COOL FLICKS: Pretty Poison (1968)

Pretty Poison is a mostly faithful adaptation of Stephen Geller's novel She Let Him Continue. The characters remain fairly true to their original incarnations and remarkably all the names remain intact.Usually movie writers like to "waspify" all the ethnic surnames in movie adaptations, but thankfully we still get to know Sue Anne Stepanek and Mr. Azenauer and Bud Munch with their original names.

I was afraid I was going to see Anthony Perkins do just another version of Norman Bates in this, but due to one of the interesting changes to the movie script Dennis Pitt is not only fully aware of his fantasy life of being a CIA agent he shares those weird stories and fantasies with everyone. So in the opening scene where we see him meeting with his parole officer for the first time (a scene not in the book) he is playing with Azenauer and teasing him. Dennis makes fun of his apparent diagnosis of mental illness with a story of aliens being responsible for polluting the town's water supply. Azenauer then cautions him about indulging in those wild stories. He's supposed to be rehabilitated and ready for the real world now. Dennis smirks, tosses off the advice, and heads out to start his new life.

Immediately afterward he sees Sue Anne for the first time and is entranced. She happens to be dressed as a drum majorette and is inexplicably marching down the street with her high school marching band. This image allows for a recurring musical motif throughout the movie that signals Dennis is daydreaming and drifting off into his private world. The marching band also adds a surreal element that will pervade the movie tying into Dennis' refusal to commit to entering the real world despite all the advice given to him by his landlady, parole officer and other adults.

The strength of the movie is in the scenes between Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins. They have an fascinating chemistry together. Weld seems like an easily impressed, easily manipulated teenage girl sick of adults and her homelife and craving adventure. She oozes enthusiasm and cheerfulness but is never cloying or stupid. There are sly hints about what she's really up to if you already know the ending. It was fascinating to see her play the subtext in the early part of the movie. What I didn't think was a wise choice was to turn her into another two-timing noir temptress.

The film devolves into a series of histrionic scenes beginning with arrest of Dennis at the hands of some hysterical policemen and ending with Sue Anne in the police station revealing that she turned him in. In the book Dennis makes this decision to call the police and confess to the crime himself because he finally realizes that he will never fit into the real world and wants to do the right thing by sparing the girl he has fallen in love with. Yet no matter how hard he tries to be believable he's still treated as if he's a lunatic. It's more effective and tragic than having him become a victim of Sue Anne's devilish betrayal.

In fact Dennis is made to out to be a cowering baby when it comes to actually doing something deadly. Perkins quivers and gives us his wide-eyed innocent looks while Weld laughs and giggles and is turned on by all the violence done mostly at her hands. Too many scenes in the original story where Dennis is complicit in the violence are removed. Weld's Sue Anne is turned into a cackling psycho in the climactic murder scene collapsing into laughter on her bed surrounded by the framed ballet dancers and flowery wallpaper of her girly bedroom. An unsettling scene for sure, but to my mind not really right for Geller's intended themes.

John Randolph (right) as Azenauer, more of a father
figure than a parole officer

The book gives us a series of ineffectual adults who don't really care about Dennis or Sue Anne, who are more interested in enforcing rules and ordering them to do the same. In the movie nearly every adult is sympathetic, especially the all too caring parole officer Azenauer (veteran character actor John Randolph), diminishing the impetus for their rebellious natures. This undermines Geller's intent of having two young people at the mercy of an adult world of hypocrites. In the novel they are reacting to a blasé world of indifference and unimaginative zombies who live their dull lives following the rules blindly. One improvement in the movie comes from the intensity of Perkins' involvement in his fantasy world of CIA rules, alien threats and paranoid delusions of being scrutinized by everyone he and Sue Anne encounter. An interesting choice is how Dennis is flippant and sarcastic when dealing with the adults and so serious and officious when he's with Sue Anne who is both starry-eyed and curious, eager to figure out just who Dennis is, why he's so strange and itching to take part in his adventures.

