Seven Golden Men (1965)

Seven Golden Men (Sette uomini d'oro) is an insanely entertaining 1965 Italian crime caper movie. It deserves to be regarded as one of the all-time classic heist movies.

The Professor is the diabolical criminal mastermind behind a plan to steal seven tons of gold from a Swiss bank. Only he’s not really diabolical at all, he’s quite a nice guy. He just likes robbing banks. It’s a harmless hobby.

He has a few odd little obsessions. Particularly with the number seven, which is why he wants to steal seven tons of gold, using a team of seven expert thieves. And the entire team comprises men whose names start with the letter A.

The entire movie consists of the robbery and its aftermath. There’s no build-up, no time spent on the planning of the operation, no back story. The movie doesn’t need any of that. It cuts straight to the chase, which gives it a punchiness and economy sadly lacking in so many modern thrillers. And the heist is one of the most elaborate, most ingenious and wittiest ever put on film. It provides more evidence that to do this sort of thing successfully you don’t need big budgets, expensive special effects or CGI. What you need is visual imagination and style, and director Marco Vicario has that in spades.

You also need pacing. And again Vicario has things under control. There are no dull moments in this film.

Of course you know there will be plot twists, and this one has all the expected plot twists. But then it adds even more plot twists and pulls off some genuinely unexpected ones.

It’s all done in a light-hearted fun way. This is not a movie to be taken seriously, and it never takes itself seriously, even though the robbery scenes compare very favourably indeed to any movie in the classic heist-movie mould. This is a good-natured romp, and these thieves are likeable and engaging.

There’s a mix of action and humour, some great visual gags, and some superb set-pieces. This being 1965 there’s no sex or nudity. This is a movie totally lacking in sleaze, or in graphic violence either for that matter. But of course there has to be a beautiful female mixed up in such a robbery somewhere, and Rossana Podestà fulfils that role admirably as The Professor’s girlfriend Giorgia. She has to rely on old-fashioned glamour and sexiness but she has these qualities in abundance, as well as charm and a nice line in high-class wickedness.

Philippe Leroy is a delightful master criminal, underplaying his role but clearly having a great time. The whole supporting cast is excellent and it’s difficult to single out any particular performance.

There are cool gadgets, there are scuba divers, there are charmingly odd 1960s cars, lots of wonderful 1960s fashions and fashion accessories (Giorgia wears some of the most outrageous eyewear you’ll ever encounter) and there’s lots of glamour. Everything you ant in a 60s movie in other words. These people are the cream of the crop when it comes to international crime, all strictly high-class. This is crime as practised by the very best people.

The soundtrack is bizarre but that just adds to the enjoyment.

This is a movie that captures the spirit of the 60s before the hippies took over. It’s all style, and it’s all fun. Very definitely an overlooked classic.

The Viking Queen (1967)

Back in the mid-60s Hammer Studios were putting a lot of their energies into adventure/fantasy movies, some if which were pretty good (She) and some of which were pretty bad but still great campy fun (One Million Years BC). And some were just downright weird (The Lost Continent). Most (including One Million Years BC) were visually fairly impressive. So their 1967 release The Viking Queen sounded like it should at least be fun.

The setting is the newly conquered Roman province of Britain during the reign of the Emperor Nero. The dying British king of the Iceni bequeaths his kingdom jointly to his daughter Salina and to the Roman Emperor. A Roman officer named Justinian is appointed as the emperor’s governor-general. It appears that in practice Salina is queen in name only, with the Romans calling the shots. Fortunately Justinian is a virtuous and intelligent Roman who wants peace and prosperity, a desire shared by Queen Salina. Justinian and Salina also happen to be hopelessly in love.

There are however a couple of flies in the ointment. Justinian’s second-in-command, Octavian, is bitter that Justinian was promoted ahead of him. Octavian is also ruthless and vindictive, and he despises the British. Salina has her own problems - the Druids are continuing to practice their abominable rites, including human sacrifice, even though the public performance of these rites has been banned by the Romans. The Druids want a war of liberation to drive the Romans into the sea, and they are excited by the prophecy that one day a queen will take up the sword and expel invaders from the land. They believe Salina is the queen of the prophecy.

The immediate cause of contention though is the planned marriage of Justinian and Salina. This marriage is absolutely forbidden by the Druid high priest Maelgan. The Druids are in fact plotting to bring about a situation that will force the Iceni to rebel against their Roman overlords. Justinian and Salina, aided by her faithful follower the Iceni prince Tristram, must struggle to prevent a war that will see them face each other as enemies.

