Raquel Welsh

  • The Biggest Bundle of Them All (1968)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2022) While my appreciation for 1960s crime caper The Biggest Bundle of Them All remains temperate, the film has appreciated slightly in time because it’s a wholly average example of something that has also appreciated in the intervening decades. It’s not a new phenomenon—the Tarantino-clones of the late 1990s are far more interesting now that we’re not deluged with them; the classical musicals of the 1950s are still great fun now that we’re not as tired of the genre as audiences were at the time. So, anyone in the mood for a 1960s crime caper comedy is on rather firm ground with The Biggest Bundle of Them All, especially considering the wild casting of the film, its European style (courtesy of its setting, its English director Ken Annakin and having been shot in Cinecittà) and pop-optimism. It pairs well with the later The Italian Job (despite not being in the same league) in how it plays with lucrative violence-free crime and ironic punishment. The casting spans decades of celebrities, with old-school titans such as Edward G. Robinson and Italian neorealist director Vittoria de Sica (!) rubbing shoulders with then-newer actors such as Raquel Welsh and Robert Wagner and black cinema pioneer Godfrey Cambridge. Welsh is clearly the sex-symbol hook on which much of the film was sold at the time—and The Biggest Bundle of Them All doesn’t pass an occasion to showcase her assets, even in a small part. It’s risky to call the film funny—overdone in many ways, a bit lame in others, it’s perhaps more accurate to call it “light-hearted.” There’s untapped potential in the final result: the film doesn’t quite manage to capitalize on its assets, leaving viewers amused but dissatisfied. It probably does play better now to anyone who’s a fan of those 1960s crime comedies.

  • Fantastic Voyage (1966)

    Fantastic Voyage (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) I’ve been on a self-imposed quest to watch past nominees and winners of the Best Special Effects Academy Award, and it’s proven a far more interesting project than many of the Best Picture nominees. Of course, it’s a category that dating faster than any other, and Fantastic Voyage is a prime example of the sort. It’s the kind of movie that exists because of special effects, so there’s no surprise if the plot takes a distant backseat to the visuals. (My first exposure to the story was through Isaac Asimov’s novelization, which had two distinctions: For one, Asimov wrote quickly while the film experienced one delay after another; for another, Asimov as a trained scientist and practising SF writer left no plot holes unexplained—leading to a situation where his novel had been out for six months by the time the dumbed-down movie came out, leading many to assume that the film was an inferior adaptation of Asimov’s concept. ) The narrative confusion and outdated technology are exhibited from the film’s first few minutes, as the film ponderously takes us through “high technology” offices that look ridiculously dated, barely explaining a premise that makes increasingly less sense. Then Fantastic Voyage compounds its own technology and narrative problems by treating its sole female character (played by Raquel Welsh, no less) as a piece of art to be ogled. In the dialogue. From a contemporary perspective, we can deal with the outdated special effects far more easily than the misogyny. There’s plenty of evidence that usually-competent director Richard Fleischer was outmatched by the premise, starting with the lack of energy in the editing. Some stylistic intentions (such as the wordless opening, or the first forty minutes without a score) become more annoying than inspiring, and that’s without discussing the increasingly psychedelic visuals. Despite my best intentions, I can’t say that I enjoyed Fantastic Voyage. While there’s some charm in seeing how they faked some of the visual effects, the film itself feels long and ponderous. It also doesn’t help that a much better take on the same idea—Innerspace—has been released since then.