TEN LITTLE INDIANS (Italy/West Germany/France/Spain - 1974) Directed by Peter Collinson. Written by Peter Welbeck (Harry Alan Towers). Cast: Oliver Reed, Elke Sommer, Richard Attenborough, Charles Aznavour, Stephane Audran, Gert Frobe, Herbert Lom, Maria Rohm, Adolfo Celi, Alberto de Mendoza, voice of Orson Welles. (PG, 98 mins) The second of three Harry Alan Towers adaptations of both Agatha Christie's 1939 novel And Then There Were None and her subsequent 1943 stage version, 1974's TEN LITTLE INDIANS has just resurfaced after decades of obscurity courtesy of Scorpion Releasing, and it's one of the more pleasantly surprising Blu-ray resurrections of the year. Like the 1965 and 1989 versions also produced by Towers, TLI '74 jettisons the bleak ending of Christie's novel in favor of the more relatively crowd-pleasing finale, and features an all-star cast of familiar faces being picked off one by one at an isolated location after a mysterious, unseen figure calling himself "U.N. Owen" (voiced here by Orson Welles) gathers them together and accuses each of a past crime they've successfully buried until now. The 1965 version, written by Towers under his screenwriting pseudonym "Peter Welbeck," was a box office success and Towers decided to remake it using the same script in 1974 after Paramount announced Sidney Lumet's glossy, star-powered MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, which gathered an amazing group of stars in support of Albert Finney as legendary detective Hercule Poirot. In response, Towers, one of the masters of the international co-production (TLI '74 was a deal brokered with Italian, German, French, and Spanish production companies), assembled a roster of the biggest names he could buy (and his wife Maria Rohm) in a cast headed by Oliver Reed and Elke Sommer that also boasted two iconic former Bond villains (GOLDFINGER's Gert Frobe and THUNDERBALL's Adolfo Celi), and beat ORIENT EXPRESS to European screens by two months in September 1974. As was the case with productions involving so many different countries, variant versions with were prepared for each market, with the Spanish version adding a prologue showing the characters at the airport as well as a subplot featuring Spanish actress Teresa Gimpera and Italian actor Rik Battaglia. The prologue as well as the subplot were cut from Avco Embassy's belated US release in April 1975 (the version on the Scorpion Blu-ray), though Gimpera and Battaglia inexplicably remain listed in the opening credits.
Towers (1920-2009) was known as an exploitation huckster and there's certainly no disputing that reputation, especially in the late '80 when he partnered with Cannon and produced a slew of films in apartheid-era South Africa for Golan-Globus and others (including the 1989 TEN LITTLE INDIANS as well as several late '80s B-movies with Reed, including SKELETON COAST, DRAGONARD, GOR, CAPTIVE RAGE, and THE HOUSE OF USHER). He later allied himself with some shady investors from the Russian mob on a pair of dire, simultaneously-shot Harry Palmer throwback thrillers (1995's BULLET TO BEIJING and 1996's MIDNIGHT IN ST. PETERSBURG) that left star Michael Caine in such a depressed state that he was seriously ready to give up acting altogether. In an amusing Towers anecdote recounted in his second memoir One Lucky Bastard, Roger Moore tells of frequent Towers star Herbert Lom (who's in both the 1974 and 1989 versions of TEN LITTLE INDIANS) declining an offer to appear in the two Russia-lensed Harry Palmer movies with Caine. According to Moore, Lom said Towers tried to woo him with the promise of an "exciting" chance to film in areas where no film crews had gone before. Towers was evasive about the exact location and Lom, probably knowing Towers all too well, kept pressing him and had to repeatedly ask "Well, where is it?" before Towers finally, hesitantly replied "Um...Chernobyl." In the early 2000s, in the profitable world of DTV, Towers was one of the first producers to set up shop in Eastern Europe and exploit the cost-cutting advantages of shooting in Romania and Bulgaria, practices that are still used to this day and provide homes-away-from-home for the likes of Jean-Claude Van Damme, Scott Adkins, and former movie star Steven Seagal.
