Reviews

Here's a swinging '60s morality tale made by and geared for leering old fogies: producer Sam Katzman's dated-on-arrival look at the libidinous doings at an apartment complex for randy unmarrieds.

This is Jungle Sam on a muckraking trek through the sexually liberated SoCal wilderness. Armed with his trusty drool cup, he casts an unblinking eye at the games schwinging singles play, the kind that result in heartache, emotional scars, deep soul-searching and lingering shots of twitching female tushies.

Revelers at the Sans Souci Apartments include hair-challenged John Saxon, buxom Lana Wood as the troubled gal pal to a loutish ladies man, statuesque beach bunny Chris Noel as a self-loathing sexpot, Milton Berle as the San Souci's smirking social director, and Marty Ingels as a bumbling wannabe swinger/supposed source of comedy relief. All this plus an eclectic array of musical talents (i.e., The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, The Walter Wanderley Trio, The Lewis & Clark Expedition), all secured, no doubt, for a less-than-princely sum.

Strictly for lovers of camp, kitsch, cringey melodrama and unintentional yuks.

Fans of fast cars, forgotten noirs, obscure L. A. locations, jowly John Bromfield and the many-splendored joys of buxotic Joi Lansing will have a field day with this no-budget delight. Produced by cheapskate auteurs Howard Koch and Aubrey Schenck, who gave the world CRIME AGAINST JOE, PHAOROH'S CURSE and THE GIRL IN BLACK STOCKINGS, this two-bit jalopy has it all: hot wheels, hot dames, hot spots (including shameless plugs for actual used car lots and beachfront watering holes), and hot action (climaxed by a wild fight to the death on a roller coaster ride).

All in an hour's running time.

Hot damn!

Grungy but likable AIP blaxpoitation/chop-socky mashup, produced in the Philippines and destined for the stateside grindhouse/drive-in circuit.

Genial beefcake James "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" Iglehart toplines as a boxing champ honeymooning in Hong Kong who becomes the unwitting target of a murderous gang hellbent on recovering a priceless statuette. Needless to say, the bad guys get more than they bargained for since Brother Iglehart is one of the titular iron men. Our hero kicks ass, takes names, and wears the most eye-searing paisley shirts this side of Walter Matthau in EARTHQUAKE. Indeed, his threads alone seem weaponized to damage an opponent's optic nerves.

Bone-crushing action, mega-seedy locations and funkadelic music abound. Hardcore '70s action movie completists, take note.

Also in the house: Filipino comedy icon Chiquito as a cute mute, the ubiquitous Eddie Garcia (BEAST OF BLOOD's mad Dr. Lorca) and the inevitable and always welcome Vic Diaz.

This slap-happy prizefighting "epic" from cash-strapped Lippert Pictures boasts a moth-eaten plot lifted shamelessly from James Cagney's CITY FOR CONQUEST (pugilist brothers, one a concert pianist, the other blinded in the ring). Still, it does bear the distinction of being the only fight film ever to feature -- I kid you not -- narration by a talking boxing ring.

Casting-wise, there are some amusingly oddball points of interest: the ever-peppy Don "Red" Barry as a slugger turned virtuoso ivory tickler, Marcia Dean, aka Lippert's answer to Vera Rhuba Ralston, as an amorous nurse, Lyle "Find out what in hell it is that they want!" Talbot as a ringside announcer, and Borscht Belt "humorist" Joey Adams as a stogie-chomping cut man.

Director Ray Nazarro brands this oater with the distinctive Nazarro touch, namely flat lighting, dreary compositions and inattention to detail.

Still, the film has a fresh, compelling story to recommend it, one with topical urgency. Ruthless land baron David Brian (in a career high performance), a European immigrant who has achieved the American dream, makes life hell for Native American sodbusters in general and a half-breed babe in particular.

It also boasts a glittering cast of low-budget luminaries: May "The Unknown Terror" Wynn as the titular tootsie, Myron "Varan the Unbelievable" Healey as a lecherous lout, Paul "My eyes are alien!" Birch as a kindly rancher, Emil "The Fourth Stooge" Sitka as a squeamish barfly, Frank "It is balloon!" DeKova as a Sioux chief, Russ Meyer regular Henry "Martin Bormann" Rowland as a shifty-eyed cowhand and frequent Sam Fuller bit player Neyle "I am impotent and I like it!" Morrow as a Sioux Indian brave named Swift Arrow.

Well worth a look, especially for psychotronic stargazers.

"Know the worst about the Japs!" screamed the original ads for this delirious WW II time capsule, a violent, rabble-rousing propaganda piece purporting to show how Japan rose to become a world terror. But with the first act of Japanese savagery, the film's true intent becomes crystal clear: to foment outrage and demonize the enemy by dishing out heaping helpings of barbaric cruelties. Atrocities on the menu include gang rape, wince-inducing torture, bayonet practice on babies, the mass slaughter of innocents, and the likes of Tom Neal, J. Carrol Naish and Abner Biberman playing sons of Nippon in heavy Asiatic makeup.

By turns, unintentionally hilarious and horrifyingly brutal, the film is never less than gripping thanks, in large part, to Edward Dmytryk's deft direction. Worth the price of admission alone is a blistering, brilliantly edited ten-minute ring fight between an American boxer played by Robert Ryan (a real-life college boxing champ) and a towering Japanese judo expert played by Mike Mazurki. It's a genuine showstopper, expressly designed to whip homefront theater audiences into a frenzy of cheers, cat-calls and general bloodlust. With Gloria Holden, Margo and Richard Loo (wonder of wonders, a genuine Asian).

This story isn't pretty, in fact it's downright scuzzy:

He's old and fat, with a bank account to match his belly. She's young and hungry, with too much peroxide and not enough scruples. Toss in a muscle-bound mechanic with a yen for faux-blonde skanks with alley cat morals and you can be sure that the postman who always rings twice will be heading for the doorbell again.

Welcome to the lower depth digs of Hugo Haas & Cleo Moore, a particularly grimy rung of the film noir inferno. Like most of their collaborations, it plays like a lurid, dog-eared pulp mystery paperback come to life, chock full of murder, mendacity, horny Hungarian junkmen with goulash for brains, Italian studs with sky-high pompadours, and femme fatales with bosoms the size of Tucker Torpedoes.

HIT AND RUN was the final collaboration between writer/director/star/gutter auteur Haas and his slatternly muse Moore. Along for the ride is Vince Edwards as the beefcake buddy who covets his best friend's bride. As with all Haas/Moore noirs, everything they touch turns to pig slop.

All told, it's one of Hugo's better efforts, a compelling, typically feverish riff on the DOUBLE INDEMNITY formula (albeit told from the perspective of the elderly cuckold) festooned with several oddball twists and turns and touches. Well worth seeking out. With Julie Mitchum, Robert's lookalike sister, as an undertaker's sassy wife.

Sabu, Gail Russell, Turhan Bey, and Rimsky-Korsakoff make exciting music together in this rip-roaring Kiplingesque adventure. Marauding big cats, spectacular matte paintings, white-knuckle knife duels at the edge of bottomless mountain chasms, a sneering, villainous Bey, and a bare-foot, jungle prince-in-Pampers Sabu with a Bengal tiger as his best pal, reprising Mowgli in everything but name only, all add up to the stuff of kiddie matinee heaven.

Song of India was a TV mainstay when I was a kid. I loved it then, which undoubtedly accounts for my love for it to this day. Your mileage may vary, natch.

With Anthony Caruso, Ian Macdonald and Trevor Bardette as the least likely Indians this side of Richard Burton in The Rains of Ranchipur.

Break out the extra-strength Thorazine for this Ladies of the Psych Ward epic, an eye-rolling, ear-splitting, hilariously overwrought stay at the Canterbury State Mental Hospital for Criminally Overacting Divas.

God help me but I love everything about this ambulance wreck of a film, from the evocative b & w cinematography by Lucien Ballard and amped-up, nerve-jangling Elmer Bernstein score to the deliciously tacky script and scenery-chewing antics of a gung ho cast including Joan Crawford as a pitiless head nurse cum martial artist, Constance Ford as her sadistic subordinate, Janis Paige as a hardboiled, sex-crazed hooker, Barbara Barrie as a cute mute with homicidal tendencies and Polly Bergen as a basket case with a beehive hairdo worthy of a Diane Arbus portrait.

