THE AMBASSADOR (US - 1985) Directed by J. Lee Thompson. Written by Max Jack. Cast: Robert Mitchum, Ellen Burstyn, Rock Hudson, Fabio Testi, Donald Pleasence, Heli Goldenberg, Michal Bat-Adam, Ori Levy, Shmulik Kraus, Avi Kleinberger, Sasson Gabai. (R, 95 mins) It was a box office flop at the time, but 1986's 52 PICK-UP has come to be regarded as a top crime thriller of its era and one of the best films to come off the Cannon assembly line in their heyday. Adapted from Elmore Leonard's 1974 novel and directed by the great John Frankenheimer, 52 PICK-UP stars Roy Scheider as Harry Mitchell, a successful L.A. businessman caught up in a web of blackmail and murder when a trio of porno industry dirtbags (the leader constantly condescendingly calling him "Sport") videotape him having sex with his young mistress, shaking him down for an exorbitant sum of money in exchange for not embarrassing his wife (Ann-Margret), the top aide to a popular mayoral candidate. When he refuses to pay, they kill the mistress and try to frame Mitchell, not understanding that he's a self-made man used to doing things his own way, bullheadedly determined to take on the blackmailers himself, manipulating them and beating them at their own game, of course inevitably leading to Scheider delivering one of his signature "Smile, you son of a bitch!" lines just as he takes out the chief shitbag ("So long, Sport!"). It's lean, mean, gritty piece of vintage '80s L.A. sleaze, not entirely faithful to Leonard--he wasn't happy that the setting was moved to L.A. from his native Detroit--but it stands today as one of the better adaptations of the author's work, which would enjoy a significant renaissance a decade later with films like GET SHORTY, OUT OF SIGHT, and JACKIE BROWN, the latter based on his novel Rum Punch.
52 PICK-UP was actually Cannon's second adaptation of Leonard's novel. Prior to the Frankenheimer film, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus produced THE AMBASSADOR, ostensibly based on 52 Pick-Up but veering so far from the source that any mention of Leonard and the "Based on the novel by" credit weren't even included in the finished version. It was obviously a subject important to Israeli-born cousins Golan and Globus, but we may never know what it was about a decade-old, neo-noir novel set in Detroit that inspired them to turn it into a preachy polemic about Israeli-PLO relations, but that's exactly what happened with THE AMBASSADOR. The only plot point from Leonard's book that it retains is the blackmail element, but it even changes that by making it the wife's infidelity that's captured on film. One of Cannon's periodic mid '80s attempts at highbrow respectability, THE AMBASSADOR was shot in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and wants to make serious political statements, but it also wants to be a Cannon genre picture. It wants a classy, Oscar-winning actress like Ellen Burstyn to give it awards season credibility, but it needs her topless and doing Skinemax back-arching in a couple of surprisingly revealing, sweaty sex scenes with Fabio Testi, who had just been fired from Cannon's BOLERO after clashing with Bo and John Derek and sent to Israel to have simulated sex with Ellen Burstyn instead. Burstyn is Alex Hacker, the bored, frustrated wife of Peter Hacker (Robert Mitchum, in a role that was probably pitched to Cannon regular Charles Bronson at some point), the US Ambassador to Israel. Hacker is so distracted trying to broker a peace deal between Israel and Palestine that he's completely oblivious to his wife's torrid affair with antiques dealer Mustapha Hashimi (Testi), a shady figure with lifelong ties to terrorism. After a bombing in Jerusalem, Hacker is summoned to an abandoned movie theater where he's shown a stag film of Alex and Hashimi having sex, and is promptly blackmailed in exchange for not airing the footage on TV and creating an international incident over the wife of the US Ambassador getting between the sheets with a terrorist. The blackmailers are presumed to be from the PLO, but it's actually a rogue faction of far-right Mossad agents determined to maintain the status quo. There's duplicity and double crosses, and numerous attempts on the Hackers' lives by a renegade KGB agent (Shmulik Kraus), which sends Hacker's security chief and bodyguard Stevenson (Rock Hudson in his final big-screen role) into ass-kicking Cannon action hero mode.
