Operación opio

The opening dose of earnest monologue from Princess Grace of Monaco gives us a clue as to what we might be in for here. It's a clunkily stitched together series of cameos built around the process of identifying and stopping those bent on exporting opium from Iran to, ultimately via Europe, the United States. Yul Brynner ("Col. Salem") starts off the process working with the Imperial authorities in Iran where poppy farming is completely outlawed. Needless to say, though, if the money was right then there were those who would bend the rules and here we can look "Salah Khan" (Hugh Griffiths - a performance straight out of "Ben Hur"). The police, though, have devised a plan to inject his resin with a radioactive isotope enabling it to be tracked and them to destroy the distribution network. Helping the colonel with his task is the doughty "Sam Lincoln" (Trevor Howard) and as they follow the trail we are introduced to a cast of dozens of famous faces adding their visage, if little else, to the potency of the message set out by HSH at the top of the film. It's quite an interesting theory, the journey is well documented as are the difficulties faced by those trying to thwart this most lucrative of trades, but the style of presentation is so very disjointed and the narrative spends just a little too much time pontificating and not enough time engaging the audience. After about forty minutes I had the gist and the baddie firmly in my sights - the remainder delivered little better than an half-baked "007" adventure (Ian Fleming was involved here too). It is not without it's tragedies - this is not a sterile depiction and characters do get bumped off to illustrate just how ruthless these dealers are - but none of that really enlivened what is essentially rather a dull drama.

I really don't care that the majority of people didn't enjoy this film. I thought it was a very watchable escapism film. Nothing complicated or confusing. I think the appeal is more for the 60+ crowd who grew up with the many international stars appearing. The sexy Angie Dickinson was in a featured role. I can't think of a better bad man than Harold Sakata (Goldfinger fame). The international locations and seeing Iran as it use to be.

The version I have runs a tad over 84 mins. The VHS picture quality is quite good. When I first saw this film on the big screen, it ran longer. From my fading memory, the original film had an excellent female mud wrestling scene, something I had never seen before. Well, that scene is gone, not fitting for TV around 1970. Much like the gypsy fight scene in From Russia With Love is mostly cut for TV.

During the film, the UN investigators spiked the opium with a radioactive dose to help follow the shipment. What happens to the ultimate users who ingest this cocktail? Never explained in the film.

At any rate, for us oldsters, seeing all of these stars in one film is a treasure. If you are too young to know these people, then take a pass. This is not a high brow boring film. Just check your brain at the door and enjoy.

The Poppy Is Also A Flower is an odd movie of great interest to film and trivia buffs primarily for having the coolest, if not largest, international all-star cast, including Yul Brynner, Omar Sharif, Trevor Howard, Gilbert Roland, Angie Dickinson, Rita Hayworth, E.G. Marshall, Stephen Boyd, Anthony Quayle, Marcello Mastroianni, Eli Wallach, Trini Lopez, and Grace Kelly, just to name those I can recall. The film concerns UN investigators tracing irradiated drugs from the poppy fields in Iran through the entire process of smuggling, refining, and sale. E.G. Marshall and Trevor Howard are the main protagonists on the trail of the drugs, which leads through the Mediterranean to Italy and Monte Carlo. Gilbert Roland is interestingly cast as a Mafia boss. Unfortunately the film isn't very effective, almost dull, in spite of super stars in exotic locations, in the first half, until one of the protagonists is caught by the bad guys. Sometimes it seems as if the dialog is dubbed or the soundtrack misaligned, or the acting just a bit stilted, though some is very good, especially Anthony Quayle as a cockney sea captain - he sounds like Cary Grant and looks like Victor McLaglen. The film has a few sights you wouldn't expect to find in any movie: E.G. Marshall hiding under Angie Dickinson's bed; Gilbert Roland watching Trini Lopez sing La Bomba; and Rita Hayworth playing a drug addict. So I'd recommend it if you're interested in the trivia aspects, but not for escapist entertainment.

Tutu the poodle was the most memorable actor in this star-littered film!

I kept waiting for Jonah and the Bots and/or Mike, Bill and Kevin to do commentary. (Would have made the film more watchable!)

Let's face it...whenever you get this many stars in one place the end result is gonna be really bad. And this is no exception.

I know this film was made by the UN to help bolster efforts to stop drug trafficking and abuse...I know the most of the stars worked for scale to cut down costs. But it looks like only Trevor Howard remembered that "working for scale" still means "working"...i.e., acting. Yul Brynner is, well, Yul Brynner. He doesn't have to act...he only has two characters in his repertoire anyway (enjoyable though those characters may be).

It was interesting to see E.G. Marshall as the hero of the piece though...one of the few interesting points to the film.

One major part of the premise was that the UN forces tagged a shipment of opium with radioactivity to track it. Now this radioactivity was measurable at a distance of several miles at times, so one has to wonder what would happen if it got away from them and got to the junkies...hoards of radioactive heroin addicts...ack.