Shameless Self Expression

Peter Cushing plays Sir Thomas Bedford, who plans the heist of a casino in Spain, a crucial if unwitting participant being an ‘afro rock’ singer Dynamite Duck (a barely intelligible Max H. Boulois), who is performing at the casino. Cushing hopes the performer will provide a nice bit of misdirection, unfortunately things become unstuck when a second group of robbers turn up and a hostage situation ensues. Hugo Stiglitz plays the dogged police commissioner, whilst Brian Murphy plays one of the casino guests who is trying to cheat at the pokies.   Supposedly never given a release in the US or UK, this 1981 cheapie from writer/director/composer/star Max H. Boulois (who only directed two other films) is one of the more obscure films in the career of Peter Cushing. And probably one of the worst. A Spanish-UK heist film, it’s easy to see why this is so unknown: It’s so nondescript and subpar that no one has likely cared to make it more widely available then or now. Boulois is a pretty...

Set over several decades the film tells the story of the inhabitants of a house in London through the years. Elderly military general Rollo (David Niven) recounts a story of lost love to his visiting relative (Evelyn Keyes). The film flashes back to when Rollo was a youngster and his father brings back a new ward named Lark (Gigi Perreau) after the little girl’s parents were killed in an accident. We eventually flash forward to their adulthood and with the father now dead, oldest sibling Jayne Meadows is now in charge of Lark (now played by Teresa Wright) and is as resentful of the latter as she was when they were kids. Farley Granger appears in the wraparound scenes as a love interest for Keyes who also has a connection to the family.   Is this 1948 Irving Reis ( “All My Sons” ) romantic weepie an all-time classic? No, for one thing it has trouble juggling all of its relationships in under two hours. I think the characters played by Farley Granger and Evelyn Keyes are far less...