Among the glut of mental asylum movies released in the early '60s (DAVID AND LISA, SHOCK CORRIDOR, SHOCK TREATMENT, CABINET OF CALIGARI), THE CARETAKERS ranks firmly at the bottom of the crackers barrel. It's the crudest, most luridly melodramatic and self-important of the lot. But for connoisseurs of bad movies, it might well be the most entertaining.

Blistering, memorable World War Two propaganda, directed with unbridled bloodlust by Tay Garnet ("Bataan") and performed with gusto by an all male cast. Jean Pierre Aumont, the only legit Frenchman in the bunch, plays a Gaelic resistance fighter hauled to a German labor camp along with his comrades, where the tortures of the damned are inflicted on them by their barbaric captors.

The characters are the regulation cross-section of types: the quick-tempered cab driver (Gene Kelly), the intellectual surgeon (Richard Whorf), the ultra-pious priest (Cedric Hardwicke), and, of course, the capitulating Quisling (Hume Cronyn). And dishing out the punishment is Peter Lorre as the definitive Nazi sadist, blowing cigarette smoke in a prisoner's face and beating his victims senseless for minor infractions.

Garnet moves past standard agitprop as he piles on acts of savagery that still pack a visceral punch. Shod feet kick noble French brows to a bloody pulp and vengeful partisan knives are thrust in German throats. But the most shocking violence is also the least graphic -- the off-screen emasculation of Kelly as described by a Nazi commander's chillingly casual bon mot: "We amputated his... enthusiasm."

Hollywood propaganda at its most effective, precision-engineered to make one's blood boil and legs cross.

Salt & Pepper return, a bit more grizzled (especially in Lawford's case) and a lot more manic (particularly in Sammy's case, who also sheds his hepcat's pomade sheen for an au courant afro) in this manure-for-brains atrocity.

This time, the expatriate Rat Packers seem less concerned with hitting on dollybirds and more concerned with taking pratfalls and wearing goofy costumes. Indeed, under the direction of Jerry Lewis, the once swinging club owners are transformed into the second coming of Martin and Lewis.

Jerry changes the dynamics of the partnership here: instead of the Dino figure doing the singing, it's the Jerry clone who warbles the ditties (three to be exact). The Total Filmmaker also encourages Davis to make "funny" faces like there's no tomorrow, and Sammy gleefully obliges. Bugging his one good eye and contorting his rubber lips in all directions, D. Gives a master class in mug-a-minute, desperately unfunny overacting.

For the record, S & P still smoke a whole lot of cigarettes. They also have a brief run-in with Christopher "Dracula" Lee, Peter "Dr. Frankenstein" Cushing and Dudley Sutton as a leering hunchback. Which provokes Sammy to let out a scream loud enough to hear in Las Vegas.

Alas, the one thing he doesn't do is scream "Hey, la-a-a-a-d-dy!!!!!" Aww, what a gyp.

Rat Packers Sammy Davis Jr. And Peter Lawford went to London to produce and star in this swinging, puke-a-delic spy spoof -- although their real aim, no doubt, was to make whoopee with all the mini-skirted dollybirds their middle-aged testes could stand.

Here's hoping the dear boys got their jollies; I know I did (metaphorically speaking, that is) watching them do the Frug, hit on chicks, and dodge bullets as they make like Matt Helm times two, commit fashion crimes unto God and Armani, hit on some more chicks, get cheeky with the coppers, and smoke, smoke, smoke themselves silly as if courting lung cancer was a badge of coolness.

Written by the great Michael Pertwee (LAUGHTER IN PARADISE, LADIES WHO DO) and directed by Richard Donner, who would later attempt to re-work the Salt and Pepper formula in LETHAL WEAPON, minus the groovilicious trappings. (Danny Glover in love beads? Perish the thought!)