Now at this point you’re probably wondering what happened to the Vikings. I’m afraid I have some bad news. There are no Vikings! So why is the movie called The Viking Queen? Presumably because it seemed like a more enticing title than The Ancient British Queen.

Apart from the total absence of Vikings the movie has other, more serious, problems. The first problem is the pacing. In an action adventure movie you expect some action and some adventure, and there’s precious little of either until the very end of the film. This also means that the climactic scenes seem very rushed and the ending seems much too sudden, as if everyone just got sick of it and decided to end the movie. Another problem is that the movie is so campy it almost becomes self-parody. At times it seems more like a Carry On movie than a Hammer movie.

The biggest problem of all is the casting. A Finnish model named Carita plays Salina, and this movie more or less started her acting career and more or less ended it as well. She’s certainly beautiful, but she’s unfortunately rather dull. The Hammer adventure movies of this period that succeeded mostly did so because they had a female lead with both beauty and charisma - Ursula Andress in She, Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC. Acting ability was not a major requirement, but charisma most certainly was. And Carita totally lacks charisma. She also lacks the physical presence to be convincing as a warrior queen.

Don Murray is even more lifeless as Justinian. Fortunately the supporting cast is rather better. Patrick Troughton (the Second Doctor Who) is fun as Tristram. Andrew Keir is delightfully villainous as Octavian, and Donald Houston chews the scenery with great enthusiasm as the chief Druid.

The movie’s battle scenes might not be historically accurate, but since nothing whatsoever in the film is historically accurate that hardly matters. What does matter is that they seem very small-scale, although the chariot charges are reasonably spectacular.

With the movie lacking so much in the action department, the movie might be expected to rely heavily on sex and sleaze. But this was a British film in 1967, so it’s somewhat lacking in those areas as well. It tries its best to be sleazy, but the sexy bits come off as more camp than sleaze.

This was definitely not one of Hammer’s finest moments. It does almost make it as an outrageous campfest, but as with everything else in the movie even its campiness is just a little half-hearted. With a stronger actress in the lead role it might well have succeeded, and it’s still reasonably entertaining if you’re in the mood for silly fun with chariots.

Cold Eyes of Fear (1971)

Cold Eyes of Fear (Gli occhi freddi della paura) is a 1971 eurocrime thriller set, for no obvious reason, in London. Director Enzo G. Castellari is probably best known today for The Inglorious Bastards.

The opening sequence is essentially an excuse for some sleaze, before the film proper begins. A man picks up a woman at a London night-club and takes her back to his uncle’s house. We later learn that the man, Peter, is the nephew of a judge. These two soon discover that they are not alone - there is a rather crazed gunman in the house who takes them hostage, for reasons that are not clear at his stage. The plot starts to come together when his accomplice turns up in a rather unexpected way.

This accomplice, Arthur Welt, turns out to be the brains behind the outfit. He’s a convict recently released from prison, and he has a major grudge against Peter’s uncle the judge. He has an ingenious plan for not only gaining revenge but for clearing his name and bringing down the other people involved in his crime. He claims the judge was corrupt and that his partners in crime got off because they were were members of the ruling class while he was left carrying the can.

There are in effect two suspense sub-plots operating simultaneously and the movie cuts back and forth between them. One involves the judge, as we wait to see if he escapes the convict’s vengeance. The other involves Peter and the woman he picked up at the club, and whether they will escape from the two rather unbalanced criminals holding them hostage.

It’s reasonably exciting and done with a certain amount of flair. The biggest problem is the atrocious English dubbing which also makes it difficult to make any judgment on the acting.

The level of violence escalates markedly towards the end and is somewhat overdone, as if the director lacked confidence in his ability to maintain the suspense and decided to go all-out with the violence instead.

It still functions as an entertaining enough thriller and it's worth a look.

The Redemption DVD is very good but it’s a pity that only the English dubbed version was able to be included.

Abigail Lesley Is Back in Town (1975)

Joe Sarno’s 1960s sexploitation movies were more psycho-sexual melodramas than anything else. His specialty was to lift the lid on respectable suburban or small town communities to expose the hidden licentiousness and hypocrisy. By the 70s though he’d mellowed somewhat, and Abigail Lesley Is Back in Town, released in 1975, is much less cynical and bleak than his classic 60s films.

What’s interesting is that the basic plot is very similar indeed to his 1969 film Passion in Hot Hollows, but the tone of this movie is very different.

In both movies a woman has left a small town community years earlier to escape the stultifying conformity and repression. When she returns she unleashes an explosion of sexual passions that rocks the town to its core. But unlike her counterpart (Norma Sue) in Passion in Hot Hollows, Abigail Lesley is a much more sympathetic character. She’s also a much more fully developed character.

