Brilliant and touching

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

This is not a good film but it's almost bad enough to be entertaining. Henry Silva seems like a menacing presence to many reviewers but to me he seemed intimidated by his shot at the big time. The scenes in which Elizabeth Montgomery and he interact seem spliced together from different movies. Montgomery is convincing in an impossible role and appealing in a way that makes you sad her career reached its apogee in the dreary wasteland of TV sitcom. She clearly had a great spirit and wit that would have made her an engaging presence if she'd had better scripts. The most annoying thing about this movie has got to be the cameos by Peter Lawford's pack of hacks. One can imagine Lawford saying, "Hey, you wanna be in my movie?" and then poor William Asher has to write in scenes which derail the plot (not necessarily a bad thing in this movie). There's an odd moment when Silva meets Sammy Davis Jr. at a crap game and Davis gives him a weird little grin. What does it mean? Nada apparently. This film is filled with these little oddments. Venerable Robert Armstrong shows up as a mobster and has a couple of deliciously cheesy lines which he seems embarrassed by. But he can't touch Mort Sahl's cameo for cringeworthiness. Sahl plays a gangster who faces death with such laidback indifference that you expect him to give us a couple of quips about cold war politics before he exits. No such luck. All in all, it's an odd Whitman's sampler of schticks and groans with a void at its center. See it for Liz at the height of her beauty and with her natural hair color.

Henry Silva is Johnny Collini, aka Johnny Cool. Adopted by the deported gangster Marc Lawrence in Sicili, he's sent to America to take over all of his former businesses, wiping out the current managers if necessary. It becomes necessary.Swept up in Johnny Cool's serial assassinations is Elizabeth Montgomery as Darien Guiness from Scarsdale -- great WASP name. She becomes Silva's love slave. We all know what great lovers Italian men are, even if they're not necessarily great actors. She aids and abets his crimes, up to and including murder by dynamite. Finally, as the agents of social control are closing in on her, she gets drunk and the next day decides to drop the dime on her boyfriend.First of all, what a cast! Movie historians will be impressed -- John Dierkes, Elisha Cook Jr., John McGiver, Robert Armstrong ("King Kong") inter alia. One of the executive producers was Peter Lawford, which may account for the Rat Pack character of some of the cast -- Joey Bishop, Sammy Davis Jr., and a reference to Jilly's, one of Sinatra's favorite bars in New York.Most of these celebrity appearances are in bit parts. The story depends on the leads, Henry Silva and Elizabeth Montgomery. Silva isn't a bravura actor nor a particularly interesting one. He's much better as part of an ensemble, in smaller roles, especially villainous ones. He was great as "Mother" in "A Hatful of Rain" but those glistening, quartzite irises can't carry a film on their own. He's given no help by the script. Not a tag line in a cartload.Elizabeth Montgomery overacts volcanically when she's not chirping away in her "Bewitched" persona. This may not be her fault. The director ought to shape the performance of a newcomer, and Montgomery was quite good in a later made-for-TV movie, "The Legend of Lizzie Borden." Besides, she's so damnably cute and sexy, in the way that Jane Fonda was at the time, that she gets a pass.The film strives for the essence of "cool" as the word was understood in the late 1950s.The score by Billy May is a good example of what I mean. It's jazz oriented but not challenging. More like big band swing, the kind of backing that Sinatra had from Nelson Riddle. I swear that the climactic phrases in the score feature Maynard Ferguson's trumpet. He's the only guy I've ever heard who can run a trumpet up into the stratosphere, like a dog whistle.But, as I say, the cool we see here is 1950s cool. It now seems a little dated. The general concept involves expensive suits, styled hair, smoking, big tips, American cars that are forty feet long, stylish mannerisms and digs, an excess of self confidence, dames (or, more commonly, "broads" or "mouses"), shades, a stride that has a bounce in it, and an air of unflappability. Think Las Vegas. Sinatra embodied it. You didn't have to be rich, though. Marlon Brando was cool in "The Wild One." Steve McQueen in "Bullet" was neo-cool.

This is a really cool gangster film featuring a much under-rated Henry Silva (Why Hollywood didn't use him more is beyond me!) playing an Italian mobster. The beggining of this film is a little awkward & slow but give it 15 minutes and it picks up quickly. Enter Elizabeth Montgomery as a bored socialite who wants some some excitement in her life and boy does she get it. Liz even gets slapped around by two guys which gets her turned on because when Henry comes back and finds her she belts out the line "I need you RIGHT NOW!" WOW! Kind of risque for the era. Good locations throughout, including many shots of Beverly Hills, Los Angeles & Las Vegas in the early 60's. Many, many cameos by Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, Jim Backus, Mort Sahl. William Asher proved he could direct drama as well as comedy (His forte'). This has no Hollywood ending either. It should be on DVD.

This is an entrancing film in which you get lost and don't even thinkabout getting out again until its stunning conclusion. I've been aHenry Silva fan ever since I saw him in it. And it features ElizabethMontgomery in her most enticing roll ever. The story starts a little rough, and you just have to stick with it for awhile, but it ripens into a headlong thriller and finally cruises to itswrenching climax. What do you think? Can a guy like this getaway with a relentless series of assaults on such powerful peopleforever? All that said, and still giving it a high rating, this movie is definitely a1963 film. What passed for heavy action back then has long beeneclipsed. There is somehow almost an innocence to theslaughter, if that's possible. Henry Silva's character, however, willalways stand up as a smart, remorseless, merciless andinexorable visitor of revenge. And he's so cool.