How in the world did Carroll Baker and Stephen Boyd show up in this barely competent international "thriller?" O.k., so neither of their careers exactly took off into the stratosphere, but still, Baker copped an Academy Award nomination back in the 50s and Boyd made a splash in big-time Hollywood with his performance in "Ben-Hur." The acting profession can apparently be called many things, but predictable isn't one of them.
This bargain-bin movie stars Baker as twin sisters who find themselves wrapped up with some insurance company and mafia toughs who are trying to collect a stolen diamond. For such a throw-away picture the plot is ridiculously hard to follow, not because it's necessarily complicated but because the whole movie is executed so poorly. The worst offender is the film editor, who makes a shambles of a car chase scene, and will cut from a scene of two people sitting on a sofa engaged in conversation to a scene of the exact same two people talking on the phone to each other from different locales, without any kind of transition.
You'd never guess Baker had it in her to deliver an Academy Award-worthy performance based on this film, though she looks pretty fetching in the 1970s garbs she dons (even if she does frequently look like a hooker), and the constant parade of wigs she and every other female character wears are a riot -- at one point, she inexplicably appears sunbathing at the beach wearing a wig the color of a blue raspberry sno-cone.
Once or twice the film flirts with an actually effective scene, like one where Baker is investigating noises in an attic and comes across a dead body (which however is never explained or tied back to the film in any way) or another set in a windmill. But every time it gets too close to competence, it veers away like a dog from a skunk.
Grade: D
This bargain-bin movie stars Baker as twin sisters who find themselves wrapped up with some insurance company and mafia toughs who are trying to collect a stolen diamond. For such a throw-away picture the plot is ridiculously hard to follow, not because it's necessarily complicated but because the whole movie is executed so poorly. The worst offender is the film editor, who makes a shambles of a car chase scene, and will cut from a scene of two people sitting on a sofa engaged in conversation to a scene of the exact same two people talking on the phone to each other from different locales, without any kind of transition.
You'd never guess Baker had it in her to deliver an Academy Award-worthy performance based on this film, though she looks pretty fetching in the 1970s garbs she dons (even if she does frequently look like a hooker), and the constant parade of wigs she and every other female character wears are a riot -- at one point, she inexplicably appears sunbathing at the beach wearing a wig the color of a blue raspberry sno-cone.
Once or twice the film flirts with an actually effective scene, like one where Baker is investigating noises in an attic and comes across a dead body (which however is never explained or tied back to the film in any way) or another set in a windmill. But every time it gets too close to competence, it veers away like a dog from a skunk.
Grade: D