Bart Allison Movies

With The Ritz, Terrence McNally's hit Broadway play of the same name is cinematized by director Richard Lester. Jack Weston plays Gaetano Proclo, a minor mob flunky who's been targeted for elimination by his brother-in-law, Carmine Vespucci (Jerry Stiller). Gaetano takes refuge in what he thinks is a Turkish bath. Actually, it's The Pits. That's the name, "The Pits" -- a gay bathhouse (this is the pre-AIDS era), where the exquisitely awful Googie Gomez (Rita Moreno) entertains the homosexual patrons with her ear-splitting renditions of such show tunes as "Everything's Coming Up Roses." Hoping to save his neck by pretending to be gay, Gaetano effusively praises Googie. Assuming that he is a big-time Broadway producer, she plays up to him. Everything would be hunky-dory, except that the bathhouse is owned by the very mob that has put a contract on Gaetano. What follows is an old-fashioned door-slamming farce, except that there are no doors to slam. The supporting cast includes Kaye Ballard, Treat Williams, George Coulouris, F. Murray Abraham, Dave King, and (as one of the patrons) a pre-Cheers John Ratzenberger. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Smashing Time attempts to turn British actresses Rita Tushingham and Lynn Redgrave into a female Laurel and Hardy. The film's second mistake is to prolong the joke for 96 minutes. Tushingham and Redgrave play a couple of dimwitted North Country girls who head to London, in hopes of breaking into the mad, mod world of fashion modeling. Instead they spend most of their screen time getting in each other's way and wreaking havoc on innocent pedestrians. The comic "highlight" of Smashing Time is supposed to be a mammoth pie fight; but outside of one cute throwaway gag involving a street minister, the sequence makes one wish, in the words of Laurel and Hardy buff Leonard Maltin, that Smashing Time "had been handled by someone other than [director] Desmond Davis." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Fledgling filmmaker (and future film historian) Kevin Brownlow worked in collaboration with Andrew Mollo for nearly ten years to create It Happened Here. Shot on 16-millimeter stock in stark quasi-documentary fashion, the film is predicated on the postulation that Germany had invaded--and defeated--England in World War II. Brownlow and Mollo's vision of this nightmarish world is perfect in every detail, right down to the German road signs in rural Britain. The plotline is carried by Pauline Murray, playing a nurse who uncovers Nazi atrocities perpetrated on Polish and Russian hospital patients. Begun in 1957 when Brownlow was an 18-year-old editing apprentice, It Happened Here was finally completed in 1964, and released theatrically two years later. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Director John Ford traveled to England to film this adaptation of the novel by J.J. Maraca, which details a typical day in the busy life of a detective for Scotland Yard. Inspector George Gideon (Jack Hawkins) begins his working day by confronting one of his fellow officers who is believed to be accepting graft. The sergeant stubbornly denies the charge, but he dies later the same day in a mysterious hit-and-run accident that piques Gideon's curiosity. While confronting internal strife within Scotland Yard, Gideon also has more typical crimes to investigate, including a murder in Manchester and a burglary in London, both of which were performed by the same vicious criminal. Gideon himself becomes the victim of a holdup and is forced to take a bullet for his troubles, while on the home front he finds himself in disfavor with his family when he forgets to bring home salmon for dinner and lets his daughter's recital slip his mind. Along with Jack Hawkins, Gideon's Day features a stellar cast of British actors, including Cyril Cusack, Anna Massey, Laurence Naismith, Dianne Foster, and Billie Whitelaw. For its initial American release, Gideon's Day (also shown as Gideon of Scotland Yard) was cut from 91 minutes to a mere 54, and distributed in black and white prints instead of the original Technicolor. Fortunately, nearly all the prints currently in circulation are of the uncut, color edition. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Recently freed from his MGM contract, Van Johnson headed to England to star in a series of pictures, the first of which was The End of the Affair. Adapted by Lenore Coffee from the novel by Graham Greene, the film casts Johnson as Maurice Bendrix, the clandestine lover of married Briton Sarah Miles (Deborah Kerr). When Maurice disappears during the London blitz, Sarah feels responsible; perhaps if she hadn't been cheating on her husband Henry (Peter Cushing), Maurice might never have been placed in harm's way. She gets down on her knees and prays, promising to return to her husband and give up Maurice if her lover's life is spared. The film's title rather gives the game away. The best performance is delivered by John Mills, as an affable private detective hired by Henry Miles to check up on Sarah's whereabouts. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this crime drama, a man learns that he has six months left to live, and before he dies he decides to get revenge against the man responsible for his incarceration. First he hires a man to kill him and frame the traitor. Later the fellow learns that he is not sick after all. Fortunately his hit man died. Later the man he wants to avenge has a final showdown with him. A struggle ensues and the fellow kills his enemy in self-defense. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide