Following the
August screening of
The Wrecking Crew (which turned out to be an absolutely beautiful 35mm print!), Los Angeles'
New Beverly Cinema will show two more Dean Martin Matt Helm movies in 35mm on Tuesday, September 6. This
double feature will consist of
The Ambushers (1967, in an IB Technicolor print) at 7:30, and my own favorite in the series (the closest to being a "real movie"),
Murderers' Row (1966), at 9:40.
The Ambushers co-stars prolific Sixties spy babe Senta Berger (
The Spy With My Face,
To Commit A Murder), and
Murderers' Row co-stars Ann-Margaret (
The Swinger) and Karl Malden (
Billion Dollar Brain). Tickets for the double bill are $8, available at the theater box office or
online.
Senta Berger was awesome. By the late 1960's, she could probably have played a seductive foreign spy in her sleep. (Some movie critic once said that Luciana Paluzzi would end up getting questioned by the FBI or MI5 if she played a spy just one more time. You could say the same about Senta Berger and Daliah Lavi.)
ReplyDeleteJanice Rule was a likeable actress (even when she was playing unsympathetic characters), but, with The Ambushers, I liked Senta better. But then, with the Matt Helm movies, I always liked the villainesses better than the heroines, anyway.
Murderer's Row gave some indication of how good Camilla Sparv could have been playing femmes fatales in spy-fi and film noir-type thrillers. But, AFAIK, she made relatively few movies, and even then she was usually wasted (Assignment K, The High Commissioner) playing the hero's doe-eyed girlfriend.