William Abney Movies

Roger Moore took a brief vacation from playing James Bond in this witty adventure drama. Rufus Excalibur ffolkes (Moore), who for some reason prefers not to capitalize his last name, is a scuba-diving adventurer for hire with a sharp mind, a quick wit, a fondness for cats, and a certain distrust of women. When terrorist Lou Kramer (Anthony Perkins) takes over an oil drilling platform in the North Sea and threatens to blow it sky high if his demands are not met, ffolkes is called in by Admiral Brinsden (James Mason) to foil Kramer's scheme before it's too late. ffolkes, also released as North Sea Hijack and Assault Force, was based on the novel Esther, Ruth, and Jennifer by Jack Davies, who also penned the screenplay ("Esther, Ruth, and Jennifer," incidentally, are the code names for the ship, drilling rig, and platform seized by Kramer in the film). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Alec Guinness plays against stereotype, imbuing his Adolf Hitler with an introverted solemnity in Ennio De Concini's Hitler: The Last Ten Days. Set almost entirely inside Hitler's Berlin bunker, the film chronicles the dying days of the Third Reich as the Allied armies close in on Berlin. Guinness's Hitler is an enclosed depressive who sinks slowly into madness, depression, and ultimately suicide as his 1,000-Year Reich collapses around him. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

The innocuous title We Shall See obscures the fact that this British melodrama is perhaps the earliest "killer bee" effort. The film gets under way when Alva Collins (Faith Brook), the mentally unbalanced wife of airline pilot Evan Collins (Maurice Kaufmann), is subjected to the stings of thousands of bees. Whoever was responsible for this knew full well that Alva was allergic to the tiny scourges, thus suspicion immediately falls upon her husband. After this lively opening, the film settles down to business as Scotland Yard searches for the bee-happy assailant. We Shall See was one of several 1960s British programmers produced by Merton Park Productions and based on the works of suspense novelist Edgar Wallace. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Set in Canada, this nasty little fable is about a respectable village elder (Patrick Allen) who is also a sexual deviate. Using candy as bait, he persuades two little girls to dance naked for him. When the girls complain to their parents, the old man is taken to court, but his prestige in town assures an acquittal. Inevitably, the man's perversities lead to the death of a child. The British title for this repellant film was Never Take Sweets From a Stranger; it was based on John Hunter's play The Pony Cart. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Peter Sellers stars as an inmate in a "model prison" run by Maurice Denham. Though Sellers is disinclined to escape (he's never been as comfortable in his life), he is convinced to do so by phony vicar Wilfred Hyde-White, who breaks into jail to outline a robbery scheme. Hyde-White's plan is to have Sellers and his cellmates David Lodge and Bernard Cribbins take a brief "vacation" from jail, pull off a big-time robbery, then return undetected to prison, thereby establishing a perfect alibi. Within its 87-minute time span, Two-Way Stretch takes satirical potshots at political bleeding hearts, obese Middle Eastern potentates, and regulation-bound British police officials. One cannot be faulted for wishing that Peter Sellers had stuck to engaging small-scale British farces such as this and had never ventured into such unamusing big-budgeters as The Bobo and There's a Girl in My Soup. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide