The Statue (1971)

          Turns out David Niven’s close encounter with a streaker during the 1974 Academy Awards broadcast wasn’t the only time when the exhibition of male anatomy caused him grief. A few years earlier, the debonair Brit starred in The Statue, a randy UK/US coproduction in which the public display of a phallus is pivotal to the plot. Very much a product of its historical moment, The Statue tries for scandalous laughs by exploring subject matter that could not be explicitly depicted onscreen at the time, therefore creating a sort of wink-wink/nudge-nudge relationship with the audience. And though time has dulled any edginess the picture once possessed, luckily The Statue has other virtues, not least of which is Niven’s smooth comic timing. So even though the movie is quite trivial—a fault not uncommon to sex comedies—it’s palatable and relatively harmless.

          At the beginning of the picture, uptight linguistics professor Alex Bolt (Niven) receives the Nobel Prize for his creation of Unispeak, an international language meant to bridge divides between nations. For convoluted reasons, the American government spends a large amount of money to commission a statue commemorating Alex’s accomplishment, and Alex’s hot-blooded sculptress wife, Rhonda (Virna Lisi), gets the job. But when Alex gets an eyeful of the work-in-progress, he’s shocked: Not only is the giant statue a likeness of Alex in the nude, but the genitals on the statue don’t resemble his own. Thus begins Alex’s fevered quest to identify the model Rhonda used for inspiration, since he presumes that man must be her lover. Probing household staff for the names of men who visited Rhonda while she was working on the statue, Alex contrives to see the men naked by attending a hippie musical, visiting a steambath, and so on. In one especially goofy sequence, Alex slips into a photo booth and snaps shots of his own manhood for evidence, alarming those standing near the photo booth.

          It’s tempting to say this material was beneath Niven, as well as costar Robert Vaughn, but the mischievous spirit of the thing comes through in scenes featuring Monty Python’s John Cleese as a friend of Niven’s character. Cleese lampoons the repression inherent to British culture while also skewering the anything-goes ethos of the ’70s. In its best moments, The Statue is ribald and smart; in its worst moments, the movie is puerile and silly. Whether the good outweighs the bad is very much a matter of taste, though it should be said the Cleese/Niven scenes are a cut above the rest of the picture.

The Statue: FUNKY

King, Queen, Knave (1972)

          Ten years after Stanley Kubrick released his problematic version of Lolita (1962), another iffy adaptation of a sexy Vladimir Nabokov novel reached the screen, albeit with a much less impressive pedigree. In King, Queen, Knave, David Niven costars with fading sexpot Gina Lollobrigida and minor British actor John Moulder-Brown, while Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski calls the shots. These folks tell an unappealing story about adultery, deceit, greed, lust, and murder. There are even allusions to incest and patricide. The kicker is that King, Queen, Knave is a comedy—or at least it tries to be one. Although Niven lends his signature pithiness, the storytelling never finds the right balance between dark and light elements. At its least surefooted, the picture feels more like a thriller than a comedy, especially during a climactic scene that recalls Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water (1962), which, not coincidentally, was cowritten by Skolimowski.

          Charles Dryer (Niven) is a super-wealthy European businessman married to icy beauty Martha (Lollobrigida). They agree to look after Frank (Moulder-Brown), the only son of Charles’ recently deceased brother. The college-aged Frank is a nervous, stuttering klutz who can’t see without his glasses, and the minute he gets an eyeful of Martha, he’s overcome with lust. (To ensure we understand this, Skolimowski includes a tacky scene of Frank masturbating to a picture of Martha.) Sensing an opportunity, Martha seduces Frank, then tries to persuade him to kill Charles so they can share his fortune. Complications of the least interesting sort ensue, not least of which is a bizarre running gag involving Professor Ritter (Mario Adorf), whose pet project involves fabricating artificial skin that feels like real human flesh.

