Saturday, April 06, 2019

Movie review - "Tommy the Toreador" (1958) ***

For Tommy Steele's third movie, Nat Cohen and Stuart Levy stumped up for colour and some location filming in Spain. It's much better than The Duke Who Wore Jeans - a lot simpler and more grounded.

Tommy plays a merchant seaman (Steele's background in real life) who accidentally gets stranded in Spain and becomes mixed up with a matador. The colour is pleasing as is the Spanish location work; Steele is in excellent form, bright and silly and energetic, and is helped by his fellow players. Janet Munro is charming as the love interest, a British show girl he meets; Sid James and Bernard Cribbins play Spaniards who try to cash in on Tommy's "fame"; Kenneth Williams is a vice consul;  Virgilio Teixeira is a real matador.

John Paddy Carstairs directed - he knows his stuff.  Maybe three stars is overly generous but this was very endearing.

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