Phil Karlson

The Wrecking Crew

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Dean Martin close-up

1968’s The Wrecking Crew was the last of the Matt Helm movies. A series of chintzy James Bond knock-offs – Faux Faux Seven? Junk Bond? – starring Dean Martin as a spy laidback to the point of requiring resuscitation, it had pretty much exhausted the seam by this fourth outing. Box office wasn’t great either so when Martin’s co-star, Sharon Tate, got murdered it made for a handy smokescreen. In public utterances Martin said that her death had taken the fun out of the films and that’s why he was giving up. In reality… who really knows? As for plot: a bullion heist so huge that it needs to be kept quiet otherwise … Read more

Kansas City Confidential

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Joe holds a gun to the head of Tony (Lee Van Cleef)

Here’s a film about a perfectly planned heist, so perfect that it hasn’t made it into the city records, Kansas City Confidential announces as it opens, in one of those scrolling on-screen scene-setters that really should be read in an authoritative voice (but isn’t). And then, in the first of many flat illogicalities, the movie turns out to be about a heist that isn’t perfect at all. It goes wrong. Not at first, or not at first by very much. But go wrong it does. The film can take it. On its release in 1952 it was so successful that it spawned a string of other “Confidential” movies. New York. Chicago. Hong Kong. … Read more