Dead Heat On A Merry Go Round -- 1966

Strange and somewhat ambiguous title for a strange and somewhat ambiguous movie. We're not talking strange and ambiguous in a David Lynch sort of way, we're talking strange and ambiguous in the I-think-the-director-left-out-some-important-information kind of way. The theme of this review is

We start with James Coburn as either a mental patient or a prisoner (I'm not sure which) who gets out on parole, and it turns out is sleeping with the prison psychologist. Well, for some reason, he skips his once-a-month parole appointment to go out of town for some reason having to do with money (I think). Well, he leaves with $5,000 and is supposed to acquire another $85,000 before he returns. Again, no reason is stated why he has to do this. So he ends up in Boston and talks to a guy there about selling something. I don't know what he was selling, but it had a value of nearly $70,000 and he was only going to get a third of that. Along the way he marries some chick, and at least that reason was clear: he was too well known in Los Angeles, and he used her to get an apartment...or so it seems. This was probably the most interesting story thread, since we got the most explanation for it.

We finally get into the bank heist portion of the story, and while how we got there was incredibly ambiguous, the story of how they're going to do it mostly made sense. I did think their idea of timing it with the incoming Russian premier was clever in using the hubbub around him to mask their operation where on a normal day, the bank would get top priority. Also, the plan surrounding getting the money out of the airport area was exceeding clever, if not exceedingly risky. It made for some good final tension. When we got back to the final story of the wife (who we do feel a bit sorry for since, after all, she was conned), we get what is supposed to be the final insult (but I'm not sure to whom). We learn that someone died and left the estate to her; trouble is we don't know who this dead person is, nor do we know her relationship with that person. We assume it's the person we met earlier, but can't be certain since names are rarely exchanged here.

What fell apart in this one was character development. We knew very little about these characters or their lives outside of their purpose in the plot, which made pretty much everyone very one or two dimensional at the most. It appears that the script may have been cursed with the same thing that afflicted Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes: the "I forgot to put the characters' names in the dialogue" syndrome. We have quite a few characters and some of them are named occasionally, but on the whole we have very little idea who is who, and beyond that, no one talks about anything. We get lots of James Coburn going around and disguising himself badly, but very little in the way of meaningful discussion either about who everyone is or what is going on in the plot.

I'll also add that while most of the actors were pretty good, the first girl that Coburn seduces in a horrible French accent needed acting lessons in a big way. Imagine a 12 year old trying to sound like Marilyn Monroe and you'll get the idea. She delivered a monologue that would make David Lynch proud, since I sure couldn't make heads or tails out of much of what she spouted.

So in the end, this film might have been good due to its apparently ironic twist at the end. The problem was that everything was so hard to follow and lacked any explanation for what was going on that I spent more time trying to figure out what was going on (much less why) than I was able to spend enjoying the film. Personally, I can barely qualify it as a good effort; it just comes off as sloppy.

So why did I get this movie? Why, to see a young Harrison Ford as an uncredited bellboy in one scene, of course. It's like playing "Where's Waldo?". This was his very first big screen role at the ripe young age of 23 and his trademark smirk was still there eleven years before Star Wars.