John McLaren Movies

As the last two years come into focus for an amnesia victim, she finds her life endangered because of the truths. ~ Rovi

With Goldfinger, the James Bond series took a turn away from relatively straightforward spy thrillers and toward campy gadgetry, extravagant sets, and kitschy jokes. Bond (Sean Connery) has to prevent a notorious gold smuggler, appropriately named Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe), from robbing Fort Knox. Goldfinger is surrounded by evil henchmen such as the sexy female pilot Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) and Oddjob (Harold Sakata), who kills with his steel-rimmed bowler hats. In order to stop Goldfinger, Bond has to survive several perilous situations, including a huge, deadly laser. Goldfinger is one of the most popular films in the James Bond series, and it set the tone not only for the rest of the series but also for most of the action/adventure films of the late '60s and early '70s. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi

There's something fishy about the fact that an airliner crash took place near an Irish convent -- especially since it was one of several similar crashes occuring in the same vicinity. Investigating this phenomenon, Steed and Dr. King find that the local nuns are tightlipped and uncooperative, and at least one is potentially dangerous. The truth behind the "accidents" is obvious from the start, but getting there is half the fun. The last episode to feature Jon Rollason as Dr. King, "Dead on Course" was written by Eric Paice; it first aired in England on December 29, 1962, and it was finally shown in America on February 13, 1991. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The child is played by Tommy Martin; the killer by Robert Arden. A US army officer on the lam after committing murder, Arden bursts into the home of widowed Patricia Driscoll. At gunpoint, he orders Driscoll's son Martin to lead him through the backwaters of rural England to safety. The two form a tentative friendship, but Arden shows his true collars before the day is done. Child and the Killer has elements in common with the much-later Kevin Costner vehicle A Perfect World. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

British melodrama maven Jimmy Sangster adapted his screenplay for Intent to Kill from a novel by Michael Bryan. Richard Todd plays a Montreal doctor who is in love with his pretty American assistant Betsy Drake. Todd is saddled with a viper-tongued wife (Catherine Boyle), who wants him to leave the provinces for a posh practice in London. The good doctor's problems are intensified when he is obliged to perform delicate brain surgery on a hated South American president (Herbert Lom), who has been targeted for assassination by a "trusted" colleague (Carlo Giustini). Only the intervention of police detective Paul Carpenter saves Todd from stopping a bullet himself. The heated intrigues of Intent to Kill are contrasted by the wintry Montreal exteriors. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

King Shadov (Charles Chaplin), the newly deposed monarch of a small European country, arrives in New York to face a life in exile. No sooner does he get here, however, than he discovers that his prime minister has stolen the entire royal treasury and departed for parts unknown. Stranded in New York in a luxury hotel without any money, the king tries to adjust to life in America and elicit interest in his plan for the peaceful use of nuclear power. He finds America in 1957 to be too noisy for his taste, however -- a run-in with some rock & roll dancers leads to some slapstick antics, and he doesn't take much to modern movies or the blaring entertainment that goes with them. He meets a pretty young lady (Dawn Addams) in a slightly risqué slapstick encounter in which he is trying to "rescue" her, and she maneuvers him into helping to plug a deodorant on television. The king proves so beguiling on the small screen that he is deluged by offers from advertising agencies, which he rejects at first. But the king soon finds that advertising may be the only thing he can do to earn enough money to keep him living like a king in exile, and he tries to work the system to his advantage, his earnings from television enabling him to remain in the country and push his peaceful nuclear plan. He soon finds the true dark side of life in the United States, however, when he crosses paths with an unhappy little boy (Michael Chaplin, the star/director's own son) whose parents are about to be jailed as part of the anti-Communist hysteria of the period. In the end, the king provides a shelter to the boy but compromises himself in the process, and while he does make the Congressional committee investigating him look foolish, he sees that he has done all of the good that he can do for now in the United States and leaves. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