From executive producer Robert Wise and debuting director John Flynn comes this once shocking, still feverish character study of repressed homosexuality in the military. Front and center and in your face is the positively unglued performance by Rod Steiger. As the tortured titular closet case (who discovers his inner Bruno while crushing a man's windpipe), Steiger brings a whole new dimension to Method-driven scenery-chewing.

This boy devours anything that isn't nailed down -- costars, script pages, film stock, and judging from the extra pounds he's packing, every Twinkie, Ding Dong and Ho Ho on the craft service table.

Small wonder he's got the munchies -- the real object of Sergeant Steiger's appetite is hunky private John Philip Law, who spends the bulk of the movie blissfully unaware of his top kick's desire.

It's a slow burn affair, taking its time to get inside the Sarge's skin to expose his loneliness and isolation, building in intensity to an explosive climax. And with ol' Rod doing the exploding, we're talking one hell of a nuclear kablooey.

All told, a harrowing, mesmerizing and steigeringly overwrought experience.

Imagine BIRD MAN OF ALCATRAZ as directed by Roger Corman and written by Lord Buckley, with a last minute polish by the writing staff of MAD magazine. Welcome to the singular, funky, and altogether strange world of CONVICTS 4. While the title may suggest a Rat Pack romp, it's actually a prison flick that's hard to pigeonhole -- part inspirational, part beatnik, and all nutzoid. The movie itself looks plenty beat too, so drab and chintzy in appearance that the actual Folsom State Prison locations seem like sound stages leased from Gravis Mushnik.

The story focuses on the big house adventures of real-life artist John Resko (Ben Gazzara), who won a last-minute reprieve from execution and served an eighteen year stretch in the poky during which his talent for painting was discovered and nurtured. While ostensibly taking place in the 1930s and '40s, the film is willfully, almost gleefully anachronistic, from the hipster-heavy dialog to the post-modern jazz music (strongly reminiscent of Fred Katz's BUCKET OF BLOOD/LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS score).

It is also populated with more stars than there are in psychotronic heaven, making this the HOW THE WEST WAS WON of screw loose hoosgow films. Luminaries guilty of first degree scenery-chewing include Sammy Davis Jr. As Wino, the walking razor blade, Ray Walston as Iggy, the comic psycho, Rod Steiger as Tiptoes, the sadistic screw, Jack Albertson as Teach, the hepcat art teacher, Broderick Crawford as Jabba the warden, and, as a loquacious con, the great Timothy Carey in a show-stopping display of unbridled weirdness. Convict Carey doesn't just chew the scenery, he gorges on everything in sight -- castmates, prison bars, you name it -- and still looks hungry for more.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

The enticingly pulpy moniker promises lurid, noir-tinged thrills. And while there's sordid doings aplenty (including one furniture-smashing heroin withdrawal), PICKUP ALLEY turns out to be less hard-boiled than half-baked. Still, there are sundry points of interest, particularly for devotees of James Bond history.

Co-produced by Albert Broccoli, the film feels like a dry run for 007 travel itineraries to come, what with Interpol narc Victor Mature ("The name's Sturgis...Charles Sturgis") globe-trotting from New York to Rome to Istanbul in pursuit of slippery international dope peddler Trevor Howard.

PICKUP's other idiosyncratic virtues include the urbane, ever-grinning Howard as a Bizarro World Harry Lime, dodging coppers via rooftops rather than sewers, sexy drug mule Anita Ekberg sashaying past the Trevi Fountain, site of her famous skinny-dip in LA DOLCE VITA, Alec Mango (7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD's caliph of Baghdad) making like Michael Gough in hormonal overdrive as he tries to force himself on La Ekberg, Andre Morell and Martin Benson (the mobster taken for a ride by Oddjob in GOLDFINGER) as British and Italian Interpol agents respectively, Sid James and Danny Green yapping like East Side Kids as Big Apple barkeeps, Eric (voice of Blofeld) Pohlmann as a fez-wearing nogoodnik, Hammer's all-purpose exotic Marne Maitland as a knife-wielding henchman, Brian Wilde (NIGHT OF THE DEMON's Rand Hobart) as a monk conducting guided tours of the Roman catacombs, and the oddball spectacle of Al Mulock (perhaps the plug-ugliest cast member of THE GOOD, BAD AND THE UGLY) as a natty New York narcotics detective.

Long story short: Die-hard Bond fans will have a feast with this Broccoli Cheese Soufflé. But cholesterol watchers, beware: it's heavy on the cheese.

Tough, ripped-from-the-headlines crime drama courtesy of exploitation maven Sam Katzman. Based on a not-so-semi-autobiographical book by the notorious Caryl Chessman, the movie stars William Campbell as degenerate career criminal "Whit Whittier," who looks back on the blood-splattered events which led to his long-term incarceration on San Quentin's death row.

Campbell's performance is forcefully persuasive, brimming with unpredictable menace and anti-social insolence. Even his greasy, sky-high pompadour complete with spit curl is unnerving -- a tousled, defiant 'eff you' to post-war conformity.

Also starring Campbell's real-life kid brother R. Wright Campbell -- who later wrote the screenplays for MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH and HELL'S ANGELS ON WHEELS -- as the teenage Whit, Kathryn Grant, cast against type as an uber-slutty gang girl, Jonathan Haze and Joe Turkel as nattily dressed thugs, and in a brief turn, Kerwin "Sinbad" Mathews as the world's least likely hardboiled reporter.

The title ostensibly refers to the film's setting, which takes place below the equator, but more aptly describes the thunder below the belt of the principal cast members -- with a veritable tsunami raging in leading lady Tallulah Bankhead's nether regions.

In all six of her 1931-32 films, Bankhead played unhappy wives in exotic locales who often fell victim to a malady common to pre-Code heroines stuck in steamy surroundings: the Triple 'H' Bug (as in Horny Humid Housewife). In THUNDER BELOW, a particularly lurid entry in the tropical scorcher sweepstakes, Tallulah sins, suffers, and sweats oh so chicly, sometimes all at once.

Set in Central America, the story revolves around Bankhead's marriage to Charles Bickford, an oil rigger, who never suspects that she's actually in love with his best friend, Paul Lukas. But when passions reach a fever pitch, Tallulah becomes so wracked with guilt that she runs off with a third man (Ralph Forbes), leaving her broken-hearted husband and lover to join up in a quest to hunt her down. Needless to say, all roads lead to hell.

Melodramatic with a capital 'M' writ large in bold, capital letters, the heavy-breathing hokum is made compelling by arresting production design and cinematography -- the pre-Code Paramount signature look -- and restrained, persuasive performances by Tallulah and her swains.

All this, plus comic relief by the great Jimmy Finlayson sans mustache and the portly Eugene Pallette, who even gets to do a horizontal mambo with a barroom tart. Where is the Legion of Decency when you really need them?

A pitch-dark slice of '50s Americana in which the sanctity of the Nuclear Family is threatened by the next worst thing to the Red menace - criminal trespassers in the living room. This paranoid subgenre, the home invasion thriller, was popularized in such nail-biters as SUDDENLY and "THE DESPERATE HOURS." But those films seem downright genteel next to this savage, hysterically over-the-top suburban nightmare.

Director Phil Karlson (THE PHENIX CITY STORY, WALKING TALL) lets us know right from the jump that he means business. On a squalid street in East L. A. (shot on location, a hallmark of Karlson films) ultra-square realtor Jeffrey Hunter stops in a candy store to call his office. To the strains of a memorably sleazy jukebox tune (guaranteed to stay in your head for days), he witnesses the murder of a Chicano youth by a gang of over-aged delinquents. Hunter, alone among the rubbernecks, dutifully offers to testify, and the gang attempts to silence him by launching a campaign of terror against his wife and children. We're talking terror writ large in big, bold capital letters.

Unlike the rather high-minded THE DESPERATE HOURS, KEY WITNESS' offers no pretense of depth, no attempt to psychoanalyze its sociopaths. This blithely sadistic baby travels the low road with single-minded purpose -- to shock, disgust, titillate and provoke middle-class outrage... in CinemaScope, no less, the better to fill the wide screen with the unrestrained antics of its cast.

