MARLOWE (1969)

Sharon Farrell and James Garner

MARLOWE (1969). Director: Paul Bogart. 

Philip Marlowe (James Garner of The Children's Hour) is hired by mousy Orfamay Quest (Sharon Farrell of It's Alive) to find her brother, but during his search the P.I. uncovers a blackmail plot involving squeaky queen sitcom star Mavis Wald (Gayle Hunnicutt of Dallas), who is having an affair with a racketeer named Steelgrave (H. M. Wynant). Little does he know that both cases are connected. Marlowe stumbles over a couple of corpses of men who have been killed with an icepick, and does his best to get along with Lt. French (Carroll O'Connor) and Sgt. Beifus (Kenneth Tobey). Two other characters Marlowe has to deal with are sexy stripper Delores Gonzales (Rita Moreno) and the karate-chopping enforcer Winslow Wong (Bruce Lee). 

Garner with Hunnicutt

Marlowe is an adaptation of Raymond Chandler's 1940's novel "The Little Sister," and this film almost manages to make a little more sense of its convoluted plot, but not quite. The movie updates the story to the sixties when it was filmed, so one has to look at Garner -- who is not bad -- as an alternate modern version of Philip Marlowe, but hardly the real deal. The best performances in this are actually from a truly excellent Sharon Farrell, O'Connor (who gets one speech taken from the novel), Tobey, and Moreno, who does a very sexy dance late in the proceedings. William Daniels and Jackie Coogan also have good roles and run with them. Hunnicutt is adequate in a smaller and less showy role than Garner or Farrell, although she gets billed after Garner. She and Farrell have a brief "cat fight."

Paging Rockford

Bruce Lee features in two sequences. The first is a funny one in which Lee breaks up Marlowe's office, upsetting the apparently straight hairdresser, Chuck (Christopher Cary), who is friendly with Marlowe, takes his messages, and teaches his trade to women in the office next door. The second is a really stupid sequence in which Lee -- discombobulated after Marlowe suggests he's gay -- hurls himself at his opponent and goes right over a railing several stories high. (As others have noted, any fight between Lee and Garner would actually not have ended well for Garner.)

Garner never appeared again as Marlowe, but he fled to television and starred as a private eye in The Rockford Files for several years beginning in 1974. 

Verdict: This is a modestly entertaining, somewhat confusing private eye flick made twenty years too late. **1/2. 

THE HELICOPTER SPIES

THE HELICOPTER SPIES (1968). Director: Boris Sagal.

"Never trust a woman who's always on time. It always indicates a -- much deeper -- problem."

Originally shown on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. television program as Parts 1 and 2 of "The Prince of Darkness Affair," this was turned into a theatrical feature for overseas release. While it has a few too many campy moments, basically it's an entertaining flick with Robert Vaughn in top form, as usual, as super-spy Napoleon Solo. UNCLE makes a deal with the nefarious Luther Sebastian (Bradford Dillman) to help them get a new weapon, a thermal prism, away from its mad inventor, Dr. Karmusi (John Dehner), who is holed up in a desert bunker -- which will self-destruct if his heart stops. But once Sebastian gets his hands on the device, he has no intention of turning it over to UNCLE. There's also a weird cult called The Third Way, a gang of men who all have white hair, the always-amusing Kathleen Freeman as a short order cook, and John Carradine as a guru who hasn't said a word in forty years. Carol Lynley is the feminine innocent caught up in the melodrama, Lola Albright is the bad girl, and Julie London has a nice turn as Sebastian's wife, who seems to bed a different hot guy every night. The film is well-edited and has some exciting scenes and interesting doom-traps. Dillman's performance is odd. H. M. Wynant is fun as all of the handsome Aksoy brothers. This busy actor is still working at eighty-two.

Verdict: Entertaining hokum. **1/2.