The Liquidator (1965 film)

Last updated

The Liquidator
The Liquidator (1965 film) UK quad poster.jpg
Original UK quad cinema poster featuring Richard Willams artwork
Directed by Jack Cardiff
Written by Peter Yeldham
Based on The Liquidator by John Gardner
Produced by
Starring
Cinematography Edward Scaife
Edited by Ernest Walter
Music by Lalo Schifrin
Production
company
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1965, original) Warner Bros. (2012, DVD)
Release date
  • November 1965 (1965-11)(UK)
Running time
105 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Box office$1,175,000 (est. US/ Canada rentals) [1]
23,498 admissions (France) [2]

The Liquidator is a 1965 British thriller film starring Rod Taylor as Brian "Boysie" Oakes, Trevor Howard, and Jill St. John. It was based on the first of a series of Boysie Oakes novels by John Gardner, The Liquidator . The film follows the 1964 novel closely. Due to a legal dispute, the film's original November 1965 release was delayed to the end of 1966, by which time the spy film craze was waning. [3]

Contents

Plot

In 1944 during World War II, American tank corps Sergeant "Boysie" Oakes (Rod Taylor) stumbles and unwittingly shoots and kills two men attempting to assassinate British Intelligence Major Mostyn (Trevor Howard) in Paris. Mostyn mistakenly believes Oakes was lethal on purpose.

Twenty-one years later, Mostyn (now a colonel in British Intelligence) and his boss (Wilfred Hyde-White) are in trouble due to a series of embarrassing security disasters. To save his job, the chief orders Mostyn to hire an assassin to illegally eliminate security leaks without official authorisation. Mostyn recruits Boysie, now living in England, into the Secret Service without first telling him what his employment will entail, luring him in with a lavish apartment and a fancy car. After Boysie passes a training course, Mostyn informs him that his code name is "L", and that it stands for liquidator. Unable to resign and not a killer himself, Boysie secretly hires a freelance professional assassin (Eric Sykes) to do the dirty work.

Things go well until Oakes persuades Mostyn's secretary Iris (Jill St. John) to spend the weekend with him on the Côte d'Azur, though Mostyn has warned him that any contact between spies and civilian employees is a serious criminal offence. Boysie is captured by enemy agents led by Sheriek (Akim Tamiroff), who firmly believes he is on assignment and wants to know who the target is. However, Sheriek's superior, Chekhov (John Le Mesurier), is coldly furious that he has gone beyond his orders to merely watch Boysie, thus endangering a much more important operation. He has Sheriek arrange for Boysie to escape.

Then Quadrant (David Tomlinson) arrives with a new mission for Boysie. He is to stage a fake assassination attempt on the Duke of Edinburgh, when he visits a Royal Air Force base, to test the security. Boysie finds that he has been duped: Quadrant is actually an enemy agent, and the bullets in his sniper rifle are real. Mostyn shows up in the duke's place and is able to locate Boysie, but while they are distracted, Quadrant and a pilot steal the real target: the Vulture, an advanced new aircraft which the duke was to inspect. Boysie manages to shoot Quadrant and board the plane as it is taking off. To his surprise, the pilot is none other than Iris, who informs him that she is the coordinator of the operation. He is able to overpower her and, with radio help, return the aircraft to the base, dumping the aircraft into the grass by accident.

Cast

Production

Producer Jon Pennington brought Australian screenwriter Peter Yeldham to the project after both had cooperated on The Comedy Man (1963). Yeldham recalled that Pennington acquired the novel, read it on an airplane and set the film into production in four or five months. Like the Jason Love Where the Spies Are , also filmed in MGM-British Studios, MGM planned a Boysie Oakes film series. Producer Sydney Box spoke to Yeldham and wished him to write two more scripts in the projected series. [4]

Richard Harris was initially approached for the role but after negotiations chose to do The Heroes of Telemark instead. [5] Taylor insisted on playing the role with an American accent because he was more comfortable with it by that stage in his career. [6]

The film opens with animated titles by the Richard Williams studio.

Like Where the Spies Are , The Liquidator was also filmed in MGM-British Studios. Cardiff recalled that the censors made them delete one of Taylor's lines: "it smells like a Turkish wrestler's jockstrap". [3]

Reception

Release of the film was held up a number of months due to a legal conflict between producer Leslie Elliot and MGM. Jack Cardiff thought this hurt the final box office result of the film, which was disappointing. [7]

Soundtrack

The original score was composed by Lalo Schifrin and includes a driving main title vocal theme and a soft end title theme ("My Liquidator"), both sung by Shirley Bassey. Other than the "Goldfinger"-type title song, Lalo Schifrin deliberately avoided the John Barry James Bond style of music. [8] [9]

DVD

The Liquidator was released to DVD by Warner Home Video on 6 September 2012 via the Warner Archive DVD-on-demand service.

Related Research Articles

<i>The Man from U.N.C.L.E.</i> 1960s American television spy drama series

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is an American spy fiction television series produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Television and first broadcast on NBC. The series follows secret agents, played by Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, who work for a secret international counterespionage and law-enforcement agency called U.N.C.L.E. The series premiered on September 22, 1964, and completed its run on January 15, 1968. The program led the spy-fiction craze on television, and by 1966 there were nearly a dozen imitators. Several episodes were successfully released to theaters as B movies or double features. There was also a spin-off series, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., a series of novels and comic books, and merchandising.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trevor Howard</span> English actor (1913–1988)

Trevor Wallace Howard-Smith was an English stage, film, and television actor. After varied work in the theatre, he achieved star status with his role in the film Brief Encounter (1945), followed by The Third Man (1949).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rod Taylor</span> Australian actor (1930–2015)

Rodney Sturt Taylor was an Australian actor. He appeared in more than 50 feature films, including The Time Machine (1960), The Birds (1963), and Inglourious Basterds (2009), and voiced the lead role in One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961).

<i>Rush Hour 2</i> 2001 film by Brett Ratner

Rush Hour 2 is a 2001 American buddy action comedy film directed by Brett Ratner and written by Jeff Nathanson, based on the characters created by Ross LaManna. A sequel to Rush Hour, it is the second installment in the Rush Hour franchise and stars Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker reprising their roles from the first film. The story follows Chief Inspector Lee (Chan) and LAPD Detective James Carter (Tucker), who go to Hong Kong on vacation only to be thwarted by a murder case involving two U.S. customs agents after a bombing at the American embassy. Lee suspects that the crime is linked to the Triad crime lord Ricky Tan (Lone).

Boysie Oakes is fictional secret agent created by the British spy novelist John Gardner in 1964 at the height of a period of fictional spy mania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Gardner (British writer)</span> English writer

John Edmund Gardner was an English spy and thriller novelist, best known for his James Bond continuation novels, but also for his series of Boysie Oakes books and three continuation novels containing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional villain, Professor Moriarty.

<i>The Glass Bottom Boat</i> 1966 American romantic comedy movie directed by Frank Tashlin

The Glass Bottom Boat is a 1966 American romantic spy comedy film directed by Frank Tashlin and starring Doris Day, Rod Taylor, and Arthur Godfrey, with John McGiver, Paul Lynde, Edward Andrews, Eric Fleming, Dom DeLuise, and Dick Martin. It is also known as The Spy in Lace Panties.

<i>The Fox</i> (1967 film) 1967 Canadian drama film

The Fox is a 1967 Canadian drama film directed by Mark Rydell. The screenplay by Lewis John Carlino and Howard Koch is loosely based on the 1923 novella of the same title by D. H. Lawrence. The film marked Rydell's feature film directorial debut.

<i>The Amityville Horror</i> (1979 film) 1979 film

The Amityville Horror is a 1979 American supernatural horror film directed by Stuart Rosenberg, and starring James Brolin, Margot Kidder, and Rod Steiger. The film follows a young couple who purchase a home haunted by combative supernatural forces. It is based on Jay Anson's 1977 book of the same name, which documented the alleged paranormal experiences of the Lutz family who briefly resided in the Amityville, New York home where convicted killer Ronald DeFeo Jr. committed the mass murder of his family in 1974. It is the first entry in the long-running Amityville Horror film series, and was remade in 2005.

Liquidator may refer to:

<i>The Day They Robbed the Bank of England</i> 1960 British film

The Day They Robbed the Bank of England is a 1960 British crime film directed by John Guillermin. It was written by Howard Clewes and Richard Maibaum and based upon the 1959 novel of the same title by John Brophy.

Hunter was an Australian espionage adventure television series screened by the Nine Network from Tuesday 4 July 1967 to March 1969. The series was created by Ian Jones and produced by Crawford Productions.

<i>Kim</i> (1950 film) 1950 adventure film directed by Victor Saville

Kim is a 1950 adventure film made in Technicolor by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed by Victor Saville and produced by Leon Gordon from a screenplay by Helen Deutsch, Leon Gordon and Richard Schayer, based on the classic 1901 novel of the same name by Rudyard Kipling.

Joseph Thomas Porcaro was an American jazz drummer.

<i>Our Man in Marrakesh</i> 1966 British film

Our Man in Marrakesh is a 1966 British comedy spy film shot in Morocco produced and co-written by Harry Alan Towers, directed by Don Sharp and starring Tony Randall, Herbert Lom and Senta Berger.

<i>Dark of the Sun</i> 1968 British adventure war film by Jack Cardiff

Dark of the Sun is a 1968 British adventure war film starring Rod Taylor, Yvette Mimieux, Jim Brown, and Peter Carsten. The film, which was directed by Jack Cardiff, is based on Wilbur Smith's 1965 novel, The Dark of the Sun. The story about a band of mercenaries sent on a dangerous mission during the Congo Crisis was adapted into a screenplay by Ranald MacDougall. Critics condemned the film on its original release for its graphic scenes of violence and torture.

<i>Where the Spies Are</i> 1966 British film

Where the Spies Are is a 1966 British comedy adventure film directed by Val Guest and starring David Niven, Françoise Dorléac, John Le Mesurier, Cyril Cusack and Richard Marner. It was based on the 1964 James Leasor book Passport to Oblivion, which was also the working title of the film. MGM intended to make a Jason Love film series, but the idea was shelved.

<i>Hot Enough for June</i> 1964 British film

Hot Enough for June is a 1964 British spy comedy film directed by Ralph Thomas, and starring Dirk Bogarde with Sylva Koscina in her English film debut, Robert Morley and Leo McKern. It is based on the 1960 novel The Night of Wenceslas by Lionel Davidson. The film was cut by twenty minutes and retitled Agent 8+34 for the US release by the American distributor Continental Distributing.

<i>The Liquidator</i> (novel)

The Liquidator (1964) was the first novel written by John Gardner and the first novel in his Boysie Oakes series.

<i>The Liquidator</i> (soundtrack) 1965 soundtrack album by Lalo Schifrin

The Liquidator is a soundtrack album to the motion picture The Liquidator by Argentine composer, pianist and conductor Lalo Schifrin recorded in 1965 and released on the MGM label. An expanded edition of the soundtrack was released by Film Score Monthly in 2006. Shirley Bassey, then well known for her Goldfinger title song performed two versions of the theme; a hard driving main title theme and a softer romantic version called My Liquidator. Due to the delayed release of the film, the soundtrack was issued later in 1966

References

  1. "Big Rental Pictures of 1966", Variety, 4 January 1967 p 8
  2. French box office for 1967 at Box Office Story
  3. 1 2 Bowyer, Justin (2003). Conversations with Jack Cardiff. Batsford. p. 190. ISBN   0-7134-8855-7.
  4. p.31 Taylor, Tadhg Peter Yeldham Interview in Masters of the Shoot-'Em-Up: Conversations with Directors, Actors and Writers of Vintage Action Movies and Television Shows' McFarland, 14 Oct. 2015
  5. p.152 Callan, Michael Feeney Richard Harris: Sex, Death & The Movies Robson, 30 November 2004
  6. Vagg, Stephen (2010). Rod Taylor: An Aussie in Hollywood. Bear Manor Media. p. 115. ISBN   978-1-59393-511-5.
  7. Stephen Vagg, Rod Taylor: An Aussie in Hollywood (Bear Manor Media, 2010) p118
  8. "The Liquidator soundtrack liner notes". Film Score Monthly . Lukas Kendall. 9 (16). November 2006.
  9. Spencer, Kristpher (2008). Film and Television Scores, 1950–1979: A Critical Survey by Genre. McFarland & Co. pp. 72–73. ISBN   978-0-7864-3682-8.