Movie review - "Some Like It Hot" (1959) ***** (re-watching)

 Just fun. Sexy. Cynical. Broad. Marilyn worth the hassle. Tony Curtis should've worked with Wilder again.

Janet Leigh Top Ten

 1) Psycho (1960) - famous scene but also a genuinely nuanced performance as a frustrated woman who makes a bad decision - Vera Miles doesn't have what Leigh had

2) Touch of Evil (1958) - passive (kidnapped) but she has an inner steel

3) Living It Up (1954) - really fun Martin and Lewis movie and Leigh matches well with Dean 

4) Scaramouche (1952) - honestly her character is a ninny and not in Eleanor Parker's league I just love this flm 

5) Little Women (1949) - the most nothing role in the story but she's ideal - she fitted in well at MGM

6) The Manchurian Candidate (1962) a sex positive woman chasing after Frank, from Leigh's hot streak of classic movies

7) The Fog (1980) - she's fine rather than great I just love the movie

8) The Vikings (1958) - lovely and warm in a movie that needs it

9) Houdini (1953) - perhaps the best film she made with Tony Curtis, very winning

10) Harper (1966) - one of many stars.

Tony Curtis Top Ten

 1. The Boston Strangler

2. The Prince Who Was a Thief - hey, this was fun

3. Sweet Smell of Success

4. The Vikings

5. Spartacus

6. Some Like It Hot

7. Operation Petticoat

8. Trapeze

9. Boeing Boeng

10. The Great Race

Marilyn Monroe Top Ten

 Not many films but anyway

1) Some Like It Hot (1959) - easy choice, so perfect... imagine Mitzi Gaynr in this. No thanks.

2) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) - again, easy choice - shame she was never reteamed with Russell.

3) How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) - glorious fun. Steals movie. 

4) Bus Stop (1956) - I recall Don Murray being creepy and Marilyn being great.

5) All About Eve (1951) - one scene but a great one.

6) The Misfits (1961) - flawed, but marvelous

7) Niagara (1953) - she's probably miscast but it's a good movie.

8) There's No Business Like Show Business (1954) - hokey story but those song and dance numbers!

9) The Seven Year Itch (1955) - icon.

10) Don't Bother to Knock (1952) - haven't seen this in ages just throwing it in there.

Movie review - "Pepe" (1960) **

Cantiflas was a huge star in Mexico who had a choice support part in Around the World in 80 Days so George Sidney and Columbia gave him his own vehicle and they filled it full of stars.

Cantiflas is in Mexico with his beloved horse. The horse is sold to filmmaker Dan Dailey while Edward G. Robinson and Greer Garson as themselves look on. Ernie Kovacs is an immigration official. William Demarest is a studio guard. Zsa Zsa Gabor enters the studio. So does Bing Crosby who sings 'South of the Border' with the star.

He befriends Shirley Jones. Jay North as Dennis the Menace attacks him. There's Charles Coburn getting struck in the head with a slingshot pulled by Billie Burke. Jack Lemmon appears in his Some Like It Hot drag outfit. Cantiflas goes to a nightclug and sees Bobby Darin sing and Michael Callan dance - its' a good number, Callan, some other guy and Shirley Jones, ending with the two guys having a West Side Story-style knife fight.

Then there's this agonisingly dull subplot begins about Jones wanting to be a movie star but also being bitter and not wanting Dailey to shag her, and Dailey being a drunk over the hill producer trying to get up a film involving Pepe's horse or something. It's all simple yet confusing which is an achievement.

Cantiflas follows Dailey to Las Vegas, where he meets the Rat Pack (Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford and Richard Conte in one scene, then Sammy Davis Jnr, then Sinatra). The whole movie set in Vegas would've been a better idea. Cesar Romero is at a slot machine looking like he's trying to pick up. He banters with Jimmy Durante.

There's a way out number where Dailey hallucinates a dance number with a tiny Cantiflas and Debbie Reynolds clambering around giant pencils and a telephone and another prop to the music 'Tequila'. Then the film starts and Dailey, Jones and Cantiflas go see Maurice Chevalier in concert. There's a comic bit where Cantiflas visits Janet Leigh at home she thinks she's someone else, husband Tony Curtis becomes involved.

Then Cantiflas is in love with Jones but she falls for Dailey. She's almost twenty years younger than Dailey and looks it.  There's a weird scene where Robinson declares Dailey's love for Jones while Dailey looks on. So we don't get a confrontation between the three.

There's a lot, as in a lot, of jokes about Cantiflas calling the horse his "son". A lot of scenes of Cantiflas being lucky - he wins at the casino, Novak pays for his engagement ring.

The film is fascinating for its oddness - an all star vaudeville act style film built around a Mexican star. Why not put some effort into the story?

An odd duck. Has a fascination.

Movie review - "The Mirror Crack'd" (1980) ***

 After two Peter Ustinov films as Hercules Poirot, EMI Films did Miss Marple as their all star Agatha Christie effort. It didn't do as well - maybe the market tapped out, maybe it lacked the exotic location factor, maybe viewers prefer Poiriot.

Angela Lansbury is a strong Marple and the cast includes some legends - Liz Taylor, Kim Novak, Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis - plus some decent secondary names: Geraldine Chaplin, Edward Fox. Anthony Steel pops up in the film within a film. Film  buffs will like this and the fact the central story was based on Gene Tierney.

Too much time is spent on Edward Fox, film buff, investigating the case. We don't care about him - we want to see Marple. I'm sympathetic to the filmmakers though - he has an excuse to ask questions, Marple doesn't. But Lansbury is hardly in it. She pops in and out then appears at the end. It's a shame they couldn't have distorted the book a bit more to have her, I don't know, go work at the mansion or something.

It is fun to see Taylor, Rock, etc... but no one is actually that good. Liz Taylor wasn't a star by this stage - she was an ex star. Ditto Novak. Hudson never seems like a director.

Oh I'm sniping. This was fine. Just not as good as the Poiots.

Book review - "Unsinkable" by Debbie Reynolds

Reynolds' second memoir. Covers her dud third marriage, adventures with Carrie, later films like Mother, construction of her hotel and casino. A lot of the financial misadventures make grim reading. I kept thinking "just invest in basic real estate and shares, Debbie. Stop trying to make a museum and hotels!"

It also goes film by film through her career with various anecdotes so the films get plenty of attention. Great anecdotes: Marjorie Main carried around an urn of her dead husband's ashes to talk to him; on Give a Girl a Break Stanley Donen had a man crush on Bob Fosse and a big fight with Gower Champion; she was taken off The Actress (they should've used her); Bundle of Joy was hard to film due to Eddie Fisher's insecurity making him cranky and Norman Taurog's memory loss; on Tammy Leslie Nielsen was a method diva and Walter Brennan full of tricks to steal scenes (like always turn your face three quarters in a two hander to get more exposure; Tony Randall (The Mating Game) had an enormous member; Richard Brooks bullied slapped Reynolds making The Catered Affair (which she otherwise liked... I think Brooks was a real bully); Glenn Ford actively chased Reynolds around a room (they became friends but Debbie... that's attempted assault); the budget of Molly Brown was cut during filming to pay for Zhivago but intense rehearsal meant they saved a dance number; Tony Curtis spread an Eddie Fisher rumour that Reynolds was a lesbian and lousy lay (and she's defensive about her love making abilities); the one time she was tempted to bang a co star was Maurice Ronet on How Sweet It Is; James Garner brought a vibrator as a joke into a bed scene with Reynolds; as an uncredited producer on Whatever Happened to Helen she was going to sack Shelley Winters for lack of professionalism and replace her with Geraldine Page but decided it would cost too much; Dennis Weaver is a great kisser up there with Frank Sinatra; Sean Patrick Flannery refused to rehearse.

Fun book.

Movie review - "Houdini" (1953) ***

 A very sweet biopic of the famous escape artist - I assume hugely fictionalised. Gorgeous photography, sets and costumes and Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh are extremely likeable in the leads. They are young a fresh faced and their chemistry works a treat.

Curtis is clearly trying and gives a good performance. Leigh is lovely. No one else gets much of a look in.  Michael Pate pops up as a heckling Brit. Connie Gilchrist, who soon went to Oz to play in Long John Silver, is in it as well.

George Pal should have done more biopics. I guess tom thumb and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm fall into that category. Directed with typical unobtrusive skill by George Marshall.

Movie review - "Arrivederci Baby!" (1966) aka Drop Dead Darling **

 Frantic comedy gives the impression it would do anything for a laugh. The actors ham it up, there's a fast past, the music is wacky.

It's a black comedy with Tony Curtis as a man who kills his wives but they're annoying so it doesn't matter.

It doesn't quite come off but I didnt mind it. I like Curtis, even in dodgy comedies, and it has pleasing locations. It's fun to see Zsa Zsa Gabor (diamond drenched ditz) and Finella Fieling (horny aristocrat) and nancy Kwan (his true love I think). 

Rosanna Schiaffino isn't quite up to her role and the film outstays its welcome but it does have some good things about it.

Movie review - "Sextette" (1978) **

 It's weird to watch. So weird. But how else to have done it? No one else could've played Mae West and Mae West was 85.

So they shove it full of songs and stars and shenanigans. It's silly but it has a compulsive fascinating. Tim Dalton completely commits, whether ogling Mae or singing "Love will Keep Us Together". George Hamilton also tries but isn't entirely convincing as a gangster. Neither is Ringo Starr as a European director, but it's fun to see him. Ditto Tony Curtis as a Russian, Dom De Luise as a manager flunky type. She has a chat with George Raft in an elevator.

It's odd. So odd. So camp. Jeez, Ken Hughes made some crap in the 70s.  Keith Moon is in it - he would be dead soon. Van McCoy pops up. And Alice Cooper. AND Walter Pidgeon.

It's got to be said some of the lines are funny. And the film does want to entertain. It's grotesque. 

There seems to be little cult for it - Myra Breckenridge is better known.

Movie review - "Don't Make Waves" (1967) ***

 A bit of a mess - I wasn't sure what the point was but it is colourful and has some of my favourite sixties actors: Tony Curtis, Claudia Cardinale and Sharon Tate. There's always something happening it is bright and silly. You can see why it didn't make money. You can also see why it's always on TV.

Nice theme song. It took a pointlessly long time for Curtis' character to be established - he was too passive. Guy should have been a mover and shaker.

Robert Webber's tycoon should have been more of a threat. I did like Joanna Barnes has his wife. David Draper is very sweet as Tate's body building love. I wish more time had been spent showing a bond between Cardinal and Curtis but he spends all his time chasing Tate which is understandable but also makes for the ending seem rushed.

There's mudslides and parachting. It focuses a lot on middle aged people. I liked Jim Backus playing himself.

Movie review - "Taras Bulba" (1962) **

Odd that this was such a hot property - Robert Aldrich tried to make it for five years. It's got spectacle but it's not too hard to find spectacle stories, surely. I suppose it has three decent leads - the imposing Cossack Taras, who loves his sensitive son but turns against him when his son falls for a Pole.

That is a strong simple conflict that should work. And this film has its moments - some spectacle, the horse duel over a cliff. Christina Kaufman is pretty. Yul Brynner is idea in the title role and Tony Curtis gives a good performance. But Curtis is simply spectacularly miscast - he's like twenty years too old for a role that needed someone who was clearly Brynner's son. I could've handled Curtis as a Cossack - I've gone with him being a Viking and a Persian prince - but not Brynner's son and that is the heart of the piece.

He's also too old for a role that requires someone callow. They would've been better off getting some teen idol - or cast Brynner's part a lot older.

The drama is muted. The character of the brother, played by Perry Lopez, is wasted (what's his dramatic point?). Curtis' mother character is wasted. Guy Rolfe's villain feels undercooked - oh for Frank Thring to have played this. Kaufman feels too young for Tony - I get they hooked up in real life, but he's too old for the character as written.

It doesn't feel real. Films have to make their own reality. This feels odd with its colourful costumes, and Cossack dancing and singing (sometimes it's like it's going to spill over into a musical).

Also the Cossacks just feel dumb. The opening scene Guy Rolfe tricks Brynner into defeat. They have a silly dispute resolution process where they jump over a gap - it's an exciting scene but it makes you worry about the stability of this society.

I admit I'm influenced by knowing nothing about this period. Maybe if the storyline had been changed to say the Goths and the Roman Empire.

I do think having cast Brynner and Curtis they should have changed it so that they were brothers rather than father and son.

Still, it is a big expensive Hollywood epic set in medieval Russia so it has points for novelty. And a gorgeous music score.

