Beat the Devil (1953)

Early 50's adventure comedy directed by John Huston, and adapted by Huston and Truman Capote from the 1951 thriller novel of the same name by former communist Claud Cockburn, whose son Alexander Cockburn would go on to be a columnist for The Nation and I think that may have been how I first became aware of this film. Sadly this movie is not as interesting as the previous sentence. Now a minor cult film owning to its impressive cast and early camp sensibilities star Humphrey Bogart was said to hate this film, because the movie lost money and Bogie had invested some of his own in it. Like the later 'Ocean's 11 films', both the Rat Pack and 21st Century versions, the logic here seemed to be lets get a lot of cool people together, have a party and make a movie. In this case I found little to grab onto in the film, no one to really invest in, nothing happening that was really that interesting. Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Robert Morley, Peter Lorre, all can be rather interesting though here not so much, Jones though is giving it her best effort by the way, can't say that for the others. Film also features James Bond's first cinematic 'M' Bernard Lee as a Scotland Yard inspector, and at 93 Gina Lollobrida it's last surviving main cast member. *1/2