THE LIQUIDATOR (1965)

In a black & white flashback to WWII, we see American soldier Boysie Oakes (Rod Taylor) more or less accidentally save the life of the British soldier Mostyn (Trevor Howard). Twenty years later (in color), Mostyn, now a colonel in British intelligence, is dealing with a spy scandal and his boss (Wilfrid Hyde-White) proposes that they kill off any of their spies who raise any red flag (i.e. suspicion of betrayal). Thinking of Boysie as a lethal killer, Mostyn visits him at the Bird Café, a bird-filled diner that Boysie owns, and gets him to join British intelligence. He is trained and given a fancy bachelor pad apartment (and a supply of women on the side) which he enjoys until Mostyn, telling him that life is more than "sex and sunlamps," lets him know that his job is to be a cold-blooded assassin of traitor spies. What Mostyn doesn't know is that Boysie can't stand violence, so Boysie subcontracts out the killing jobs to a pro named Griffen who is very good at his job and not terribly demanding when it comes to payment. Boysie then settles into a fling with Mostyn's secretary Iris (Jill St. John) despite being warned that spies should not fraternize with civilians. When Boysie takes Iris to the French Riviera, he gets tangled up in an espionage exercise in which he is to attempt to kill the Duke of Edinburgh, using blanks, of course. What he doesn't know is that he is being used by other spies to actually assassinate the Duke.

This movie was only on my radar as one of any number of minor James Bond rip-offs of the mid-60s—it even has a bombastic theme song sung by Shirley Bassey (of "Goldfinger" fame)— but it turned out to be a fairly delightful adventure, positioned somewhere between spoofy and serious. The character of Boysie Oakes, created by novelist John Gardner, went on to be featured in several novels but this is his only movie which is kind of a shame, although "reluctant spy who hates violence" is not the strongest plot device on which to hang a film series. But Rod Taylor is so good, I'd have watched a sequel if he'd been in it. He's handsome and masculine and personable while still making the character's squeamishness about violence read as real. The reviewer at Mysteryfile.com notes that Taylor can come off as "dashing and frightened out of his wits at the same time" and this may be the key to his performance here. Trevor Howard and Jill St. John are his equals, Akim Tamiroff is an oily villain and David Tomlinson pops in about halfway through as a character with ambiguous goals. Eric Sykes plays the paid assassin as a regular working guy. The movie almost splits into thirds, with part one being the hired killer spy spoof, part two being the fling between Boysie and Iris, and part three being the more serious spy endgame with some requisite plot twists thrown in. Even though the tone shifts are problematic at times, I found this quite enjoyable. Pictured are Taylor and St. John. [TCM]