Dull, overly convoluted, and bearing no resemblance to the "He's through negotiating!" thriller the poster art indicated, the barely-released and justifiably obscure THE AMBASSADOR just hit Blu-ray thanks to Kino Lorber, though it's one of Cannon's worst films. It never finds the balance between serious drama and hard-hitting action, and the finale goes from laughably out-of-touch to appallingly tacky, with Hacker organizing Israeli and Palestinian youth for a candle-lit kumbaya "dialogue for young people" where he delivers a series of rambling talking points while the attendees chant "peace" before being interrupted by a machine-gunning terrorist attack with a Sam Peckinpah level of gore and splatter. It's another example of Cannon trying to have it both ways by taking what they think is a high-minded, serious film and turning it into a grindhouse action shoot-'em-up (outside of the same year's existential action classic RUNAWAY TRAIN, that kind of Cannon crossover move almost never worked). An aging Mitchum looks bleary-eyed and confused throughout, never once looking like he understands the Political Science 101 dialogue he's reciting. You could make a drinking game out of how many times he mumbles "I just want to start a dialogue for young people" and it's one he'd almost certainly be up for playing. Burstyn brings her A-game but the material is simply beneath her (surprisingly, she worked for Cannon again a few years later on the expensive Golan-directed prestige flop HANNA'S WAR), while Donald Pleasence gets to ham it up a bit as the irate Israeli defense minister.
Hudson is solid as the tough-as-nails Stevenson, working well with Mitchum even though they reportedly didn't get along well at all. Hudson was under the weather throughout the shoot and he looked slimmer than he had in the years prior to his 1981 heart attack and subsequent quintuple bypass surgery, but not in an ill way that would indicate the HIV diagnosis he would receive a few months after THE AMBASSADOR wrapped production in early 1984 (the film wasn't released until January 1985; Hudson starred with an unknown Sharon Stone in the 1984 TV-movie THE VEGAS STRIP WAR and appeared on the fifth season of DYNASTY before succumbing to AIDS in October 1985). Leadenly directed by the veteran J. Lee Thompson, who would become of the top in-house Cannon guys throughout the decade (10 TO MIDNIGHT, KING SOLOMON'S MINES, FIREWALKER, DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN) and simplistically written by Max Jack and an uncredited Ronald M. Cohen (both vets of the short-lived 1981 ABC series AMERICAN DREAM), THE AMBASSADOR does offer one clever bit of caustic repartee between the Hackers (when she uses horseback riding as a cover story for some afternoon delight with Hashimi, Peter asks "English or western?" and she snidely replies "Bareback") but little else, jettisoning any connection to Elmore Leonard and wasting an overqualified cast in the process. At least with 52 PICK-UP, Cannon got it right the second time.
PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW (US - 1971) Directed by Roger Vadim. Written by Gene Roddenberry. Cast: Rock Hudson, Angie Dickinson, Telly Savalas, John David Carson, Roddy McDowall, Keenan Wynn, James Doohan, William Campbell, Barbara Leigh, Susan Tolsky, Aimee Eccles, Margaret Markov, June Fairchild, Joy Bang. (R, 91 mins) A textbook example of the kind of movie that could never be made today, PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW is a brazenly smutty, time-capsule-worthy T&A black comedy where laughs are mined from an awkward virgin being seduced by his sexy teacher and from underage, nympho high school girls hooking up with and being murdered by their charming, predatory guidance counselor and pillar-of-the-community football coach...with music by The Osmonds! It's a plot more suited for a New World Pictures drive-in comedy produced by Roger Corman, even featuring frequently nude Corman starlets like Barbara Leigh (THE STUDENT NURSES), Joy Bang (NIGHT OF THE COBRA WOMAN), and Margaret Markov (THE ARENA, BLACK MAMA WHITE MAMA), but it came from MGM, directed by French auteur and enfant terrible Roger Vadim, making his American debut ("his tribute to the high school girls of America!" the trailer crows) following the international success of 1968's BARBARELLA, and scripted by none other than STAR TREK creator Gene Roddenberry. Based on a 1968 novel by Francis Pollini, the film began life as a project for one-time Stanley Kubrick producing partner James B. Harris, with the lead role of serial killing counselor, coach, and sex addict Tiger McDrew intended for New York Jets QB Joe Namath. Given his playboy