So much average

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Turn on the sink spigot and water shoots out the stovetop; flick a light switch and the TV comes on. Add a housekeeper whose voice can be heard in Australia, and you've got a promising comedy. In fact there are a number of clever ideas in this screen adaptation of a stage play. Nonetheless, in my book, the movie's only fitfully funny.Now, Glenn Ford wrote the book on effective low-key acting, a style adapting most readily to a droll brand of comedy, as in The Sheepman (1958). Here, however, Ford's in a perpetual tizzy that would tax even the expert delirium of a Cary Grant. He strives mightily, but the demands of 100-minutes of forced hyper is really over-stretching the effort and grows pretty thin. I agree with reviewer Blanche2—the part calls for a comedic actor like a Jack Lemmon or an Ernie Kovacs.Then too, this is really tricky material. After all, Ford is meticulously intent on a criminal act, namely, murder; still, I was surprised when he actually pulls the trigger. What's needed with slippery black humor of this sort is a light touch all the way through. Wisely, for example, Ford looks the fool in his outlandish murder get-up, while the victim staggers around like an all-night drunk. But the cops and especially Martin Landau appear not to be in on the joke. They're too serious by half, reminding me of an unwanted fact-- that once Ford pulls the trigger, he's morally guilty of a crime whether his bullet finds the mark or not, a sour note the script understandably glosses over. Again, this is really tricky material to bring off successfully.I don't mean to imply the film doesn't have its moments or that players like McGiver and Reiner aren't amusingly droll or that the perky Reynolds isn't more restrained than usual. It's just that the 100-minutes remains a patchwork of promising parts that unfortunately adds up to an uneven whole.

Someone ought to show this movie to Jim Carrey: it deserves a remake. In fact, there was a remake in France, played by Louis DE Funes. This remarkable comedy, a black comedy, has only an error: Glen Ford was a great actor, but the character needs a bit of madness, and Ford played so polite, so friendly. Also with Debbie Reynolds, although that her character is minor. An actor so remarkable in comedy as Carrey could do a great performance and a magnificent comedy based of the original play of this film. recently showed in a local TV, in is yet so amusing, so funny and almost cracy as in its time. But deserves best luck. George Marshall, a discreet director, made in this comedy one of his best pictures. Many people has forgotten The Gazebo, and thinks that is a romantic comedy. It is not: it is a black comedy.

As of this writing, Glenn Ford is still with us, living in retirement. He has never, except from his fans and fellow actors, received the recognition his honest acting abilities in drama or comedy have fully deserved. His performances in "Experiment In Terror" and "The Blackboard Jungle" and "3:10 To Yuma" fully show his firm handling of dramatic material. He was a superb psychotic villain in "The Man From Colorado". He held his own with Rita Hayworth and George Macready in "Gilda". And for comic gems let me suggest "The Rounders" (holding his own with Henry 0Fonda, Chill Wills, and his old film friend Edgar Buchanan), "Teahouse Of The August Moon", and this film. For some reason the New York Times film critics always slam "The Gazebo". I can't tell why. It may be because those comedies traipsing on dark matters like murder seem to need an element of elegance (in some quarters) to be rated highly. But how many "Kind Hearts And Coronets" or "Monsieur Verdoux" films can there be? THE GAZEBO is certainly bereft of elegant villains like Dennis Price and Charlie Chaplin, but it does draw us into the hero's real problems.Elliot Nash (Ford) is a hard-working producer, whose wife Nell (Debbie Reynolds) is an equally hard worker performer. Nash has been receiving blackmail threats from a man he has never met. The man is demanding an impossibly large sum of money for pictures he has of Nell that might hurt her career. Nash is forced, in his bumbling way, to consider the only alternative (short of a miracle) to take care of the blackmailer: he must kill him. So on a night that Nell is away from their suburban home, Nash (following a step-by-step plan he even wrote down and put into his desk's top draw) arranges to shoot and kill the blackmailer and to bury the body. He had originally intended to simply bury it in the back yard, but Nell has accidentally helped him here - it seems (for his birthday gift) she is installing an antique gazebo in the backyard, under the watchful workmanship of John McGiver. Ford drags the dead body (in an old bath curtain) into the backyard, and puts it into the foundation of the gazebo.The problems arise afterward. First, it turns out the police want to question him anyway regarding the blackmailer - it seems they found his body in his office, shot to death. They don't suspect Nash for this, but they are curious about why the blackmailer called him. Of course this leads to the issue - who is in the gazebo. Ford goes nuts trying to figure out who among his family and friends is missing. Secondly, it also brings up another matter. Elliot and Nell have a close friend, Harlowe (Carl Reiner), whom Elliot has always found a little annoying as Harlowe once was dating Nell. Now he's around prying into the relationship of Elliot and the dead blackmailer.Soon some others pop up, two goons (the leader is Martin Landau) wondering what happened to Dan - whom they knew was supposed to be visiting Elliot. Can he be the man in the gazebo? Is he the key to all this? The action of the jittery Ford is priceless, particularly in the scene where he shoots the visitor. An example: Nash has been thinking of doing some work with Alfred Hitchcock. Hitch calls (we never see or hear him) while Nash is wondering how to bury the dead man. Ford asks Hitch advise "for a plot he's working on" and Hitch helps out.The final ten minutes, when Ford is almost ready to throw himself on the mercy of the detectives (Reiner and Bert Freed, as a Lieutenant who literally louses up his own case), only to change strategies in a moment of clarity, are hysterical. I particularly hope you fully appreciate Freed's tag-line at the conclusion of the film.

The dalliances that once occurred on "The" gazebo are nothing compared to what might have been under it...if only Elliott could have read some Tarantino before the end of this brill flick. Glenn Ford had begun to show signs of his great comic timing in Imitation General, but I think his unique brand of humour finds its feet in this film. There is something delightfully neurotic about Glenn's gift of busy humour. These days he'd be called a thinking man's Jerry Lewis (until Jerry made The King of Comedy and put his own ghosts to bed), but Glenn has an energy that defies his laconic roles like in The Rounders. For a man who claimed only to play himself on screen, he shows a delightfully schizoid turn in this film.(Like he should have be born a Gemini) While the film displays some great moments by Debbie Reynolds, Carl Reiner and a delightful ensemble cast it is the sheer energy of Glenn Ford which makes it hum along. In most of Glenn's films you are confronted with his unerring intensity, deep pride and honesty, but in this we see a little of that pure naivety of spirit that only good people possess. I don't mean wholesome in the apple-pie way, but more the deep-seated belief that life is good nad it's only people who fall off the rails from time to time. This is one of the lovely points about this film. So much is lightly turned on its head. This is the sort of film David Lynch might have made if he had been married to Doris Day or Shirley Temple. When you think about some of the themes and how lightly murder and blackmail are dealt with, you could suspect that you had entered Twin Peaks c1960. Whoever thought up the Alfred Hitchcock sequence deserves an award and I'd love to know what the chap was really saying on the other end of the line!!! I admire the people who can get TCM and I was glad I blackmailed and murdered my way to a bootlog copy of this great flick. And if the critics failed to realise the quality of its writing and acting then that would only be par for the course, (Just ask Cate Blanchett) While I cannot give it a 10, I can tell anyone who likes there humour smart and slick then this is well worth a quick squizz.