous female nakedness, a TV-series-style soundtrack and a showdown/shootout in an arcade on a Brighton pier (where the goodie guy fires off about 25 shots from a little automatic). The goodie with girl in tow runs into the inside of the ghost train to hide. The baddies actually get ONTO the train to try and find and kill them! Soon they have no blanks left, so they jerk with their pistols, like kids do when pretending to shoot, so that they could add shot-sounds to the soundtrack later! One of the poorest films ever. Lucky it was not longer!

Before I start my review I must point out that the version of the film I saw was quite poor, which may have coloured my overall impression. But anyway, here goes: 'Blind Date', or 'Chance Meeting', as this is also called, is one of Joseph Losey's first British films, some few years before major arthouse success began with 'The Servant'.

The film has a very upbeat and touristy, whimsical intro, with Hardy Kruger as boyish Dutch artist Jan hopping off a Routemaster by the Thames and buying flowers in Westminster Square, with, yes, the Houses of Parliament in the background. All this is of course setting us up for what is to come when he arrives at the Mews flat where he is expecting to meet the lady with whom he is having an affair.

Suddenly the police arrive, first uniforms and then plain clothes, who prevent him from leaving, and the scene turns into something reminiscent of Joseph K's predicament when he is arrested and interrogated without being informed of what he is accused of. This Kafkaesque scenario is protracted for some time and you get the distinct feeling that this is a film based on a stage play. Even the flashbacks showing Jan's claimed meetings (at art-dealer's, Tate Gallery and Jan's painting studio) with a sophisticated, and married, French lady, have a staged feeling to them. At last we, and Jan, get to see that there is a murdered woman in the flat, although her face is not shown and Jan assumes that the body belongs to the French lady whom he was expecting to meet.

In contrast to other reviewers I must say that Hardy Kruger's acting is annoying in this film. He does his version of the broody but earnest young artist. There is a lot of posing and gesturing and falling about - histrionics which Losey ought to have reined in.

Stanley Baker is competent but not brilliant as the brusque inspector who inexplicably drinks milk throughout the movie. (The first time, he actually helps himself to milk from the murdered girl's fridge!) It's funny to see in these old films how the police run riot all over the crime scene, picking up objects without gloves and generally contaminating everything.

Micheline Presle, with her beautiful eyes, is rather good in the part of the sophisticated French lady married to the English lord. The inspector works hard to unravel the truth, even though under pressure from his posh chief to not let the lord, who is also an important diplomat, be implicated in any way, even to the point of suggesting that the inspector offer Jan a manslaughter charge and reduced sentence if he confesses, instead of proven homicide if he doesn't. Jan however maintains his innocence and the inspector drives him to London Airport in order to observe the reactions of the arriving lord. And now we see that the lady is still alive. (The body in the Mews flat was really the lord's kept woman.)

In the end the inspector engineers a confrontation with the French lady, who (incredibly) can not keep up her mask of not knowing Jan and he is satisfied that Jan is innocent and releases him. Not that we care too much, as Hardy Kruger is so irritating that I certainly wouldn't have shed much of a tear if he had been condemned!

Worth seeing, if only for Baker and Presle, and for the views of a bygone London. One shot shows the skyline all the way along the riverside from Westminster to the City. Not a skyscraper in sight. In fact you can actually see the dome of Saint Paul's. (This film was made about seven years before the Post Office Tower was built which was for a while the tallest building in Europe.) I doubt if you can see Saint Paul's today amid the infestation of skyscrapers that now clog the City.

This film draws you in. It's very slow but you keep watching. It reminded me at times of 'I hired a contract killer' by Karismaki or the dreary kitchen sink realism in Mike Leigh's 'All or Nothing'. Gradually, as John May pursues his quest, his life improves, even though he is fired from his job in a despicable way. He finally finds the beginning of a friendship, perhaps even a romance but then, bam, that possibility of a happy ending is taken abruptly from us and we are given a corny, superstitious, spiritualistic closing scene instead, a choice the director apparently felt was incredibly deep and meaningful and which has indeed been approved by a good many other reviewers here. Shame... that brought my rating down from 8 to 6.

Great movie but way too long... needs to be cut down to say, two hours or less...

On the plus side: Ryan Gosling and most of the main actors. Great cinematography, sets and effects, appropriately clangorous music.

