The Richard Boone Show (TV Series) All the Blood of Yesterday (1964) User Reviews

Action Man versus Nostalgia

[lor_ · 16 December 2023]

Richard Boone as director tries to pull an Orson Welles in this disappointing episode of his great repertory series. The actors elevate the lousy cloak & dagger material provided by the series' script supervisor William Gordon (who earlier delivered an excellent screenplay for "The Fling").

Warren Stevens impresses playing an action hero straight out of those European B movies starring George Nader, in a transparent tale of WW II veterans 20 years after, some idealistic (Stevens) and many cynical, inlcudng Boone, bad guy Guy Stockwell (giving a poor performance among the ensemble players) and a couple of earthy faux French femme fatales: Laura Devon and over-the-top Jeanette Nolan.

Boone includes plenty of jiu jitsu fight scenes for Stevens, but the show's pace is dull and the themes of romanticism (regarding heroic for a cause during the war) versus cynicism (very corny issues of compromise and going over to the dark side to survive) are trite. Welles specialized in these fanciful morality tales but for Boone the show lapses into parody..

Intrigue In Europe.

[searchanddestroy-1 · 7 January 2016]

The beginning brings you powerful action scenes, including a terrific fist fight between Stevens and a big guy with a knife. Great stunt play here. Boone is also very convincing in his character, an impressive one, be sure of it. It looks like an espionage yarn, a very mysterious story about a former action man during WW2, in the French resistance nets, who is involved in a dark case of intrigue and treason. I admit that, after the first ten minutes, the pace slows down a little, Richard Boone's character disappears and you have to be careful to follow the whole stuff. I expected better than this a bit complicated search of the traitor search scheme. I assure you that in the French resistance nets, there were bunches of last minutes members, guys who were experts in double deals, treachery, treason, who always took care of themselves instead of the group which they were supposed to fight for. Not the best of the series, but worth a look. And, again, I insist on the fist fights, which are outstanding, better than most of the ones we see even in the action movies now, in the 2010's. Superb ending, even if not spectacular.