          None of the three main characters is remotely sympathetic, because Charles cheats on his wife with random bimbos, Frank betrays his uncle’s trust, and Martha is a would-be murderess. Whatever satirical edge the material may have possessed in its original form did not make it to the screen. Skolimowski renders some imaginative camerawork, such as crane shots tracking characters’ progress up flights of stairs, though just as often, his overzealous angles feel amateurish; the less said about the undercranked fisheye-lens shots during sex scenes, the better. While still quite alluring (she was in her mid-forties at the time of filming), Lollobridgida gives a trite performance, all petulance and teasing, and Moulder-Brown is annoying, his blithering-idiot routine growing tired within seconds of his entrance. So it falls to Niven, ever the smooth professional, to put this thing over. Whenever he’s onscreen, the picture is bearable.

King, Queen, Knave: FUNKY

1980 Week: Rough Cut

Sometimes it’s hard to identify why a movie star goes out of fashion. In the case of Burt Reynolds, pinpointing the reasons for his decline from a decade-long reign among of the world’s top box-office attractions is fairly easy. Setting aside offscreen issues, Reynolds simultaneously frustrated and patronized the public’s appetites. In pictures like Rough Cut, a wannabe sophisticated heist thriller in the mode of old Cary Grant movies, Reynolds plays against type to desultory effect. And in pictures like his other 1980 release, Smokey and the Bandit II, Reynolds halfheartedly repeats the highlights of previous good-ole-boy flicks. It wasn’t as if Reynolds had lost his mojo—witness his fantastic work as director and star of the 1981 cop thriller Sharky’s Machine—but rather that he’d become wildly inconsistent. In the business of selling brand-name actors, consistency is king. Anyway, if it sounds as if these remarks about Rough Cut pertain to everything but the actual movie, there’s a reason. Dull, forgettable, and vapid, the movie is the wreckage left over from a troubled cycle of development and production. Based on a novel by Derek Lambert and adapted by the great Larry Gelbart (who was rewritten and can therefore remain somewhat blameless), the picture concerns a gentleman thief named Jack Rhodes (Reynolds). While prowling Europe, Jack meets a beautiful fellow thief named Gilliam Bromley (Lesley-Anne Down), so they join forces to plan a $30 million jewel heist. Naturally, they also become a couple. Hot on Jack’s heels is his longtime adversary, British detective Cyril Willis (David Niven). Also present are Jack’s eccentric co-conspirators, including ex-Nazi Ernst Meuller (Patrick Magee). While Niven provides occasional pith, Reynolds is miscast and unengaged, while Down is merely ornamental. Boring, trite, and unimaginative, Rough Cut features all the heist-movie clichés that had been destroyed by the Pink Panther movies, and director Don Siegel (who replaced Peter Hunt partway through production) doesn’t create anything approaching the desired level of Hitchcockian playfulness.

Rough Cut: LAME

A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square (1979)

          Inexplicably taking its name from a 1939 romantic ballad that was recorded enough times over the years to become a crusty standard, the weak heist comedy A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square stars the American actor Richard Jordan as an amiable criminal operating on foreign soil. When the UK-made picture begins, Pinky (Jordan) earns parole from a British prison by way of good behavior, promising his jailors that he plans to make an honest living as an electrical engineer. Stretching credibility way past the breaking point, Pinky soon lands a job at a major bank—because, apparently, British financial institutions don’t perform background checks on prospective employees. Anyway, Pinky plays things straight until he inadvertently reconnects with local crime lord Ivan (David Niven), who coerces Pinky into helping Ivan and his crooked gang rob the bank. Various twists and turns ensue, most of which are predictable.

          Although neither writer Guy Elmes nor director Ralph Thomas add much to the vocabulary of heist movies—quite to the contrary, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square is thoroughly forgettable and generic—the filmmakers benefit from a pair of nimble leading players. Jordan, the handsome stage-trained actor who generally fared better with heavy dramatic material, is left adrift throughout much of the movie, because the filmmakers seem unsure about whether to present Jordan’s character as cocksure or sincere. Nonetheless, Jordan lands a few key moments with emotional authenticity, especially during scenes depicting his character under duress. Costar Niven, meanwhile, effortlessly steals the movie with his carefree-urbanite routine, even though the plot requires viewers to accept Niven as having the potential to become a cold-blooded killer. Still, whenever Jordan as the crude and swaggering American is juxtaposed with Niven as the masterful and suave Englishman, it’s possible to see the culture-clash patter the filmmakers presumably envisioned.