At first she appears very much like Norma Sue - deliberately causing chaos and seducing everyone who can possibly be seduced. As the film progresses we learn that she has reasons for feeling a degree of bitterness. Most importantly though, whereas Norma Sue was intent on revenge and on leaving a trail of destruction behind her, Abigail Lesley wants to liberate the people of Bayport. And rather than being the somewhat vicious rednecks of the earlier film the people of Bayport are merely repressed.

Most repressed of all is Priscilla (Rebecca Brooke). Abigail had seduced her husband Gordon (Jamie Gillis). Priscilla is conducting a kind of extramarital romance with a rather shy fisherman, but they’re both too uptight about the whole thing to have sex. She is very embarrassed by her sexual feelings, even when those feelings are directed towards her husband. Her aunt Drucilla (Jennifer Welles) suffers from no such hang-ups, which simply embarrasses Priscilla even more.

Her friend Alice Anne has her own embarrassing little secret - she learnt everything she knows about sex from her brother. Lila and Tracy have a secret as well - a youthful lesbian love affair. And it’s been quietly smouldering ever since.

Abigail decides the best plan is to get everyone sleeping with everyone else. Once they’ve overcome their inhibitions they’ll be free and happy. Hey, it was the 70s, when people still thought sex was a good thing. The results are not quite what she expects, but they’re certainly not disastrous. Especially for Priscilla.

Sarno recruited his cast mainly from New York City porn stars, many of whom worked mainly in the hardcore area. But this was the 1970s, when porn stars had generally started their careers as legitimate actors. They knew how to act. And given an opportunity to do real acting they could produce the goods. The characters in this movie have real complexity, as do the performances.

Jennifer Jordan is delightful as Abigail. She’s a bad girl, but she’s a nice girl as well. Being a bad girl has worked for her and she believes it can work for other women. Rebecca Broke is outstanding as Priscilla. She’s so emotionally and sexually repressed it’s painful to watch. You really feel for her. Jamie Gillis as her husband Gordon is a bit like Abigail - he’s cheerfully immoral but good-natured. And Jennifer Welles is great fun as Priscilla’s enthusiastically lascivious aunt Drucilla.

Certain kinds of scenes were pretty much obligatory in the softcore movies of this era. There had to be some lesbian sex, and at least one female masturbation scene. Sarno manages to make these ingredients actually work as part of his story. The various lesbian couplings kind of make sense in a 1970 exploring-one’s-sexuality kind of way. And the scene where Priscilla watches two of her friends having sex then slinks off to her bedroom to frantically and tearfully masturbate is actually rather moving. For Priscilla sex is very very disturbing.

The sex is certainly more graphic than in earlier Sarno films but it’s still strictly softcore.

The mood is, surprisingly for a Joe Sarno movie, fairly light. These are mostly likeable people and while the events set in train by Abigail prove very unsettling nobody really gets hurt. And for at least two people there’s real love at last. Overall it’s like an early Sarno sovial/psychological melodrama crossed with a good-natured romantic comedy. And the mix works rather well.

Retro Seduction’s DVD release puts most mainstream DVD releases to shame. It’s packed with extras including some great interviews. Jamie Gillis, who passed away recently, is particularly amusing. And there’s a commentary track as well. The DVD transfer makes use of the last surviving print of the movie. It’s a theatrical print but in excellent condition and the movie looks terrific.

This is one of the finest examples of that strange 1970s phenomenon, the serious arty erotic movie.

The Lost Continent (1968)

Hammer made movies in an extraordinary variety of genres over the years but I don’t think they ever made another film quite as odd as The Lost Continent. It’s a science fiction horror adventure thriller and it features some of the weirdest (and most effective) visual imagery in all of Hammer’s output.

The film is based on a Dennis Wheatley novel, Uncharted Seas. I haven’t read the novel but there seems to be a very obvious debt to William Hope Hogson’s The Boats of the Glen Carrig, one of the strangest novels ever written.

As the tramp steamer Corita leaves port bound for Caracas it is intercepted by a customs launch but the Corita’s captain ignores the customs officers’ orders to heave to, and the Corita heads for the open sea. It isn’t long before we discover why Captain Lansen was so anxious to avoid the annoying formalities of a customs inspection. Both his cargo and his passengers are equally dangerous and illegal.

The cargo comprises dozens of drums of a high explosive called Phosphor-B. It’s an illegal cargo at the best of times, but given the fact that this steamer is totally unseaworthy and is uninsured and that Phosphor-B explodes on contact with water it’s an even more illegal undertaking. The passengers are all in need of a passage anywhere out of the country. They’re all on the run from something. Captain Lansen is broke and wants to retire. The high-risk cargo and the high-risk passengers should bring in a sufficiently healthy profit to allow him to sell his ship for scrap and retire comfortably.

