The Worst Film Ever

Best movie ever!

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Producers: Humphrey Bogart, James Woolf. A production of Santana Pictures (Los Angeles) and Romulus Films (London). Released in the U.K. by Independent in association with British Lion on 11 January 1954; in Australia by 20th Century-Fox on 18 August 1954; in the U.S.A. by United Artists in March 1954. Running times: 100 minutes (9,000 feet) (U.K.); 93 minutes (premiere engagements in the U.S.A.), 93 minutes (Australia); 82 minutes (general release in the U.S.A.); 89 minutes (U.S. television print distributed by Screen Gems). Copyright in the U.S. by Santana Pictures on 3 March 1954. New York opening at 68 neighborhood theaters: 12 March 1954. Sydney Opening at the Mayfair. SYNOPSIS: Six adventurers are stranded at a small Italian port while their steamer is being repaired. One group is a quartet of international crooks - Petersen, O'Hara, Ross, and Ravello. The other consists of their front-man, an American fortune hunter named Billy Dannreuther, and his wife, Maria, who pass the four scoundrels off as their "business associates." They are bound for British East Africa, ostensibly to sell vacuum cleaners in Kenya, but actually to buy up some public land on a private tip that the place is loaded with uranium. With a passion for secrecy, the four conspirators see danger everywhere, having already murdered one potential blabber in London. NOTES: Unsuccessful on first release in America and England, the movie was later taken up as a cult favorite. But in Australia, the reverse happened. Bogart's popularity ensured that the picture took excellent money (even from audiences who found its story and treatment confusing) right across the board. Later, although film societies made some efforts to impress the corduroy set, they were unsuccessful. Coffee philosophers will always condemn a movie that's popular (unless of course that popularity occurred a generation or two ago.COMMENT: Personally, I thought the African scene where the conspirators were forced to smile one of the funniest in the film. Another memorably comic interlude was the episode with the Hispano-Suiza. The whole film is shot in a stylish and inventive fashion. Bogart is ideally cast and Morley's portrayal is as rich and fruity as a ripe paw-paw. Marco Tulli has made many Italian films, though we believe Beat the Devil and The Monte Carlo Story (1956) are his only English-language appearances. Saro Urzi has been acting in Italian films since 1939. Beat the Devil is his only English-language film to date. Urzi achieved international recognition in 1964 when he starred in Pietro Germi's Sedotta e Abbandonata.

There are times when you look at a movie and you have to say "the devil made them do it." This is one of those cases, as a little known novel- Beat The Devil by James Helvick adapted by a writer Claud Cockburn whose writing is best known as the source of Cabaret, then adapted by Truman Capote and John Huston plus a couple of other writers, and you wind up with something oddly eccentric. Then you give the film a very low budget and film it all in Europe with several fairly well known actors and expect the cast to carry the film. It almost works though I am not sure if the cast or the writers got over paid for this one.The British part of the humor stands out, the tuna can not be put any further into a cheek than it is here. Oddities scream out in galore. Gina Lollobrigida is Bogart's wife, who oddly is not cast as an Italian though she seems very much to be one. Jennifer Jones is married to Edward Underdown who is sickly all the time while she is lying about him being an English Noble type. Both women seem to stray to each others husbands, though neither woman seems into either of their men, except using them for money and status.Bogart is doing business with a group of con men headed by Robert Morley and Peter Lorre, and yet he is performing a con job on them, and balancing the two eccentric ladies in his life. There is a rich texture to the cast, script, and story yet the film is done on the cheap. Look for Bernard Lee, M in the classic Bond films, as Insp. Jack Clayton, trying to make nonsense of this whole thing.The film sort of starts near the end, then goes back to the beginning and sort of fills in the strange world with a lot of the smoke and mirrors. That is what this film is, subtle humor with A List Talent performing on a shoe string budget with famous writing adopting a little known novel into a odder film. It kind of reminds me of Fairly Odd Parents being done live without actual parents while the kids are using crayons to color in a slang dictionary without a printed book to base the meanings on.

Odd film. Made as a parody of the Maltese Falcon.Filmed on the fly, with Huston writing parts each day as he filmed.It has the look of one of those later Orson Welles films he made with his own money.It's worth a watch, but no where near as good as the Maltese Falcon.The synopsis:A quartet of international crooks -- Peterson, O'Hara, Ross and Ravello -- is stranded in Italy while their steamer is being repaired. With them are the Dannreuthers. The six are headed for Africa, presumably to sell vacuum cleaners but actually to buy land supposedly loaded with uranium. They are joined by others who apparently have similar designs.

Just desserts are dished out with glee in this 'crime drama'. Each character is built up to be disliked enough that when the hammer comes down on them, the result are hilarious. No character ever rises above 'amoral' and most are just downright sleazy, so when each little plot is foiled, it's just more icing on this cake of a movie. The supposed main plot of the movie is vague, and takes a back seat to the characters who slowly sink in the quicksand of their behavior throughout the movie. Humphrey Bogart plays the 'arranger' for a quartet of the most inept criminals in movie history. How they got together, no one knows. What they did before: who cares? What their brilliant caper is? Something about uranium and Africa I think. None of that matters. What matters is the expressions on their faces as one by one their ideas fail, their schemes implode, their Machiavellian machinations collide like bumper cars at the amusement park. They discuss murder, robbery, infidelity with banter lighter than air. Each of the actors plays their parts perfectly straight, one has to wonder if any of them were clued in on this prank noir. This is John Huston to the hilt, no holds barred, no character flaw left unexploited. A must see for any Huston fan. People that take their movies too seriously, may not 'get it', so your mileage may vary.