Flicks

Pleasing as it is to record that Hollywood has at last owned up to being the most illustrious ghost town in the annals of the West (the date of its actual demise can he left to the more perfidious film historians), there is little call for the ghosts themselves to be put out on show to prove it. The cheapskate nostalgia irritates, and all those responsible emerge with reputations for impotent sensibility, to say nothing of bogus craftsmanship. On reputations such as these stand The best of Sheila', now showing at the Kings.

Nothing less than a gallery of ghosts adorns this brittle thriller, pastiched from Agatha Christie's waste paper bin. John Mills and James Coburn looking like mere shadows of their former selves, Raquel Welch paling before the effort of maintaining the glamour tradition in which she undeservedly finds herself, Dick Benjamin and Dyan Cannon representing all the stars who never were and Ian McShane and Eileen Hackett attending on behalf of those when never will be.....ghosts aplenty there. And not each spooky or spacy or whatever the chic clique say. In the hands of Director Herbert Ross (the most intrepid ghost hunter of them all) they move with the eerie adroitness of mechanical toys with minor malfunctions. Maybe that is how scriptwriters Anthony Perkins and Stephen (Mr Broadway) Sandihem people their grim whodunnit world. Or maybe that is what is meant by Hollywood's golden past—but if it is, then it's fools gold, for it has not the capacity to either beguile, amuse or entertain, aspects no movies can affort to be without.

All of these reservations require qualification, however. The film has a certain exotic setting which means that the coincidental details have a power of their own. The various states of undress in which the women are apt to find themselves, the enticing views of the Riviera low-life, the miscellaneous scraps of history included to load the air with atmosphere....that sort of thing. Not enough to keep people happy, I imagine, but enough to make things bearable Which, given the basic ingredients of this pot pourri, is what its producer could really expect.

And what of the ghosts, then? Ate they there to frighten people away as one might be lead to believe? Perhaps, but I prefer to think they're out and about only to be exorcised. II so, that would be, as the saying goes, 'grouse'.