On the minus side: Unbelievable Wallace character, overacted by Jared Leto; unbelievable and sentimentalising relationship with 'virtual' female companion for K, too much screen time spent wallowing in this - the noir type hero should go home and drink his whisky alone!

Also,some plot doubtfuls: Firstly, K's ability to crash through walls without suffering any damage...

Secondly, how his flying car ploughs through iron and steel junk without breaking the window glass, and, after that, how can the bad girl obliterate the crowd of attackers so that there are not even any bodies left when K walks from his vehicle? Thirdly: why the heck do the assassins leave K alive when they abduct Deckard... doesn't make any sense... except as what it crassly is: to save him for the big showdown at the end...

Totally agree with 'afmwass' here. This film is very very slow to watch, but not in a good way.

I appreciate a good art-house film and I don't mind slow scenes if it fits the story but this is just dreadful. Even within the first minute of the film I was asking my friend 'what's happening?' and this we continued to ask each other throughout the movie.

Whole long takes are just about things like the main character changing his shirt or going to the toilet! Whenever it seems as if the story is going to pick up and there is going to be some action, it just peters out or the director cuts forward to nothing happening the next day.

There are basically only three scenes in the whole movie where there is a bit of action but they all just lead to nothing:

1. The guy gets bitten by a snake, he seems to be dying but the next shot shows him in the hospital and ready to leave.

2. The guy drags a drunk visitor along a hotel corridor to a room where there is a very beautiful girl who wants to share his room, and he does nothing!

3. The confrontation with 'bad guy' Lester, which has actually been built up to with a bit of suspense, only delivers a very anti-climatic bout of clumsy fisticuffs.

Bottom line, don't be fooled by the reviews that say that this film is 'deep' or 'haunting'. It is not deep, it is shallow. Yes, it could be called 'haunting' in the sense that the next day you vaguely remember how crap it was and wonder why they bothered to make it, and why you bothered to watch it!

With all respect to another contributor's otherwise decent review, I would like to point out that this is certainly not a 'noir' picture. It is a straightforward modern (in 1963) drama/thriller. There are few dark shadows and there are not meant to be.

The setting is a newly built middle-class estate of which there are thousands like it in Britain. These kinds of estates usually have quite wide streets and the houses are often fairly widely spaced. The interior of the house is bright and airy. This does not give a gloomy noir type location and that is the whole point. The setting SHOULD be innocuous.

Neither are the main characters in the least bit noirish. The principle lady is not a femme fatale, she is an attractive housewife who is expecting a child and who is shown to be a kind auntie figure to the little neighbour girl.

The husband is not a figure of doom and destiny, he is a rather staid architect who only begins to look at his secretary after a long period of denial by his wife. The secretary, who by the way, COULD have been cast as a femme fatale, is an efficient but lonely divorcée played by an actress who is rather plain and certainly less attractive than the wife.

It is not the locations and characters that are meant to represent the darkness in this film; it is the male intruder who attacks the wife. As other reviewers have pointed out, this intruder is played with a convincing mixture of menace and vulnerability by a young Jeremy Brett.

As no other reviewer has touched upon it, I would like to mention a point that struck me, namely the odd performance by Jack Hedley in the role of the inspector who is brought in from the Yard to supervise the case. In the scene where he first appears, where he visits the couple, the camera rather lingers on his face and he seems to be having strange thoughts.

Perhaps the actor was merely trying to convey worry or hesitation about warning the couple that the attacker is a stalker whose only agenda is the wife but I can't help getting the feeling that the director wants us to see something more to it than that. This feeling is reinforced in the rooftop finale at the end of the movie.

After the husband has lifted his wife to safety, instead of ending with a conventional shot of the couple kissing or hugging, the director allows them to leave the shot and the last thing we see is the inspector picking up the wife's high-heeled shoes and holding them at his chest as he looks away into the distance and the frame contracts to black.

All in all, not a bad film, but one would have preferred another actor to Richard Todd, who seems to have been rather typecast in this sort of role, and the secretary could have been more alluring.

On a comical note, look out for a shot of the couple running along a beach in swimsuits in which the bodily proportions of Todd - big head, little body - are on rather unflattering show!