In this comedy, an American learns that he is an English earl. He travels to Great Britain to run his estate. Mayhem ensues when he falls in love with a girl there. His girl friend back home is not amused until she finds a new love of her own. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Also known as Chance Meeting, The Young Lovers can be described as an Iron Curtain romance. The boy, Ted (David Knight), works as a code expert at the American Embassy in London. The girl, Anna (Odelle Versois), is the daughter of a communist dignitary. When Ted and Anna fall in love, they find their every move monitored by both sides. The course of true love is eventually roadblocked by bureaucracy, forcing hero and heroine to escape to a neutral corner of the world; the trouble is, there isn't any such corner. A lighter variation on this theme can be found in Peter Ustinov's play and film Romanoff and Juliet. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

James Hadley Chase's 1939 bestseller reached the screen for the first time -- which a lot of critics of the book would have said was one time too many -- in 1948, in somewhat bowdlerized form, under the aegis of Renown Pictures and screenwriter St. John Legh Clowes, making his sole bow as director. Filmed in England but set in New York, No Orchids For Miss Blandish tells of a sheltered heiress (Linden Travers) who is abducted on her wedding night by a trio of cheap hoods, in what starts out as a jewel robbery and turns into a kidnapping/murder when one of them (Richard Nielson) kills the bridegroom. More mayhem ensues as the three kidnappers soon end up dead, and Miss Blandish falls into the hands of the Grisson mob, led by Slim Grisson (Jack LaRue), who are pros at what they do, throwing their weight around the underworld at will and not too afraid of the police, either. Slim Grisson isn't really better than any of those around him, but he's smart enough to restrain his worst impulses, which makes him start to look very good to Miss Blandish, who finds herself strangely attracted to him, as the first real man she's ever seen, and also a way out of the sheltered existence she's known all of her life. He's as amazed as anyone around him -- including his own mother (Lili Molnar), who runs the gang in tandem with him -- that he doesn't want to ransom Miss Blandish, or plan on killing her because she knows too much; or that she'll testify on his behalf, if necessary, that the one killing she did see by him was, in fact, a matter of self-defense. They plan to run off together, but neither Grisson's mother nor the rest of the gang can see parting with a potential million dollar ransom, or leaving a witness alive -- even if it means killing Slim Grisson to get to her. And when a nosy reporter named Fenner (Hugh McDermott) starts putting the police on the trail of the gang, Slim himself isn't above committing a few more murders to bury any witnesses. The movie was so violent and amoral, that it appalled critics and social observers on both sides of the Atlantic, whose agonizing over its content actually helped turn the picture into a bigger hit than it might otherwise have been. This was especially true in America, where the movie enjoyed a five week run in one of New York's bigger movie palaces to sell-out business, though it was edited considerably and re-cut twice for US release (the second time, a couple of years later, as Black Dice). Robert Aldrich filmed the same story as The Grissom Gang (1971), with Kim Darby, Scott Wilson, and Irene Dailey. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

American first lady Eleanor Roosevelt's impending visit to a tiny English country village is the motivation of the Anglo-American coproduction Great Day. As the villagers prepare for their prestigious guest, all sorts of internal squabbles and personal foibles rise to the surface. The story concentrates on embittered WW1 veteran Captain Ellis (Eric Portman), whose insecessant drinking and sponging is a source of embarrassment for his long-suffering family. The Captain's daughter Margaret (Sheila Sim) is on the verge of entering into a wealthy but loveless marriage so that she can rescue her mother (Flora Robson) from her father's excesses. In the Lesley Storm stage play on which this film was based, Captain Ellis comes to a bad but not entirely undeserved end; the film allows him a last-minute reprieve, as well as a chance to change his ways before Mrs. R. shows up. A moderate hit in England, Great Day sank like a stone when released in the US by RKO Radio. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Like the better-known (and more popular) A Canterbury Tale, Welcome Mr. Washington is a sometimes amusing, sometimes poignant dramatization of what happened when American troops "invaded" England during WW II. Dismissed as "overpaid, oversexed and over here," the Yanks face some hostility while trying to adjust to British manners and mores. But when a farming community finds itself dangerously short-handed at harvest time, the American GIs pitch in and help their British brethren in true "hands across the sea" fashion. Real-life American army lieutenant Donald Stewart is cast as the nominal romantic lead, his lack of professional polish all the more obvious in his scenes with the talented Barbara Mullen. The film is stolen by Peggy Cummins as a precocious teenager, some three years before Cummins was brought to Hollywood to star in Forever Amber (which, as it turned out, she didn't). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi