Frank Sinatra as Tony Rome Times Two!

One wonders if Frank Sinatra regretted turning down the lead role in Harper (1966), one of the '60s best detective films. That might explain his decision to star in Tony Rome, another private eye picture, the following year. Although based on a novel by Marvin Albert, Tony Rome comes across as a Harper rip-off with the locale shifted from the West Coast to Miami.

Tony Rome is a former cop who likes gambling, women, and living on a boat. In need of cash, Tony accepts a job from his former partner to return an heiress, who has passed out in a cheap hotel, to her father. The young woman (Sue Lyon) and her wealthy patriarch (Simon Oakland) each hire Tony for different reasons: She wants Rome to recover a missing diamond pin that she was wearing; her father wants the private eye to find out why his daughter has been acting strangely. 

By the time Tony figures what's going on, he's been beaten up multiple times, accused of murder, and nearly killed himself. On the plus side, he has also met a beautiful, very rich divorcee (Jill St. John)!

Gena Rowlands.

Tony Rome is a lightweight mystery with a convoluted plot that doesn't bear close scrutiny. What the screenplay lacks in depth, it makes up for in snappy dialogue ("Miami Beach--twenty miles of sand looking for a city"). An added bonus is the on-location shooting which gives Tony Rome a different look and feel from the multitude of private eye pictures set in and around L.A. 

On the negative side, Tony Rome is sexist and includes at least one racist remark. It's one thing to have a male character leer at a scantily-dressed lady; it's another thing when the camera lingers--close up--on a woman's derriere. Then, there is the 52-year-old Sinatra who has to fight off beautiful women half his age. (Of course, Frank did date the much younger Jill St. John in real life....).

Jill St. John.

Sinatra brings an affable weariness to his performance as the titular detective. The role certainly doesn't require him to bring his "A" game (as he did on other 1960s films like The Manchurian Candidate and Von Ryan's Express). He and leading lady Jill St. John have a nice chemistry (no surprise there...see above); it's too bad that her character has little to do with the plot. 

Gena Rowlands stands out among the supporting cast, but she's barely in the movie. In fact, none of the female characters get much screen time and that includes Sue Lyon and an unbilled Deanna Lund  (according to Tom Lisanti's Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema, the future Land of the Giants TV star was embarrassed with her performance and asked to have her name removed from the credits.)

Despite just middling box office success, Frank Sinatra returned as Tony Rome in the following year's Lady in Cement. The only other holdover from the first film was Richard Conte as Tony's police detective chum and sometime nemesis. 

The story gets underway quickly when Tony discovers the title corpse while scuba diving for sunken treasure. While the police try to identify the victim, an imposing thug named Gronsky (Dan Blocker) hires Tony to search for a missing go-go dancer named Sandra Lomax. Could she be the lady wearing cement shoes?

Dan Blocker.

While Tony Rome rates a notch about average, Lady in Cement is a perfunctory private eye picture. In the 1940s, it would have been considered a "B" film. Dan Blocker rises above his material, turning Gronsky into a likable--but still threatening--criminal. Along with Jill St. John, he appeared with Sinatra earlier in Come Blow Your Horn. It's a shame that Blocker, who found television fame on Bonanza, didn't have a a bigger movie career. He died in 1972 at age 43 due to complications following gall bladder surgery.

Raquel Welch and her tall hair.

Raquel Welch doesn't fare as well as Sinatra's leading lady. She plays a character very similar to the one portrayed by Jill St. John in Tony Rome. However, whereas St. John excelled at playing sexy, flirty socialites, Welch struggles to find a groove. Some of her scenes are downright awkward. She was much more effective in later films such as Hannie Caulder (1971) and Kansas City Bomber (1972).

Lady in Cement flopped at the box office and plans for a third Tony Rome film--to be titled My Kind of Love--were scuttled. If you plan to watch either film,  I do need to warn you about the music scores: Tony Rome kicks off with an atrocious theme song suny by Nancy Sinatra whereas Lady in Cement boasts one of the 1960s worst soundtracks courtesy of Hugo Montenegro.

John Frankenheimer's Black Sunday

Having recently watched John Frankenheimer's superb Seven Days in May again, I became interested in revisiting his 1977 thriller Black Sunday. I saw it during its original theatrical run--and that may have been the one and only time. To my surprise, my assessment of the film has not deviated over the last 48 years.

Based on Thomas Harris' bestseller, Black Sunday centers on Michael Lander (Bruce Dern), a mentally-unstable U.S. Navy veteran who is exploited by a member of a middle eastern terrorist organization (Marthe Keller as Dahlia). Their goal is to capture attention for their cause by killing thousands of people at a large-scale event in Miami. The movie unfolds as if the audience doesn't known the precise nature of their massacre. However, the movie's poster gives away the plot so there is no element of mystery in regard to the terrorist plans.

Robert Shaw.

What remains is a cat-and-mouse game between the good guys, led by an Israeli commando (Robert Shaw), and the villains. It's a structure similar to the earlier The Day of the Jackal (1973), in which an assassin meticulously plans to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle. The difference is that Jackal director Fred Zinnemann and star Edward Fox manipulate the audience into rooting for the assassin for most of that film's running time. 

Bruce Dern as Lander.

In contrast, the screenwriters and cast in Black Sunday let down Frankenheimer by failing to create involving characters. We should feel sympathy for Lander and, to a lesser degree, Dahlia. However, Dern’s acting is so wildly over the top that he loses the humanity in his character. Keller doesn't even get the chance to express or explain Dahlia's motives; they're provided by a Russian spy during a quick conversation with Shaw. Her character remains an enigma, killing with efficiency in one scene and crying for no apparent reason in another. Robert Shaw fares better as the film’s hero, but it’s almost by sheer will. His role is underwritten as well, especially when reacting to the murder of a long-time friend. 

Marthe Keller as Dahlia.

To Frankenheimer's credit, the final 45 minutes ratchet up the thrills effectively as the terrorist plot reaches its crescendo. Producer Robert Townsend worked with the National Football League to film an actual football game. Frankenheimer incorporates that footage seamlessly, adding an authenticity to the climatic disaster. His purposefully chaotic direction--especially as crowds pour out of the stands--creates an almost cinema vérité effect. It's a shame that an exciting sequence involving a blimp includes some unconvincing rear screen shots.

It's too bad that Black Sunday never reaches its potential as a nail-biting suspense film. The climax delivers the goods, but a weak script, uneven acting, and a bloated running time (over two hours) keep it from providing a growing feeling of tension. It's a far cry from Seven Days in May and just goes to show that a fine director can only do so much with the material and cast that he's given.

Quick Takes on Rhubarb, The Big Brawl, and Hit!

Ray Milland and Rhubarb.

Rhubarb (1951). This occasionally diverting comedy concerns a wealthy eccentric (Gene Lockhart) who leaves his fortune to a feisty alley cat instead of his spoiled daughter. She is miffed, to say the least, and so is the old man's baseball team, a group of superstitious losers who believe it's unlucky to be owned by a cat. Although its outstays its welcome and wastes the talent of Ray Milland, this silly effort still contains some inspired lunacy (e.g., a court case to determine if Rhubarb is an imposter). It's also notable as one of the first films to satirize television commercials. The supporting players include Strother Martin, Alice Pearce (the original Mrs. Kravitz on Bewitched), someone who looks like Leonard Nimoy, and a photogenic kitty with more star quality than Morris. For a better Ray Milland baseball comedy, check out It Happens Every Spring (1949).

Jackie Chan gets ready!

The Big Brawl (1980). This was Fred Weintraub's and Robert Clouse's second attempt to repeat the success of their 1973 martial arts smash Enter the Dragon. And though it's better than their first effort, Black Belt Jones with Jim Kelly, it's still an uneven mixture of broad kung fu comedy and Depression-era gangster drama. The plot, loosely borrowed from the 1975 Charles Bronson film Hard Times, is about a bare-knuckle fight staged by rival gangland bosses (Jose Ferrer and Ron Max). Perennial loser Ferrer blackmails martial artist Jackie Chan into being his fighter at an unofficial national competition (hence, the film's title). The affable Chan provides plenty of comedy as well as some amazing acrobatic feats. However, at that point in his career, Chan lacked Lee's intensity. Also, director Clouse never gives him an opportunity to display his skills against a fellow martial artist. Mako, who plays Uncle Herbert, comes off best, spouting lines such as: "Sometimes, you make me tremble--with disgust"). Fortunately, Jackie Chan eventually found the right vehicle to reintroduce him to mainstream American audiences: 1995's Rumble in the Bronx.

Billy Dee Williams looks cool!

Hit! (1973). When his teenaged daughter suffers a drug-related death, a government agent (Billy Dee Williams) goes to Marseilles in search of the drug dealers responsible. This brutal revenge tale, obviously influenced by The French Connection (1971), was made at the peak of the "Blaxploitation" film era. These modestly-budgeted movies cast Black stars in violent action films such as Slaughter, Black Caesar, Coffy, and Superfly. This was one of the better efforts, though the film's slow-moving second half and uninspired ending take the edge off a promising premise. A typical 1970s anti-hero, Williams' revenge-minded father resorts to blackmailing prostitutes and killers in order to exact his wrath. Displaying no signs of his future stardom, Richard Pryor has a supporting role as one of Williams' allies (however, it you watch the film on TV, you may miss half of his profanity-filled dialogue). Hit! is sometimes confused with another Blaxploitation film made a year earlier: Hit Man, which stars Bernie Casey. That film is a respectable remake of Get Carter (1971).