TCM showed the David Niven version of "Raffles" the other night, so I went to check on it in my library and found this movie sitting next to it, that I'd taped years ago but hadn't yet watched. I'd filed it under "raffles" since, at the time, I didn't recognize any of the actors in it. Realizing that I wasn't going to be adding any more movies about raffles to this tape, I slapped it onto the VCR to see if it was worth keeping and re-categorizing.
I don't know how this was edited for a PG-13 rating, but the R-rated version has two interlocking parts. Part 1 is the hackneyed story line. The best thing I can say about it is that the story flows rather well, probably due to good editing. Part 2 consists of a series of musical montages thrown in every once in a while, presumably to advance the story line and wake up the audience. Although they are jarring in context, out of context they are mildly interesting as curiosities in themselves, and they account for my rating this movie a 2 instead of a 1.
As for the cast, the two lead actors play these characters named Lake and Palmer (what, no Emerson?) who hatch the plot of the movie to raffle off a date with the to-be-found most beautiful woman in the world, played by Teri Lynn Rutherford, who apparently never made another movie, so I won't be stacking more of her flicks onto this tape. At least now I have a tape to reuse to record some other junk off the telly. I can't believe I spent my time writing a review of a movie barely worth watching.
