1968 - SOL MADRID, the one about the undercover cop

With the once mighty MGM studios seeing better days, someone got the idea to feature The Man From U.N.C.L.E. leading man David McCallum in a movie.  McCallum is Sol Madrid a sort of  humorless tough undercover cop on the trail of some drug smugglers in Mexico.  McCallum was popular on TV as spy Illya Kuryakin so he got his one time chance at a big screen role like every other TV star usually did.

The whole film has kind of a tired  feeling to it.  Everyone seems to be walking through the motions with all the usual double cross stuff that's always in these films.  If there is any entertainment value in the film, it sure isn't the plot. Anyway, McCallum infiltrates the drug lords, beats up some bad guys and screws a gangster's moll played by Stella Stevens who always seemed to be in every movie and TV show.   The film does look like it had some on location filming in Acapulco well at least I think it did.  Mostly Sol Madrid has that tired MGM studio back lot look to it.

 

The film actually has a decent cast besides McCallum and Stella Stevens.  Tellly Savalas is the drug kingpin in Acapulco.  Savalas appears to be doing a warm up for his Blofeld character from On Her Majesties Secret Service,  he is essentially playing the same guy. Ricardo Montalbán is another undercover cop working with Sol Madrid.  Character actor Pat Hingle is the organized crime accountant and  Rip Torn is another organized crime bad guy out to get Sol Madrid. Good actors all of them, but they don't really have much to do.

 

Brian G Hutton directed, he wasn't noted for filming action shoot em up's, at this point in his career but  he must have impressed the producers as they hired him to direct Where Eagles Dare.  File Sol Madrid under tired crime thrillers.

Written by David Karp, the running time is 90 minutes.

1970 - KELLY'S HEROES, very confused genre film

A confused mess of a film if ever there was one.  Kelly's Heroes is maybe a war film or an antiwar film.  Maybe a comedy or maybe some sort of bank heist film.  In any case it all mashes together somewhat uncomfortably.  

The cast is certainly an eclectic bunch,  Clint Eastwood is the leader of a group of soldiers rushing behind the enemy lines during World War II to get their hands on a bank full of gold.  Telly Savalas is the loud mouthed sergeant.  Don Rickles is the supply sergeant feeding them weapons and fuel.  Rickles is playing on his Las Vegas insult comic persona.  The wild card in the bunch is Donald Sutherland playing a late 1960's hippie somehow dropped into a 1940's war movie.  Sutherland is so completely out of character it would be interesting to know who had the idea for him to go down this odd character path.

The director Brian G. Hutton can't seem to figure out the right jokey tone for the film so he resorts to some large scale battle scenes staged by the famous 2nd unit director Andrew Marton who was always good at blowing up stuff.   

Overall this is a very cynical film somewhat funny at times.  It gets it's entertainment value from being a big production with excellent photography from the legendary Gabriel Figueroa a cinematographer usually associated with Luis Bunuel

146 minutes, written by Troy Kennedy Martin.

1968 - WHERE EAGLES DARE, still entertaining Alistair Maclean war film

The producers of Breakheart Pass hired Alistair MacLean to write an original story and screenplay.  Where Eagles Dare a typical Alistair MacLean mix of action and improbable if clever plots.  This film had a larger budget than Breakheart Pass, a better cast and managed to balance the tone between seriousness and improbability pretty well.

Yakima Canutt, the famous stunt man was responsible for the action scenes, particularly the unnerving cable car scenes with stunt men actually dangling around in mid air, rear screen projection for the actors of course.  Most of the film was shot in the "day for night" process with filters being used to fake the night scenes, pretty understandable considering all of the complex action and explosions throughout the film.  

The composer Ron Goodwin was hired to write one of his "typical" British war movie scores.  Goodwin always seemed to have a knack for this kind of war music, his score adds a lot to the film.

Where Eagles Dare has a very good cast, Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, Mary Ure and resident Hammer horror chick Ingrid Pitt.  Burton's good and does most of the acting work playing it serious and at times not very serious.  Clint Eastwood doesn't say much but he gets to shoot a lot of Germans, which was one of the major criticisms of the film when it came out, the high body count.

 
 Mary Ure had worked with Burton on the classy British drama Look Back in Anger, about the British working class, this film had a little different theme.  Alistair  MacLean never knew what to do with women in his books, so Mary Ure doesn't do much, although she does seem to know what end of the machine gun she should hold before slaughtering Germans.

The end of the film has a clever twist to it after all the action.  You have to give Alistair MacLean credit.  What ever his worth as a writer, he was certainly very good at putting together a story like this.

Running time, 155 minutes.