Despite his well-documented penchant for ruses and chicanery, Tower$ had a knack for drawing big names to dubious projects and his 1967-1970 partnership with Jess Franco yielded some of the cult Spanish director's most ambitious and professional-looking work (1969's JUSTINE and VENUS IN FURS and 1970's COUNT DRACULA and THE BLOODY JUDGE being the standouts). Towers was capable of backing some fairly lavish, respectable productions like 1965's THE FACE OF FU MANCHU and its first two sequels and the 1965 version of TEN LITTLE INDIANS, directed by longtime David Lean assistant George Pollock, has an air of class to it, with a fine cast headed by Hugh O'Brian and doomed GOLDFINGER Bond girl Shirley Eaton, and Christopher Lee providing the voice of U.N. Owen. There's also a classier-than-usual--for Towers--aura surrounding the 1974 TEN LITTLE INDIANS as well. Directed by British filmmaker Peter Collinson (THE ITALIAN JOB, OPEN SEASON), TLI '74 benefits greatly from Towers' securing one of the most unusual and striking locations he could find: the Shah Abbas Hotel in Isfahan, Iran, just a few years prior to the Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution against the Shah. An isolated location is key to any adaptation of And Then There Were None, but the Shah Abbas (now known as the Abbasi Hotel, and not exactly located in the middle of nowhere; the desolate exteriors around the hotel were actually shot in the desert of Almeria, Spain, showcased prominently in many a spaghetti western), a luxury hotel built over 300 years ago, becomes a character itself as Collinson has the camera prowl the ornate and seemingly endless hallways and expansive lobbies and lounge areas and one of the most memorable movie staircases you'll ever see. It's almost like a Middle East Overlook Hotel (the cast and crew actually stayed at the Shah Abbas as the production more or less took over the hotel for the shoot), and while it frequently comes close to achieving that same feeling of tension and isolation in THE SHINING, it could've been even better had Garrett Brown's Steadicam been available in 1974.
A shot of the staircase from the film
A recent photo of the staircase from the Abbasi Hotel web site
Stylistically, TLI '74 is very much a product of its time, with Collinson staging the murders in a very giallo-style fashion, often taking full advantage of every bit of the widescreen frame. Two murders in particular--Elsa (Rohm) and General Salve (Celi)--are staged with an almost Dario Argento-like, logic-be-damned panache, with Salve's even foreshadowing the brutal stabbing death presented by Argento as a shadow on the wall in the opening scene of the following year's DEEP RED. Indeed, if Argento or Sergio Martino ever made a 1970s Agatha Christie adaptation, it would probably look a lot like what Collinson accomplished with TEN LITTLE INDIANS. The story yields little surprises if you've seen any other of Towers' takes on the project or Rene Clair's 1945 classic AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, but TLI '74 stands out with its stylish murders, a persistent, throbbing score by longtime Ennio Morricone associate Bruno Nicolai, and the visually stunning Shah Abbas Hotel, an expansive location that gives its ten victims nowhere to hide, yet still feels claustrophobic amidst its vastness. Even if you're familiar with the story, this well-crafted take on TEN LITTLE INDIANS is beautifully shot by cinematographer Fernando Arribas (DEATH WALKS AT MIDNIGHT, DEATH WALKS ON HIGH HEELS, COMIN' AT YA) and is a neglected and forgotten gem that's worthy of rediscovery. If you're intrigued by the idea of Agatha Christie gone giallo, you'll find this to be the best and most interesting version of Towers' three takes on the story.
