Movie review - "Trap" (2024) ** (warning spoilers)

 Gets off to a strong start, playing with audience sympathies. Josh Hartnett has his best role in ages and rises to the occasion. M Night Shamalan clearly loves his daughter. The film does run out of ideas. Shifts POV twice - to his daughter and Alison Pill. I think we could've done with one. Shame they had to lead the stadium. Hayley Mills is a profiler and she's quite good!

Hayley Mills Top Ten

 I just finished Hayley Mill's memoirs, quite fun, and in the interests of killing time wile half watching a movie I'm not that engaged in I thought I'd do a Hayley Mills top ten.

1) Tiger Bay (1959) - astonishing debut. One of the best ever by a child actor, up there with Tatum O'Neal in Paper Moon. One of J Lee Thompson's best movies. Yvonne Mitchell very good in a support role. A lot of 40s and 50s British films were about a kid who witnessed a crime (Hunted, Secret Place, The Fallen Idol, The Yellow Balloon)... this gets points for having a female.

 

2) The Parent Trap (1961) - I always wondered what Annette Funicello thought when Disney flipped over Hayley Mills and started making all these movies for her. "What am I? Chopped liver?" This movie is fun, once you get past the fact the parents conspired to keep kids away from their siblings and other parent for their whole life... oh, and that you can tell the reunion will last five seconds. Mills is excellent. Brian Keith is always good.

 

3) Whistle Down the Wind (1961). A small film, but extremely well done. Superbly acted. Written by Mills' mum - who became an alcoholic. Hayley later did another film written by her mother, Sky West and Crooked, that was a lot less successful.

 

4) The Trouble with Angels (1966) - Mills showed she could be in a popular teen film not made by Disney. Really fun girls-at-convent-school movie, surprisingly hasn't been embraced by many feminist critics despite its female stars, writer and director.

 

5) The Family Way (1966) I figured this would be a cutesy generation gap comedy jazzed up with a Paul McCartney soundtrack and some brief Hayley Mills nudity and, yeah, it is, only there's all this complex sexual stuff going on. Like Hywell Bennett clearly has a much lower sex drive than Mills which is going to cause troubles down the track, and John Mills plays a man who was clearly in love with his best friend (who went along on John Mills' honeymoon... is that normal in England?).

6) In Search of the Castaways (1962) Bright Jules Verne adventure.

7) Endless Night (1972) The best of Mills' psycho thrillers (Twisted Nerve, Deadly Strangers).

8) The Chalk Garden (1964) An old play gets the Ross Hunter treatment but quite well done.

9) The Moonspinners (1964) Charming spys in Greece tale from Disney, lovely location scenery, and Mills the ideal plucky heroine.

10) Appointment with Death (1988) - I wanted to include one late period HM film and this was it for me, she's very good in an entertaining film.

Movie review - "Sky West and Crooked" (1966) **

 Not bad. Just dull. John Mills isn't much of a director. It needed the sensitivity of say a Bryan Forbes. Ian MacShane is too old to play Hayley Mills' love interest. It feels as though John Mills should've starred in the film as opposed to directing it.

Annette Crosbie is good as Mills' drunken mum.

Movie review - "Summer Magic" (1963) **

 Hayley Mills once said this was the worst of the six films she made for Disney, and she was right, although it did quite well at the box office. 

It's based on Mother Carey's Chickens, that book which RKO filmed in the 1930s and Katherine Hepburn refused to do. The plot is slice of life Americana - Dorothy McGuire moves her family, including daughter Mills, to an old farm.

The thing is, it doesn't feel like a farm because it's all clearly shot on the Disney backlot with unconvincing back projection. There are several Sherman brothers songs so it's a musical.

Deborah Walley perks things up a little as a bitch. Her learning to bond with her poorer rellies forms the guts of the plot.

 McGuire nods her head and smiles winsomely as she often did in those late 50s early 60s films she was in starring teen idols (A Summer Place, Susan Slade). Burl Ives smiles and sings. Two random handsome men turn up - James Stacy and Peter Brown - to be love interests to Walley and Mills but I got them confused. Michael J Pollard is in it plus some redhead kid who sings.