reputation, Namath would've been perfect casting, but the film spent two more years in development before it ended up in the hands of Vadim, with the role of Tiger McDrew eventually going to Rock Hudson. It's against-type casting that works, considering Hudson's past in light romantic comedies with Doris Day and years later, his closeted homosexuality becoming common knowledge to the world beyond industry insiders. Despite an Oscar nomination for 1956's GIANT, Hudson was always labeled a lightweight actor. He was making efforts to tackle more complex and challenging roles, starting with John Frankenheimer's 1966 cult classic SECONDS (easily his best performance), but the public wasn't buying it. Hudson spent most of the rest of his career in TV after PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW, appearing in just five more big-screen features (and only three of those were leads) until his death in 1985. As McDrew, Hudson, sporting longer hair than usual as well as an impressive early '70s porn stache, has a few extra pounds on him than he did in his heyday but he's still got all of the charm that made him a star, even with a sinister gleam in his eye and an unsettling leer as a bevy of beauties disrobe and throw themselves at him with reckless abandon. It's an inspired decision that allows Hudson to slyly explore the dark and twisted flipside of his onscreen persona.
Hudson's McDrew is a married dad introduced having sex with a student in his office at the same time confused, sexually frustrated virgin Ponce de Leon Harper (John David Carson) is so taken with substitute English teacher Miss Smith (Angie Dickinson, introduced with a close-up of her ass jiggling in a miniskirt) that he goes to the lavatory to jerk off but instead discovers a girl's nude body in the next stall. While clueless principal Mr. Proffer (Roddy McDowall) can't get a grip on what's happened ("I don't understand this...we've always kept our academic averages so high!") and can only offer superficial memories of the victim ("She was a fine girl...and a terrific little cheerleader") and incompetent sheriff Poldaski (Keenan Wynn) lets a bunch of curious onlookers loiter about the crime scene, no-nonsense detective Surcher (Telly Savalas) and his partner Follo (James Doohan, the only STAR TREK cast member present) arrive to take charge of the investigation. All the while, Tiger continues to score with a succession of high school hotties as the body count rises, while simultaneously advising Ponce on understanding women and learning to control his awkward and badly-timed erections. Tiger even recognizes a kindred spirit in Miss Smith, who needs little prodding when Tiger suggests she seduce Ponce and make him a man.
PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW is inappropriate in all kinds of ways. Sure, the bulk of the film is a series of dirty jokes and naked women (the August 1971 issue of Playboy was devoted to the film, with pictorials for Dickinson as well as all of the actresses playing the Pretty Maids), but there's some brilliant bits of dark humor and social commentary, whether it's a student asking Ponce if they've got football practice and Ponce responding with a dead-serious "No, we never have practice the day of a murder," or idiotic and knee-jerk Poldaski arriving on the scene of the first murder and impulsively grabbing the first black student he sees for questioning with a threatening "Not so fast...where do ya think yer goin'?" There's a running gag with Surcher constantly busting Poldaski down to traffic duty, with a great sneering performance by Savalas in what plays like a sarcastic dry run for his years on KOJAK. PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW was a box office flop in 1971, though it found a second wind on late-night Showtime and HBO in the early '80s, when the relationship between Dickinson's Miss Jones and Carson's Ponce (Dickinson has never been sexier onscreen than she is here) made the film fit right in with the "Hot for Teacher" craze spawned by the likes of PRIVATE LESSONS (1981), HOMEWORK (1982), MY TUTOR (1983), and THEY'RE PLAYING WITH FIRE (1984). With the ubiquity of teacher-student sex scandals, it's hard to believe there was once a time when such things were played for good-natured laughs, and were so part of the pop culture norm that Van Halen even had a huge MTV hit inspired by the subject. In that respect, perhaps PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW was ahead of its time, but can you even imagine it or something like PRIVATE LESSONS--a smash sleeper hit in theaters in 1981--getting the green light today without a shitstorm of controversy and trigger warnings?
