Joel McCrea Westerns Collection
The Liquidator
James Bond had barely arrived on screens in the early 60s before there was a flood of copycat espionage films followed by the inevitable super-spy parodies. One of the better copycats is The Liquidator (1965), based on a book by John E. Gardner (who would later pen some James Bond novels - Nobody Lives Forever, No Deals, Mr. Bond). The film pretends at times to be a serious spy thriller but there are enough sight gags and throwaway humor to let you know that nobody is taking it completely seriously.
Rod Taylor stars as Boysie Oakes, hired by an old school buddy, Colonel Mostyn (Trevor Howard), to stop the defections and infiltrations within a British spy agency. Taylor becomes Agent L, "The Liquidator," complete with the requisite fast women and even faster cars. A dream life for some except that, well......Agent L isn't going to give 007 any real competition. He's afraid of flying, for one thing, and the sight of blood makes him queasy. Will he still be able to get the job done?
The Liquidator had actually been made in 1964 but a squabble over legal rights held up the release for two years. It was filmed on location in Nice, Monte Carlo and the Antibes among other exotic places frequented by jet-setting super-spies. An album of Lalo Schifrin's score was released in 1965 (sample tunes: "Boysie's Bossa" and "Bikini Waltz") with a theme song by Shirley Bassey, who sang more official Bond themes than anybody else ("Goldfinger" is practically her signature tune.) There's another Bond connection in co-star Jill St. John who would later appear with Sean Connery in Diamonds Are Forever (1971).
Rod Taylor is actually quite good in the title role. An Australian actor who became popular in Hollywood in the late 1950s in films like The Time Machine (1960), The Birds (1963) and Zabriskie Point (1970), Taylor delighted audiences and kept his devoted fan club busy. For The Liquidator, Taylor wanted to do many of his own stunts. One sequence involved a car teetering over the edge of a real 400-foot cliff but Taylor insisted on doing the scene sans stunt men and subjected himself to repeated takes. During an airplane sequence, Taylor was asked to shake and move so that the plane (actually a stationary set) appeared to be going through turbulence while Taylor also improvised his dialogue, a task he pulled off perfectly.
Director Jack Cardiff was a former cinematographer who won an Oscar for Black Narcissus (1947), received Academy Award nominations for three more films and accepted an honorary award in 2001. He's also had a sporadic directing career which includes a true oddity - Scent of Mystery (1960), the only film ever made in Smell-O-Vision, Young Cassidy (1965) starring Rod Taylor as writer Sean O'Casey (the film was initially started by John Ford who was unable to complete it due to health reasons), and the cult favorite Girl on a Motorcycle (1968) starring Marianne Faithful.
Producer: Jon Penington
Director: Jack Cardiff
Screenplay: Peter Yeldham, based on the novel by John E. Gardner
Cinematography: Edward Scaife
Costume Design: Joan Bridge, Elizabeth Haffenden
Film Editing: Ernest Walter
Original Music: Lalo Schifrin
Principal Cast: Rod Taylor (Boysie Oakes), Trevor Howard (Col. Mostyn), Jill St. John (Iris MacIntosh), Wilfrid Hyde-White (Chief), David Tomlinson (Quadrant), Akim Tamiroff (Sheriek), Eric Sykes (Griffen), Gabriella Licudi (Corale), John Le Mesurier (Chekhov).
C-104m. Letterboxed. Closed captioning.
By Lang Thompson
Rod Taylor stars as Boysie Oakes, hired by an old school buddy, Colonel Mostyn (Trevor Howard), to stop the defections and infiltrations within a British spy agency. Taylor becomes Agent L, "The Liquidator," complete with the requisite fast women and even faster cars. A dream life for some except that, well......Agent L isn't going to give 007 any real competition. He's afraid of flying, for one thing, and the sight of blood makes him queasy. Will he still be able to get the job done?
The Liquidator had actually been made in 1964 but a squabble over legal rights held up the release for two years. It was filmed on location in Nice, Monte Carlo and the Antibes among other exotic places frequented by jet-setting super-spies. An album of Lalo Schifrin's score was released in 1965 (sample tunes: "Boysie's Bossa" and "Bikini Waltz") with a theme song by Shirley Bassey, who sang more official Bond themes than anybody else ("Goldfinger" is practically her signature tune.) There's another Bond connection in co-star Jill St. John who would later appear with Sean Connery in Diamonds Are Forever (1971).
Rod Taylor is actually quite good in the title role. An Australian actor who became popular in Hollywood in the late 1950s in films like The Time Machine (1960), The Birds (1963) and Zabriskie Point (1970), Taylor delighted audiences and kept his devoted fan club busy. For The Liquidator, Taylor wanted to do many of his own stunts. One sequence involved a car teetering over the edge of a real 400-foot cliff but Taylor insisted on doing the scene sans stunt men and subjected himself to repeated takes. During an airplane sequence, Taylor was asked to shake and move so that the plane (actually a stationary set) appeared to be going through turbulence while Taylor also improvised his dialogue, a task he pulled off perfectly.
Director Jack Cardiff was a former cinematographer who won an Oscar for Black Narcissus (1947), received Academy Award nominations for three more films and accepted an honorary award in 2001. He's also had a sporadic directing career which includes a true oddity - Scent of Mystery (1960), the only film ever made in Smell-O-Vision, Young Cassidy (1965) starring Rod Taylor as writer Sean O'Casey (the film was initially started by John Ford who was unable to complete it due to health reasons), and the cult favorite Girl on a Motorcycle (1968) starring Marianne Faithful.
Producer: Jon Penington
Director: Jack Cardiff
Screenplay: Peter Yeldham, based on the novel by John E. Gardner
Cinematography: Edward Scaife
Costume Design: Joan Bridge, Elizabeth Haffenden
Film Editing: Ernest Walter
Original Music: Lalo Schifrin
Principal Cast: Rod Taylor (Boysie Oakes), Trevor Howard (Col. Mostyn), Jill St. John (Iris MacIntosh), Wilfrid Hyde-White (Chief), David Tomlinson (Quadrant), Akim Tamiroff (Sheriek), Eric Sykes (Griffen), Gabriella Licudi (Corale), John Le Mesurier (Chekhov).
C-104m. Letterboxed. Closed captioning.
By Lang Thompson
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