Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round

Handsomely-produced, location-rich crime-drama with a light touch concerns a recently-paroled crook who gets right down to business upon his release: using a variety of aliases across the US while masterminding a complicated heist on the bank at Los Angeles International Airport. In the flashy leading role, James Coburn never resorts to mugging or other outrageous tactics; he's dry as a martini, but not above a little wily interplay with the ladies. Director Bernard Girard's own screenplay is complicated enough without the asides to the surveillance team surrounding the visiting Russian Premier, and a romantic subplot involving Camilla Sparv (which ties in to the finale) is as obtuse as the film's unwieldy title. Still--for Coburn buffs especially--there are several strong sequences building up to the tightly wrought finish, and the well-chosen supporting cast is solid. ** from ****

"Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round" is a fun film, especially if you remember the '60s. It looks just like a movie from the '60s too - beautiful women, casual sex, calling the cops "the fuzz," and as everyone else has mentioned, Harrison Ford as a messenger. Blink and you miss him.

James Coburn plays a man of many names and professions who needs to raise $90,000 to buy building plans of a bank next to the airport so that he can commit a robbery.

He gets it by seducing women, making copies of their keys, and then robbing them. Once he has the plans, he and his cronies decide to rob the bank the day the Soviet premier is due at the airport.

This film really held my interest, and it had some very tense moments toward the end of the film. James Coburn does a wonderful job in the lead, and there's nice acting in a supporting role by Robert Webber as the self-important head of the security force at the airport.

Camilla Sparv, as one of Coburn's women, received some big publicity in the '60s, but her U. S. career never went anywhere.

Great twist ending. Baby boomers will get a kick out of this one.

This film deals with a con-man named Eli Kotch, (James Coburn) who just gets out of prison and decides to lay out his ground work for a large bank robbery at the Los Angeles, California airport. Eli also knows that a Russian Prime Minister will be visiting Los Angeles and flying into the same airport which will distract the police force away from a bank holdup. Eli also meets up with a very sexy blonde named Inger Knudson, (Camilla Spary) who works for very rich people and cons her into doing all kinds of things, Eli even marries her with a fake ID. There is plenty of comedy and some tense moments in a police station. You will never be able to figure out how this picture will end. It will definitely surprise you. Enjoy.

This crime movie was only "fair," not worth owning if you are a collector, but worth checking out if you are a James Coburn fan. The title is a lot better than the story.

This is another of those mid-60s films that was Hollywood-in-transition, meaning it was just a year or so away from abolishing any moral codes. Here, we see casual sex accepted as okay and the bank robbers portrayed as the good guys, even though they are anything but good.

The female lead, Camilla Sparv, was a strange-looking lady who never really made it as a star. One can see why. It's also interesting to hear the language of the period with the police being called "the fuzz," etc.

James Coburn is fun to watch, but the rest of the cast is unmemorable, except that it marked the film debut of Harrison Ford, who plays a messenger boy in one quick scene. Other than that, the film provides few noteworthy memories which is probably one reason why there are so few reviews of this here.

For quite some time, this movie has held a place on my list of quintessential 60s guilty pleasure; it's a mini-super-light heist flick variation on some of the same themes in John Boorman's masterpiece, POINT BLANK - with its consistent visual chronicling of a transient American culture made anonymous by its materialistic-quack preoccupations (and thus,easily vulnerable to chameleon criminality). James Coburn, who plays DEAD HEAT'S hero shares some of Lee Marvin's traits in POINT BLANK. Both men move, mysteriously, like the wind, "beat the system," "win out" as anti-heroes but, in the process,they negate themselves out of existence ( they are, literally, "gone with the wind" at their respective pictures' fade-outs). On this last go-round, having just recently watched it again (via TCM), I'm prepared to give it a less qualified, more hearty endorsement. Writer-director, Bernard Girard makes the best case for modern international airports to be THE stage for absurdist comedy of any film I can think of. It begins with a mock-dramatic monologue by Coburn that keys the unique tongue-in-cheek tone of the film brilliantly and is probably the best acting he ever did on film. Stu Philips' catchy theme music maintains the puckish spirit of the piece in a way that few American movie scores of the 60s ( or movie scores of any other period for that matter) have been able to do as successfully or as memorably.