It's easy for us in 2023 to forget just how big of a deal Racquel Welch was. I was born in 1972, so by the time I hit puberty, she was playing the role of the former sex symbol. But once you see her in this film, it all makes sense.
She's Juliana in this, the girlfriend of criminal Harry Price (Robert Wagner), whose gang has taken former Chicago gangster Cesare Celli (Vittorio De Sica, yes, the director of Bicycle Thieves) captive. Yet none of the older man's fellow bosses and none of his henchmen try to save him. No one is more insulted by Cesare, who decides to teach Price and his gang how to steal $6 million in plutonium.
Ten days before shooting, director Ken Annakin realized that he'd read a similar script called The Happening. That movie was being made by Sam Spiegel at Columbia, who got 15% of the profits for this, got to approve the script, changed the title from The Italian Caper and delayed it for six months after his movie.
There's a great cast in this, with Edward G. Robinson as a professor of crime, plus Godfrey Cambridge, Davy Kaye, Francesco Mulé, Mickey Knox and Victor Spinetti. The soundtrack is pretty choice as well, because you have Johnny Matthis singing "Most of All There's You," which had music written by Riz Ortolani.
It's funny reading interviews with Annakin and Robinson, as they both didn't think much of Welch, who they either said winged all of her lines and didn't learn them or that she was just using her body instead of being an actress. Robert Wagner wrote that she was late so many times that Robinson cut a ten-minute promo on her, leaving Welch in tears.
She was late again the next day.
She's Juliana in this, the girlfriend of criminal Harry Price (Robert Wagner), whose gang has taken former Chicago gangster Cesare Celli (Vittorio De Sica, yes, the director of Bicycle Thieves) captive. Yet none of the older man's fellow bosses and none of his henchmen try to save him. No one is more insulted by Cesare, who decides to teach Price and his gang how to steal $6 million in plutonium.
Ten days before shooting, director Ken Annakin realized that he'd read a similar script called The Happening. That movie was being made by Sam Spiegel at Columbia, who got 15% of the profits for this, got to approve the script, changed the title from The Italian Caper and delayed it for six months after his movie.
There's a great cast in this, with Edward G. Robinson as a professor of crime, plus Godfrey Cambridge, Davy Kaye, Francesco Mulé, Mickey Knox and Victor Spinetti. The soundtrack is pretty choice as well, because you have Johnny Matthis singing "Most of All There's You," which had music written by Riz Ortolani.
It's funny reading interviews with Annakin and Robinson, as they both didn't think much of Welch, who they either said winged all of her lines and didn't learn them or that she was just using her body instead of being an actress. Robert Wagner wrote that she was late so many times that Robinson cut a ten-minute promo on her, leaving Welch in tears.
She was late again the next day.