Which would be all well and good except for the fact that the Corita is heading straight for a hurricane. It’s only a matter of time before disaster strikes. After various adventures and intrigues involving the ill-assorted passengers and the mutinous crew the ill-fated steamer finds itself trapped in a strange sea covered by a bizarre and deadly sea-weed. With the propellors hopelessly fouled the ship drifts into what turns out to be a strange and unknown world.

At this point what appeared to be a rather melodramatic thriller suddenly becomes something very different and much much stranger. We’re entering a lost world, a vast sea covered so thickly with the deadly weed that people can walk cross it, a sea dotted with islands and with scores of wrecked ships dating back for many centuries. There are people living in this lost world, two bizarre cultures constantly at odds with one another. One is ruled by a boy who claims to be descended from an ancient Spanish conquistador. He also claims to be a god. And there are monsters in this strange world.

The cast is headed by Eric Porter as Captain Lansen, a rather ambiguous character. He’s a crook and a liar but with a strong streak of unexpected heroism.

This particular movie was not only produced by Michael Carreras but directed by him as well. The real stars are cinematographer Paul Beeson and production designer Arthur Lawson. They give the movie the right other-worldly atmosphere, and the sepia-wash photographic look of the movie is very moody and quite spooky.

It’s a brave attempt to do something radically different. It doesn’t really succeed, but it’s an interesting failure, and it’s entertaining in its own way. It has some pacing problems but once the lost world is reached the sheer weirdness of it all makes the journey worthwhile.

My copy came as part of a Hammer two-movie set from Anchor Bay, paired with The Reptile. The two movies don’t really have anything in common apart from the fact that they’re both oddities and they’re both somewhat underrated. The set also includes a couple of episodes from the World of Hammer TV documentary series.

The Lost Continent is definitely a film for those with offbeat tastes, and a liking for high camp also helps. I enjoyed it but if you’re expecting anything resembling Hammer’s better-known gothic horror movies you may be disappointed.

Sidewalks Of Bangkok (1984)

Sidewalks Of Bangkok (Les trottoirs de Bangkok) is in most respects the least typical of all Jean Rollin’s films. The very idea of Rollin, the master of erotic surrealist horror, doing a spy thriller is bizarre enough. The result is even stranger, and yet it has an odd appeal.

Not only is it unlike any other Rollin movie, it’s also unlike any other spy thriller. Rollin throws away all the rules of the genre and simply follows his instincts, and decides to have some fun while he’s doing it. And that’s probably the key to enjoying this movie - you have to realise that he’s not really taking it very seriously. Which is not to say that it bears any resemblance to the familiar spy spoof genre - it’s much too nihilistic and while it can be taken as comedy of a sort it’s a very black kind of comedy.

Even most Rollin fans don’t like this one, and I think it’s because it takes quite a while to get into the spirit of this movie and to pick up on the many and varied influences. It has some similarities to Jess Franco’s off-the-wall comic book and pulp fiction-inspired movies such as The Girl from Rio and The Devil Came from Akasava, even to the extent of having a diabolical criminal mastermind. But surprisingly Rollin uses a rather stark visual approach - there’s none of his trademark dream-like ambience. It looks superficially like a typical spy thriller except that the content is deliberately over-the-top and has the kind of breathless overheated quality you find in some of the old Hollywood movie serials of the 30s and 40s.

The plot is centred around what Alfred Hitchcock used to describe as a McGuffin - an object that has no importance in itself and never needs to be explained but which everyone in the movie wants to get their hands on. It’s interesting that a director like Rollin who had never attempted this kind of thriller before has such a perfect understanding of how to make use of a McGuffin. Like Hitchcock he wastes no time at all on meaningless technobabble or convoluted explanations. In this case the McGuffin is a tube containing a secret biological weapon. Even the characters in the movie don’t know anything more about it other than the fact that it’s essential that they possess it and prevent their enemies from getting their hands on it.

A French spy named Rick got hold of the tube in Bangkok. Shortly thereafter he was murdered but before his death he passed it on to a Thai prostitute named Eva (played by an actress know only as Yoko) . Now the French intelligence services are trying to retrieve the tube. Unfortunately a gang run by a diabolical and perverse criminal mastermind named Rita (Brigitte Borghese) is also after it. Rita has despatched one of her top henchwomen to Bangkok, the beautiful, glamorous and deadly Claudine (Françoise Blanchard).