The only adult character who remains true to the original story is Sue Anne's mother even more of a harpy than she was in the book. As played by Beverly Garland Mrs. Stepanek is the best supporting part in the movie. She is epitome of the bitch mother. Philandering with wannabe hunks and yet keeping a tight control on her "slut" daughter who is only following in her mother's footsteps. Garland appears in three scenes but she makes the most of them delivering her lines with vehement gusto, puffing away on a cigarette, slapping her daughter like Ida Lupino in Women's Prison. It's no wonder Dennis retreats to the kitchen or inches his way to the front door when in her presence. No one would want to be in the same room with such a Fury.

The movie works largely thanks to the presence of Perkins and Weld and their very magnetic chemistry. Their scenes are the strongest, most powerful and most imaginatively composed and lit. If there are a few unintentionally campy moments like the shot of Sue Anne straddling her first murder victim like she's won a wrestling contest or some dreadful dialogue like Perkins oft quoted "What a week...!" speech they only enhance the weirdness of the movie. This is supposed to be a story of young people -- a 22 year old man and a 17 year old girl -- committing sabotage, murder and having drug enhanced sex in the 1960s. Watching two people much older than their parts (Perkins was 36, Weld 25) carry off their roles with 100% commitment and never once parodying themselves or their past roles is both impressive and wildly entertaining.

COOL FLICKS: The Two Faces of January (2014)

I'll never pass on a Patricia Highsmith movie. This is one that I was completely unfamiliar with. I have read quite a few of her books, and reviewed one on this blog, but not only have I not read The Two Faces of January I hadn't any idea of the basic plot. Nor did I want to know before I saw the movie. From the opening scenes in which Viggo Mortenson and Kirsten Dunst are touring Greek ruins in their elegant attire to the final violent moments I was riveted. It may be one of the few sun-drenched noir movies in existence. Sun and heat and Greek ruins have never been more sinister on film.

I'm not sure I want to discuss the story at all but I urge any Highsmith fan, whether familiar with the novel or not, to see this movie. Viggo Mortenson and Oscar Isaac are fascinating to watch. Kirsten Dunst also does some interesting work in shading her character but the screen is dominated by the presence of the two men as one might expect in a Highsmith story. All of them are crooks of one sort or another. Each of the three leads is corrupt and a master manipulator. Isaac is Rydal a con man of a tour guide exploiting tourists' ignorance of the Greek language and the Greek drachma to his own ends; Mortenson plays Chester the shifty investment banker indulging himself in a life of excess; and Dunst is his wife Colette who hides her fear and hidden desires beneath a veneer of American charm and plastic smiles.

Highsmith's fascination with male bonding, friendship and fraternity is augmented in this story by a very strange surrogate father fixation in the attraction Rydal has for Chester. The catch is Rydal hated his real father who we learn has recently died at the opening of the movie. Yet he cannot help being drawn to Chester who uncannily resembles his dead father. Their initial meeting is all about stares and penetrating gazes and the father/son motif inexorably plays out in a dangerous and ultimately heartbreaking manner.

To me the most intriguing aspect of the film are the looks exchanged between characters and their silences. Often what isn't said is more important than what is and carries more weight. So much is conveyed only through glances or stares. It's an interesting choice not often used these days in movies that seem to be talkative monologue marathons. Not to disparage the intelligent dialogue devised by director/screenwriter Amini who also wrote the excellent screen adaptation of James Sallis' novel Drive. He uses dialogue with economy but is more interested in visuals to tell his story. This is a smart movie about smart and wily characters.

By the time the movie was about halfway done I suddenly had to know if it was being faithful to Highsmith's novel. So I went searching online for a book review or a plot summary and found that it was very much true to her novel with only a few minor tweaks. Having watched this cat and mouse game played out in the blazing Greek sun with more than a few references to it rich mythological heritage not the least of which is the eerie reverse Oedipal psyche I am now eager to read the book. I'm curious if Highsmith focusses more on young Rydal and his twisted family life and also if she delved into mythology as much as Amini did.

COOL FLICKS: That Cold Day in the Park

It's all about Frances.

