Film Reviews by Steve

Knockabout cops and robbers caper which maintains a broad appeal while clearly a class above contemporary Carry On films. The star is Peter Sellers, trying out his French accent months before his debut as Inspector Clouseau. This time he's a Cockney mob boss with a front in haute couture. But the lead is Lionel Jeffries as a clueless copper.

A gang of Aussie villains is impersonating police officers and snatching the swag from every job in London. So Scotland Yard and the underworld come together to fight back. This doesn't reinvent the wheel. Parts of it can be traced back to the Keystone Kops, particularly a climactic chase sequence. And it sends up contemporary heist films.

Some of the humour is lost in time. When the gangs form a syndicate, they pastiche popular impressions of bumptious trade unions. But it mostly creates absurd situations which the actors navigate in earnest stone face. Like when the alliance meets in a funfair and negotiate on the rides. It's still funny in places, but mostly a charming entertainment.

The familiar cast considerably elevates the droll script, especially a peak period Peter Sellers. Jeffries makes a fine stooge. The location shoot around residential London lends some authenticity. This is the best of many British crime film comedies of the sixties, triggered by the success of The Lavender Hill Mob a decade earlier.

Colourful, episodic blockbuster loosely based on a third century BC text by Apollonius Rhodius about a rootless adventurer and his mythical quest for the magical golden fleece. While plot points are changed, it's still quite surprising and heartening that it wasn't just made up by a group of staff scriptwriters over a boozy lunch.

Todd Armstrong is a brawny, square jawed Jason, flashing of tooth and blade. His co-star Nancy Kovack arrives late in the tale to contribute a dance and some voluptuous glamour. The two US stars are dubbed and the support cast is all familiar British and Irish actors, because the ancient Greeks spoke in received pronunciation... 

The destinies of mankind are preordained by the gods. So Zeuss (Niall MacGinnes) commands the resolute hero to fight a sequence of supernatural monsters. Which brings us the the astonishing stop-motion animation of Ray Harryhausen. This is his greatest work, and my personal favourite is Talos, the bronze giant who pursues Hercules (Nigel Green).

The Hydra is magnificent too, and just when it looks like the fun is over, we get the seven sword fighting skeletons at the climax. Bernard Herrmann's score of rousing fanfares is perfect accompaniment. Don Chaffey shoots a bright and entertaining background on the sunny Italian coast, but the film is a testament to Harryhausen's legendary art.

Unusual dystopian allegory adapted from the classroom classic by William Golding. A group of English public schoolboys are washed up on an uninhabited island in the Pacific during a nuclear war. Isolated from the normal control of civilisation, they revert to a state of tribal savagery. The influence of society is superficial and soon abandoned.

Theatre director Peter Brook took 30 children to Puerto Rico during their summer holidays and improvised the action. The amateur performances are sometimes laboured, but effective. Tom Chapin is well cast as the leader of the hunters, and Tom Gaman has a little awkward, mystical magnetism as the most enlightened of the boys.

It's experimental cinema, but more appealing than that sounds. While the film explores philosophical concepts, there is still narrative realism as the group divides into factions founded on their degree of self-interest or the waning pull of reason. So it's natural to take a side. In their primitive state, the boys still reflect normal social and political hierarchies.

The location photography makes a huge contribution to the ultra-realistic style. It would be tempting to call this film unique, except it was remade in 1990... But the '63 version is more faithful to the novel and gets closer to the primal state. There are many desert island films which explore the isolation of the human animal from society. This is the most pessimistic.

For the sequel to The Mouse that Roared, almost all the cast and crew were replaced. Which means no Peter Sellers in multiple roles. Ron Moody substitutes effectively as the PM of a tiny European state, though Margaret Rutherford has little to do as the Grand Duchess.

Only David Kossoff returns as the lugubrious, whimsical nuclear scientist, and he steals every scene. This time he plans to land a rocket on the moon using a volatile local wine as fuel while the Soviets and Americans get snagged up in the vortex of inspired absurdity.

While the film satirises the space race, it acutely sends up convoluted cold war politics and espionage. This time around, Grand Fenwick more obviously stands in for the diminished status of Britain after WWII. And it's even funnier than the original, with the comic lunacy almost always on target.

Richard Lester directs the energetic farce with gusto and the sets of the obscure medieval city state are pretty good for a low budget comedy. Bernard Cribbins' usual schtick as a bumbling halfwit gets tiresome, but that may be a matter of taste. This is a genuinely hilarious, irreverant comedy, with a brain.

Faithful version of Harold Pinter's tragicomedy which retains Donald Pleasence and Alan Bates from its West End debut and Robert Shaw from the opening on Broadway. It's an absurdist play/film and which examines the cruelty of power and hierarchy through its three characters, though there is little plot.

Robert Shaw plays an isolated working class man who had electric shock treatment as a teenager and now is numb and withdrawn. He takes a homeless ex-serviceman (Donald Pleasence) to his vacant, junk filled attic where the visitor is oppressed by Shaw's manic, menacing, more enterprising brother (Alan Bates).

This is an art film. While it look like realism, it takes place in a space of poetic imagination. Pinter's themes are undefined and open to interpretation. And it's spellbinding. Of course the script is paramount, but the cast is definitive, with Pleasence the standout as the bigoted, malicious, persecuted vagrant. 

It was made for a pittance with donations from many artists, including Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Nic Roeg was the cinematographer. The co-editor went on to manage Wham! The audio effects were by the composer of the theme from Dr. Who. This is a fascinating curiosity and an obvious labour of love from everyone involved.

High tension, low budget thriller which is among the best British B films ever made. This is due to a much better cast than is usual for this kind of production, but mainly because of Lance Comfort's direction which wrings all of the suspense out of the inspired premise.

A maladjusted misfit (Robert Shaw) abducts the son of a wealthy banker and locks him in an isolated house with a bomb stitched into a doll timed to explode at the hour of the title. Then the kidnapper walks into the parents' swanky mansion and demands a huge ransom.

A paunchy John Gregson investigates but his task is complicated when the angry father (Alec Clunes) kills the criminal. And the clock still ticks. Some of the thoughtful dialogue is just editorialising on related themes, but this is interesting. Maybe the breaking of the case is a little humdrum, but we get a nice ironic twist at the rousing climax.

There's an expressionist look to the opening scene while the kidnapper sews up the the doll, though such visual flair is rationed. The budget won't allow many stylistic flourishes, but the plot is well designed and assembled. It's a short, lean, exciting thriller with a psychological edge and no lulls. Hitchcock on a budget.

Nasty, tasty police drama which creates an unusually brutal picture of the capital's criminal gangs. Nigel Patrick is an old school senior copper who operates by immersing himself in the underworld and doesn't play by the rules. But gets results. His boss (Harry Andrews) wants him to clean up his act and employ modern police methods.

When Patrick's main informer turns up dead, he follows the snout's final lead to a ruthless mob of bank robbers. They are fronted by a flash, vicious psychopath (Derren Nesbitt) but led by a quiet, more considered organiser (Frank Finlay). Nigel is compelling as the cool, street smart inspector. And Nesbitt tears up the scenery to knockout effect.

The plot is a quick shuffle of Fritz Lang's classic noir, The Big Heat, but the feel of the film looks forward to The Sweeney. The cops are just another London gang and not always honest. The crooks get caught because they are dim gamblers who can't play a long game, and cheat each other. Senior police are politicians with a clean profile. The public has to take their chances.

The only bum note is a big gangland punch up towards the climax. Ken Annakin directs with uncharacteristic panache. It's too late for film noir but the interiors have that look. It's the sort of British crime film where the crooks hide out in a lockup in the East End. It's a thrilling, raw, violent gangster film with a foul villain and a nonchalant, charismatic hero.

Wandering shaggy dog story adapted on a shoestring from a play by John Mortimer. A young female artist paints flowers for a company which designs wallpaper. She has an affair with an older married manager over many lunch hours. But this being Britain just before the sexual revolution, there is no place for them to get it on.

Eventually he finagles a hotel bed but then things start to get surreal as the lovers get absorbed into the lie made up by the man to secure the room from the buttoned up landlady. It's mainly a two hander with Shirley Anne Field as the amused art school graduate being manoeuvred into sex by a manipulative wage slave, played by Robert Stephens.

