Year:  1967
Rating: 6.0

---

From time to time I get in the mood to see a particular actor in a few films - this time for whatever reason I was thinking of Raquel Welch. By every standard known to man, she was more a presence than an actress and her presence basically resided in her chest. Still I have always liked her and her films are almost always flimsy but enjoyable. She was just unable to unmoor her character from herself though she did get better as an actress as she got older. She is still going strong at 80 preserved like a pickled jar trying so hard to keep her looks and legend. Relax. Get old. You deserve it. On talk shows in which she is always very articulate and amusing, I keep worrying that her face will become unhinged and fall down to her waist. Not yet and I wish her many more years.


Raquel Welch is Fathom. In a green bikini, a shapely sun dress, sky diving, being shot at by a spear gun, being pushed out of an airplane, blowing up a boat, being run after by a bull in a bullring while wearing a slinky red dress or just being rather adorable. This is Raquel in her prime and it is a fine thing to see. For me Raquel and Ursula Andress were the premier pop sex bombs of the 1960's after the ones in the 1950's had begun to fade. The ones as a boy who made me realize just how different women were from us. They had a cool factor that a Monroe or Mansfield never had - as much as I like them too - it was just different because the 60's were different. The Italian sex stars were of course in a class by themselves.


Raquel has an interesting back story that shows how determined and tough she was. Born Jo Raquel Tejada in 1940, she was married with two children by 1963 when the couple separated. And she decided she would be a star in films and grinded it out as a weather woman, modeling, a cocktail waitress and then small parts leading to bigger parts leading to stardom in Fantastic Voyage and One Million Years B.C. in 1966. By Fathom she was a star though not many took her seriously as an actress - then or ever really - but she had a distinctive look and attitude that worked. And the poster of her in One Million Years BC was every teenage boy's fantasy.


Fathom is fairly light in nature - though a few people are murdered - but the tone feels breezy, the soundtrack is pure elevator pop and we all know Raquel will be just fine. She is a skydiver and gets talked into parachuting onto a man's property (Anthony Franciosa) by British Intelligence (Ronald Fraser) and setting a bug. She is told that he has a device that could set off a nuclear bomb. Another wealthy man (Clive Revill) is after the Fire Dragon as well as is another man (Tom Adams) who seems much too innocent. Of course, everyone is lying to Fathom and spinning one yarn and one twist and turn after another. About 2/3s of the way through I began to realize that this was sort of a remake of The Maltese Falcon with a Fire Dragon instead. Raquel is no Bogart but she is much sexier.