Gillian Freeman has taken Richard Miles' character of Madame and a handful of key scenes as a springboard for an exploration of an oppressive and claustrophobic kind of loneliness. The kind of loneliness that will drive Frances (Sandy Dennis in a mesmerizing, bravura performance) to things she had barely dreamed about. Living in a cluttered apartment with all sorts of anachronistic and "old people's" furnishings (she has a harmonium!), cared for by an indifferent bustling housekeeper she also "inherited" from her dead mother Frances seems to have become her own prisoner. But one night at the end of a dinner party for her ancient friends -- most of whom are also inherited from her mother and all of whom are twice her age or more -- she drifts away from their idle chatter to glance out her apartment window. Outside in the pouring rain she sees a young man (Michael Burns) sitting on a park bench, apparently just as lonely as she is, getting drenched. With no umbrella and no real coat he curls up on the bench and lets the rain come down. We see her watch him with a sly smile on her face as she begins to plot. Once her guests have left Frances goes outside to the boy and invites him into her house. Just for a while. Until the rain stops. He can warm up, take a bath, have some food. Then when the rain stops, be on his way.

And so begins That Cold Day in the Park (1969), Robert Altman's second feature film and one of his least known movies. The combination of Altman's love of improvisational dialogue and Freeman's artful and cultivated speeches give the movie an air of timelessness and spontaneity. The movie opens with what seems like banter and chatter among Frances' dinner guests. A similar improvisational feel occurs when we see the boy with his sister and her boyfriend and much later in a visit to a doctor's office. The purpose of the visit and type of doctor are revealed only to us through the seemingly random conversation of three women in a waiting room. Meanwhile the camera follows Frances as she wanders about nervously or fidgets in her seat. This is one of the most clever sequences in the movie, a kind of scene we rarely see on film any more, a scene you need to pay attention to. Only rarely does the dialog betray its 1960s era as in the slangy phrases tossed around by the Boy, his sister and her boyfriend.

And the movie has such a mystery about it. The Boy indulging himself in his fraudulent mute world, toying with Frances, teasing her and Frances not really letting on what she's up to. This is more than a simple act of kindness, of taking a stranger in out of the pouring rain. There is a mind game of sorts going on between the two as well as other games. On his first night she gives him a bath, takes away his sodden clothes and lets him wander around her home clad only in a blanket. They listen to music. He coyly dances for her to gypsy music played on her hi-fi. He practically does a kind of strip tease. What is he up to? Why is Frances so willing to let a stranger run wild in her home? When he decides to stay for the night she locks him in his bedroom. She does it with such purpose we know that she has some kind of ulterior motive.

The Boy comes and goes as he pleases, but always returns to Frances' home. One day he returns with some "cookies" -- really brownies laced with pot. The two of them have a party that night with wine and the brownies. Frances becomes drunk and high and really lets her hair down. They play a game of blind man's buff, she flirts with him and continues her endless monologues about her life. He listens, returns the flirtations, but abandons her once again before the night is over. She's beginning to get a bit perturbed about his disappearances.

The crucial scene and the most poignant in the movie is the night when in a moment of utter honesty Frances bravely walks to his bedroom and delivers a speech about what her lonely life has become. She talks of Charles, a man old enough to be her father, who is attracted to her, who has propositioned her several times. "His immaculate shirts...he has a terrible habit of plucking at the creases in his trousers. He disgusts me." She talks about odd details of the first night she met the Boy. "You wore no socks with your shoes. No socks. That...it gave me such a peculiar feeling." She goes on becoming increasingly vulnerable, confessing her attraction for him, and getting the courage to slip into the bed next to him. What ends the scene is not only terrifying for Frances but heart-wrenching for the audience. We know that from this point on she will stop at nothing to keep the Boy in her home.

From that moment on there is an air of danger about the movie. As if her eccentricity weren't enough Frances becomes totally unpredictable. Her strangest and most desperate act is hiring a hooker by proxy and bringing her back to the Boy as a gift. As in the book this is the climax of the story. Whereas Miles had the third character of Yves enter at the eleventh hour, in the film there is no savior for the Boy. The movie has a very different ending, far more disturbing. For me because the story has always focused on Frances and her slow deterioration into a world of her own making Altman and Freeman's changed ending is much more satisfying. It also makes a lot more sense than Miles' somewhat ambiguous and flat ending in the novel.

