moonspinner55

Italian-Spanish co-production from director Eugenio Martín about an investigator with Scotland Yard (Michael Craig) who suspects an Englishman of foul play after all three of his wives died under dubious circumstances. It takes 25mns for top-billed Carroll Baker to appear as a neighbor with a mysterious agenda, but she's quite delightful here in one of her best Euro-trash, would-be giallo roles. It's a tacky dramatic thriller worked over by five writers, but nevertheless an enjoyable one. ** from ****

Edward Albert made his film debut in this truly odd drama about a 12-year-old farm boy in the post-Civil War South who runs away from his strict parents (who are quick to punish the kid for his foolish clumsiness) and is befriended by Anthony Perkins, a drifting ex-soldier whose amnesia hides a violent past. Ungodly, impossible material, adapted by Morton Fine and David Friedkin from the book by Helen Eustis, is drably 'artistic' and weighted with mannered performances. One day, film historians must investigate why Perkins chose to appear in these desperately uncommercial film projects. * from ****

College kid in Northern California (attending Berkeley, though it's never specified) "drops out", apparently after the suicide of a female friend (she appears to drown herself in the Pacific Ocean near Big Sur, though this isn't specified either). Documentary filmmaker and screenwriter Hall Bartlett (Oscar-nominated in 1953 for "Navajo") directed and co-wrote this feature which plays like a documentary in search of a subject. Cinematographer Richard Moore gets some lovely shots of Big Sur and Monterey, while the music (largely songs by singer-songwriter Tim Buckley) is appropriately full of angst and melancholy. Our protagonist takes to the highway after an argument with his father--played by Jack Albertson, in the film's only strong scene--but, for reasons unexplained, he wrecks his beautiful car (a black 1956 Porsche Speedster) and begins hitchhiking. Kent Lane has the lead; he's not supposed to be a rebel or rabble-rouser, but instead just an ordinary kid with troubling thoughts he mainly keeps to himself (he blows a job interview after asking the boss if he believes in past lives). Lane has a handsome, angry look that resembles Gary Lockwood's, but he has very little charisma and isn't encouraged to show us any depth. Bartlett uses Lane as a camera subject, putting him in front of sunsets and a Ferris wheel; there's nothing wrong with that in the visual sense...but when the filmmaker runs out of calendar art, the movie's over. There isn't an overt political statement being made here, at least not that I picked up on; we hear battle noise as Lane walks through what looks to be a veterans' cemetery--and the end-credits are scored with bits of speeches from Hitler to Kennedy to Martin Luther King--so what exactly are the "Changes" in the title? If it's a generation-gap thing, that point is made within the first 10mns. The rest of the film exists to evoke freedom, or the search for freedom, without the need to have money or make money. However, when Lane goes to a fair to eat a burger and play arcade games, he doesn't cry poor. *1/2 from ****