One of Hollywood's most open non-secrets is that the judges who choose the Oscar winners adore movies about innocent, child-like, saintly, mentally-impaired characters. If the character is scary as well as saintly, so much the better. If the character's simplicity enables him to do something heroic, that's better still. It's a cliché, but they never seem to get tired of it. Charleton Heston pointed this out in an interview, saying: "If you want to win an Academy Award, arrange to play a retarded character." (This was long ago, when "retarded" was still the preferred technical term.) The obsession goes all the way back to Quasimodo.
Maybe Mr. Heston should have added: make sure you play the character WELL. Not the way this guy Denny Miller does. He plays the part so badly that I had to remind myself that BLAZING SADDLES was still 18 years in the future, otherwise, I would have thought that Miller was trying to do a parody of Mongo.
The rest of the performance is correspondingly awful. Bad acting by the entire cast (they look tired and bored), bad sets, bad costumes, bad camerawork, bad plot, bad writing. Dr. Kimble is even more unrealistically saintly and virtuous than the mentally-impaired guy. It has so much cloying, sugary goo, and so little substance that I had to check my blood-sugar when it was over. I thought I might need to go to an emergency room and get an injection of insulin. (And I'm not even diabetic.)
The only reason I give it any stars at all is that Malcolm Atterbury is in the cast. He's always fun to see. Other than that, this is a good hour for a nap.