That Cold Day in the Park is now available on DVD from that fine video company Olive Films, in both regular DVD and Blu-Ray formats. There's also the internet; I managed to watch the movie broken up into seven parts on YouTube (all seven parts together here). Not advisable for movie purists -- the color is washed out and a few scenes are too dark to see what's really going on. I'd suggest finding a DVD copy. Finally, this underrated movie is reaching a wider audience now as it so long deserved. There are several reviews on movie blogs all over the internet. One of the most knowledgeable and insightful critiques can be found at "Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For".

COOL FLICKS: I Put a Spell on You - Halloween Movie Fest

The one, the only -- Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe)

Even though I am already seeing Christmas ads on TV (!) and my local café is prominently displaying a selection of “holiday” cards beside the Kind bars, breath mints, and other impulse buys near the cash register it is still the "Season of the Witch" for me. Thankfully, Jack-o-lanterns far outnumber Christmas wreaths in my ‘hood.

With only three days left before the big costume parade on Halsted Avenue and trick or treating everywhere else I have time to sneak in my suggestions for a Halloween mini- movie festival for your DVD player. Most of these films are easily available on DVD and a few can be found online. Looking for unusual frights and shivers? Sample a few or all of these suitably chilling Halloween movies all having to do with spell casting whether literal or metaphorical. We begin with the most recent and travel back in time to the oldest.

Outcast (2010) – an original take on witchcraft and spell casting from a Scottish TV writer/director Colm McCarthy is his feature film debut. A young man is being stalked by a powerful warlock and his mother (Kate Dickie) resorts to witchcraft and runic spells to protect him. Meanwhile a mysterious beast terrorizes the countryside committing gruesome murders. The stories intersect in a chilling climax. A brutal horror film that is also at its heart the story of mother who will stop at nothing to protect her child.

Travel to the Louisiana bayou for a little lesson in hoodoo of the American south. Not at all the same as voodoo as you will learn in The Skeleton Key (2005). Kate Hudson -- normally not at all one of my favorites -- plays a hospice worker who is charged with taking care of the dying patriarch (John Hurt at left) of an old plantation family. Hurt at first seems to be dying of a terminal illness, but is he actually being scared to death? What is he so frightened of? Is his loss of speech a medical condition or the result of spellcasting?

Secrets in the attic, midnight strolls in a spooky Southern Gothic mansion, and a whole lot of witchery and superstition are the ingredients in this combination fright flick and mystery story. Gena Rowlands and Peter Sarsgaard round out the fine cast. Hudson is actually rather good in this one and the story is so well told (original script by Ehren Kruger who also wrote the very fine Arlington Road as well as Impostor and The Ring) and shot you soon find yourself completely engrossed in the mysterious and very spooky goings on.

Rufus Sewell succumbs to the siren song of a deadly mermaid

She Creature (2001) was part of a somewhat successful attempt to revisit old monster movies from the 1950s in a cable TV series called "Creature Features." The original was also called She Creature but that is all they have in common. This remake (the best of the series, IMO) uses the legends of mermaids and the Sirens of Greek mythology, sets the film in Victorian England and is a vast improvement. I enjoyed it a lot.

Sewell & Gugino notice a change in the catch of the day

Sebastian Gutierrez wrote and directed this homage to old Hammer horror flicks and casts Rufus Sewell and Carla Gugino as a couple of con artists trying to pass off Gugino as a mermaid in a lame sideshow act. When they find a real mermaid they capture her, cage her and exploit her for a money making exhibit that will outdo their previous pathetic attempts. They get a lot more than they bargained for with this very angry mermaid. The ending is completely over-the-top but just plain perfect for a monster movie. Sewell and Gugino are splendid, but the real stars of this retro monster movie are the make-up designer and the special effects team.