          Supporting players Richard Johnson and Oliver Tobias add welcome flavors to the mix as, respectively, a dogged police inspector and Pinky’s best friend. Lost in the shuffle, however, are actresses Gloria Grahame and Elke Sommer. Grahame’s role as the mother of Tobias’ character is inconsequential, and Sommer merely provides eye candy by wearing a succession of slinky outfits and appearing in a laughably gratuitous nude scene. Another problem with the choppily edited movie is the terrible music score by the normally reliable Stanley Myers; the main theme sounds like the house band from Hee-Haw trying to play the theme from The Benny Hill Show.

A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square: FUNKY

1980 Week: The Sea Wolves

          Several veterans of the highly enjoyable military adventure The Wild Geese (1978)—including director Andrew V. McLaglen, star Roger Moore, and screenwriter Reginald Rose—reteamed for the offbeat World War II adventure The Sea Wolves. In fact, the original plan was to reunite all three main stars of The Wild Geese: Richard Burton, Richard Harris, and Moore. Alas, it wasn’t to be, so Moore costars in The Sea Wolves with the considerably older David Niven and Gregory Peck. As it happens, Niven and Peck are more appropriate casting, notwithstanding Peck being an American, since the story dramatizes a real-life incident during which a group of retired British cavalry officers were recruited for an espionage mission against the Nazis. Additionally, Niven and Peck had collaborated to strong effect in a previous manly-man adventure picture, 1961’s The Guns of Navarone.

          The Sea Wolves has a certain genteel charm owing to its old-fashioned presentation of Allied heroism and Axis treachery. However, the absence of the modern tonalities that McLaglen and Rose utilized so well in The Wild Geese—angsty antiheroes, twisted international politics—makes The Sea Wolves seem overly tame. The filmmakers’ attempts at integrating lighthearted comedy into the mix further diminish the life-or-death gravitas needed to make the derring-do scenes work. At its worst, the movie is flat and forgettable.

          Set in India, the picture begins by showing U-boats sinking British tankers, thus interrupting key Allied supply lines. British spies determine that information about the tankers is emanating from a radio transmitter hidden somewhere a port controlled by the neutral country of Portugal, meaning that no official invasion force can be sent to dismantle the transmitter. This situation gives rise to the bold idea of recruiting soldiers from the Calcutta Light Horse, many of whom are retired and living in India. Eager for another shot at military action, aging enlisted men train for their mission while the Light Horse’s officers—played by Moore, Niven, and Peck—conduct espionage in order to learn the exact location of the transmitter.

          Despite the tremendous appeal of the leading actors, The Sea Wolves is bogged down with predictable plotting and uninspired staging. Furthermore, the chemistry between the leads never clicks quite the way it did between the stars of The Wild Geese. Moore seems like he’s a generation apart from his costars, Niven looks bored, and Peck seems frustrated at playing such a vapid role after getting so much room to stretch in his two previous films, MacArthur (1977) and The Boys from Brazil (1978). One also suspects that McLaglen was exhausted after having directed two elaborate films—the larky ffolkes and the leaden Breakthrough—in the year prior to making the equally complex The Sea Wolves. Whatever the reasons, The Sea Wolves is watchable but a disappointment nonetheless.

The Sea Wolves: FUNKY

Death on the Nile (1978)

          The all-star period mystery film Murder on the Orient Express (1974) was such a commercial and critical success that another big-budget Agatha Christie adaptation was sure to follow. And while Death on the Nile is far less posh than its predecessor, it’s still quite enjoyable—more so, perhaps, than the stolid Orient Express. Clever and intricate though they may be, Christine’s books are not high art, and the makers of Death on the Nile treat the source material as pulp, whereas director Sidney Lumet and his Orient Express collaborators took the dubious path of treating Christie as literature. In any event, Death on the Nile plays out like a quasi-sequel to the earlier film, since both pictures feature Christie’s beloved Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Albert Finney played Poirot in Orient Express, but Peter Ustinov assumes the role in Death on the Nile, marking the first of six films in which he essayed the character.

          As per the usual Christie formula, the narrative follows a large number of interconnected characters, all of whom eventually land in the same place—a steamer churning down the Nile River in Egypt—for a long voyage filled with intrigue and murder. The picture begins in England, where penniless Jacqueline (Mia Farrow) begs her rich friend, Linnet (Lois Chiles), to provide employment for Jacqueline’s fiancée, Simon (Simon MacCorkindale). Linnet steals Simon from her friend, marries him, and embarks on a honeymoon trip through Egypt. Yet Jacqueline chases after them, taunting the newlyweds with threats of revenge. Eventually, Linnet and Simon encounter the vacationing Poirot, requesting his assistance in dispatching the nettlesome Jacqueline. Various other characters enter the mix, and before long it becomes clear that everyone except Simon and the neutral Poirit has a grudge against Linnet.

          It’s giving nothing away to say that she dies about an hour into the 140-minute film—after all, the story can’t be called Death on the Nile without a corpse—so the fun stems from Poirot’s ensuing investigation. The pithy detective performs a thorough review of all the possible suspects, even as more people are killed, finally unraveling the true killer’s identity during a Christie staple—the final scene of Poirot gathering all the suspects in a room and then explaining, with the help of elaborate flashbacks, how he connected clues. It’s all quite far-fetched and formulaic, but there’s a good reason why Christie is considered the queen of the whodunit genre. It also helps that Anthony Shaffer, the playwright/screenwriter behind the intricate mystery film Sleuth (1972), did the script, and that director John Guillermin provides a brisk pace and a sleek look.

          As for the performances from the huge cast, they’re erratic. On the plus side, Ustinov is droll as Poirot, David Niven is urbane as his sidekick, and the best supporting players (Jane Birkin, Jon Finch, Olivia Hussey, I.S. Johar, Maggie Smith) provide the varied textures asked of them. However, some players are badly miscast (Jack Warden as a German?), and some deliver performances that are too clumsy for this sort of material (Chiles, Farrow, George Kennedy). That leaves Bette Davis and Angela Lansbury, both of whom treat their parts like high camp; neither tethers her characterization to human reality, but both fill the screen with palpable energy.

          By the end of the picture, one does feel the absence of Lumet’s sure hand, since he did a smoother job of unifying his Orient Express cast members than Guillermin does here. Nonetheless, in the most important respects, Death on the Nile delivers Christie as pure silly escapism, which seems about right.

Death on the Nile: GROOVY

Candleshoe (1977)

          “I ain’t depressed,” tough street kid Casey explains. “I’m delinquent. There’s a difference, you know?” Had all of Candleshoe, the live-action Disney flick that tells Casey’s story, risen to the droll level of this dialogue, the movie would have been much more entertaining. Alas, the passable film coasts on the strength of glossy production values and skillful performances as the filmmakers substitute unnecessarily intricate plotting for actual storytelling. Based on a novel by Michael Innes, Candleshoe is one of those Disney pictures that twists itself into narrative knots while trying to generate an offbeat spin on a familiar formula. At its core, the movie presents the standard Disney gimmick of a wild kid becoming tame thanks to the acceptance of a loving family. Yet Candleshoe also includes con-artist schemes, an elaborate heist, a kidnapping angle, sweet kids attending to a dotty aunt, transatlantic travel, and a vivacious butler who masqueredes as different people in order to convince his employer that her estate is still solvent. Candleshoe only rarely breaks from the exhausting work of providing exposition long enough to offer such simple pleasures as slapstick and verbal comedy. So, while the movie isn’t bad—since it’s harmless and moderately intelligent—it’s leaden and slow when it should be light and speedy.

          Anyway, Jodie Foster, at her precocious best, plays Casey, an American street kid living in a dingy foster home. One evening, she’s “purchased” by English crook Bundage (Leo McKern). Turns out Casey vaguely resembles the long-lost niece of a wealthy Brit, Lady St. Edmund (Helen Hayes). Bundage hopes to insert Casey into Lady St. Edmund’s estate, Candleshoe, so Casey can find a buried treasure. Casey agrees to pretend she’s the long-lost niece in exchange for a cut of the take. Yet once Casey arrives at Candleshoe, she falls in love with the family—Lady St. Edmund; her resourceful butler, Priory (David Niven); and several children. Meanwhile, Casey discovers that Candleshoe is bankrupt, so she joins in with family schemes to keep the place afloat without revealing the financial trouble to Lady St. Edmund. Inevitably, some moments in Candleshoe are charming,simply because the actors are so good. Hayes provides warmth, Foster provides spunk,McKern provides menace, and Niven provides wit. Yet Candleshoe trudges when it should soar, never taking flight until the moderately entertaining slapstick-fight finale.