THEY CAME TO ROB LAS VEGAS (Spain/France/West Germany/Italy - 1968) Directed by Antonio Isasi. Written by Antonio Isasi, Lluis Josep Comeron, Jorge Illa and Jo Eisinger. Cast: Gary Lockwood, Elke Sommer, Lee J. Cobb, Jack Palance, Roger Hanin, Jean Servais, Georges Genet, Gustavo Re, Daniel Martin, Gerard Tichy, Maurizio Arena, Armand Mestral, Fabrizio Capucci, Enrique Avala, Ruben Rojo, George Rigaud, Fernando Hilbeck, Luis Barboo, Lorenzo Robledo. (R, 129 mins) "America's free-living and free-wheeling pleasure capital and the men who came to strip it raw!" One of the great hyperbolic tag lines of its era, and it's only fitting for one of the most memorable movie titles of its day. Even if you've never seen it, that tag line tells you almost all you need to know about THEY CAME TO ROB LAS VEGAS. A late-night TV staple well into the 1980s, the film fell into obscurity for a couple of decade before Warner Archive resurrected it for a widescreen DVD release in 2010, THEY CAME TO ROB LAS VEGAS is one of many international Europe-set capers of the 1960s (along with SEVEN THIEVES, TOPKAPI, GAMBIT, KALEIDOSCOPE, GRAND SLAM, THE BIGGEST BUNDLE OF THEM ALL, and THE ITALIAN JOB to name a few) but unique in that the Spanish-French-West German-Italian co-production is required to fool the audience into thinking it's taking place in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Some great second unit Vegas location work helps, but all of the interiors and any scenes involving the actors were shot in Spain and other than the four English-speaking leads, the supporting cast is made up of a bewildering mix of actors from four different countries playing Americans but all speaking their own language and letting the dubbing team figure it out later. The effect is jarring at times, especially since the dubbing isn't all that great (if you watch enough Eurotrash movies, you'll recognize the familiar voices of dubbing fixtures like Ed Mannix and Nick Alexander), and the Euro-lounge score by Georges Garvarentz and the haunting, wordless, giallo-like vocals of the ubiquitous Edda dell'Orso almost immediately blow the movie's cover, eliminating any illusion that this is an American film, but Spanish director/co-writer Antonio Isasi (SUMMERTIME KILLER) busts his ass assembling it all together in the most seamless way possible.
Fresh off of his turn as doomed astronaut Frank Poole in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, Gary Lockwood stars as Tony Ferris, a San Francisco hippie who shaves his sideburns and gets a haircut to become a Vegas blackjack dealer after turning down an offer to go in on an armored car heist with his older brother Gino (RIFIFI's Jean Servais), a mobster who's just escaped from prison. It was a smart move, since Gino and all of his cohorts end up being gunned down by the cops. At the casino, Tony has a table scam going with girlfriend Ann Bennett (Elke Sommer), who's also the mistress of her married boss Steve Skorsky (Lee J. Cobb), the owner of the security company whose armored car Gino tried to jack. It isn't long before Ann is an accomplice in Tony's labyrinthine plot to avenge Gino's death by staging an elaborate heist of a Skorsky truck ostensibly filled with casino cash that's en route from Vegas to L.A. Complicating matters is Douglas (Jack Palance), a pissed-off Treasury agent who's working undercover as an insurance investigator in a sting on Skorsky, who's been using his trucks to transport gold for the west coast branch of the Cosa Nostra. Douglas knows what Skorsky's up to, but hasn't been able to prove it, and when a surveillance team follows a decoy truck employed by Tony, Skorsky is convinced his own employees are ripping him off. The distraction allows Tony and his crew to stash the real truck--which they don't know is filled with Mafia gold--in an underground bunker they've dug in the desert, with Skorsky's employees and one of Douglas' undercover agents (Ruben Rojo), barricading themselves inside, refusing to open the door as Tony and his increasingly mutinous crew try to find a way in.
Isasi juggles multiple storylines where all parties eventually converge for a shootout in the scorching desert, with additional conflicts stemming from two of Tony's men--Merino (Daniel Martin) and Cooper (Fabrizio Capucci)--actively revolting and trying to cut him out of his own plan, and an increasingly irritable Skorsky getting it from all sides, with his scheming mistress, an incredulous Douglas and an unhappy mob boss (Roger Hanin) all breathing down his neck. Cobb and Palance have some amusing back-and-forth ballbusting throughout, and while he never became a big star, Lockwood is more than capable of holding his own as a lead here. The film has some interesting subtext with its juxtapositioning of Tony's hippie, free love lifestyle clashing with the more old-school Gino, almost like Isasi has one foot in the counterculture and another in the more refined elegance of the classic caper film. The casting of Servais is no accident, with his starring in Jules Dassin's highly-revered 1954 heist classic RIFIFI, but the "young generation" point may be a little too oversold, as Servais, 27 years older than Lockwood and looking it, seems more like his disapproving father than his protective older brother. Tony warns Gino that he's out of touch and out of his element, and that he and his aging gangster pals aren't equipped to deal with today's computers and the technological know-how required to rob a high-tech armored truck (high-tech by 1968 standards--it even has a Skype-like video feed to stay in constant contact with Skorsky's headquarters, but looks like Isasi rented a huge RV and put some steel siding on it), and sure enough, they're immediately killed for their efforts.