Leading the hood parade is Dennis Hopper as Cowboy, a gang leader with a serious case of the Method mumbles, who lives up to his outlaw nickname by threatening to rape Hunter's eight-year-old daughter(!) Susan Harrison (the timid Susie Hunsecker of SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS) plays his hyper-tramp girlfriend with whiplash hips and the hauteur of a slumming deb. Joby Baker, a rubber-faced ringer for Jerry Lewis, emotes to the mezzanine and beyond as the weed-smoking, jive-talking, aptly-named Muggles. More restrained but no less bizarre is Corey Allen, the teen ganglord of "Rebel Without a Cause", looking sullen and pouty as if resentful at being demoted to playing Hopper's flunky.

Only Johnny Nash is a washout as the gang's sole black member. He's sensitive, conscience-stricken, cares for his mother, and even wears collegiate cardigans. In other words, he's a party pooper, as tiresomely square as Hunter and his family of upright, uptight goody goodies. Indeed, after wife Pat Crowley has her umpteenth fit of hysterics, you may find yourself rooting for the lowlifes.

Fans of REAR WINDOW curious to see Georgine "Miss Torso" Darcy up close and personal may want to check out schlockmeister Sam Katzman's DON'T KNOCK THE TWIST. Be forewarned, though: The closer you get the more likely you'll be yearning for the view from James Stewart's vantage point. Garbed in tacky outfits and shot with hard, unflattering lighting that emphasizes every wrinkle and crow's foot, poor Darcy looks haggard and careworn as the least convincing teenager this side of Stockard Channing in GREASE. The Katzman touch strikes again.

And again and again. Especially on the dance floor, where the hip-swiveling twisters provide an excuse for lingering shots of backfields in motion, zeroing in on one twitching female butt after another.

All of this leering leads to one of the film's, ahem, cheekiest moments: the psychotronic spectacle of sixtyish Hortense Petra -- the real-life Mrs. Sam Katzman -- twisting up a storm as the camera tilts down to ogle her outsize keister. Apparently Jungle Sam loved his wife not wisely but too well.

Other twisted sightings include a raven-haired Mari Blanchard as a haute couture designer of Twist fashions, Barbara Morrison, aka Mrs. Kipfer, the snooty English madame in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY ("Why, if it isn't Ah-n-gelo Mah-ggio!") as a society doyenne/twistin' fool, Frank Albertson (the flirty geezer with the 40 grand in PSYCHO) as a TV exec, and background actor extraordinaire Bess Flowers as a snooty oldster who winds up going 'round and around and up and a-down thanks to Chubby Checker, The Dovells and Gene Chandler.

The median age of the cast has got to be around 65 years old, making DON'T KNOCK THE TWIST something of a groundbreaker -- the first rock 'n' roll film aimed expressly at assisted living communities. Actually, the median age seems more like 75, what with the elderly extras playing Twist-happy revelers in the night club scenes. It isn't every day you see refugees from "Kick the Can" bopping to the beat of The Bristol Stomp and flashing their dentures at the Duke of Earl as he walks through his dukedom. Perhaps that's for the best.

Norman Bates, move over -- Leo Kroll is in the house, and there's barely enough room for his victims. As the jumbo-sized mama's boy-cum-serial throttler, Victor Buono owns this film, lock, stock and rubber strangulation gloves.

At once, arrogant, infantile, obnoxious, heartrending, and creepy as all hell, Buono constantly keeps you off-guard and on edge. His remarkable work sets this grubby, low-rent thriller apart from the rest of the PSYCHO knockoffs. When he's off screen. The film goes into snooze mode, with flatly directed and indifferently acted police procedural scenes that put a choke-hold on the action.

Thankfully big Vic's around a lot and with flop sweat to spare, his b.o. Damn near palpable as he ogles his victims in their lacy undergarments. (You may need to watch the movie with a canister of Lysol handy.)

Two supporting performers also stand out: Kewpie doll Diane Sayer as a sexy, insinuating fun fair vendor, and Ellen Corby, ol' Grandma Walton herself, as Leo's monster of a mother, a woman always at the ready with an encouraging word ("Face it, son, you're not good-looking... You're fat."). Corby, by the way, is just about the only actress in the cast who doesn't strip down to garter belt and black stockings. I, for one, did not feel cheated.