Candleshoe: FUNKY

Murder by Death (1976)

          Because Murder by Death is a silly riff on vintage detective stories, it’s tempting to think the picture was intended to mimic Mel Brooks’ crowd-pleasing style of throwback spoofery, although it’s just as possible the film merely rode a mid-’70s boom in nostalgic crime films. Whatever the motivation for making the picture, the result is the same—Murder by Death is goofy but uninspired, a harmless romp that never quite achieves liftoff. Fans of detective stories will, of course, get more out of the picture than anyone else, because the film’s characters are gentle caricatures of famous literary sleuths. Casual viewers might simply enjoy the star power of the cast and the occasional glimpses of screenwriter Neil Simon’s signature wit. But, alas, this is a minor effort for everyone involved.

          The plot isn’t really worth describing, since it’s just a perfunctory contrivance, but the gist is that a mysterious millionaire named Lionel Twain (played by author/TV personality Truman Capote) invites a coterie of detectives to his estate and challenges them to investigate a murder that will take place during the detectives’ visit. Whoever solves the crime will get $1 million. The detectives include Dick and Dora Charleston (David Niven and Maggie Smith), based on Nick and Nora Charles from the Thin Man movies; Sam Diamond (Peter Falk), based on Maltese Falcon hero Sam Spade; Jessica Marbles (Elsa Lanchester), based on Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple character; Milo Perrier (James Coco), based on Christie’s Hercule Poiroit; and Sidney Wang (Peter Sellers), based on Charlie Chan.

          Obviously, any film that attempts to put these diverse characters together isn’t striving for consistency or credibility—the Spade-esque character emanates from hard-boiled fiction, for instance, whereas the Thin Man types emerge from a bubbly light-comedy milieu. Rather, Simon and producer Ray Stark (abetted by undistinguished director Robert Moore) concentrate on stringing sight gags and verbal zingers together. Unfortunately, none of the humor is memorable, and the actors give such cartoonish performances that Murder by Death feels juvenile. Falk probably comes off the best, since his version of Sam Spade is fairly close to his Columbo role from TV, and Falk’s rat-a-tat interplay with his secretary, Tess (Eileen Brennan), has some energy. In sum, Murder by Death is exactly as clever and funny as its title, which is to say not very.

Murder by Death: FUNKY

No Deposit, No Return (1976)

Although it’s basically harmless, No Deposit, No Return is hard to praise for many reasons. Firstly, the movie represents the Walt Disney Productions style of inoffensive storytelling run amok—the movie contorts itself to ensure that every character is likeable except for one minor villain, thus eradicating narrative conflict. Worse, these plot contrivances cause the movie to sprawl over 112 meandering minutes, and the film’s premise is far too thin to support the running time. So, even though the picture’s performances are generally fine and the production values are respectable, No Deposit, No Return is tiresome. When the movie begins, spunky young siblings Tracy (Kim Richards) and Jay (Brad Savage) learn their mother, a magazine editor, won’t be joining them as expected for vacation during the kids’ break from boarding school. Instead, the children are being sent to stay with their super-rich grandfather, J.W. Osborne (David Niven), who detests their company. Since the feeling is mutual, the kids run away, ending up in a cab with inept robbers Bert (Don Knotts) and Duke (Darren McGavin). The enterprising urchins blackmail the crooks into “kidnapping” them—in exchange for part of the ransom the kids plan to demand from J.W., the crooks agree to hide the kids in their lair for a period of time. Meanwhile, J.W. is aware of everything that’s happening, so he lets the kids stay “kidnapped” rather than intervening. Slapstick ensues, with a side of gooey sentiment. When listing this movie’s plot problems, it’s hard to know where to begin. Bert and Duke are master criminals whom the police desperately want to catch, and yet they’re also boobs who never actually steal anything? The kids found the only two criminals in the world who like babysitting? J.W. would rather let his grandchildren stay with strangers than tolerate their company? You get the idea. Knotts, McGavin, and Niven do their best, given the shoddy material, while Richards and Savage are palatable as Disney kids go, but the movie is so absurdly contrived that it ends up feeling more like a Disney knockoff than actual Mouse House product.

