Tony Rome & Lady In Cement (Double Feature)

You could make a drinking game out of Twilight Time's new double feature Blu-ray release "Tony Rome" & "Lady in Cement," but if you did you'd probably regret it. This pair of Frank Sinatra gumshoe flicks are so rife with sexist, homophobic content that hoisting a glass or a bottle to each instance of vintage male crassness would leave you wrecked before you reached the halfway mark of the first title, let alone the poisoning you'd inflict on yourself trying to get through both movies.

The films are based on books by Marvin H. Albert, who wrote a trio of mystery novels featuring a private eye named Tony Rome. (Lucky for us the third book was never turned into a movie. Two is more than enough.) Sinatra plays Rome, a stereotypically hangdog, hard-drinking PI with all the trimmings: Remote, beautiful women at every juncture (Jill St. John, Raquel Welch), a strained relationship with his best friend on the local police force (played here by Richard Conte), and occasional pummelings endured by hulking henchmen or dished out to mincing gays (a drug dealer in "Tony Rome," and a pair of pimps in "Lady in Cement"). Footloose and hardboiled, Rome lives on a houseboat in Miami -- a symbol for his readiness to slip the moorings at any time and go where need or whim might take him.

The plot of "Tony Rome," released in 1967, is serviceable enough and entertainingly labyrinthine: When Tony's ex-partner (Robert J. Wilke), now a detective at a hotel, asks Tony for a favor -- deliver a drunk patron (Sue Lyon) home to her wealthy parents -- the detective finds himself drawn into a bewildering mystery involving a lost diamond pin. Heating things up is an equally hard-drinking and hard-boiled divorcee (Jill St. John) who provides both distraction and morsels of information. Almost randomly, a pair of lesbians with a weird, abusive mother-daughter vibe fetch up in the middle of things; a throwaway gag about a would-be client worried about that her "pussy won't smile" is typical of the film's level of sexual innuendo; and wolfishly eager camera zooms swoop in on women's backsides, though to be fair one of these laughable zeroings-in is followed by a quick cut to a boxer's hindquarters. (Hey, we're all guys here, right?)

The second movie, released just a year later, is every bit as knotty, though in a manner that feels forced and puffed up. The mystery starts off with a frankly ridiculous discovery -- looking for sunken galleons, Frank stumbles, or rather scuba dives, upon a female corpse -- and the film staggers absurdly from one to another less than credible bit of business. Some of the absurdities on view are amusing (all the scenes with "Bonanza" actor Dan Blocker, especially the meta moment in which Blocker's character is glimpsed watching "Bonanza" on TV), but mostly the screenplay demonstrates a thinness of material. Case in point: A cop stops by the residence of a stylish beauty (Welch) to warn her that "there's a killer on the loose." Her response: "If I see a killer, I'll call!" Neither the dialogue nor the direction rises above this ludicrous, fizz-free exchange, and the fact that the so-called killer is Tony Rome himself, victim of a frame-up, was trite even in 1968.

Another 1968 release, one can't help noting, was the Sinatra-string release "The Detective," which only makes "Lady in Cement" seem all the more superfluous. Even Julie Kirgo, Twilight time's excellent essayist, seems to be having a hard time, in her loner notes, finding reasons to celebrate these movies. Kirgo drums up some points to celebrate -- the films' cinematography, which offers eye-popping color, is one -- and you can tell she appreciates the campiness of the films. The fact remains, though, that it's the constantly astonishing third-rateness of this double feature that keeps you watching.

Both films come with Twilight Time's signature isolated music tracks, by composers Hugo Montenegro and Billy May, though you'd have to have somewhat specialized tastes to appreciate the '60s-stye music, and what a shame Sinatra doesn't sing... though Nancy Sinatra does. "Tony Rome" offers a commentary track with four film historians: Eddie Friedfeld, Anthony Latino, Lee Pfeiffer, and Paul Scrabo. They don't have that much to say about the film itself, but they are full of trivia about the actors, locations, and other associated elements.

There is a real utility in presenting terrible movies, and even glorying in them. "Tony Rome" is fine for its genre and its time, but to modern eyes it's a camp curiosity at best. "Lady In Cement" isn't Ed Wood-grade awful, but it doesn't miss the mark by much. Together, these films constitute educational examples of filmic styles best left behind and social attitudes hardly worth gilding with nostalgia.

"Tony Rome" & "Lady In Cement"
Blu-ray
$29.95
http://www1.screenarchives.com/title_detail.cfm/ID/31959/TONY-ROME-LADY-IN-CEMENT-1967-1968