Too bad one of those good things wasn't this movie, my thoughts, as Richard Harris spoke the above line, and my anxiousness for the end growing as the film dragged on. This mob spoof overstays its welcome, although the opening shot of the Hudson River graveyard is an interesting (and absurdly comical) shot of cement shoed statues, their ghostly torsos clad with Medusa like wild hair, some decomposing, a few others fish food. As for the plot, basically a mob war that nobody can win, it is so oddly presented that you have to wonder if this is what director John Frankenheimer ("The Manchurian Candidate", "Seven Days in May") thought of as comedy.
Black comedy works best when it deals in irony, but this view of entirely unlikable people in ugly situations results in utter disgust towards the proceedings, not ironic whimsy. The film's most amusing scene (barely so) is the handicapped hit-man Chuck Connors' briefcase of arm attachments, some crude, some comical. Veteran actor Edmund O'Brien offers a minor touch of class as the big boss, with Constance Ford (coming back to films after a decade on daytime soaps, most notably as the tough but loving matriarch on "Another World") playing a stereotypically hard-boiled madame predictably named Dolly. As for leading lady Ann Turkel, the less said the better.
Black comedy works best when it deals in irony, but this view of entirely unlikable people in ugly situations results in utter disgust towards the proceedings, not ironic whimsy. The film's most amusing scene (barely so) is the handicapped hit-man Chuck Connors' briefcase of arm attachments, some crude, some comical. Veteran actor Edmund O'Brien offers a minor touch of class as the big boss, with Constance Ford (coming back to films after a decade on daytime soaps, most notably as the tough but loving matriarch on "Another World") playing a stereotypically hard-boiled madame predictably named Dolly. As for leading lady Ann Turkel, the less said the better.