This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. I'm back after several weeks off, in part because there were some themes I couldn't think of good movies for, and in part because of everything going on in regular life. But this month we have five mystery-related themes which I think I should be able to come up with movies for. The first of them is "Capers", which isn't really a mystery theme so much as a suspense theme, since we already know whodunit. In any case I decided to go with three movies that have British ties to them:
The League of Gentlemen (1960). Not to be confused with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, this movie stars Jack Hawkins as a military man who's been cashiered out of the service. So he contacts several other men in the same situation who are all blackmailable and in need of money, and comes up with a scheme to rob a bank. Of course, things don't quite go right, but you'll have to watch the movie to see how.
11 Harrowhouse (1974). Charles Grodin plays a diamond dealer who travels back and forth between the US and UK. De Beers, the South African company, artifically keeps supply low to maintain high prices, and wealthy Trevor Howard wants Grodin to get some of those diamonds -- by vacuuming them out of the vault. John Gielgud runs the exchange where the vault is; James Mason plays a terminally ill man willing to help in the heist; and Candice Bergen plays Grodin's girlfriend.
The Italian Job (1969). Michael Caine plays a criminal who gets word of a plan to steal a shipment of gold bullion in Italy during an Italy-England soccer match, when the confluence of the two events is going to cause such a commotion that they'll have a better chance of getting away with it. Noël Coward plays a rich man stuck in prison who might be able to finance the scheme, and Benny Hill is among the people brought in to carry it out. The famous climax involves Caine and Co. driving Mini Coopers through Turin, with a cliffhanger ending.
3 comments:
You say not to be confused with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but that's immediately what I thought of. lol. I worked at a theater when that came out and it was affectionately called "LXG"
I watched The Italian Job for the first time this summer. I enjoyed most of it except for the ending. :(
I have not seen the first 2 nor heard of them but I really want to see them especially the one with Charles Grodin who just died, I think, this year. I enjoyed The Italian Job which was quite fun.
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