Or maybe none of this happened. It's open to interpretation but my view is the whole story is the hallucinatory day dream of the girl to pass the time while she repetitively paints floral patterns, all day, every day. But of course, that didn't happen either because John Mortimer imagined the whole thing, so perhaps the exercise is a reflection on the creative process.

Other readings are possible. It's an absurdist comedy more droll than hilarious, but it does observe the period with a curious eye, before feminism and swinging London. Shirley Anne isn't a great actor but she has a natural cool detachment which suits the role. It's a fragment; an imaginative, entertaining curiosity short enough to watch in a lunch hour.

The factual inaccuracies transferred from Jean Anouilh's hit play mean that this grand epic is redundant as history. Thomas Becket is presented as a Saxon rather than a Norman and without this misconception the whole structure of the drama would collapse. The story is shaped to present the conflict between Becket and Henry II as popular entertainment.

And of course it is a vehicle for two of the most celebrated actors of the sixties; a theatrical duel between Richard Burton as the eponymous archbishop and Peter O'Toole as the king appointed by god to rule England. Burton takes the honours with his smouldering charisma hinting at unknowable psychological complications, while O'Toole's shrill histrionics get tiresome.

It is a compelling film and it is a particular thrill to see the staging of the murder in the cathedral. But it is most successful as a medieval blockbuster with grandiose sets and locations and a stirring musical score which draws on period Gregorian chants. Peter Glenville was a theatre director but he gets the whole budget up on the big screen.

There is another story behind the legend. Of a sociopath who assumes his divine right to rule, and an ordinary man who discerns that he is in communion with a creator. The greatest epic of all is their elaborate delusion and extravagant cruelty and corruption. We see the majestic pageantry, but Glenville also exposes the deplorable suffering this dystopia validated.

Revisionist war film set in the Malayan jungle during WWII adapted from Willis Hall's debut play. A patrol of British soldiers are engaged in sonic experiments to confuse the Japanese, but spend more time fighting each other. Aside from incessant bickering and indiscipline, the film explores the hypocrisy of military ethics.

Eventually, the ensemble cast is picked off by the enemy. Some viewers will be amenable to Laurence Harvey's gobby Cockney taking a stray bullet early on, but he later becomes the film's conscience as he defends the rights of their Japanese prisoner when the senior officer (Richard Todd) intends to kill him, prompted by his second in command (Richard Harris).

This all adds up to an obvious attempt to break with the traditions of the patriotic memorials of fifties British war films. This unit is a rabble. The men are not heroes. Most of the dialogue is just inane quarrelling and provocation; but there is something compelling about how panic, prejudice and incoherent pragmatism grips the flawed command.

Ultimately the film restates that war is hell. The jungle setting was created in an obviously limited space in the studio, but there is a rich atmosphere, with the constant tropical rainfall. Apparently the cast all hated each other, which probably helped. It's a potent war film, but mainly interesting as a point when British cinema began to show a different side of WWII.

Social realist crime story which owes plenty to the tough American heist films of the fifties. Four career criminals down on their luck hold up an armoured van. When the guns start to go off, the caper falls apart. Then the story segues into a revenge drama as the wife (Billie Whitelaw) of the dead security guard goes vigilante in search of his killers.

So it's a genre film, with a familiar theme of the futility of greed. It's mainly interesting for the location shoot around Newcastle, particularly the industrial regions and the shipyards. Which makes it feel like a forerunner to Get Carter and offers a great snapshot of the period. The workers live in the nice new suburban homes built since the war.

Michael Craig leads the gang, and he was usually one of Rank's pretty boys, but he makes a credible ruthless hoodlum. And the film gets a huge boost from French actor Françoise Prévost who plays the sexy, disappointed wife of the inside man who becomes Craig's rather mercenary moll. She turns out to want the stolen goods worst of all.

It isn't noir. There's a flat documentary look and it is mostly shot in the streets. The big band jazz score is a period standard, though still pretty good. The hold up is capably directed but there is little style and few surprises. Still, it's a lot of fun to see how far Craig's cold hearted villain will go for a suitcase full of money. Which is all the way.

Critically adored Victorian ghost story adapted from Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. Deborah Kerr is the repressed, unworldly governess responsible for two children in a majestic, isolated country home. The film poses the classic supernatural dilemma: is the newly appointed tutor insane, or is the elaborate mansion really possessed by malevolent spirits.

Though the themes run much darker, including a psycho-sexual angle which implies abuse. No surprise that this film is so loved by film makers, because the direction by Jack Clayton is extraordinary. Every instrument of screen craft is employed to make this the most eerie experience imaginable; especially the sound, music, costumes and set decoration.

And credit is due to cinematographer Freddie Francis for his creative use of CinemaScope. But there is little narrative. The same static situation is repeated from a number of perspectives while the audience decides whether the tutor is crazy. Which is interesting, but it occasionally gets stuck, at least until the exquisitely chilling climax.

Deborah Kerr thought this her best performance, with good reason. Martin Stephens and Pamela Franklin, both 11 years old, are impeccable support. Many horror directors have ripped this off. There are no jump scares or big musical cues. This is a sensual, immersive experience. And a subtle, haunting work of cinematic art.

One of the key films of the British new wave, which documents provincial working class life of the period through a realist approach. It tells a candid story drawn from the commonplace; the courtship and complications of a young couple who come together and marry when she gets pregnant. But which leads to a crisis when she miscarries.

Otherwise, this is a film of little dramatic incident. The working class man (Alan Bates) is looking for sex. The woman (June Ritchie) wants marriage and materialism. If these sound like dated stereotypes, then this is a period piece which captures a fascinating moment in British social history, just before the sexual liberation of the sixties.

This is the generation who missed out. The cinéma vérité is enriched by John Schlesinger's observant and eloquent direction. The social realism, shot around industrial Manchester is authentic. But it's his ability to use technique to explain these characters and their unspoken desires starkly but sympathetically which makes the film special.

The performances are genuine. Alan Bates is the nucleus, and he exposes the heart of a flawed everyman; not always sympathetic, but real. The support characters are archetypes, played by a gallery of soon-to-be television stars. In 1962, just hearing those working class voices- and accents- was a revolution. This film keeps them alive.

Understated satire on the British legal system based on a play by former lawyer John Mortimer, who went on to write Rumpole. A quiet, clean living drudge (Richard Attenborough) has murdered his wife. For his defence, the court appoints an empty headed, elderly barrister (Peter Sellers), for his first ever case.

The play was a two hander, but in the film there are flashbacks to scenes of conflict between the mild mannered husband and his raucous spouse (Beryl Reid). He is browbeaten and numbed by domesticity. Whereas she laughs like a hyena at everything. Every single thing.

The dialogue between the accused and his counsel is splendidly dry, like little crackles of irony that spark in every sentence. Sellers and Attenborough make a superb comical team. Dickie's hangdog, henpecked husband is perfect. In the context of all this deadpan drollery, the wife's cacophonous ribaldry is riotously, laugh-out-loud hilarious.

It's not all that cinematic. It could have been done as a radio play. And the fizz doesn't quite last until the fadeout. But the sly script is deft and sharply sardonic. The humour sounds like a precursor for the comedy double act of John Fortune and John Bird. It's a cultish curiosity and a quintessentially British experience.

Energetic occult thriller which overcomes its familiar set up to deliver an adrenaline rush which never lets up. Peter Wyngarde plays an erudite psychology professor on campus at a British university who has a rigid belief in rationality. But after he gets his credulous wife (Janet Blair) to burn her voodoo paraphernalia, his world starts to fall apart.

This is the third version of the novel The Conjurer Wife, and the premise of the scientific mind in conflict with the supernatural has been explored many times; including the similarly titled Night of the Demon. This isn't quite as good, but there is an intelligent script and Sidney Hayers' kinetic direction- plus a rousing score- make it an exhilarating spellbinder.

Wyngarde was a late substitute for Peter Cushing. Which was an advantage as the replacement brought a muscular vitality. Hard to imagine the lean, wan Hammer star being chased around the quad by a paranormal eagle in the rousing climax. Margaret Johnson gives a wonderfully strange performance as the conjurer wife's rival.

There's a transatlantic feel to the production, perhaps because the adaptation was by veterans of The Twilight Zone. The limited sets suggest a small budget but this gives the film a feeling of entrapment, enhanced by the web of noirish shadows. The effects and stunts are fine. There's nothing new here, but it's rarely done as well.