This film has a few nice sixties moments, principally the scenes in the early part of the movie where the main guy, Paxton, and the main girl, Tobey, are enjoying their relationship and seem to be in love. There are a couple of brief authentic street scene shots at a resort (I don't know where, on the East Coast presumably) that are like small windows back in time and a cool shot of the couple swinging (literally) on a hanging ring on the beach.

About halfway into the movie the main guy starts to have regular fun with a couple of other girls. The first girl, when she finds out, gets upset and cooks up a plan with the other two to lock him in the attic and take turns in using him for sex.

This of course would be a fantasy come true for many adolescent boys, and our guy does indeed react a bit like the cat that got the cream in the beginning. But after a while he starts to get dissipated and shabby and exhausted.

'Why doesn't he just leave?' we ask ourselves. And indeed the Dean of the girl's school asks Tobey just that. 'We have sapped all his energy,' says the girl.

This is an odd little film, although the feel and look of it and the corny pop soundtrack make it similar to a number of low-budget productions from this period, from both sides of the pond. 'Here we go Round the Mulberry Bush', an English effort, also from 1968 and also with a sort of 'permissive society' theme (music by Traffic) springs to mind.

It's a bit puzzling that these girls, at this time of 'sexual liberation', should so readily wish to 'punish' someone for giving them a good time... I suppose the fuzziness of the script and the contradictory currents within the narrative are reflections of the writer's state of mind and of the state of the society.

It is also interesting to observe that the poster for the film, which can be seen above, does NOT show that one of the three girls is black. The studio and the distributors must have baulked at the idea of showing, not only 'promiscuity' but 'inter-racial' at that! By the way, the black girl is far and away the sexiest and coolest of the three girls! Yvette Mimieux is pretty but she always gives an insipid impression in her movie roles, and the hippy girl is nothing special IMHO.

I must admit that I did not really listen to all the dialogue as I had the sound fairly low and was noodling on guitar so I can not give a true and whole picture of this movie. But I can say that it is interesting from a historical/cultural perspective and is worth one viewing at least.

Two English guys, one young, one older, on the run in a dusky landscape, pursued and intermittently taunted by a VERY low-flying helicopter. (Good stunt pilots!) We don't know where they've escaped from but it must've been recently for their hands are still bound behind their backs and they don't seem to know each other very well.

The older man is at first more forceful, giving the impression that it is he who has been the prime mover of their getaway, but we soon see that he is not all that smart and in an early scene he (off-screen) kills an old goatherd, hoping to get a knife, but the body yields nothing. This gives an immediate bad feeling about the fate of these two guys.

It is in fact quite annoying to watch how long they stumble through the landscape without seriously trying to sever the cords. After all, they are bound with rope and there are plenty of sharp rocks around.

Later, in a village, they manage to enter a house and find a razor. After finally cutting their bonds they steal a rifle and supplies and stuff, all in the presence of a silent, staring woman who seems to be mourning a dead man. But Mac can't resist swiping a loaf of bread from in front of the corpse which sets the woman off screaming and they have to run, as the village comes to noisy life about their ears.

Time after time they manage to elude capture, even when surrounded and hunted by hundreds of soldiers! Trying to pick up the men's history from their talk is impossible and we are never told what - if anything - they have done to have caused their captivity.

Robert Shaw is fairly convincing as the slightly unhinged Mac. We believe that he could be a criminal of some kind.

But Malcolm McDowell, as Ansell, though physically convincing, says his lines as if he's acting in his school play. A scene toward the end where he is supposed to be a bit delirious is particularly cringe-inducing.

Now, I know many consider McDowell to be a talented actor who made wrong choices and ended up in dodgy roles, but the fact is that (like Keanu Reeves) he is one of those actors who speak as if they're saying lines that they've memorised (which of course, they have!) Sure, this can work in the right part. Nobody could have played Alex in 'A Clockwork Orange' better than McDowell, but Alex is basically a comic book character, so his rendition fitted perfectly.

As others have pointed out, the film doesn't make you feel all that much sympathy for the fugitives, although a bit more for the younger one because, in contrast to the older one, he doesn't seem to want to kill and only does it when forced to.

Striving for freedom, the men head for the mountains and here (still pursued by soldiers and helicopter) they reach what we presume to be a border for there is a group of soldiers waiting who do not fire on them as they approach. Ansell is the first to reach them. On their guard, they visibly relax when he throws down his gun. He urges Mac to join him but Mac is curiously reluctant, and hearing the approach of the helicopter goes back down the slope to confront it and make a pointless sort of 'last stand' with his machine gun. Failing to shoot down the chopper, he is himself killed but we don't feel any pity for him.