Book review - "This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me" by Norman Jewison (2005)

A tale of one man's journey from success to success - Jewison was born into a relatively poor family but it was in Canada; he joined the navy and went to university and decided to go into showbiz. He moved to England and broke in there, then worked in the early days of Canadian TV then in New York. Handling Judy Garland for a TV special (he managed to sweet talk Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin into supporting her) got him a reputation as someone who could deal with stars - he received an offer from Tony Curtis to do Forty Pounds of Trouble which led to a contract with Universal: two comedies with Doris Day, one with Dick Van Dyke (his first flop), then changing gears with The Cincinnati Kid and hitting a golden streak: The Russians Are Coming, In the Heat of the Night, The Thomas Crown Affair, stumbling with Gaily Gaily but then doing Fiddler on the Roof, Jesus Christ Superstar, Rollerball and so on.

It was truly one of the great careers - plenty of critical acclaim and box office hits, lots of power. His personal life seems to have been tranquil - met a girl, married, had kids, kids turned up fine.  Had a little bit of tall poppy syndrome from Canada but not a lot; a few flops but not that many; no production disasters. He dealt with some temperamental stars and seemed to be able to cope with all of them, even Garland and Steve McQueen.

He reveals himself to be the director who dealt with a sobbing star who had inadvertently killed her dog via giving her a lamb chop - a tale told by William Goldman in his memoirs (not told particularly well here - Jewison is a solid rather than top level writer) - the star was Doris Day. (So was Doris Day having an affair at the time? Goldman said the star was.)

He had/has solid liberal, humanistic beliefs which saw him make film like In the Heat of the Night and try to make Malcolm X before being booted off the latter to make way for Spike Lee.

Obviously a decent man, hardworking and talented, with great instincts for casting and story.

I was hoping for a little more gossip. Sylvester Stallone was a bit of an egomaniac on FIST and rewrote Joe Eszterhas. McQueen could be a baby but lobbied hard for the role in The Thomas Crown Affair. The screenwriter of Thomas Crown sounds like a character. But an enjoyable book.

Book review - "The Studio" by John Gregory Dunne

Re-reading this observational classic which holds up very well. I read a whiny snobby New York Times review which found the whole thing shocking and alarming but having worked in the industry it seems to be just a bunch of smart people trying to do their job well.

Arthur Jacobs has had a nightmare making Dr Doolittle and is desperately trying to hype the film into being a success by any means necessary - and he's also trying to make Planet of the Apes which was a risk, non-sexy proposition. Richard Zanuck is trying to come up with successful films - he turns down Joe Pasternak's pitch of a film with Bob Buckner which doesn't sound that great. Some execs talk tough with the agent of Wayne Maunder, star of Custer.  Darryl Zanuck points out his son was given the job in part to stop him being knifed in the back. Ed Anhalt talks budgeted with Richard Fleischer for The Boston Strangler. Pasternak is impatient with the not very good director of The Sweet Ride. Actors are annoying (Heston is keen on Apes because he wants to say something meaningful, Bob Denver pitches music for Sweet Ride). Irwin Allen tries to make shows on budget.

Sure sometimes people come across as dicks - Darryl Zanuck goes out drinking with his son and their girlfriends and reminisces about the old days including Dick Zanuck's football career; Paul Monash talks about helping black people at Watts and all his therapy. But they're not evil, just human beings.

It's a great book.

Book review - "Yvonne" by Yvonne De Carlo (1987)

The cinematic work of Yvonne De Carlo deserves re-appraisal - for a time there in the late 40s and early 50s she was a genuine lower level star at Universal, playing a succession of slinky Eastern dancing girls and tough Western dames in some unpretentious technicolor films. She and Maureen O'Hara were these quasi-feminist adventure stars, until the 50s took hold and both wound up staring admiringly at the heroes.

De Carlo was an old pro in the best sense of the world. She started quite young, with a pushy mother and absent father (very common elements in biographies of female star). She did a lot of dancing when younger and moved to the US from Canada; her looks saw her win beauty contests which resulted in a dancing gig at the Florentine Gardens. She worked hard at her dancing and was eventually picked up for the movies, doing a stint at Paramount.

In the 1940s girls with "exotic looks" were not discriminated against; de Carlo played a series of dancing girls and natives; she was going to step in for Dorothy Lamour in Rainbow Island but Lamour changed her mind. She also just missed out on good parts in For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Story of Dr Wassell. Her career was stagnating there but got a huge boost when Walter Wagner cast her in the lead of Salome Where She Danced which turned her into a star.

