This is not a good film but it's almost bad enough to be entertaining. Henry Silva seems like a menacing presence to many reviewers but to me he seemed intimidated by his shot at the big time. The scenes in which Elizabeth Montgomery and he interact seem spliced together from different movies. Montgomery is convincing in an impossible role and appealing in a way that makes you sad her career reached its apogee in the dreary wasteland of TV sitcom. She clearly had a great spirit and wit that would have made her an engaging presence if she'd had better scripts. The most annoying thing about this movie has got to be the cameos by Peter Lawford's pack of hacks. One can imagine Lawford saying, "Hey, you wanna be in my movie?" and then poor William Asher has to write in scenes which derail the plot (not necessarily a bad thing in this movie). There's an odd moment when Silva meets Sammy Davis Jr. at a crap game and Davis gives him a weird little grin. What does it mean? Nada apparently. This film is filled with these little oddments. Venerable Robert Armstrong shows up as a mobster and has a couple of deliciously cheesy lines which he seems embarrassed by. But he can't touch Mort Sahl's cameo for cringeworthiness. Sahl plays a gangster who faces death with such laidback indifference that you expect him to give us a couple of quips about cold war politics before he exits. No such luck.
All in all, it's an odd Whitman's sampler of schticks and groans with a void at its center. See it for Liz at the height of her beauty and with her natural hair color.
All in all, it's an odd Whitman's sampler of schticks and groans with a void at its center. See it for Liz at the height of her beauty and with her natural hair color.