A high camera shot at the very end shows Ansell turning and walking up the hill towards an outpost, shepherded by the soldiers, but we have no idea what fate awaits him. Will he be freed or imprisoned or will he be surrendered to the country from which he has escaped? We don't know. The camera pulls away from the figures and the last view is only landscape.

'Figures in a Landscape' is an action film that puts its main characters through a gruelling succession of hardships but breaks the cardinal law of action by failing to make us identify with them and root for them.

This is something that was fully understood by Hitchcock, who knew how to get the viewer to root for the main characters. Think of 'The 39 Steps' in which the hero is also on the run through the landscape. You thrill with Hannay in every episode and WANT him to escape and succeed. And then compare with 'Kill Bill' where, for me, it was impossible to identify and sympathise with the main girl because she was herself a cold-blooded killer.

If the film is supposed to be 'existentialist' then it fails there too because the characterisation and dialogue is too poor.

All in all, worth watching once at least for the great landscape photography and the helicopter stunts.

Having read some reviews previous to seeing this movie I was led to expect a really good old-fashioned scary time. And it WAS a bit scary at times in the first half but as the film progressed it became more and more silly, so that in the second half it became more of a 'make funny comments and have a laugh' experience.

One of the funniest moments is when the husband guy is looking through a hole in the wall and he's supposed to be really frightened but he just looks a bit worried, and with his pudding basin haircut and dumb expression he so reminded me of Lou Costello in that monster spoof movie that I burst out laughing. Actually Costello was better at pretending to be frightened than this guy, Livingstone, or whatever his name is.

Also funny is the bit where in the middle of intense action the husband shouts: "We have to get her to the priest, for the exorcism!" as if the audience had forgotten by that point and needed to be reminded. That made us laugh a lot!

Funniest of all is how you're supposed to buy all the cod religion/psychology stuff spouted by Warren, the so-called ghost expert. And that the premise is that "only a real Catholic priest" has the ability to drive a demon out of a person! So when the guy's wife is possessed and being super-nasty Warren says "I'll have to do it myself." And the husband guy, who is NOT religious, says: "but you're not a proper priest!" And then this Warren guy takes a bible and starts reading some stuff. And it's in Latin! Like, it HAS to be Latin or it won't work! But he's crap at reading Latin. Oh man! I was expecting the demon to say, like: "Give me a break! I'm not getting out of this person for that crappy Latin!"

This film was not scary and you can not take it seriously, especially the finale, which is really over the top and ludicrous. Near the end the possessed woman is tied to a chair with a blanket over her head (because she bit someone) and then, in an attempt by the director to make it exciting, the chair rises from the floor and turns upside down and wiggles about. This also made us laugh a lot. And then the chair falls down but instead of the woman falling on her head, it does a neat little flip at the last moment and she lands on her back! This is because the happy ending requires her to stay intact so she can be dispossessed (?) unpossessed (?) depossessed (?) and return to being a good old swell American mom.

Another daft thing is how the ghost-hunter guy, even though his wife is messed-up from helping people get rid of demons, and even though they have a young daughter, still he insists on keeping a room filled with demon-infested objects. And a guy comes to visit and says, very intelligently: "why don't you take all this stuff to the incinerator?" and this Warren guy comes up with some total bullshit about "burning it doesn't get rid of the demons". So instead he keeps all of it like a junk shop from hell in his own house!!

I can't be bothered to write more about this film now. Thanks for reading!

Isn't it great how people experience things in totally different ways? I just read thru most of the other reviews for this film... Some love it and think the acting is great - others hate it and think the acting is crap! Some love the soundtrack, others find it dead annoying! Some fall in between...

Many reviewers praise John Laroquette, saying he gives a great supporting performance. Why? He hardly does anything except come and go on a motorbike or stand in the UNFOCUSED background and wipe glasses in the bar! Patrick Bauchau, who has a lot more screen time, and does a load of action and says a load of stuff, hardly gets a mention! What's that about?

In this movie Genevieve Bujold is mousy and unattractive and has clothes and haircut like a boy. Then she puts on a dress, some make-up and slicks her hair back in an oily duck-tail. So now she's sexy, right? Wrong.... just even MORE unattractive!