While not a legitimate horror movie per se Apartment Zero (1988) is still one of the creepiest and under-appreciated films out there. Definitely scary enough to add to any evening of Halloween films. It may be the only arty slasher film in existence. Colin Firth in one of his earliest screen performances shows just why he deserves that recent Oscar. He plays Adrian LeDuc, a loner art film theater owner, who out of financial need rents a room in his apartment to mysterious stranger Jack Carney played by 80s hunk Hart Bochner. The two develop a very strange friendship and soon LeDuc is shielding his roommate when Jack is suspected of being a serial killer. Written and directed by Argentinian filmmaker Martin Donovan whose real name is Carlos Enrique Valera y Peralta-Ramos.

Donohoe doing her snake act

Can there be a more hysterically funny, bizarrely surreal, and ridiculously erotic horror movie than The Lair of the White Worm (1988)? If there is, I haven’t found it yet. Ken Russell has taken Bram Stoker’s weakest novel of the supernatural and transformed it into a campy, slithery, fright fest that could also be a very perverted herpetophile’s wet dream. A mix of surreal nightmare sequences, over the top sex scenes, a generous helping of offensive blasphemy, and an absurd use of snake and phallic imagery The Lair of the White Worm is one head trip of a horror movie. Add to that hodgepodge one of the most delightfully weird performances in the person of the sexy and witty Amanda Donohoe as Lady Sylvia Marsh and you can't go wrong. Hugh Grant is the hapless hero caught up in Lady Sylvia’s serpentine spell. The first time I saw this movie I couldn’t believe half of what I was seeing. To this day I have yet to see a horror film this daring when it comes to mixing sex and laughs and scares.

Looks like 1988 was a banner year for spooky movies. The Serpent and the Rainbow is also from that penultimate 80s year. Bill Pullman plays a doctor who travels to Haiti because he has heard of a drug used in creating a state of suspended animation that might be the origin of zombie mythology and inadvertently stumbles into the dangerous world of voodoo. Zakes Mokae is the powerful voodoo priest who utters the line “I want to hear you scream” in one of horror cinema’s truly bloodcurdling and nerve-wracking torture sequences. Based on a true story of a botanist who did research into the toxic and hallucinogenic plants used in Haitian voodoo rituals.

What's Halloween without a monster or two? I’ve always loved Roddy McDowall and when he plays slimy villains he’s at his best. He does a sort of Norman Bates redux role in It! (1967), a remake of the old silent German expressionist film The Golem (1920). The movie also has Jill Haworth and it is largely due to these two actors that the movie isn’t an utter disaster. Unintentionally funny and campy beyond belief It! does what all monster movies do well -- takes a preposterous story and make it thoroughly entertaining.

Watching ol’ Roddy become master of the murderous statue and using it to eliminate everyone who angers him is too much fun. His performance makes it easier to forgive the story's frequent lapses in common sense. But that’s what makes it one of my favorite monster flicks. What may not be so easy to forgive or overlook is the ridiculous apocalyptic ending involving nuclear warheads that should’ve obliterated half of England.

Conjure Wife is one of the more intriguing treatments of witchcraft in a modern setting. Charles Beaumont, best known for his work on TV’s Twilight Zone adapted Fritz Leiber’s novel for the screen and it remains faithful to the themes of the book. Retitled Burn, Witch, Burn (1962) (or The Night of the Eagle, depending on whether you live in the US or UK) the story works both as satire and horror story. Burn, Witch, Burn is nonetheless a chilling tale of superstition, spells and black magic. Perhaps the least gory of the films appearing on my Halloween film fest list this year it still holds a high place on the honor role of effective movies involving witchcraft. Also it earns special points for simultaneously being an intelligent movie that skewers the world of academia for its satiric touches on the bureaucracy of universities and the way in which wives control their husband’s destinies.

Janet Blair resorts to witchery to save her husband's life and career

COOL FLICKS: A Life at Stake (1954)

Crime and noir film devotees know the insurance policy plot is as old as Double Indemnity. Probably even older. A Life at Stake is yet another spin on the hapless mark duped into taking out a life insurance policy and realizing almost too late he's put a bullseye on his back. Just who is being duped in this story is something that is not all that clear at first. Screenwriter Russ Bender provides more than an ample amount of twists to what could have been a tired story.

