Shadow of Treason

This film is not without some assets. The music by Martin Salvin is quite good, and so are the environmental sceneries in Trieste, Dubrovnik and Somaliland with nightclubs in dark alleys and scary wild animals in the African wilderness. But that about sums up the credits. The script is not bad, the dialog is not without interest, the plot is far-sought but rather a standard post-war cocktail of war left-overs of traitors and deceits, the central topic being about money, and the main action being a quest for a lost treasure of counterfeit money appropriated by deceit and blackmail. A nice kettle of soup of a random extravagant intrigue, if James Bond had been into it, but he isn't, and John Bentley as Steve is a very poor substitute, cool and superior enough but hardly convincing with middle-aged obesity and unshaved crudeness of a face, like something between Walter Matthau and Fred MacMurray, with no sense of humour and not even funny. The ladies are ordinary Barbie types with hidden daggers like in any cheap spy thriller, while the best actor is Ferdy Mayne as Mario. John Gabriel as the villain going crazy is exaggerated, and Fetan Hamamah is quite right in laughing him down to ridicule. Anita West sings a song at a nightclub, but not even that is impressive. The elephants are impressive though, and so is the old man Vladimir Leib as Litov, a deaf and mute invalid playing the piano quite expertly, and his one introductory scene is the best in the picture. The worst thing that can be said about this film is the direction, which is totally without engagement and merely formal, leaving no after-taste, no nuances, very little human feelings and just a general cynical callousness. The story offers materials for a good thriller, but that is not well taken care of. Fools make fools of themselves, and that's that.

"Shadow of Treason" is an ultra-low budgeted film made by Brits in what was at the time Yugoslavia. Why? Because it was CHEAP to film there! Despite the cheapness of the film and a plot that is only okay, it's still worth seeing just for John Bentley's performance!

Steve (Bentley) is hanging out in Yugoslavia for no apparent reason. However, after he thwarts an attempt on a stripper's life, she hires him to be her protector. He soon realizes folks are trying to kill her because her father (who had recently died) had been blackmailing them, as the list of people he left to her are the names of his prey. Steve needs to figure out why they were all being blackmailed as well as which one of them is the one trying to kill his client.

The story is okay. But I was really impressed by Bentley. First, he plays a world-weary American...yet he is British. His accent was fine and his characterization of Steve was wonderful...so much so that it seems sad that he's not more of a household name. Overall, an uneven and occasionally dull film...which lights up when Bentley is in the picture.

The first two-thirds of the film (which I watched courtesy of YouTube) were quite good, and at times John Bentley belied his 47 years by appearing tough - though he should have kept his shirt on rather than display his flabby torso. The scenes in which the father in his wheelchair followed the villain pursuing his daughter were well directed.

But with the move to Somaliland the film became formulaic, with no fewer than FOUR hackneyed encounters with animals. Bentley seemed to follow a very crude small map with incredible ease, as well as finding his way through some well-lit tunnels to conclude his quest.

I thought that the floor show at the beginning was a little daring in that the girls were "cheeky", but only because the film had a 1950s look to it. Then I realised that it had come out in 1963, a year after "Dr No", with a sensual Ursula Andress, a virile Sean Connery, colour and exotic locations. No real comparison!

While she's singing in the night club in Trieste, some one tries to kill Faten Hamamah. So she hires John Bentley as a body guard. He had just wandered into the club and beat up the assassin, who fled. This leads them and three others on a quest for treasure buried in a cave, with directions like "take three paces from a stalactite and look in the hole in a big rock."

John Bentley's last big-screen show is a poorly written one, which seems to depend more on exotic locations like Trieste, and exotic beauties like Miss Hamamah. She was a mainstay of the Egyptian film industry. She also made a couple of forays into international production, neither of which was particularly impressive as a movie. In this case, we can definitely lay the blame on the script. With Anita West and Ferdie Mayne.