Lesley Anne Warren, on the other hand, can act, is gorgeous, has a great figure, and can really wear clothes and walk in high heels - watching HER makes up for all the rest of the nonsense in this film!

Rudolph's earlier, 'Remember my Name', is actually a MUCH better film. Antony Perkins has far more presence than Keith Carradine, and Geraldine Chaplin is just brilliant in that movie. In fact, it would've really perked this film up if Perkins had played Mickey and Chaplin had played Nancy. After all, Mickey's supposed to be a bit crazy and no one can play a bit crazy like Antony Perkins! And Nancy is supposed to be smart and intense and Geraldine Chaplin does smart and intense superbly! Plus she's a lot more attractive!

Oh, well, you can't win 'em all...

I first saw the original (black and white) film on TV when I was a kid and have never forgotten it, especially one scene in particular which I shall come to later.

The later film follows the plot of the first film closely. The dialogue is often word-for-word. The main difference action-wise is that several doses of nudity have been added to the 1983 version, including an embarrassingly tacky cat-fight with whips. In IMDb's trivia section for this movie it is stated, twice, that the whip scene was already in the 1945 version but it certainly was NOT in the one that I saw.

The original film is wonderfully cast: the mild-mannered but sympathetically dignified Sir Ralph (Griffith Jones) the gentleman-rogue highwayman (James Mason) the irritatingly pious butler Hogarth (Felix Aylmer) the dashing Kit Locksby (Michael Rennie) and sweet Caroline (Patricia Roc).

Interestingly, Patricia Roc (the supporting actress) is actually more beautiful than Margaret Lockwood, but Lockwood, in the role of the scheming and danger-loving wicked Lady, carries the film with ease and one feels that nobody could have played the role so perfectly! All this, however, is far from the case with the remake. Sir Ralph is played by a far, far too old and unattractive Denholm Elliot.

Kit Locksby is played by a totally undashing and wooden Oliver Tobias.

Glynis Barber is OK as Caroline and Geilgud is pretty much the same as Aylmer in the butler role.

It is clear that the producers have been very careful to make the supporting actresses much less attractive than 'star' Dunaway! This can be seen not only in the Carolines but in Ralph's sister Henrietta who, in the first film, is attractive and arch (Enid Stamp-Taylor) but plain and peevish in the second (Prunella Scales).

Alan Bates manages the highwayman role OK, until the speech-before-the-hanging scene. Here you can't help but compare him to Mason and I'm afraid he falls very far short.

But all this would be sort of acceptable if the lead could carry the most important role, the wicked Lady herself. But Faye Dunaway is just not in the same league as Lockwood. And because so many scenes are exactly the same as the original, you can't help but compare them.

Add to this the fact that Winner has added several instances of gratuitous nudity along with a tacky sex-by-an-open-fire scene between Tobias and Barber. To avoid confusion let me emphasise that the following concerns the original Wicked Lady film and NOT the remake! This film succeeds because it precisely balances all our conflicting sympathies. Yes, we DO feel sorry for Caroline that Barbara comes and steals the love of her life, Sir Ralph; but we also understand that Barbara soon gets bored with his staidness. She may be wicked but she's FUN and we enjoy seeing her impose her own terms upon the household: opening the locked room with the secret passage and moving in there to have both her independence and an escape route to freedom and excitement.

When she begins her wild affair with the highwayman she cuckolds Ralph and yet we don't feel very sorry for him because we know that he was not only foolish to have married her in the first place but in doing so he spurned and humiliated the gentle Caroline.

Eventually Barbara's lawlessness leads to harm: her killing of the coachman, Ned (for which she seems to feel genuine remorse) and then the poisoning of the butler. When Hogarth discovers Barbara's wicked ways she realises all will be lost if he talks. Quickly understanding the only way to get round him, Barbara appeals to his spiritual pride, begging him to help her 'reform'.

And so begins a regime of 'goodness' and 'good works'. This is rather comical and we sympathise with her trials, and, strangely, continue to sympathise with her, even when she uses poison to get rid of her tormentor. But when the dying butler threatens to talk, Barbara must deal with the situation quickly, and deal with it she does.

