TROOPER HOOK - I really liked this 1957 western when I saw it as a kid so nice to see it again 50 years later. I like Barbara Stanwyck's other '50s westerns too (CATTLE QUEEN OF MONTANA, THE MAVERICK QUEEN, THE FURIES, 40 GUNS), this is a nice black and white one made the year after THE SEARCHERS and is also about a woman being rescued from living with the indians - here though its a mature woman with her son by the Apache chief Nanchez (Rudolfo Acosta). Joel McCrea is the Trooper Hook of the title who has the task of taking Cora and her son back to her husband as they travel though Indian territory on a stagecoach which also has Senorita Susan Kohner, cowboy Earl Hollimann, and the splendidly venal Edward Andrews on board). Stanwyck is very compelling as Cora and plays it mainly silent as she re-adjusts to civilisation. Nanchez is also in pursuit as he wants his son. John Dehner is the husband who wants his wife back but not her half-breed child ... its tense and nicely resolved and its one of Stanwyck's better '50s films, all wrapped up in 80 minutes and there is even a Tex Ritter theme song!
THE SPANISH GARDENER - 50+ years later this is still a compelling drama, from a A J Cronin bestseller, and is a nice look at the Costa Brava in the '50s as stuffy minor diplomat Michael Hordern and his neglected son Jon Whiteley (the little boy in MOONFLEET) arrive, following the father's divorce. Dirk Bogarde is the gardener hired by the father who soon forms a bond with the lonely boy who has no friends as he and the father move around a lot. The father though soon grows jealous of the friendship between gardener and boy - is he jealous of his son or of the gardener? Hordern excels as the buttoned-up repressed man unable to express his feelings. Things take a melodramatic turn as the father forbids his son to continue associating with Jose, the gardener, and the servant (Cyril Cusack) engineers a theft for which Jose is blamed. Soon Jose is on the run with Nicholas (Whiteley) seeking him out and the father now humbled and sorry for his actions in pursuit as it is all nicely resolved. Director Philip Leacock made some interesting movies before moving into television.
NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY - Jack Smight's 1968 black comedy was a treat back then and is still so now, as serial killer Rod Steiger dons different disguises to con his way into the homes of lonely middle aged women ... it of course boils down to his mother complex! Rod runs a theate so has access to lots of disguises as we see him in turn as an Irish priest, a Polish plumber, in drag as a woman scared to go leave a bar, and hilariously as a camp hairdresser! George Segal is Mo Brummell, the harrassed Jewish detective on the case - plagued by his very Jewish mother Eileen Heckart who is great fun here. Lee Remick is the girl who may provide a clue and she is charming here making something special of the standard girl role. Just one quibble: wouldn't the mother fixated killer go after Segal's mother rather than his girlfriend? It's got a nice late '60s feel .... below, right: Steiger in drag with another victim...
PARANOIA, or A QUIET PLACE TO KILL - a friend into those Italian giallo thrillers lent me this Umberto Lenzi thriller from 1970 and its a whole lot of fun as the melodramatic plot twists and turns as racing driver Carroll Baker crashes her car on the circuit and ends up slightly wounded in hospital. During her period of recovery, she accepts to stay at her ex-husband (Jean Sorel) and his new wife's mansion. Two attractive women and one handsome guy in one house can only result in extended sequences of sexual intrigue, double-crossing and conspiracies to murder, particularly when the precocious daughter of the second wife arrives with a plot of her own. Baker and Sorel excelled as this kind of thing and Carroll frequently disrobes to add to the sexual tensions. It all rises to a crescendo and a final twist that leaves one dazed !
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