Duffy le renard de Tanger

This film features gorgeous photography on the Mediterranean and a plot that I never found predictable. It's very stylish and has cool music, including a great tune by soul singer Lou Rawls. James Coburn, James Fox and James Mason are all very good in it, as is the beautiful Susannah York. The plot involves the theft of money from a ship on the Mediterranean Sea. It's James Mason's sons that steal his money, and it's what follows that gives the film it's intrigue. Definitely worth watching.

Right from the beginning in swinging London this film epitomizes the coolness of the sixties. Excellent performances by James to the power 3: Coburn, Fox and Mason. Especially Coburn appears to be not acting at all in his tailor-made dropout role, he is just being his natural self. The atmosphere, the images, the music and the plot each contribute to the overwhelmingly positive feeling this picture leaves me with every time I see it. Why can't they make movies like this anymore (sigh, sob)? Another thing that strikes me about this film is that there is no other film (at least that I know of) which bears only the faintest resemblance to this flick. It stands out, on its own. Incredibly, it is available neither on video nor on DVD. Please help, Mr. Duffy-owner!

Retired master criminal in Tangiers is recruited by a hedonistic British youth and his working-stiff brother to rip off a business tycoon of nearly three million dollars; complicating matters is the kid's kittenish girlfriend, who seems to change loyalties easily. Mod, swinging caper-comedy curiously doesn't spend a lot of time on plot-exposition (the planning of the actual heist is kept mostly off-screen), yet it does putter about lazily while introducing us to these people (who end many of their sentences with "man" and "baby"). James Coburn's decadent pad is really peculiar ("pop-porno", he calls it), and yet it has almost nothing to do with what's going on or even with Duffy's character (he does possess, however, the only fish tank-cum-slot machine I've ever seen!). Once the pieces of this location-rich adventure come into play, the picture becomes a passable piece of fluff (with a twist ending that is rather far-fetched, leaving a few questions unanswered). Still, Coburn is an intriguing presence, Susannah York is flighty and flirtatious (and beautiful with a tan), and James Mason is typically suave--and silently cunning--as their victim. ** from ****

When "Duffy" was released, I was working in one of my father's theatres as the projectionist. As a projectionist I saw a lot of movies...over and over again. I can tell you that when you screen the same movie six to eight times a day for two, three, four weeks or more, most films soon lose their lustre. Not so with "Duffy". Of course I was just a kid then, and the sixties "counter-culture" was my adolescent fantasy. James Coburn, already extremely cool from "The Magnificent Seven" and "The Great Escape" was riding a wave of popularity from the campy "Flint" movies, but "Duffy" was a very cool and fun movie that I never tired of watching. It never took off as a hit and I've often wondered why. It was just as effective as other caper movies of the era, such as "Topkapi" or "Gambit". I think the reason it never took off was because 1968 was an eventful, tumultuous year, and "straight" America was frowning hard upon hippies and counter-culture. Too bad. I think the owner of this film would be surprised and well rewarded by releasing it to DVD.

This is a "feel good" movie. It has a fun plot, the actors all put in a good performance, and it was filmed in gorgeous Mediterranean locations. If you like vacationing in the Mediterranean area, this movie whets your appetite for another visit. Most of the movie was filmed in and around the city of Almeria, located on the south coast of Spain. This area has been used frequently for "spaghetti westerns" because of desert-like scenery. The scenes of "Tangiers" were filmed right in the city of Almeria. I visited here in 1984, and the city still had many winding alleys and whitewashed houses that looked like they could have been Tangiers. The lighthouse and rocky beach scenes were filmed at nearby Cabo de Gato. I revisited Almeria in 1999, and it was unrecognizable - all ugly hi-rise buildings. The Cabo de Gato area is still gorgeous, though. There are many beach houses near the lighthouse, but it is now a protected natural reserve area. I've never been able to find the beach club in the movie, although the scenery is very much like the area around the nearby town of San Jose.