Angela Lansbury turns in a neat performance as an unlikely temptress. She shows a glimmer of her monstrously manipulative mother soon to be unleashed in The Manchurian Candidate, a performance that earned her a third Academy Award nomination. As Doris Hillman she can flip the switch from sexy dame with dulcet voice and shapely gams to terrible termagant ready to slap a man's face and scream a torrent of abuse.

He-man hunk Keith Andes is Edward, the mark with a love of money and booze. In a gratuitous shirtless scene the viewer knows our hero is a manly man from the get-go. As the movie unfolds we may be watching him slowly wrapped around Doris' fingers but the director wants us to know that though he's weak of mind he's no Casper Milquetoast in the physique department. We also get to watch him fall in love with his framed $1000 bill, a chunk of cash that will come back to haunt him repeatedly.

As Doris' kid sister Madge, Claudia Barrett proves to be the biggest surprise of the movie. At first we think she's just hanging on to the muscular, lantern-jawed hero for a little thrill, stir up some sisterly jealousy. By the midpoint, however, she'll prove to be every bit as wily as Doris and her scheming husband. She adds a double dose of the twists to the plot with schemes of her own. The $1000 is released from its prison of a picture frame transforming itself from prop to a sort of a supporting character.

I liked this movie a lot. The plot seems heavily borrowed from Cain's novel but there's a delicious quirkiness to this movie's self-conscious low budget attitude. Offsetting Andes' mostly wooden monotone acting is the polished and sparkling performance from Lansbury and occasional inspired bits from Barrett combined with several expertly shot noirish scenes that lift A Life at Stake out of the realm of forgettable B flicks to make it something of a cult classic.

Jane Darwell: "He's a weird one. Him and his thousand dollar bill.

Framed like a picture and a-settin' on the table."

Douglass Dumbrille as Gus reminds his wife who's in charge

Other highlights include Jane Darwell in a cameo as a suspicious landlady and Douglass Dumbrille as Doris' urbanely menacing husband Gus. The melodramatic score is by Les Baxter and the clever script by B movie actor turned screenwriter Russ Bender. Another B movie stalwart, Paul Guilfoyle (dozens of character parts in films like The Grapes of Wrath, Mighty Joe Young, The Mark of the Whistler, Mad Miss Manton and White Heat) does a fine job in his directing debut. Guilfoyle teams up with neophyte cameraman Ted Allen (also his debut as Cinematographer) in creating some moody shots heavily influenced by classic noir movies of the 1940s and getting the most out of his capable cast. Maybe Guilfoyle could have cracked the whip a bit more on Andes. His strongman body deserved and could've taken the blows.

There are a couple of absurdities in the story (like a cabin in the woods with French windows that open onto a cliff side deck that was never finished) and the acting sometimes slips over into grandiose scenery chewing and posing for the camera, but it's such an odd film I was willing to overlook the few faults. In fact, by the midpoint when I realized the plot was headed straight into the land of weirdness I almost wanted more of the absurd and surreal. This is a little known movie that deserves full fledged cult status.  It can be seen in its entirety on several streaming websites for free. As it's one of several movies that has slipped into the public domain you should feel no guilt about watching it on YouTube or downloading it as I did. I've watched it about four times in the past few months and as derivative and hokey as it may be I still find things to enjoy about A Life at Stake.

"I feel just luscious. Uh...how much insurance do you have?"

Gus Hillman's coffee will send you to sleep rather than keep you awake.

Madge (Claudia Barrett) and Edward discuss putting to good use his treasured $1000.

Doris asks Edward to admire the view from the porch-less French windows.

That's quite a drop. Hmm...

The battle for Edward between two scheming sisters.