In the movie's, for me, most unforgettable scene, Barbara presses the pillow on Hogarth's face to finish him off. I don't know quite why the director felt obliged to make an insertion at this point but we are given a sudden extreme close-up of her eyes looking shifty, perhaps intended to remind us of her wickedness or possible simply to remind us that Ralph and the others are just beyond the curtain. Whatever, but after this insert we are given a shot so beautifully framed and lighted that Lady Barbara looks almost angelic. And as she finishes the deed she gives a little sigh of accomplishment that is almost orgasmic! The film manipulates our sympathies so deftly that we don't really grasp how immoral it all really is.

Caroline is united in the end with her Ralph and we think this is only right and good. After all, Ralph is the one who, in a key scene, stands up to all the other landowners and judges and even berates them for their treatment of the poor, showing that, though mild at home, he CAN be tough when it comes to fighting for justice.

Note how, in this scene in the later movie, Ralph's speech is severely curtailed, making him seem far more weak and ineffectual.

The remake in fact handles everything very coarsely. Winner and Dunaway make Barbara so grotesque that we can neither identify with her nor feel sympathy for her.

So, if you're planning to watch The Wicked Lady (1983) please don't bother. Hunt down a copy of the original from 1945. You won't be disappointed!

I first saw the original (black and white) film on TV when I was a kid and have never forgotten it, especially one scene in particular which I shall come to later.

The later film follows the plot of the first film closely. The dialogue is often word-for-word. The main difference action-wise is that several doses of nudity have been added to the 1983 version, including an embarrassingly tacky cat-fight with whips. In IMDb's trivia section for this movie it is stated, twice, that the whip scene was already in the 1945 version but it certainly was NOT in the one that I saw.

The original film is wonderfully cast: the mild-mannered but sympathetically dignified Sir Ralph (Griffith Jones) the gentleman-rogue highwayman (James Mason) the irritatingly pious butler Hogarth (Felix Aylmer) the dashing Kit Locksby (Michael Rennie) and sweet Caroline (Patricia Roc).

Interestingly, Patricia Roc (the supporting actress) is actually more beautiful than Barbara Lockwood, but Lockwood, in the role of the scheming and danger-loving wicked Lady, carries the film with ease and one feels that nobody could have played the role so perfectly! All this, however, is far from the case with the remake. Sir Ralph is played by a far, far too old and unattractive Denholm Elliot.

Kit Locksby is played by a totally undashing and wooden Oliver Tobias.

Glynis Barber is OK as Caroline and Geilgud is pretty much the same as Aylmer in the butler role.

It is clear that the producers have been very careful to make the supporting actresses much less attractive than 'star' Dunaway! This can be seen not only in the Carolines but in Ralph's sister Henrietta who, in the first film, is attractive and arch (Enid Stamp-Taylor) but plain and peevish in the second (Prunella Scales).

Alan Bates manages the highwayman role OK, until the speech-before-the-hanging scene. Here you can't help but compare him to Mason and I'm afraid he falls very far short.

But all this would be sort of acceptable if the lead could carry the most important role, the wicked Lady herself. But Faye Dunaway is just not in the same league as Lockwood. And because so many scenes are exactly the same as the original, you can't help but compare them.

Add to this the fact that Winner has added several instances of gratuitous nudity along with a tacky sex-by-an-open-fire scene between Tobias and Barber. To avoid confusion let me emphasise that the following concerns the original Wicked Lady film and NOT the remake! This film succeeds because it precisely balances all our conflicting sympathies. Yes, we DO feel sorry for Caroline that Barbara comes and steals the love of her life, Sir Ralph; but we also understand that Barbara soon gets bored with his staidness. She may be wicked but she's FUN and we enjoy to see her impose her own terms upon the household: opening the locked room with the secret passage and moving in there to have both her independence and an escape route to freedom and excitement.

When she begins her wild affair with the highwayman she cuckolds Ralph and yet we don't feel very sorry for him because we know that he was not only foolish to have married her in the first place but in doing so he spurned and humiliated the gentle Caroline.

Eventually Barbara's lawlessness leads to harm: her killing of the coachman, Ned (for which she seems to feel genuine remorse) and then the poisoning of the butler. When Hogarth discovers Barbara's wicked ways she realises all will be lost if he talks. Quickly understanding the only way to get round him, Barbara appeals to his spiritual pride, begging him to help her 'reform'.

