Inside Out
                             
Director: Peter Duffell
Year: 1975
Rating: 6.0
An easy-going tension free Mission Impossible styled caper. The only issue is whether they will get away with it and the viewer is certainly rooting for them. It is hard to figure out exactly why this film was made - a natural for a TV movie but theatrically seems a push. But it has two big TV stars - Telly Savalas in the middle of the Kojak series and Robert Culp still popular from the run of I, Spy. Throw in older stars like James Mason and Aldo Ray and you have the making of a good cast. Savalas comes at you in two cinematic forms - the charming rogue and ladies man or the psycho who would cut out your guts for a souvenir. Here he is the former - all polish and hand kissing. Do men still kiss a woman's hand or has that gone the way of the waltz? Director Peter Duffell (nearly all TV shows) offers a breezy well-paced film full of bonhomie and simplicity. Why make a caper complicated when it can be done so easily. Nothing here rings true, so just go along for the ride.

 

Savalas is a conman but times are a little tough and he has bills to pay. So, when he gets a call from Mason who plays a German ex-commander of the prison camp Savalas was in with an offer, Savalas hops over to Germany. Mason - doing his best German accent - tells him a story. During the war, some gold bars were picked up by the SS but never delivered. $6 million dollars worth of it. Enough to get Savalas interested. A few hitches though - the only man who knows where it was buried is being held prisoner as a Nazi for war crimes in a citadel with loads of guards. He is the only prisoner there. Savalas recruits an old friend - Culp - who is the planner - and another old friend who is one of the guards - Aldo Ray. Now they just have to come up with a plan. Which is basically out of a Mission Impossible show - only the fake faces are missing.

 

This all inexplicably goes well, and they get the information - but the gold is in East Berlin. Is that a problem for our boys? Nah. Just put on a few military uniforms and sail through the checkpoints. If I was a more demanding viewer, this might have bothered me - lazy scriptwriting - but this was just what the doctor ordered for the mood I was in. Savalas at his most charming, good friends, no bickering, no backstabbing and a plot that in the real world would have no chance but in the movies we will take it.