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Reviews
Flight to Tangier (1953)
Pretty Poor Stuff
A real rattletrap of a movie, in which all the parts clank like mad but can't mesh. Jack Palance is poorly used in a script that has him playing from moment to moment the grim stoic, man of the world, homesick patriot, lovesick romantic, and half a dozen additional stereotypes. He spends most of the time literally dragging around Joan Fontaine and Corrine Calvet while on the run from both the police and black marketeers. The plot is a slice of Cold War tripe in which embargoed American war surplus material is being sold to the Russians. Nobody in the cast looks entirely comfortable at any point, and neither will the viewer.
Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)
Watch That Last Step
This is 95% of a pretty fascinating film. Basically a heist picture, it's also a message movie: Let's all get along as brother armed robbers under the skin. The lead-up to the crime is full of great, realistic, everyday glimpses into the lives of two losers, played by Robert Ryan and Harry Belafonte. The melodrama is held beautifully in check by director Robert Wise, who gets wonderful performances out of everybody in the supporting cast, especially Ed Begley and Gloria Grahame, the latter of whom was still a complete knockout at age 35. It's the message part that trips up the picture during the last few minutes, as Ryan and Belafonte get to wrangling racially when in more plausible circumstances they'd be running like rabbits in opposite directions.
The First Great Train Robbery (1978)
The Pretty Good Train Robbery
Great production values and great performances almost bring off Michael Crichton's thin plot in this 1978 film about an 1855 robbery caper. Sean Connery and Lesley Anne Down are both solid in their parts as the mastermind and his accomplice/mistress, but both are outshone by Donald Sutherland, who has the best part by far and he was never better. The film has the look and feel of mid 19th century England down pat, and if the story had leaned less on tired devices such as "the routine never varies", which is used over and over, the film would have benefited. Screenwriter/novelist Michael Crichton clearly needed a co-writer, but his stock was so high in Hollywood at the time he even persuaded United Artists to let him direct. The acrobatic moving train heist sequence is pretty spectacular, but would have been utterly impossible on a train in 1855. One other highlight is Jerry Goldsmith's score, which has to rate as one of this veteran composer's best.
Lotsa Luck! (1973)
No Luck
I was curious to see if anyone remembered this flop and surprised to find five reviews on file. The only reason the show is fresh in my mind is that I happened to attend the pilot taping in Los Angeles in 1973. I was no Dom Deluise fan, but like almost any other TV viewer of that time, I was an admirer of Carl Reiner and his creative team from the "Dick Van Dyke" show.
So it came as a considerable shock and disappointment to see how bad "Lotsa Luck" turned out to be. I was not alone in my opinion, and I don't think the taping audience and I managed more than two unforced laughs during the entire ordeal. Believe me, the common conception that laugh tracks are frequently used to cover bad writing was entirely accurate in that case. The pilot, as reviewer "Aldanoli" mentions, turned entirely on the purchase of a new toilet. There was exactly none of the warmth that had underlain even the most caustic "Van Dyke" humor. It was just a bunch of unpleasant people screaming at each other.
I can well remember Persky and Denoff pleading with the audience prior to the taping to give the characters a chance to win us over. It didn't happen, and obviously didn't happen when the thing went on the air either. One curious point was that Carl Reiner was nowhere to be seen that night. Perhaps he had an inkling of how hopeless it was.
The Rockford Files: The Trees, the Bees and T.T. Flowers: Part 1 (1977)
Trees, Bees, Flowers, Jeez!
Not often that "Rockford" falls on its face but this appalling two- parter is one such occasion. The script is a preposterous mishmash of sentimental melodrama right from the start and the second half is worse than the first. In the story's one ironic touch, Rockford's police buddy Dennis Becker recaps for him early on just how idiotic the plot is. It seems every hand is turned against geezer Strother Martin in an attempt to further urban sprawl and convert his small suburban holding into apartments. The evil mastermind, a real estate developer, is built up into such a monster he'd give Simon LeGree a run for his money, and he's given a lot of help by a chorus line of corrupt doctors, bankers, lawyers, pharmacists, police and sundry other parties. Then there's some maudlin interplay between Martin and Garner and Noah Beery and an attempted suicide, and a dragged out eulogy, and on and on. Rockford fans can skip this fiasco with a clear conscience.