And so begins a regime of 'goodness' and 'good works'. This is rather comical and we sympathise with her trials, and, strangely, continue to sympathise with her, even when she uses poison to get rid of her tormentor. But when the dying butler threatens to talk, Barbara must deal with the situation quickly, and deal with it she does.

In the movie's, for me, most unforgettable scene, Barbara presses the pillow on Hogarth's face to finish him off. I don't know quite why the director felt obliged to make an insertion at this point but we are given a sudden extreme close-up of her eyes looking shifty, perhaps intended to remind us of her wickedness or possible simply to remind us that Ralph and the others are just beyond the curtain. Whatever, but after this insert we are given a shot so beautifully framed and lighted that Lady Barbara looks almost angelic. And as she finishes the deed she gives a little sigh of accomplishment that is almost orgasmic! The film manipulates our sympathies so deftly that we don't really grasp how immoral it all really is.

Caroline is united in the end with her Ralph and we think this is only right and good. After all, Ralph is the one who, in a key scene, stands up to all the other landowners and judges and even berates them for their treatment of the poor, showing that, though mild at home, he CAN be tough when it comes to fighting for justice.

Note how, in this scene in the later movie, Ralph's speech is severely curtailed, making him seem far more weak and ineffectual.

The remake in fact handles everything very coarsely. Winner and Dunaway make Barbara so grotesque that we can neither identify with her nor feel sympathy for her.

So, if you're planning to watch The Wicked Lady (1983) please don't bother but hunt down a copy of the original from 1945. You won't be disappointed!

This movie has been described as a heist movie. May you be warned, dear reader, there is very little heisting here. The one real sequence, which comes after about forty minutes of turgid and unnecessary build-up, is intended to be tense and exciting, as the director cross-cuts repeatedly between the heist action and a concert hall (where house-owner is) with a performance of an absolutely horrendous Barry-composed piece for orchestra and guitar, in which the guitar is mostly drowned out by the loud and bombastic noises of the orchestra. The guitar music itself is very insipid, featuring mostly plain chords, with none of the fluid runs or flamenco riffs that one expects, especially in Spain, from the classical guitar. Nevertheless the performance receives thunderous applause and a standing ovation. Why?!

As for the heist itself, we are expected to swallow a lot here. Firstly, the supposedly expert cat burglar (Caine) when shown a picture of his proposed entry window, opts for a torturous route whereby he has to use a grappling hook to climb up to the balcony of a higher floor and get himself over to the roof above said window, hang from the edge of this roof and then let himself fall and catch hold of the windowsill a floor and a half below - a marble windowsill mind which is not square but is ribbed and rounded at the edge!

Caine then has to pull himself up from this position – and remember, he's a very big man – and onto the windowsill. When you're watching this you go WTF! All they needed to do was have a small extending ladder with them and he could have got to the windowsill in a fraction of the time, without having to risk his life to do it.

Once inside he lets the old man in, whose job it is to open the safe, but he complains that the old safe has been replaced with a new one. Time ticks by, the concert is finishing (signalling return of house owner). Safe cracker admits defeat but not Caine, who proceeds to noisily smash the surrounding brickwork with a hammer and chisel.

We now have to swallow that the three servants in the house hear nothing of this because they are eating and listening to the concert on the radio!

Caine lugs the safe out to the car and they avoid in the nick of time the previously drugged but now awake guard dogs along with the returning house-owner.

After this 'heist' Caine and the old man's wife start to get friendly, Caine gets a snazzy E-type and the film descends into a series of conversational set-pieces which totally fail in their desired intention of instilling fascinating and thought-provoking dramatic content into the movie.

To give an example: Caine in one scene is lying motionless on his back on the bed and listening to the lead actress, who with mask-like expression (perhaps adopted to evoke high drama but more probably an expression of the actress's complete lack of personality) is droning on and on and on about some old personal history that is meant to be hugely significant but which is so boring that you (I did anyway) just turn off and stop listening and you see Caine lying there and you see that he's done the same and is presumably daydreaming about getting his final scene wrapped so he can collect his cheque and get out of there.

The film stretches on in similar manner until the 'sad' and 'dramatic' ending where you don't feel sad but happy because it finally finished and you can leave the cinema/switch off the TV! Would have given this film two points but have to give three because of the beauty of the E-type Jag!