User Reviews

Slow-moving adaptation of Ken Follett spy novel is partly redeemed by solid performances throughout and outstanding location work. Robertson's romancing of Hubley is not credible--he's 27 years older than her--but both carry on gamely. (Her scenes with Robertson's son are especially strong.) Nice supporting work from Lewis, Maitland, and Swales. You haven't lived until you've heard Robert Culp with a German accent.

This hard-to-find movie was a good spy drama capturing the spirit of the international-production era of "big TV". Cliff Robertson plays an American serving in British Army Intelligence in early WW2 Cairo Egypt. There's a threat that Egypt - and Africa - will be lost to the Nazis, and spies abound, as does fleeting loyalty on the part of Egyptians not necessarily on the British side. Widower Cliff crosses paths with Season Hubley, a lady of the evening, in his efforts to defeat or apprehend a German spy played by David Soul. There's derring-do, ineffectual supervision, plot twists and a few stabbings. Overall, I liked it as a period piece. But there's also some TV history here: Lina Raymond, playing Sonya the belly dancer/voluptuary and Season Hubley both do topless nude scenes, the very first ones for females in a major TV market (WPIX-TV NY, 4/29/85 and 5/9/85). That marks some history, if obscure, for The Key To Rebecca.

This film is unbelievably bad. I have never been a fan of David Soul and this film, he kills people for the hell of it and speaks that "Ve Have Vays Off Making You talk Accent" just as he did in the film Pentathlon with Dolf Lundgren. You have Cliff Robertson as an English Officer, speaking the Queens English and Robert Culp playing Rommel and quoting lines like "I Vill Eat Ze Blitish For Bleakfast and Ze Blitish Have Defeated Me. How can two fine actors as Cliff Robertson and Robert Culp, who are normally good, act so bad. Fortress in Cairo was far better with a low budget. This story could be remade, with English, German and Arabic actors.

This is an entertaining spy film, ony marred by the need to display British officers --pointedly, British Intelligence officers-- as dumb. These fictional Brits need to make unforgivable mistakes in order to allow the bad guy escape and escape again, and thus stretch the plot.

Then, the hero should have died twice, but he is the hero, so he won't. The bad guys also waste their chances of finishing him; they are almost as dumb as the British. As in Austin Powers films, instead of killing their enemy right away, the bad guys delay pressing the trigger.

However, one must admire Follet's ability to depict the ways in which the good guys slowly tie the noose around the villain; how they do intelligence.

To me, the worst instance of stretching the story is near the end, when Robertson's character puts a bullet on Wolf... but only one, so the German Spy manages to grab his son and threatens him again.

Nevertheless, as I said, the story is watchable.