COOL FLICKS: Too Many Crooks (1959)

I've always loved Ruthless People, the 1986 comedy in which Danny DeVito tries to get rid of his harridan wife played by Bette Midler only to discover prior to killing her that she has been kidnapped.  He is elated and taunts the ineffectual kidnappers by not paying them and daring them to kill her and put an end to all his troubles. Screenplay writer Dale Launer claimed to have been inspired by O. Henry's "The Ransom of Red Chief" about the kidnapping of an obnoxious child who causes headaches for the crooks trying to get money from his parents who don't want him back.  Well, it appears that Launer really took the idea from an old Rank Organization/Pinewood Studios movie called Too Many Crooks. I only learned this a few days ago when Christopher Fowler mentioned it in passing on his blog here.  So of course I had to find the movie and see for myself. Too Many Crooks has an awful lot in common with Ruthless People. But the 1959 British movie happens to be funnier, less vulgar, and has a sense of fun and hysteria that outshines the American film of the 80s.


Terry-Thomas, premier sputterer and cad of so many British and American farces, plays Billy Gordon, a greedy businessman who fears banks and the taxman. He keeps all of his money hidden in several safes and other secure spots out of the hands of his wife and the British government.  A gang of inept thieves targets him for their latest caper, but they fail miserably at their group effort as masked yeggmen.  So they turn to Plan B - kidnapping his daughter.  Their ineptitude once again trips them up when they learn they have kidnapped not his daughter but his wife. And the joke is on them when Gordon has no interest in paying the ransom. Even when their gang leader Fingers (George Cole) attempts to barter on the ransom dropping it from £10,000 to £4,000 to a mere 200 quid Gordon will not fork over the money. When his wife learns that she is unwanted and not even worth 200 her meek demeanor gives way to vengeful Fury. No more Mrs. Nice Gal for Lucy Gordon played with wily charm by Brenda De Banzie.  She lets loose with a display of military combat techniques on her captors and lets them know who's got the real brains and brawn.  She convinces the gang of crooks to turn the tables on Gordon and rob him of every penny they can lay their hands on.

The movie is an all out farce with all the typical ingredients you expect from low comedy. Sight gags, goofy pratfalls and slapstick antics, silly disguises by the trunkful, shapely women in tight fitting costumes providing ample opportunity for  lots of breast jokes.  Cole shows off his skill at comic dialects yet his character always manages to slip into his native Cockney giving him away each time. But for every slapstick joke there are probably two or three genuinely witty lines in the very clever script by Michael Pertwee, son of playwright and novelist Roland Pertwee.  The screenplay is also apparently based on a story by novelist and journalist Christine Rochefort and Jean Nery, who was a Cannes Film Festival judge though I can find nothing else about him.

Terry-Thomas is blackmailed by "Sgt. Sykes" (Cole),
one of the many disguises of Fingers, the gang's leader

As with any farcical comedy there are a number of bizarre complications, utter coincidences and convenient accidents that add to the chaos.  Gordon is told if he doesn't pay up on the ransom his wife will be cut up into tiny pieces and distributed along the Great North Road.  Not much later he will be handed a newspaper with a headline emblazoned WOMAN MURDERED ON GREAT NORTH ROAD and frantically jump to conclusions. A series of mishaps lands him in court where one of the silliest sequences takes place. Gordon's incoherent rambling of "Money, no money. Oh, I wish I were dead" at the scene of his house fire is misinterpreted as "Mummy, Mummy." Then turned around by his defense attorney to be "Bunny. No, Bunny." As the lawyer explains, "Bunny, his budgerigar."  It goes on and on like the best kind of wordplay in a Marx Brothers movie or an Abbot and Costello routine.

The gang of crooks is made up of some veterans of the Carry On series, Sid James and Bernard Bresslaw,  and Joe Melia in his screen debut. Melia plays a scrawny, wannabe weightlifter who speaks almost all of his dialogue sotto voce and is called, aptly enough, Whisper. The shapely women are blond bombshell Vera Day as the gang's moll Charmaine and Delphi Lawrence as Gordon's unnamed secretary. Lawrence may be recognizable to keen 1960s TV fans for guest appearances on many US and UK shows like Wild, Wild West, The Man from UNCLE and Gideon C.I.D. Each of these supporting players gets their chance to shine in the chaotic, incident filled story.  Only Rosalie Ashley and Nicholas Parsons as Gordon's daughter Angela and her tax inspector fiance seem wasted as the symbols of sanity in this madcap world of criminal activity gone haywire.