Despite its counterculture elements in the early scenes, THEY CAME TO ROB LAS VEGAS didn't exactly become the EASY RIDER of Euroheist movies, but it was a moderate success for Warner Bros. in US theaters in 1969 and was cycled through the regional drive-in circuit for a number of years. It made its TV debut in prime-time on NBC on Saturday, July 16, 1977, going against THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE on ABC and the Bob Barker-hosted Miss Universe pageant on CBS, with the R-rated, 129-minute film hacked down by at least 30 minutes to fit in a two-hour time slot with commercials, which likely made an occasionally confusing film completely incoherent. Since its very welcome DVD release seven years ago, uncut and with Juan Gelpi's outstanding cinematography in the desert sequences restored to its widescreen glory (Isasi shot these scenes in the same stretch of desert in Almeria, Spain where Tuco sends Blondie on his agonizing march in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY), THEY CAME TO ROB LAS VEGAS has been in semi-regular rotation on Turner Classic Movies and remains an instantly recognized cult item even by movie buffs who haven't seen it, and one of the best examples of the 1960s Euroheist caper thriller.
THEY CAME TO ROB LAS VEGAS opening in Toledo, OH on April 16, 1969
TV listing for THEY CAME TO ROB LAS VEGAS,
airing in prime time on NBC on Saturday, July 16, 1977
MEET HIM AND DIE (Italy/West Germany - 1976) Directed by Franco Prosperi. Written by Peter Berling, Antonio Cucca, Claudio Fragasso, Alberto Marras. Cast: Ray Lovelock, Martin Balsam, Elke Sommer, Riccardo Cucciolla, Ettore Manni, Heinz Domez, Ernesto Colli, Peter Berling. (Unrated, 94 mins)
Raro USA has done a fine job bringing cult classic 1970s poliziotteschi and other Eurocult gems to DVD and Blu-ray over the last few years, frequently in comprehensive, near Criterion-level packaging (their first box set of Fernando Di Leo crime films, featuring CALIBER 9, THE ITALIAN CONNECTION, THE BOSS, and RULERS OF THE CITY is absolutely essential). There have been stumbles along the way: a pressing error caused the entire run of Massimo Dallamano's THE SECRET OF DORIAN GRAY (1970) to be recalled, the DVD release of Di Leo's TO BE TWENTY (1978) had a glitch that causes it to skip the last chapter of the film, forcing you to go to the chapter selections to see the end of the movie, and their recent Blu-ray release of Umberto Lenzi's NIGHTMARE CITY (1980) has been knocked for its subpar transfer that doesn't even look as good as the decade-plus-old Anchor Bay DVD. You can't knock them all out of of the park, but their edition of MEET HIM AND DIE is an unmitigated disaster of shit-the-bed proportions.
The movie itself is fine--it's not the best polizia and it's not where one should start when exploring the subgenre, but it's an entertaining action thriller. The plot is filled with shootouts, double-crosses, and some nicely-done chase sequences. Massimo (Ray Lovelock of LIVE LIKE A COP, DIE LIKE A MAN) is busted for holding up a jewelry store and sent to prison. It's revealed very early that he's actually an undercover cop, ostensibly posing as a criminal to help orchestrate an escape for incarcerated mob boss Giulianelli (Martin Balsam), who's still overseeing his smuggling operation from the inside and the cops know there's bigger fish to catch. But Massimo's ultimate goal is to use Giulianelli to get to Perrone (Ettore Manni), who employs the two goons who shot and paralyzed his mother. From the action to the memorable score by Ubaldo Continiello to--if you watch the English track--the appearances of all the usual suspects in the dubbing world (Balsam--the same year he co-starred in ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN--dubs himself, while Lovelock is voiced by Ted Rusoff, and Elke Sommer turns up about an hour in and is dubbed by Pat Starke), MEET HIM AND DIE is a perfectly serviceable polizia. There's nothing new here, but fans will find a lot to enjoy.
