Hot Millions

In getting through the backlog of movies on my DVR, even though I've only had the current one for a few months, I recently watched Hot Millions.

Peter Ustinov plays Marcus Pendleton, who at the start of the movie is finishing up his sentence in a British prison for embezzlement, although he's been a model prisons as shown by the warden letting Marcus do the warden's tax returns; this shows, however, that Marcus hasn't really reformed, as he's looking to take as many dubious tax deductions as possible.

Marcus was caught out in his last con job by one of the new supercomputers that in those days filled an entire room; in fact, in looking for a new job he's finding that the new computers are going to make crimes like embezzlement especially difficult for people like him. However, he finds out that one Caesar Smith (Robert Morley), a computer expert, is about to head to South Americas for a long sabbatical.

So Marcus comes up with the idea of passing himself off as Caesar and getting a job at the London branch of Tacanco, an American conglomerate. Perhaps he can use the computer to his advantage. There, he gets hired by the head of the branch, Carlton Klemper (Karl Malden), but Carlton's right-hand man, Willard Gnatpole (Bob Newhart), immediately suspects something isn't quite right with Caesar.

Meanwhile, Caesar/Marcus returns to his old flat in London, where he's got a new neighbor in Patty (Maggy Smith), a nice woman who is unable to hold down a steady job because she's flighty if nice. Caesar eventually falls in love with Patty, although his scheme is put in jeopardy when she gets a job, however briefly, at Tacanco.

Back at Tacanco, Caesar finds that it's going to be difficult to hack in to the computer because it has a blue light that, if the circuit is broken, will signal a security breach. (The movie was released in 1968, so you can forgive the primitive and unrealistic security system.) One day, he sees that that lady janitors are using the computer's heat to make tea for themselves by kicking the computer in just the right spot to get a key panel to go up that, happily for Caesar, will also allow him to bypass the security system.

Caesar then sets about reprogramming the computer to invest in a bunch of phony shell companies that he's set up in various European cities, bribing small business owners with a share of the proceeds. It's so lucrative that he keeps coming home with large amounts of foreign currency that he's forgotten about stuffed in his jacket pockets, something that Patty, who by now is his wife, notices.

The scheme is so audacious and far-fetched -- seriously, these titans of business don't realize these are bogus companies? -- that it's bound to be discovered, especially with Gnatpole not trusting Caesar one bit. And sure enough, it is found out, forcing Caesar/Marcus and his wife to flee to South America since they don't have an extradition treaty with the UK. How everything gets resolved after that, is, well, an exercise for the viewer.

I've always found that Peter Ustinov is an acquired taste, in that a little bit of him goes a long way, and to be honest, I also found that to be the case in Hot Millions. There are good ideas in the movie, but something about Ustinov's presence kept putting me off, especially since I didn't see how anybody could fall for his nonsense. Everybody else in the cast, however, does well with the material they're given, and the period interest in early computers also makes the movie worth a watch, despite the flaws I felt it has.

Hot Millions got a DVD release courtesy of the Warner Archive, although this is one of those movies that the TCM Shop inexplicably claims is on backorder. You can get it at Amazon, however, and also watch via streaming if that's your thing.