Everyone wears period clothes - bonnets, and weird hats when driving. Picks up in the second half.

Movie review - "That Darn Cat!" (1965) ***

 Hayley Mills' last film for Disney. They wanted her to sign a new contract but she turned it down, and later regretted it. I wonder what sort of movies she might've gone on to make - probably the parts given to Suzanne Pleshette eg Blackbeard's Ghost, The Ugly Daschund - maybe the lead in The Love Bug, opposite Dean Jones in Monkeys Go Home.

 This was a big hit in its day -  fun Bill Walsh fantasy comedy with Mills and Dean Jones as its young stars, and a solid back up of character actors: William Demarest, Elsa Lanchester, Frank Gorshin, Neville Brand, Ed Wynn, Dorothy Provine.

There's some fun comedy at the top where Mills and her byofriend discuss going to beach party movies and she asks "don't you get the impression we go to the same movie again and again and they just change titles". Although Mills is top billed this is more of an ensemble piece. I thought she would romance Jones but she's too young... he has a quick romance with Provine, who plays Mills' elder sister, while Mills has a boyfriend, a Jim Hutton type.

It's shot like a TV movie as Robert Stevenson films tended to be around this time but there's good actors, a fast pace and an engaging sense of sweetness.

Movie review - "The Moon Spinners" (1964) ***

 The powers in Hayley Mills' life were desperate to ensure she "didn't grow up too fast". As a result she never got on drugs or booze - but on the other hand she married the first man she had sex with, Roy Boulting. I remember Universal had similar obsessions with growing up Deanna Durbin slowly.

This was technically Mills' first grown up, ish, role... though there's not a lot of romance. The lucky man was Peter McEnery, a young British actor. I feel maybe they should've gone with an American - Tommy Kirk would've been ideal and safe. 

Mills goes on holiday to Greece with her aunt (Joan Greenwood!) and gets involved with robbers. It's slight but charming with wonderful location filming. McEnery  is fine, though perhaps given too much of the action when the story should've been entirely geared to Mills, who is lovely as ever. Maybe they felt sorry for McEnery who is constantly being beaten up. 

The support cast is fun: Eli Wllach as a baddy, Irene Papas as a local, John le Mesurier and Sheila Hancock as local Brits and Pola Negri, still looking pretty good, as a mysterious rich lady. A sweet fun film and I'm surprised Disney never remade it even if just for TV.

Movie review - "The Daydreamer" (1966) **1/2

 A Rankin Bass production, an anthology of the stories of Hans Christian Anderson.  It actually tells the story of Anderson as a teen, jumping into dream/fantasy sequences comprised of stop action animation.

It's quite charming though has a choppy quality. There's a lot of unconvincing dubbed singing voices. The cast is interesting - voices are done by actors including Burl Ives, Hayley Mills (the Little mermaid), Boris Karloff and Tallulah Bankhead. 

There's live action appearances from Ray Bolger, Margaret Hamilton, Jack Gilford (as Anderson's dad - you'll recognise the face), Ed Wynn.

Movie review - "The Bananas Boat" (1975) aka What Changed Charley Farthing? *

 A sort of comic adventure with Doug McClure as a scamp who travels around the Caribbean being chased buy irate husbands. He winds up with prim Hayley Mills and her father Lionel Jeffries.

I think they were going for an African Queen vibe - McClure manhandles Mills, molests her, and they fall in love. Of course. Mills has her mid 70s mumsy haircut that was used seemingly as part of that sabotage to kill her career.

Sidney Hayers has directed some decent films but this is very poor. McClure is charmless, Mills plays it in a weird accent. Lionel Jeffries and Warren Mitchell have their moments. There's shenanigans with commies in Cuba. But it just isn't very good. Actually it's really dull and hard to watch.

Movie review - "The Chalk Garden" (1964) ***

 Not a typical Ross Hunter film in some ways - it's not American, not a remake, there's no Lana Turner or Sandra Dee. But there are Lana Turner-Sandra Dee type parts: Deborah Kerr is a mysterious governess with a Past involving murder and Hayley Mills is the spirited kid who is troubled and makes life hard for governesses.

There's some decent mystery - what happened to Mills' father? What's the deal with Kerr? Plus a strong cast including Edith Evans as Mills' grandmother and John Mills (in the John Gavin part I guess) as the butler, who probably should be creepy to make this more exciting but is actually nice.

I enjoyed it. Some movie stars hanging around a nice set, with decent Ronald Neame direction, lush music. I got a bit confused in places, the relationship between Mills and her mother Elizabeth Sellars felt under cooked, but it was entertaining.

Book review - "Forever Young" by Hayley Mills (2021)

 Hayley Mills had one of the great child star careers - she came out of nowhere to play a scene stealing role in Tiger Bay and might have drifted back into anonymity (no British producers offered her roles) had not Disney wanted to sign her to a seven year contract. Disney promised to do well by her and he did - Pollyanna, The Parent Trap, In Search of the Castaways, The Moon Spinners, Summer Magic That Darn Cat.

She managed to alternate things with interesting films such as Whistle Down the Wind and The Chalk Garden.

Her parents/Disney turned down parts in Exodus, The Children's Hour and Lolita - the latter especially was galling to her. All three films did have notably sadistic, or at least retake-retake-retake directors so maybe they were being protective. But it bugged her - Lolita especially (though Sue Lyons' career wasn't that amazing.)

Her post Disney career started well enough with The Family Way and The Trouble with Angels. But then she had a string of rotten films - Pretty Polly, Sky West and Crooked, Take a Girl Like You, Mr Forbush. Many of these were made by/with her husband and/or father - you could argue they helped damage her career. But it's not as though there were other roles going. Mills grew up very pretty and charming but as an adult she lacked the X factor she had as a child performer.

This is a well written memoir full of interesting stories, like joining her father in Australia when he was making Summer of the Seventeenth Doll - they went to a party with the touring English side, everyone was boozy, Ann Baxter lost an earring in the pool and everyone jumped in to find it. Stewart Granger bullied her at a party, teasing her about the paper in her bra. I can see him doing that.

It goes up until her leaving Roy Boulting. Odd decision - surely there was at least a chapter on Leigh Lawson and making Parent Trap 2 and films like Appointment with Death?

Movie review - "The Kingfisher Caper" (1975) **

 One of those South African films made during the 1970s that tried to get international attention - B list stars, ugly photography, slack handling. This one is based on a Wilbur Smith novel, which is surely more exciting than the result. Hayley Mills and David McCallum play siblings whose dying father runs a diamond company. Hayley's character is good but David's is bad - accordingly he has the most interesting role. Mills looks mumsy. Her husband Roy Boulting is credited as one of the writers of the script.  The actual heroic lead is Jon Cypher is who is Mill's foster brother. He's not that great.

It's dull and plods along. Surely South Africa is prettier than this? I liked the cable car sequence and McCallum's money hungry wife.

Movie review - "Deadly Strangers" (1975) ** (warning: spoilers)

 One of a few thrillers Hayley Mills made as she tried to reinvent herself. The main issue with this is it doesn't quite have enough plot for a feature and Sidney Hayers, who made a few enjoyable movies, doesn't have the style to cover that up.

Mills has a mumsy haircut that doesn't flatter her. Simon Ward appears as a guy who gives her a lift. Sterling Hayden has this random role where he's in it for about ten minutes as some old codger who gives Mills a lift and falls in love with her then disappears.

The big twist is (spoilers) its Mills who is the psycho when we think it's Ward. This is revealed by a newspaper headline with big photos of Ward and Mills. But hardly anyone seems to recognise them, which feels like a chat. We don't find out Mills is a psycho until the very end. It would have been a better movie had we found out earlier - gotten tension out of the last half hour knowing.

Mills does a bit of nudity here - shows her bum in a bath as she did in The Family Way, goes in lingere in a fantasy sequence, and goes topless. But she's got that unflattering haircut. Her performance is professional rather than inspired.  Ward isn't bad. The visual look is very 70s Britain.

Jimmy Sangster and Hammer simply told this story much better in the sixties.

Movie review - "Tiger Bay" (1959) *** (re-watching)

Lovely location photography in Cardiff. Solid acting from John Mills, Nice brooding stuff from Horst Bucholz. Brilliant work from Hayley Mills - one of the great acting debuts of all time.

It's a little long. There's no mystery. We know he did it - so it's just a matter of time before he's captured. The final scene on the boat drags especially for me. It might have been better had we been unsure - or if Anthony Dawson, as the creepy guy Yvonne Mitchell was cheating on the sailor with, was actually guilty.

Interesting look at multi racial Britain, then not often emphasized on screens. There's a black woman living in Mitchell's old house.

Mitchell's character has a quasi feminist speech - the influence of J Lee Thompson's then wife Joan Henry? Mitchell plays what I call the "Diana Dors" part. Was her character in a concentration camp? She refers to being in camps. Maybe a refugee.

Superb Hayley Mills. Love her scenes with John.

Movie review - "Appointment with Death" (1988) ***

There's not a lot of kind words for this late period Peter Ustinov Poirot... in part because I guess Michael Winner directed it but also because it was Cannon Films and the cast lacks real star power. There's nothing wrong with Carrie Fisher, Laren Bacall, Hayley Mills, Jenny Seagrove, David Soul... but really every part needed to be played by someone at that level, there's too many unknown.

It's got to be said though the acting is pretty good - it's fun to see Ustinov doing his thing, and Gielgud, and Piper Laurie being a bitch, and Bacall being a bitch, skinny Carrie Fisher. I enjoyed the Israeli locations and period touches like the discussion of Palestine and Mrs Simpson. It moves fast and Christie narratives kick in during the second half as they tend to do. Like most Winner movies it's very fast. It does lack star power but this was unfairly picked on.

Movie review - "The Parent Trap" (1961) ***

Listening to Tommy Sands and Annette Funicello warble away at the title track I couldn't help wondering what Funicello thought when Disney pushed Hayley Mills so strongly. "What am I, Walt? Chopped liver?"

Probably not, everyone says she was super nice.

And Mills was a better actor. Her accent is slightly jarring but she's fun as the twins who realise they're twins and swap. Talk about cruel parents-  not introducing themselves to their own children, not letting them know they had a sibling - but those were the times. And it makes for better drama.

The script is quite well structured once you get past the cruelty - Maureen O'Hara is uptown, Brian Keith more rugged, so the girls grew up differently. They meet at camp, clash, then become friends, realise they're sisters, plot to get parents back together, there's a villainous child hating woman after Keith's money (I actually wound up having sympathy for her).

The sexual/familial politics are dodgy by today's standards but it works dramatically. Brian Keith plays the comedy straight, effectively - O'Hara does her hoity toity bit but is appropriate (though you don't feel the remarriage will last). The pacing is deliberate but effective. More could have been done with the grandparents.

Hayley Mills Top Ten Key Films

1) Tiger Bay (1959) - first rate thriller from J Lee Thompson with Mills superb
2) Pollyanna (1960)- hard going, very long, not hard to see why it wasn't the success they hoped, but Mills is charming and she won a Special Oscar for it
3) The Parent Trap (1961) - great fun, Mills in terrific form
4) Whistle Down the Wind (1961) - superb film
5) The Chalk Garden (1964) - effective British drama
6) The Trouble with Angels (1968) - surprisingly pro nun comedy with Mills fun as a naughty girl... though she does decide to take vows at the end!

7) The Family Way (1966) - Mills is a nice girl but shows off her backside and has sex in a warmly affectionate film with a surprising amount of gay sex
8)Twisted Nerve (1968) and Endless Night (1972) - psycho thrillers which are more vehicles for Hywel Bennett than anything else
9) Take a Girl Like You (1970) - not all these films are good - creepy sex comedy with Oliver Reed as a very aggressive pursuer -this film is awful and is the sort of bad material that helped kill Mills' career as a star
10) The Kingfisher Caper (1975) - pretty awful South African adventure story which finished off the job started by Take a Girl Like You

Movie review - "Take a Girl Like You" (1970) *

I've never read Kingsley Amis' novel but surely there was more to it than what is here. Not all books are easy to adapt, but my overwhelming impression watching this is "what's the point?"

Producer Hal Chester has thrown a whole bunch of ingredients into the mix - the director is Beyond the Fringe alumni Jonathan Miller, the writer is musician George Melly, the cast includes Oliver Reed coming off Women in Love and Hayley Mills trying to grow up on screen and a singer, Noel Williamson - but the end result is just... ugh, whatever.

Actually no, that's not true - for the most part this is downright uncomfortable with Reed being a sex pest to Mills - he takes her to his place, insists she go to his flat although she's not keen, kisses her and tries to seduce her, even after she repeatedly says no... then I think we're meant to hope they end up together. He keeps coming at her, she keeps saying no, but seems to like him, he keeps lecturing her that she should have sex, she relents, then finds out he told his mate they were gong to do it, she decides to sleep with his mate... I was unsure whether this happened. Then he chases after her she says she might be in love with him he keeps chasing her.

Is this meant to be romantic? Charming? Frank?

At it's heart this feels like a Rock Hudson-Doris Day-Tony Randall comedy with Oliver Reed as Rock, Hayley as Doris and Noel Harrison as Randall. Only those movies at least had the excuse of being American in the early 60s, and Hollywood glamour, nice costumes and clothes, and star charisma. This is set in some ugly small down.

Mills is actually quite good - an understated touching performance. She's so likeable you really wish she could do better than lecherous Reed. Reed has charisma as always but overpowers. He looks like a psychotic rapist there's no Rock Hudson charm. Harrison is meant to be a swinger but comes across as a creepy gay.

This was a horrible horrible movie. I felt for Hayley Mills who was doing good work.

Movie review - "Whistle Down the Wind" (1961) ***

Very simple, sweet, effective film about three kids from the north who believe an escaped convict hiding in their barn is Jesus. The eldest girl is Hayley Mills, Bernard Lee (M from the Bond films) is dad, Alan Bates is excellent as the crim, but the show is stolen by Alan Barnes as the youngest kid.

All the acting is superb - it really was clever for Bryan Forbes to pick this for his debut as a director, because I think it really helped having an actor in charge. The performances are excellent. It's a fine role for Mills, whose casting help get the film financed (her mother wrote the original book). The northern atmosphere is well evoked.

I did feel the story could have done with another twist/development/complication - maybe that would have over complicated things though. I love that this was a box office hit.

Movie review - "The Trouble With Angels" (1966) ***

Feminist film studies tend to focus on Ida Lupino's early features - I think critics prefer to study noir rather than comedies - but this is interesting and fun, and very female focused: the original writer was female (a Peggy from Mad Men type), the bulk of the cast are female, women drive the action.

It's about antics of two friends at a convent school over a number of years: Hayley Mills and June Harding. There's a series of adventures - they get busted smoking, pull pranks, fight and support, and gradually come to see the nuns are alright. It was a good choice for Mills who smokes and mucks up but is basically good. I didn't quite buy she'd take vows at the end... the character just seemed to have too much life. But I figured it's something a directionless kid with lousy male role models might do.

The film is sympathetic to nuns lives in its way - the rituals, the death of a nun. It's quite sensitive.

Jim Hutton makes a cameo (he totally suits the world of this sort of movie), and Camilla Sparv plays a nun. They should turn this into a TV series.

Movie review - "Pollyanna" (1960) **

There's a solid cast and high production values but jeez this was hard going. It's over two hours long and lacks gags and charm. Hayley Mills is fine in the lead - these sort of parts are hard to play but she's perfectly likeable.

It really needs more villains, or scariness, or romance, or, I don't know, drama. Some of this works - Hayley winding up crippled and all the townsfolk gathered around to visit; the performances of Mills and Agnes Moorehead (who totally gets the genre); the softening of grumpy Adolphe Menjou who adopts Kevin Corcoran (and yes there's dodgy overtones to that these days but I went with it).

But there are too many flaws. For starters the town isn't that miserable when Pollyanna arrives. It's a normal town. Nancy Olson's maid is just an idiot; are we meant to find her romance with James Drury, who just kisses her in the main street without asking, charming? Jane Wyman isn't that strict. Pollyanna doesn't help Richard Egan. It's just Wyman is a bit uptight for Egan. And did I mention it goes too long?

It was a box office disappointment even though Mills did win an Oscar - presumably this was in part because a new child star invoked pleasant memories of the 1930s.