Salome was made by Universal who put her to work in lots of Easterns and Westerns, and wanted someone easier to deal with than Maria Montez (and De Carlo could sing and dance which Montez couldn't). Occasionally she got the chance in something more prestigious like Criss Cross. De Carlo eventually branched out into comedy, notably in England, and got a few parts in "A" pictures, like The Ten Commandments and Band of Angels. But she never made the full transition to "A" stardom - it's harder for women, especially in the macho late 50s. And to be fair De Carlo didn't have the individuality of great stars - or even great icons like Maureen O'Hara; she lacked spark and life-sometimes she blended into the scenery. But she could act and sing and dance, often better than she was given credit for.

De Carlo found things harder  from the late 50s onwards, but she kept at it - working regularly in TV and having a career boost when starring in The Munsters. She also achieved fame on Broadway in Follies. She expresses regret her agents didn't push her for Broadway roles earlier; I'm surprised she didn't appear in more musical films - Universal did make them, though not as often as they did in the 40s.

As a good looking girl De Carlo spent a lot of time fending off lecherous Hollywood wolves/sex pests - Errol Flynn, Franchot Tone, Orson Welles. She was keen on Sterling Hayden but he didn't do anything. Ditto James Stewart. She had amiable dates with Red Skelton and knew Burgess Meredith, a romance with Ray Milland before finally losing her virginity to someone called Carl Anthony. She says Billy Wilder was the first great love of her life. She later had serious romances with Howard Hughes (who made love like an engineer which made me laugh), Robert Stack, Howard Duff and Jock Mahoney (she fell pregnant to him but lost the baby), flings with Burt Lancaster, Carlos Thompson, Tony Curtis and Robert Taylor. There was Aly Khan, of course, who was a great lover - it isn't a very discrete book!

The book gets harder going as once De Carlo marries stuntman Bob Morgan. A sexy man's man, he was overly fond of a drink, and not a particularly devoted husband. She was going to leave him but then he had an accident which resulted in him losing his leg. From then on it was work, work, work as she took every gig going - night club acts, crummy roles in films. She was perennially unlucky in love - she had a taste for love rats (married men, pricks), which never improved.

I liked reading about her encounters with Maria Montez - de Carlo came to Universal as a Montez back up taking her role in Frontier Gal but Montez and she got along; Montez would talk about her being reincarnated, warn her off Howard Hughes and recommend de Carlo and Jean Pierre Aumont (her love interest in one film) play more love scenes because you got more close ups that way.

De Carlo admits to being a right winger - I would've been interested to hear more about this. (I imagine a lot of actors who slogged their way up from the chorus were right wing eg Ginger Rogers.) The book was written before her son died.

It's an entertaining book - a little harrowing (all the sexual harassment), and sad (the career and financial battles). De Carlo had a pretty good life - fame, some good parts, sex with handsome men - but struggled to hang on to money and a good relationship. Still, the world was a better place for her being in it.

Movie review - "Criss Cross" (1949) ****1/2 (re-viewing)

In an earlier review of this film on this blog, I regarded it as a story-lite remake of The Killers. Seeing it on the big screen I was knocked out what a good movie it is, brilliantly shot and directed (by Robert Siodmak).

The story held up better than I originally thought, and there were heaps of things I didn't notice - notably the richness of the support cast: the slimy waiter, amiable bartender, drunken girl at the bar, the fiancee of Lancaster's brother, his brother, the collection of gangsters (the quiet spoken white haired guy, the drunken mastermind of the operation, the tubby gangster, the lean one).

The story was full of richness I hadn't noticed - the interplay between the gangsters, the level of Lancaster's addiction for Yvonne de Carlo, Lancaster's family life (his brother Richard Long gets his girl to kiss him by "mock" threatening to hit her).

De Carlo isn't fantastic (this film shows that she was never an A-tier star... she simply doesn't have the charisma) but she's pretty good and has that fantastic dance moment where Lancaster sees her dancing (with Tony Curtis) after a long absence. Lancaster is superb - with his physique and puppy dog eyes, hopelessly hooked on de Carlo (for a macho star Lancaster was excellent at playing sensitive). Dan Duryea is good as always as the gangster.

A really superb film noir.

Script review - "Some Like It Hot" by Billy Wilder and IAL Diamond

Such great fun. You remember the visuals of this film - Marilyn Monroe and her ukelele, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in drag, but they leap off the brilliant scaffolding of the script. It has a fantastic setting of the late 1920s - gangster, prohibition, St Valentine's Day Massacre. The version of the script I read didn't actually specify "sequences" but you can see Wilder using a sequence method
A - set up of the two leads seeing a murder and fleeing to Miami as girls
B - on the train, meeting Sugar, finding out about her
C - arriving in Florida, Osgood falls for Jerry, Joe starts to pursue Sugar
D - extended sequence of Joe pretending to be millionaire seducing Sugar while Jerry dances with Osgood
E -the guys decide to leave as the gangsters turn up.