That is, if they can get past the botched transfer. Whether it was Raro's doing or them just working with what they had, the DNR (digital noise reduction) here is off-the-charts. It's as bad as the infamous PREDATOR Blu-ray. In the long shots, it actually looks sort-of OK, but close-ups of the actors--and director Franco Prosperi (more on him in a bit) uses a lot of close-ups--look like they're coated in a waxy glaze, all lines and definition completely removed as everyone just has a smooth, lifeless appearance, surrounded by garish, overly-bright colors. All the grain has been removed, with a fake grain sort-of "hovering" over the image (Blue Underground's Blu-ray release of Dario Argento's THE CAT O'NINE TAILS is a horrific example of this), and it's most noticeable whenever Riccardo Cucciolla (as Massimo's boss) is on screen--watch how the designs on his loud sport jackets sort of move. Sure, there are some moments where it's not awful-looking, but for the most part, this is a horribly ugly transfer and indicative of everything people misunderstand about the concept of high-definition. This is not how movies should look. This is not how film looks, especially when it's one from the mid-1970s. It's anti-HD.
As if the transfer and the absurd levels of DNR weren't bad enough, Raro completely embarrasses itself with the accompanying booklet. There's an essay about the film by polizia expert Mike Malloy, who recently directed the documentary EUROCRIME, which looks at the genre and interviews virtually every still-living actor who appeared in them. Malloy obviously knows his shit, and his essay, as well as a video segment in the bonus features where he talks about the movie, the actors, and the subgenre itself, are nicely-done (I liked his description of the Italians latching on to what was popular--peplum, spaghetti westerns, crime movies--and "strip-mining" it until everyone was completely exhausted with it). But there's also a two-page bio of Prosperi and an accompanying filmography, and here lies the problem: as strange as it seems, there were two Franco Prosperi's working in Italian cinema from the 1960s to the 1980s. The MEET HIM AND DIE Prosperi was a genre and exploitation journeyman who dabbled in a little of everything over his mostly unexceptional career (007 ripoffs in the '60s, horror films in the '70s, and CONAN ripoffs in the '80s). The two-page bio is for the other Franco Prosperi, best known for co-directing, with Gualtiero Jacopetti, the MONDO CANE documentaries. The filmography listed after the bio? That's for the correct (MEET HIM AND DIE) Franco Prosperi. Now, I don't expect the general public to know (or care) that there are two very different Franco Prosperi's--I didn't know until a few years ago and even the most hardcore Eurotrash disciple has gotten them confused at some point in their travels. But shouldn't someone at Raro maybe not fallen asleep at the wheel? Was anyone paying attention? Was anyone in charge of proofreading or fact-checking? Did they even watch the video that Malloy shot for them? Because he specifically mentions the "two different Franco Prosperi's" phenomenon and he specifically says "The director of MEET HIM AND DIE is not the guy who made MONDO CANE." Can you imagine Criterion ever making a gaffe that egregious? Did anyone not find it odd that the bio of Prosperi made no mention of the film in which it's packaged? Malloy is the only credited author of the booklet, but it's obvious from his video segment that he didn't write the bio, since he knows it's not the correct Prosperi. So, between the shitty picture quality and the careless packaging, is there any reason at all to get behind this tire fire of a Blu-ray release? The relatively obscure MEET HIM AND DIE (which may have had some brief US exposure under the title RISKING) is far from essential, but even the worst polizia deserves better than what it gets here: a release that does nothing for the film, the genre, either Franco Prosperi, or Raro USA's sinking reputation. This whole package is riddled with the kind of bush-league fuck-ups that make you hesitant to purchase anything else they release in the future. Get it together, guys.
