Just so...so bad

Best movie ever!

A Disappointing Continuation

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

American soldier Lloyd Bridges runs the black market on the side during World War II Italy and ends up in military prison when he's caught. Somehow making it back to Italy in spite of being broke and having no passport, Bridges finds himself followed everywhere he goes and ultimately wanted for murder. Bridges strives to find the money and keep the police off his trail, but there's no peace for the criminal no matter how minor.Lea Padovani co-stars as the pretty Italian girl who latches onto him, and there's all sorts of other shady Italian characters, some familiar with Bridges since his days selling illegal goods. This is just an average thriller where the hero really isn't somebody you root for, even if it is the future sea hunter or the head of air traffic control who picked the wrong week to give up amphetamines. Bridges is pretty sexy, though, looking quite handsome in nothing but a pair of boxers.

Where the movie really succeeds is as a character study. Bridges' ex-army man Frank Keeler comes across as unusually unsympathetic. We see him first as a penny-ante black- marketeer. Then, after serving a term in the brig, he cadges money from his buddies, but runs out on the debt. And if that's not bad enough, we discover he ran out on his Italian girlfriend and now, back in Italy, wants to use her again. Yeah, he's something of a rat, and only returns to Italy to dig up his buried army loot. Bridges is excellent, with an appropriate swagger and cocky self-assurance. And we don't so much root for him as wait to see what happens next.Filmed on location in Italy, the authentic background helps overcome a rather muddled plot, especially the murky intrigue with American gangster Conway. What's really apparent, however, is the influence of Orson Welles' The Third Man (1950) from the previous year. Here, director-producer Wilder emulates much of Welles' complex visual style in a story that also resembles Welles' tale of post-war European intrigue, even down to the guitar accompaniment in place of the highly popular zither of The Third Man. Nothing necessarily wrong with this, except Welles is a really tough act to follow.Anyway, It's an appropriate ending that achieves some poignancy without betraying Frank's selfish character; thanks also to Aldo Fabrizi's sly performance as the wily caretaker. All in all, it's an obscure movie, likely because of the absence of big name stars. Nonetheless, Bridges shows here how much talent there is outside those big name stars.

Produced and directed by W. Lee Wilder, this Italian production stars Lloyd Bridges as a GI who returns to Italy after the war to find some money he stashed a few years earlier (I don't want to give away too much of the plot, so I'll be intentionally vague)--needless to say, he has a number of problems in getting to it and a number of other people manage to get in the way of his getting it. Lea Padovani is the lovely but fiery lady he knew during the war who he tries to find to assist him, and the colorful Aldo Fabrizi is a man who lives right next to where the money was stashed and who befriends Bridges, but who Bridges must keep in the dark about his REAL reasons for being in the area. As always, Lloyd Bridges manages to make the character richly detailed and full, giving him some unpleasant qualities even though he is the "hero" of the piece, and making us feel for him as he faces danger and encounters one problem after another. The ending is nicely ironic while being positive and bringing the character to a new level of self-awareness. Wilder uses a number of nice, unexpected touches throughout and the location filming and mostly-Italian cast (except for two small supporting characters who play Americans)give the film a unique flavor. This originally received a US release through United Artists and was taped off TV during the early days of cable, when stations had a lot of time to fill and still played off-the-wall black-and-white B movies that could be gotten cheaply. Those days are long gone, but you should still keep your eyes out for this distinctive mystery with a fine Lloyd Bridges performance.