Reviewed by DAVID L. VINEYARD:         


CROSSPLOT. United Artists, 1969. Roger Moore, Martha Heyer, Claudia Lange, Alexis Kanner, Francis Matthews, Bernard Lee. Screenplay by Leigh Vance, with additional dialogue by John Kruse. Director: Alvin Rakoff.

    It was all dressed up like a dog’s dinner. Doesn’t make any sense, any of it.

             — Roger Moore

CROSSPLOT Roger Moore

   This swiftly paced thriller made between Roger Moore’s stints as the Saint and James Bond is an entertaining exercise in minor Hitchcock with good overall performances and a complex and twisty plot.

   Moore is Gary Fenn, a playboy advertising executive in swinging sixties London who finds himself up to his neck in intrigue a la John Buchan when the bad guys have the bright idea to use him to find Marla Kugash (Claudie Lange), a Hungarian model who has overheard an assassination plot at the hands of her aunt, television producer Jo Grinling (Martha Hyer), and assassin Ruddock (Francis Matthews — television’s Paul Temple and a Hammer film regular).

   Written by Saint script regulars Leigh Vance and John Kruse (who even wrote some of the non-Charteris Saint novels), and directed by Saint regular Alvin Rakoff, with much of the production crew from the Saint series (which had just wrapped up), this mostly looks like a made-for-television movie with a bit of nudity thrown in, but isn’t bad for that.

   The comedy is light, the suspense mild but effective, and there is at least one well done chase (despite some bad back projection) with Moore in a vintage car being pursued across the British countryside by a low flying helicopter.

   Despite the made for television look of the film, it has some effective moments when it almost rises above its television roots, and a likable and attractive cast hold it together.

   Moore was a natural at this sort of thing, though having just played Simon Templar and soon to do The Persuaders and then James Bond, it’s a bit hard to imagine that he’s any real danger from this lot of conspirators.

   Lange proves an attractive and offbeat heroine, and has a nice tasteful nude scene. Hyer is largely wasted in what is little more than the guest villain in a Man From U.N.C.L.E. episode, but Bernard Lee, M in the James Bond films, has a nice villainous turn to class the proceedings up.

   Complete with corny, but catchy, theme song, and psychedelic title credits, this is light entertaining fare you will likely feel more affection for than it actually deserves thanks to an attractive cast and low ambitions.

   It does exactly what it sets out to do without embarrassing itself, its cast, or the viewers’ intelligence, which is higher praise than many a more ambitious thriller. It’s a lightweight romantic comedy thriller, and that’s all it had any ambition to be. You can’t complain too loudly when a film succeeds at exactly what it intended to be, and nothing more.