Promising, but inadequately worked out B-pic, handsomely shot on nighttime locations in Mexico City (using all Mexican tech below-the-line) for 20th/Fox’s lowball Panorama shingle. Ricardo Montalban (very hunky in a white-T) stars as an unemployed, single dad, a would-be musician, hoping to roust up the cash to buy his 10-yr-old son the guitar he’s promised. But soon after his nosy neighbors overhear him raising cash from an old flame, the woman is murdered by on-the-prowl serial killer Lee Marvin. All this seen by Montalban’s kid who’s up on the apartment roof for tonight’s fireworks. Hearing the neighbors finger his dad to the cops for the crime, he’s around to spot the real murderer, and follows him over a long night in hope of clearing his father. Meanwhile, Dad’s also spending the night out, buying that guitar at a pawn shop and romancing local pickup Anne Bancroft. (Anne Bancroft?) Eventually, police home in on Montalban just as Marvin, elsewhere in the city, spots the kid tailing him and starts up a most unlikely friendship. There’s real dramatic potential in all the crisscross relationships, and suspense as the cops move in. If only director Harry Horner, better known as an Oscar-winning art director, could handle his cast, fix bad lines & straighten out dumb story beats. (That’s all?) Still, worth a look as blueprint for a better film and for its darkly stylish lensing of unusual Mexico City locations.*
DOUBLE-BILL: The most interesting angle in the film is Marvin’s need for friendship with the kid. An idea nicely developed by Clint Eastwood & Kevin Costner in A PERFECT WORLD/’93.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *That darkly stylish lensing is wonderfully lit by . . . whom? There’s no credit for cinematographer, but I’m guessing Gabriel Figueroa, Mexico’s greatest lighting cameraman, perhaps working off-the-books while under contract elsewhere.
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