VIDEO ARCHIVES NOTES: This movie was discussed on the December 10, 2024 episode of the Video Archives podcast. 

Following up his turn as Phillip Marlow in Farewell, My Lovely, Mitchum is back and he’s got Michael Winner directing and writing for him. Sure, Mitchum is twice the age he should be and this is in London instead of Los Angeles, but it’s got a mean edge that I love.

General Sternwood (Jimmy Stewart) is near death, but still wants to know who is blackmailing him. He hires Marlowe, who meets the military man’s daughters, Charlotte (Sarah Miles) and Camilla (Candy Clark). The case leads the detective to pornographer Arthur Geiger (John Justin), his employee Agnes Lozelle (Joan Collins) and finally to Joe Brody (Edward Fox), who Agnes is in love with. As for Camilla, she’s found at the scene of Geiger’s murder after posing for nudes, which would shock her dying father.

As for Charlotte, she is tied up with Eddie Mars (Oliver Reed), a gambler whose wife Mona (Diana Quick) ran off with Charlotte’s husband Rusty and who has several bills due thanks to Charlotte’s gambling debts. Meanwhile, Brody steals Charlotte’s nude photos and pays with his life.

Marlow tangles with a hitman named Lash (Richard Boone) and several red herrings to figure out exactly what the General wants him to look into. He actually never wants the old man to learn the truth about his daughters, particularly when he puts his own life on the line to draw one of them out.

Jimmy Stewart was having issues saying his lines on time due to hearing issues and possibly memory problems. Mitchum may have said, “The picture was all about corpses, but Jimmy looked deader than any of them,” but Stewart outlived him by one day.

Oliver Reed was only in this so he could work with Mitchum and was impressed that the actor could drink a bottle of gin in just 55 minutes. Meanwhile, Mitchum and Boone seemed to be having a drinking contest at all times and even fired live rounds close to one another in a gun fight scene.

As you can imagine, this was a set full of maniacs. When meetings some folks of Arabic nationality, Mitchum warned them that Winner was a Mossad agent, while Winner set up a porn photo shoot to ensure that “copyright issues” didn’t come up for the magazine in the film, which ended up with Mitchum hooking up with the model that was in that shoot, Lindy Benson. He was also being stalked by two women, who had a battle in his apartment at one point during filming.

Winner hated that Joan Collins wore wigs, so he demanded she use her real hair. When they wrapped,  Collins gave Winner a friendly kiss and as she walked away, she took off her wig, fooling him for teh entire production.

When that car blows up at the end, the effects crew had soaked rags in gasoline. Winner decided it would be a good idea to light a cigar around this — he had only been on film sets his entire life — and ignited a gas line, which set the crew tent on fire and nearly a house.

You can watch this on Tubi.