Henry Silva is Johnny Collini, aka Johnny Cool. Adopted by the deported gangster Marc Lawrence in Sicili, he's sent to America to take over all of his former businesses, wiping out the current managers if necessary. It becomes necessary.
Swept up in Johnny Cool's serial assassinations is Elizabeth Montgomery as Darien Guiness from Scarsdale -- great WASP name. She becomes Silva's love slave. We all know what great lovers Italian men are, even if they're not necessarily great actors. She aids and abets his crimes, up to and including murder by dynamite. Finally, as the agents of social control are closing in on her, she gets drunk and the next day decides to drop the dime on her boyfriend.
First of all, what a cast! Movie historians will be impressed -- John Dierkes, Elisha Cook Jr., John McGiver, Robert Armstrong ("King Kong") inter alia. One of the executive producers was Peter Lawford, which may account for the Rat Pack character of some of the cast -- Joey Bishop, Sammy Davis Jr., and a reference to Jilly's, one of Sinatra's favorite bars in New York.
Most of these celebrity appearances are in bit parts. The story depends on the leads, Henry Silva and Elizabeth Montgomery. Silva isn't a bravura actor nor a particularly interesting one. He's much better as part of an ensemble, in smaller roles, especially villainous ones. He was great as "Mother" in "A Hatful of Rain" but those glistening, quartzite irises can't carry a film on their own. He's given no help by the script. Not a tag line in a cartload.
Elizabeth Montgomery overacts volcanically when she's not chirping away in her "Bewitched" persona. This may not be her fault. The director ought to shape the performance of a newcomer, and Montgomery was quite good in a later made-for-TV movie, "The Legend of Lizzie Borden." Besides, she's so damnably cute and sexy, in the way that Jane Fonda was at the time, that she gets a pass.
The film strives for the essence of "cool" as the word was understood in the late 1950s.
The score by Billy May is a good example of what I mean. It's jazz oriented but not challenging. More like big band swing, the kind of backing that Sinatra had from Nelson Riddle. I swear that the climactic phrases in the score feature Maynard Ferguson's trumpet. He's the only guy I've ever heard who can run a trumpet up into the stratosphere, like a dog whistle.
But, as I say, the cool we see here is 1950s cool. It now seems a little dated. The general concept involves expensive suits, styled hair, smoking, big tips, American cars that are forty feet long, stylish mannerisms and digs, an excess of self confidence, dames (or, more commonly, "broads" or "mouses"), shades, a stride that has a bounce in it, and an air of unflappability. Think Las Vegas. Sinatra embodied it. You didn't have to be rich, though. Marlon Brando was cool in "The Wild One." Steve McQueen in "Bullet" was neo-cool.
Swept up in Johnny Cool's serial assassinations is Elizabeth Montgomery as Darien Guiness from Scarsdale -- great WASP name. She becomes Silva's love slave. We all know what great lovers Italian men are, even if they're not necessarily great actors. She aids and abets his crimes, up to and including murder by dynamite. Finally, as the agents of social control are closing in on her, she gets drunk and the next day decides to drop the dime on her boyfriend.
First of all, what a cast! Movie historians will be impressed -- John Dierkes, Elisha Cook Jr., John McGiver, Robert Armstrong ("King Kong") inter alia. One of the executive producers was Peter Lawford, which may account for the Rat Pack character of some of the cast -- Joey Bishop, Sammy Davis Jr., and a reference to Jilly's, one of Sinatra's favorite bars in New York.
Most of these celebrity appearances are in bit parts. The story depends on the leads, Henry Silva and Elizabeth Montgomery. Silva isn't a bravura actor nor a particularly interesting one. He's much better as part of an ensemble, in smaller roles, especially villainous ones. He was great as "Mother" in "A Hatful of Rain" but those glistening, quartzite irises can't carry a film on their own. He's given no help by the script. Not a tag line in a cartload.
Elizabeth Montgomery overacts volcanically when she's not chirping away in her "Bewitched" persona. This may not be her fault. The director ought to shape the performance of a newcomer, and Montgomery was quite good in a later made-for-TV movie, "The Legend of Lizzie Borden." Besides, she's so damnably cute and sexy, in the way that Jane Fonda was at the time, that she gets a pass.
The film strives for the essence of "cool" as the word was understood in the late 1950s.
The score by Billy May is a good example of what I mean. It's jazz oriented but not challenging. More like big band swing, the kind of backing that Sinatra had from Nelson Riddle. I swear that the climactic phrases in the score feature Maynard Ferguson's trumpet. He's the only guy I've ever heard who can run a trumpet up into the stratosphere, like a dog whistle.
But, as I say, the cool we see here is 1950s cool. It now seems a little dated. The general concept involves expensive suits, styled hair, smoking, big tips, American cars that are forty feet long, stylish mannerisms and digs, an excess of self confidence, dames (or, more commonly, "broads" or "mouses"), shades, a stride that has a bounce in it, and an air of unflappability. Think Las Vegas. Sinatra embodied it. You didn't have to be rich, though. Marlon Brando was cool in "The Wild One." Steve McQueen in "Bullet" was neo-cool.