No Deposit, No Return: LAME

Old Dracula (1974)

For about the first 15 minutes of its running time, the British-made horror spoof Old Dracula seems as if it might turn into something amusing. David Niven plays a courtly, modern-day version of the famous bloodsucker. Instead of attacking victims in their homes, he allows tours through his castle, “pretends” to be Dracula, drugs his guests, and discreetly drains their blood via IV tubes. Turns out he’s searching for the rare blood type that can revive his undead girlfriend, Vampira. After establishing this passable premise, however, Old Dracula devolves into crass buffoonery. When several Playboy models, one of whom is black, visit Dracula’s castle, the count drains their blood and revives his lady—but thanks to a plasma mix-up, Vampira (Teresa Graves) becomes black. Thereafter, Dracula and his resuscitated companion chase the models across Europe, hoping to find the blood that’s required to “correct” Vampira’s transformation. Sadly, the movie’s cavalcade of insulting stupidity has merely begun. After seeing a blaxploitation movie, Vampira starts talking like a clichéd ghetto click, and then Old Dracula gets bogged down in dull melodrama straight out of a Hammer flick: Caddish swinger Marc (Nicky Henson) tries to save his girlfriend (Veronica Carlson) from Dracula’s clutches, even though Marc is (sort of) under Dracula’s hypnotic spell. Alas, none of this is funny. It’s a bummer to see the eternally charming Niven mired in this dreadful movie, which was originally titled Vampira but renamed to piggyback on the success of Mel Brooks’ 1974 smash Young Frankenstein. Niven is the only top-shelf actor in the picture, and the starlets surrounding him (Graves included) are terrible; furthermore, the storyline drags from one repetitive incident to the next, becoming tackier with each passing scene. Ultimately, Old Dracula makes the mediocre 1979 Dracula spoof Love at First Bite seem sublime by comparison. (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

Old Dracula: LAME

Escape to Athena (1979)

Escape to Athena should be a tasty wedge of cheese, based solely on the eclectic cast and the fact that helmer George P. Cosmatos (The Cassandra Crossing) knows how to make entertaining trash. Set during World War II, the movie features Sonny Bono, Claudia Cardinale, Elliot Gould, David Niven, Stefanie Powers, Roger Moore, Richard Roundtree, and Telly Savalas as guards and inmates at a German prison camp on a Mediterranean island. The muddy screenplay, based on a story co-written by Cosmatos, tries to weave together a plan to derail an impending Nazi onslaught, a quest to liberate oppressed locals, and a scheme to steal ancient relics—while still leaving room for comedy and romance—but in trying to play every possible crowd-pleasing note, Cosmatos creates an absolute mess. Not only are the ample charms of the cast wasted, but sumptuous location photography by British DP Gilbert Taylor, of Star Wars fame, is squandered on inconsequential and occasionally nonsensical scenes. Miscasting and tonal inconsistency are the biggest problems. Moore, clearly eager to try something different between 007 movies, plays a stately Austrian commandant who resents his Nazi superiors, but he gives an atrocious performance: His accent is pathetic, and he tries to come across as likeable and menacing at the same time, so his work is indecisive and sloppy. Bono is such an intrinsically ’70s figure, sporting the same shaggy shoulder-length hair and drooping walrus moustache he wore in his countless TV appearances with Cher, that he’s a walking anachronism. And the scenes featuring Elliot Gould as a fast-talking American showman, complete with straw boater hat and vaudeville hucksterism, are decidedly unfunny. Making matters worse, some of the top-billed players, notably Cardinale, Niven, and Roundtree, get lost entirely because their roles are underwritten and lack distinct impact. It’s true that a few of the action scenes are passable, and Powers is appealing-ish as a showgirl using her wiles to make the best of a bad situation, but neither of these elements feels compatible with the other. Despite its obvious eagerness to please, Escape to Athena is so undisciplined that watching the cavalcade of lame humor, random stars, and sporadic action eventually becomes numbing.

Escape to Athena: LAME