A listless movie with no jokes, not even any wit, and a plot that's muddier than a WWI trench, this movie earned its obscurity. The chief clerk at Pewter Bank & Trust is a beta male, Smedley (Paul Sand), who easily embezzles >$100K because of lax bookkeeping and a trio of inept bank managers: cigar-chomping Stutz (Burgess Meredith), chicken-hearted Benchly (Richard Basehart), and punctilious Julius played by Ned Beatty, whose humorlessness is the funniest thing in the movie.
Instead of pressing charges against Smedley, they conspire to steal another $100K and cook the books in an attempted cover-up. Don't ask.
Michael Murphy plays a lightly corrupt clergyman whom several of the thieves foolishly confide in. Arthur Godfrey is pointless as a town father who organizes patriotic parades, presumably an attempt by writer/director Joseph Jacoby to provide contrast to the crooks in their midst. But when the crooks are as lifeless as the rest of the citizens, there is no contrast.
As for obligatory females, there are two, both pretty, both young, and both insulted by playing the same character: gold-digging trollop. Brunette Charlene Dallas made three movies in the 1970s, then some scattered TV roles. Blonde Constance Forslund, with an MFA from New York University, had a more substantial career, peaking as Marilyn Monroe in "This Year's Blonde," a 1980 TV movie written by Garson Kanin. She deserved better than this, as did they all.
Burgess Meredith observed that the movie has "no car chases, nobody shoots anybody, nobody even yells at anybody, and nobody gets laid." In fact there are seductions, and one getaway car roars past another (with suitcases full of cash ineptly strapped over the trunk!). As for "nobody yells," true enough, but a little bluster could have injected some energy into the endless yammering about the money.