After an interlude of Bangkok sleaze the plot becomes a series of double-crosses and chases punctuated by an extraordinary number of killings.

The violence is very non-graphic but it’s strangely disturbing because it’s so terrifyingly casual. These are people for whom murder is a thing of no consequence whatsoever. This horrifying cold-bloodedness contrasts oddly with the crazy adventure romp feel of the plot (which even includes spies tied to the railway tracks in the path of an oncoming train in a very obvious nod to 1940s serials). The disjunction between the pulpy plot and the casual violence is the element that leads me to suspect that Rollin was aiming at a kind of existential black comedy. There are also some amusing moments provided by the spies’ faithful and super-intelligent dog Rudy.

There are a few typical Rollin touches. His movies almost always have twinned female characters - sometimes they’re lovers, sometimes sisters or actual twins, and sometimes they’re just linked by destiny. In this case the improbable but rather touching female pairing is between the naïve but likeable prostitute Eva and the ice-cold killer Claudine who discovers she’s not as ice-cold as she’d thought.

Apart from the glimpses of Bangkok fleshpots early on the sleaze element is provided mostly by Rita. She likes to relax by watching her prisoners being tortured while she pleasures herself. It’s a it gratuitous but then diabolical criminal masterminds are supposed to be wicked and depraved.

This is a very minor Rollin movie but if you accept it as an amusingly offbeat aberration in his career then it’s actually quite entertaining. Plus it has Françoise Blanchard. I’m not sure about her hairstyle in this one (it was the 80s) but she’s still fabulous.

Roxanna (1970)

It was a common enough strategy in the 60s and 70s to try to avoid censorship problems with erotic films (and other exploitation movies) by giving them “redeeming social value.” This usually took the form of dire warnings about the horrific consequences of sex, drugs, rock’n’roll and everything else that makes life fun. Nick Millard took this to something of an extreme, his 1970 film Roxanna being a case in point. Millard (credited here as Nick Phillips) gives us another of his extraordinarily harrowing tales of excess and self-destruction. One can’t help feeling that in Millard’s case it wasn’t just a pose to placate the moral watchdogs, that in fact Millard’s view of the 60s and 70s really was as bleak as his movies suggest. Roxanna is a young woman consumed by her sexual obsessions. She seeks out every form of sexual deviance, from lesbianism to sex with transvestites to shoe fetishism. Her sexual excess is accompanied by excess in every other possible area. Rather than being liberated she finds herself trapped in a never-ending cycle of pleasure that comes at a price. There’s very little in the way of plot, and there’s no synchronised dialogue, only an occasional voiceover narration. Millard doesn’t need anything else. He tells Roxanna’s story entirely by visual means. Sexploitation movies of this era required at least a modicum of acting ability from their stars. In some cases the acting is truly awful while in others it’s surprisingly good. In this case the performance of Louise Thompson in the title role is quite remarkable. Roxanna’s gradual disintegration is moving and at times quite horrifying. The scenes where she’s twitching as if she’s being torn apart from inside are quite difficult to watch. While movies like this might have been aimed mainly at a grindhouse audience the odd thing is that very often titillation is combined with sheer existential horror. Sexploitation icon Uschi Digard appears as one of Roxanna’s lesbian lovers, while Lynn Harris (who gave a fine performance in Millard’s later Pleasures of a Woman) plays Roxanna’s final lover, Patricia, who takes excess every bit as far as Roxanna does. The Retro-Seduction Cinema DVD, in common with most of their releases, includes a host of extremely interesting extras. An all-too-brief interview with the eccentric but entertaining 42nd Street Pete (a walking encyclopaedia of 1960/1970s sexploitation and erotica) is a highlight. And there are no less than two other short movies on the disc, including Seduction Cinema’s 2002 remake of Roxanna. They did this with several other of Nick Millard’s films, including Pleasures of a Woman. The idea of remaking 70s sexploitation/softcore might seem pointless since much of the fascination of the genre is its time capsule quality but surprisingly these modern versions are nowhere near as bad as you might expect. In fact they’re not bad at all. Misty Mundae relishes the opportunity to do some real acting and her performance is quite effective. But it’s the original 1970 version of Roxanna that is the main reason to buy this DVD. Millard’s despairing vision of the hangover that followed the binge of the sexual revolution is depressing but makes its point. There’s more than enough sex and nudity to have kept the grindhouse audience satisfied. Modern audiences will be more interested by the overwhelming pessimism combined with a certain degree of sympathy for a woman drawn irresistibly towards the abyss. Very few mainstream Hollywood movies have ever dared to be quite so unrelentingly bleak.