The Unstoppable Man (UK, 1961) 67 min B&W DIR: Terry Bishop. PROD: Jack Lamont, John Pellatt. SCR: Terry Bishop, Alun Falconer, Paddy Manning, based on Michael Gilbert’s novel, Amateur in Violence. MUSIC: Bill McGuffie. DOP: Arthur Grant. CAST: Cameron Mitchell, Marius Goring, Harry H. Corbett, Lois Maxwell, Denis Gilmore. (Argo Film Productions)
Back in my hot youth, I would play the “Cameron Mitchell Drinking Game”. At every new scene that you see the actor appear with a cigarette, take a drink. Any modest imbiber would be under the table before the third act of Nightmare in Wax. I can’t do the drinking game anymore, however it’s still amusing to keep track. The cigarette count is less here, if because the movie is only an hour long.
But seriously, The Unstoppable Man is another interesting credit in the actor’s career of unusual international productions. This second-feature cheapie is also another late 50s-early 60s British production featuring an American star. Mitchell is American businessman James Kennedy, operating out of a London office, whose son Jimmy (Denis Gilmore) gets kidnapped for ransom.
This programmer is diverting because Kennedy never acts like a helpless victim. Rather, he views the kidnapping as a business deal: “I have what they want; they have what I want.” Surely, he’s concerned about Jimmy (although his cigarette intake remains about the same), but he seemingly doesn’t break a sweat in cleverly getting the upper hand on the crooks. He quickly starts dealing the cards with a television appearance which can be viewed more as a business negotiation than a plea. When he pays the ransom, he cleverly uses several of his employees to trail the crooks right up to their hideout. He even pays more than the asked-for 10,000 pounds, knowing that some dishonest henchmen will pilfer some of the extra funds, and out themselves.
Marius Goring appears as the Scotland Yard Inspector Hazelrigg, whose offers to help are frustrated as Kennedy takes control of the situation, and then finally (though subtly) stands aside to let Kennedy conclude his “business deal”. In an interesting bit of casting, Canadian Lois Maxwell (who moved to Britain in her teens, and was soon to be immortalized as “Miss Moneypenny” in the James Bond films) appears as Kennedy’s sister Helen.
This efficient cheapie dispenses with any frills (a two-shot of Helen and Jimmy pointing offscreen is matted over stock footage of London’s tourist traps), does what it needs to do in an hour, and is out. (The film ends with a throwaway line by Hazelrigg instead of the expected sentimental fadeout of Kennedy hugging Jimmy.) The highlights are the excitingly detailed “cat and mouse” sequence where Kennedy’s employees follow “the drop” all around the city, and the film’s final minute where Kennedy comes to the rescue with a flamethrower! Usually, this might be a spoiler, but since a lot of the poster ads use it (including the Sinister Cinema DVD), audiences are conditioned to expect it. It’s one of the few action sequences, but well worth waiting for. Still, what precedes it is completely satisfying way to spend an hour on a Saturday night, due to its unusual spin on the “ransom” plot, with Arthur Grant’s crisp cinematography, and Bill McGuffie’s bouncy jazz score.
The clever opening credits shimmer over a film developing tank while the crooks wait for a photo of Jimmy to appear, except that the sequence cuts away to a separate title card of the film’s name. Was this produced or previously released under another title? The IMDb doesn’t list one. Speaking of which, it is thrilling at this age to find films on IMDb that still have no reviews, like several of the other features made by Argo Film Productions. (This title didn’t either, when I picked it up at one of Sinister Cinema’s $98 sales. I just rolled the dice, and glad I did!) For incurable cinema archaeologists like yours truly, this presents another enticing mystery lost to history, as several of their titles await resurrection. (David Hedison as The Son of Robin Hood and Robert Ryan in The Crooked Road are perhaps the better remembered of Argo’s output, though I’d also be curious to see the Macdonald Carey thriller Stranglehold, and the spy film The Long Shadow with John Crawford.)
The Sinister Cinema DVD precedes the movie with a great trailer for the 1960 beatnik nudie epic, The Prime Time, which was the first movie credit for Herschell Gordon Lewis!
Oh yes- the Cameron Mitchell cigarette count came to seven.
Greg Woods
Greg Woods has been a film enthusiast since his teens, and began his writing "career" at the same time- prolific in capsule reviews of everything he had watched, first on index cards, then those hardcover dollar store black journals, then an old Mac IIsi. He founded The Eclectic Screening Room in 2001, as a portal to share his film love with the world, and find some like-minded enthusiasts along the way. In addition to having worked in the film industry for over two decades, he has been a co-programmer of films at Trash Palace, and a programmer/co-founder of the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. He has also written for Broken Pencil, CU-Confidential, Micro-Film, and is currently working on his first novel. His secret desire is for someone to interview him for a podcast or a DVD extra.