OK, I should have been warned when I ordered a DVD that advertised itself as celebrating the 80th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe and it having her picture and name first on the cover instead of the lead star of the day - Richard Widmark (which was of course why I'd bought it). (Happily the cover is reversible; the alternative is the original movie poster I think).
I didn't think I particularly had anything against MM; was never a fan certainly, but this film has left me feeling as if I've just overdosed on a tub of sweets full of artificial sweetener. I feel like I need to watch a good salty Western to get that yucky saccharine flavour off my tongue. Marilyn! Who can't talk normally but has that breathy wispy little-girl thing going on, which is annoying in itself after seconds but she keeps it going all through the film - a character, if not a person that you really want to slap and certainly wouldn't trust. I can't say she doesn't play the suicidal psychotic babysitter from hell well. The fragility probably works there. But watching her in this was something to be got through and even Widmark couldn't rescue this from a two-star rating from me.
RW is, as ever, wonderful as the irascible, short tempered (bit of a 'Slattery') type, the pilot who won't or can't commit and who strings his cabaret singer girlfriend (Ann Bancroft) along until she calls an end to it. Happily it seems that rescuing mentally ill girls is the best way to prove that you really do have a heart and so the relationship is saved. Pah. I'm heading back to Warlock.
I didn't think I particularly had anything against MM; was never a fan certainly, but this film has left me feeling as if I've just overdosed on a tub of sweets full of artificial sweetener. I feel like I need to watch a good salty Western to get that yucky saccharine flavour off my tongue. Marilyn! Who can't talk normally but has that breathy wispy little-girl thing going on, which is annoying in itself after seconds but she keeps it going all through the film - a character, if not a person that you really want to slap and certainly wouldn't trust. I can't say she doesn't play the suicidal psychotic babysitter from hell well. The fragility probably works there. But watching her in this was something to be got through and even Widmark couldn't rescue this from a two-star rating from me.
RW is, as ever, wonderful as the irascible, short tempered (bit of a 'Slattery') type, the pilot who won't or can't commit and who strings his cabaret singer girlfriend (Ann Bancroft) along until she calls an end to it. Happily it seems that rescuing mentally ill girls is the best way to prove that you really do have a heart and so the relationship is saved. Pah. I'm heading back to Warlock.
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