raquel welch

lady in cement movie poster

In my review of Tony Rome (1967), I noted that it wasn’t a bad film, but that it lacked a certain something, that it didn’t “pop.” The thing is, it was so close to being a very good film. With a few changes, it could have been brilliant. It was close enough that I decided to watch the sequel, Lady in Cement, in hopes that the filmmaker would make the proper corrections and turn the story into something wonderful.

Sometimes, even the smartest people are wrong. Lady in Cement does make some changes—all the wrong ones. In my opinion, Tony Rome needed a sharper script, some tighter one-liners, and an endlessly cool lead. What Lady in Cement does is lean into the more sexist and homophobic tropes, make the jokes much broader and, therefore, lame, and allow Frank Sinatra to be even less interesting and cool than before.

It starts out strong. Tony Rome is looking for some Spanish gold that was lost at sea in the 1500s and instead stumbles across a dead woman at the bottom of the ocean, her feet encased in concrete. (I do always wonder about these situations – did they force the woman to stand in wet concrete for hours until it dried, or did they kill her first and then someone stood her up until it dried?)

He reports the incident to our friendly neighborhood detective, Santini (Richard Conte), and carries on with his life. That doesn’t last long as a big old brute named Waldo Gronsky (Dan Blocker) hires Rome to find a lady named Sondra Lomax. Naturally, this case connects to the dead lady with cement shoes.

Raquel Welch makes an appearance as a lady who threw a party that Sondra Lomax attended. She’s connected to some gangster who gives our hero trouble. There’s a lot of shoe leather questioning at local hotspots and more than a lot of dumb gay jokes. The 1960s were a curious time in cinema as gay people were suddenly allowed to exist but they usually wind up just being stereotypes and the butt of dumb jokes.

None of the story is all that interesting, and the filmmaking doesn’t perk it up any. I’ve decided that Sinatra, who was in his 50s at the time, just doesn’t have that cool factor at that point to make his Tony Rome <ahem> sing. I love the guy, but he just doesn’t work for me in these films.

What we’re left with is a movie that could have been a lot of fun to watch but winds up being kind of a bore.

the last of sheila

Rian Johnson listed this film as an influence on Glass Onion, his recent Knives Out sequel for Netflix (which is excellent, I highly recommend it) so I thought I’d give it a watch. Almost immediately the influences come flying right at you from the television screen.

The story involves a group of rich, beautiful, (mostly) young people who have found success in the movie industry. They’ve been invited by their friend Clinton (James Coburn) for a week aboard his yacht where he had prepared some delightfully complicated game.

The game involves revealing select secrets from each person (alcoholic, ex-convict, homosexual, child molester, etc) and will conclude with the revelation of who ran over Clinton’s wife one year prior and didn’t have the decency to stay with her and maybe call for help. Everyone more or less enjoys the game until someone actually dies and then it becomes a very real murder mystery.

Glass Onion is a lot bigger, a lot bolder, and a lot more fun, but The Last of Sheila is rather delightful in its own way. The cast includes James Mason, Ian McShane, Raquel Welch, and Dyan Cannon. It was shot on location in the Mediterranean. It was written by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins of all people.

Clinton is a movie producer and he has an idea bout making a movie about his dead wife’s life. He wants everyone he’s invited on the boat to help him make it. They, scriptwriters, directors, and actors all, desperately need him and this movie to help their sagging careers. It is full of twists and turns, mysteries and reveals. The cast is clearly having a good time.

It isn’t quite as punchy as I’d like it to be, and the direction by Herbert Ross never excites. He certainly doesn’t make great use of the beautiful setting. It feels very much of its time. One of the big secrets is the character is homosexual which wouldn’t be a big deal now, but in 1973 could be quite detrimental for a celebrity working in Hollywood. That is more scandalous within the film (as is being an alcoholic and a shoplifter) than the revelation that one of them is a child molester which is shrugged off by the characters and the film. But mostly the film is a lot of fun and if you liked Glass Onion I highly recommend it.