Back in the 60s Frank Sinatra was still considered the
essence of cool, right alongside Steve McQueen. Both had their followings and
Sinatra had made a successful crossover to films from his singing days. Both
were still doing well at this time. The best part was that he didn’t attempt to
be the swinging cool cat ala what the teens of the time were doing but did so
on his own terms. It was at this time that he starred in two films based on the
character of Tony Rome.
The first film, TONY ROME, featured Sinatra as the title
character, an ex-cop turned private detective in Miami who lives on a boat. In
response to a request from old friend Ralph Turpin he takes a young woman named
Diana Pines (Sue Lyon) to his boat after she’s found unconscious in a hotel.
Her father Rudolph Kosterman (Simon Oakland) then hires Rome to find out why
his daughter is acting so strange.
At the same time he’s hired by Diana and her mother to find
a missing diamond pin she lost that night. The end result is that he gets
chloroformed, beaten up and finds Turpin dead in his office. Instead of giving
the police plenty of information to solve the case, Rome prefers to work on his
own. With the help of a divorcee he meets (Jill St. John), he sets out to
discover who killed his friend as well as the case he was hired for.
The movie is a straightforward detective story of the
hard-boiled type. Sinatra is cool as can be, a swinging cat who takes nothing
from anyone. Before the end comes around you know not only will he solve the
mysteries he will do so with a vengeance.
The second film, LADY IN CEMENT, has Rome seeking treasure
off the coast of Florida only to discover a woman with her feet encased in a
cement block on the ocean floor. He reports this to his friend on the police
force and lets it go at that until he’s hired by Waldo Gronski (Dan Blocker) to
find a woman named Sandra Lomax.
While searching for the woman he meets Kit Forrester (Raquel
Welch), a woman who was hosting a party Sandra was at. This meeting doesn’t sit
well with gangster Al Mungar (Martin Gabel). Somewhere along the way Rome
figures that all of these characters have intersected at some point and sifting
through the clues he has he hopes to find Sandra.
Once more Sinatra portrays the hip cool detective, a man who
knows the seedier side of the world and can coast through it to find out what
he needs to know. Welch offers a decent performance here though most would
think it was only her figure that got her parts the way Hollywood used her. She
was a better actress than most gave her credit for. The story is solid, the
clues are there and the solution one you search for while watching making it a
decent mystery.
Twilight Time has released the two films together and they
do their usual bang up job as far as the presentation of the film itself.
Extras include an isolated score track with some effects, an audio commentary
track with film historians Eddy Friedfeld, Anthony Latino, Lee Pfeiffer and
Paul Scrabo and the original theatrical trailers. As always production was
limited to just 3,000 copies so pick one up now if you are interested.
Click here to order.
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