Compelling hokum. Lionel Barrymore, in a variation of his trod-upon tycoon from "Dinner at Eight," plays the doting, selfless head of an insensitive, selfish family. Wife Fay Bainter, having just sold a novel to the movies, is on a spending spree before heading to Hollywood; son Tom Brown has his heart set on joining a college fraternity; elder daughter Mae Clark is torn between two lovers; dithery sister Mary Carlisle has thoughts of eloping with her nitwit boyfriend.

Meanwhile, Barrymore is facing scandal and prison on a trumped-up embezzlement charge, a crisis he withholds from his self-absorbed brood. Will the family rally to his side before he ends it all in suicide?

The film is so cunningly constructed that we squirm in suspense in spite of our conviction that all must end well. It's the kind of skillful schmaltz that leaves you feeling at once satisfied and foolish. With Una Merkel as a knuckleheaded maid, saving Louise Beavers and Hattie MacDaniel the indignity of demeaning themselves.

Among the sundry delights to be found in this British white slavery sexpose is the gonzo turn by Herbert Lom. As London's mac daddy supreme Nick Biaggi, Lom is a sight to behold, a horn-doggie dandy in homburg, lapel carnation and spats (au courant fashion be damned). He's low-key at first, oozing oily charm and generosity, the better to bamboozle naive French waif Odile Versois, who's been lured into a life of shame by Lom's field procurer/mamasan/mistress Brenda De Banzie. But behind closed doors it's a whole 'nother Herb. Channeling his inner Michael Gough, he's all over Odile like a cheap suit, manhandling her love handles and assaulting her face with wet, slobbering kisses. It's truly an unhinged spectacle; even Lom's toupee looks like it has an erection.

Also in the house: affable tough guy Eddie Constantine as the world's least likely Canadian, the always welcome Robert Brown (Tumak's dad in One Million Years B.C., 'M' in the Bond films of the '80s) as a two-fisted cabbie who rouses his fellow hacks to do battle with the 'ho-mongers, Diana Dors, poured into bum-busting skirts and Frederick's of Soho lingerie, as a hooker with a score to settle, and, as the groom at a wedding party, a remarkably young Michael Caine.

All this plus a wacky weed-induced dream scene that must be seen to be disbelieved.

Lowdown high times guaranteed.

Brutal, straightforward bio-pic of the notorious Jewish gang boss. Writers Wesley Lau and Tamar Hoffs tell their sprawling story with fidelity to the headlines and nary a hint of what made this complicated mobster-cum-family man tick. (Curiously, there's never a mention of Lepke's infamous Murder Inc. operation, opting instead to concentrate on his drug trafficking and extortion enterprises.) Luckily, Tony Curtis' riveting performance fills in what the writers' have neglected, transforming Lepke Buchalter into a disturbingly three-dimensional character. Tossing off Yiddishisms with a sneer, keeping his impish smile to a minimum, he plays Lepke as a stone-faced ruthless street thug with a yen for power and conservative family values. It's as though Sidney Falco from "Sweet Smell of Success" had finally taken over J.J. Hunsecker's column. Whether snarling out death orders or tremulously asking his prospective father in law for permission to marry, Curtis invests the role with a skillful understatement (as well as a Bronx boy's veracity).

In the film's best scene, a queasy mixture of eroticism and complex emotions, Lepke is on the lam and holed up in a trollop's apartment. As the woman brazenly tempts him, Curtis silently and eloquently conveys the anguish of a lonely man struggling to remain faithful to his wife.

The director Menachem Golan is rarely this subtle, striving for ethnic texture and period color and overdoing both. Grubby hook-nosed Jews, swarthy pasta-eating Italians, and outsize Fedoras are shoved in our face. The violence is luridly overblown (a prostitute gets an ice pick thrust in her neck during lovemaking), and sometimes downright preposterous (a plate of spaghetti camouflages an explosive device). But just try to turn away from Curtis. With Anjanette Comer as Lepke's doting wife; Milton Berle, surprisingly restrained as her father; Barry Miller as the young Lepke; Vaughn Meader as an unlikely Walter Winchell.