The first four acts are so strong it was a surprise (and didn't really matter) that Wilder muffs the last one - it's a bit convenient the gangsters are having a convention at that hotel, and that another gangster wants to kill Spats. Why make this decision? Why not just have some gangster identify them and tell Spats, and have Spats killed while trying to get the boys?

But like I say it doesn't really matter... the situations are strong and the jokes clever. Wilder/Diamond incorporate things that pay off beautifully - like Osgood having a yacht, and giving Jerry and engagement present which Joe gives to sugar. I love the pop culture references like "I've got Rudy Vallee records".

The character of Sugar is a real dimwit - I give her and Joe maybe a month before he betrays her. But at least she acts consistently. Osgood and Jerry make a much better couple. The sexual harrasment and other things women have to endure, and their camaraderie, is very well depicted. A great read.

Book review - "Just Tell Me When You Want Me to Cry" by Richard Fleischer

This isn't one of the famous director memoirs - at least, not that I'm aware - and it sat on my bookshelf for a long time unread, but it was good. Very self effacing for a work from a director - it doesn't talk about his life and times and career so much as encounters with crazy characters. They are certainly memorable: Howard Hughes at RKO making him shoot additional footage for His Kind of Woman; dealing with Orson Welles on Compulsion; Kirk Douglas on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Vikings; Rex Harrison on Dr Doolittle (making them hire Sidney Poitier, then quitting, then being replaced by Christopher Plummer and coming back again); Charles Bronson on Mr Majestyk; Daryl F Zanuck in thrall to Juliete Greco; ducking work with John Wayne on North to Alaska; Laurence Oliver on The Jazz Singer.

There's more affectionate reminiscences: working with the team of Stanley Kramer and Carl Foreman; the hard-living polio-afflicted screenwriter Earl Felton (who I'd never heard of before); Gilbert Roland on Bandido; his early mentor, RKO hard man Sig Rogell.

It's all great fun. I wished that there were more on other films Fleischer made - there's nothing on Che! or See No Evil or Amityville 3-D or lots of other movies. But what's here is good.

Movie review - "The Great Race" (1965) ***

Everything I'd read about this film indicated it was a bloated, unfunny waste of cash which does no one credit. I was delighted to find it was a fun, free spirited homage to old silent film gags, an obvious inspiration for Wacky Races, with its cast and director Blake Edwards in fine form.

Tony Curtis has a fun old time sending up his 50s Universal hero image, and he's well matched by Natalie Wood, who never looked prettier (in a variety of fetching outfits, including some relatively racy underwear) or as though she was having more fun (even though she attempted suicide once the film was over); plus Jack Lemmon hamming it up as Professor Fate. There's also Peter Falk as Lemmon's sidekick and Keenan Wynn, as Curtis' sidekick. I did wish they'd focused on some other people in the race - it wasn't that though three wasn't enough running time.

It's bright and colorful and genuinely funny and charming - I enjoyed The Prisoner of Zenda bit thrown in at the end, and winding up on the ice floes, and the pie fight. It is very long, far too long, and really shouldn't have cost all that money - there's plenty of production value but it all could've been done on the studio backlot.

Movie review - "You Can't Win 'Em All" (1970) **

Buddy action film, very much in the vein of Howard Hawks, which has two novelties - it's setting during the Turkey-Greek War of 1922, and the starring duo of Tony Curtis and Charles Bronson. These two work well together - sparky Curtis and taciturn Bronson, double crossing each other and chasing women. There's also a dame who both want to get in the sack and who has her own adventure - Michele Mercier, who I'd never seen in anything before but has a big role and holds her own well enough.

There's some decent production values - the budget goes a long way with plenty of extras, and bullets. The story at times felt like Vera Cruz and it might have been better had they borrowed more from that film and had more of a clash between the two guys, with one becoming more good than the other... but no the guys fall in love pretty much. I think action adventure is very hard to do well and they don't particularly do it well - it's done "okay".

Some interesting faces pop up in the support cast - Patrick Macgee as a Turkish general, and Australia's own Tony Bonner, of all people, as a soldier.