Customer Reviews

Hot Millions [VHS]

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you like character acting at its very finest, then watch this movie. Peter Ustinov here builds on the sly but endearing crook persona he won Oscars for in Spartacus and Topkapi. While the characters in those films are expressions of Ustinov's great abilities in making sleazy characters sympathetic, this film goes beyond the slightly over-the-top characterisations of those films to present a fully-rounded character in the context of a credible and somewhat touching love story. This is particularly remarkable because Hot Millions is a light and airy 60s caper film. The scenes between Ustinov and Maggie Smith are brilliant, exhibiting a humourous warmth all too little seen in films, and there is great comedy generated by the presence of Karl Malden and Bob Newhart. Nice score and tight direction too. In my opinion, one of the very best mainstream movies of the late 60s, and one which gives renewed pleasure on each viewing.

They mostly don't make films like this any more, and more's the pity.

Sir Peter Ustinov and Dame Maggie Smith have a marvellous chemistry, he as a charming embezzler/con man, she as a total disaster of a would-be "career girl".

As the film opens, Marcus Pendleton (Ustinov) is just getting out of gaol; the prison governor counsels him that he'd better go straight; computers are making it impossible to get away with his style of crime any more (that's how they got him this time), and he's getting too old for another spell in quod.

He agrees wholeheartedly.

So wholeheartedly that, determinig that Britain's foremost computer-anti-crime expert, Ceasar Smith (Robert Morley), is an avid lepidopterist, he lures him away to the Amazon on a wild butterfly chase... and takes his place, studying computers the while. (As daunting as they semed, computers were a lot less complex in those days.)

Hired by an American conglomerate as head of computer security for their British operations, he is in a perfect position to, as it were, hunt with the hounds and run with the fox.

By slipping one piece of bogus data into the computer, he lays the basis of a pyramind scheme that will net, literally, millions. (And remember, this was a time when the villains in Bond movies still hadn't learnt the word "billion".)

Enter Patty Terwilliger, living in the flat next to his, and a total disaster in terms of surviving the Real World -- as an example of the sort of disasters that invariably befall her, she gets a job as an omnibus conductor... and the 'bus drives away and leaves her behind.

He meets her, and, at first, simply wants to help her get on. He arranges her a job as his secretary, figuring that she can't have too much trouble there, right?

Did you ever see what happens when an old-fashioned carbon/film typewriter riboon escapes in the office?

Well, nothing propinks like propinquity, and soon they fall in love.

One of the American execs (Bob Newhart) has a bit of feeling for her, and a distrust of "Ceasar".

Eventualy, of course, they wind up on the run, arriving in Brazil (offering, as it does, a large amount of no extradition treaties).

The execs (Newhart and Karl Malden) come after them, to negotiate some sort of deal with "Smith".

(There are two sequences at Brazlian Customs, featuring Cesar Romero in a cameo appearance, that are absolutely hilarious. One involves a gladstone bag full of large-denomination notes in five or six currencies, one involves a jar of instant coffee...)

And the end is a nice little twist to give it all a happy ending.

This is a film solidly in the tradition of the "Ealing" comedies starring Alec Guinness, particuarly "The Lavendar Hill Mob";it's veryvery funny, and it deserves to be on DVD.

Buy it anyway; i;m sure your VHS machine still works.

(I was inspired to hunt up this film here on Amazon (i forst saw it when it was new) and review it after reading an essay by Francois Trufautt on Max Ophul's "Lola Montez", in which he praised Ustinov highly...)

This is a Warner Archive product. That means it is a manufactured-on-demand DVD-R. There have been numerous reports of this particular film having the problem of "the purple ring of death". Always carefully inspect your Warner Archive DVD-Rs as soon as you get them. If you see this purple ring, your DVD-R will not play in any player. If you buy the product new, either from an authorized retailer or from Warner Brothers, you can get a replacement disc. However, if you buy this one used that may or may not be the case. Warner Brothers had so much trouble with so many copies of this particular film that they actually took it out of production for a while. I'm not sure if it is back up for sale again on their site, but for the first ninety days after release they are the only authorized dealers of these discs.

Just keep this in mind before you make such an expensive purchase. As for the film, it is very much worth having. Peter Ustinov is simply wonderful as a computer age thief, and I highly recommmend the film itself.

This is a gem of a caper film, with fantastic performances by Peter Ustinov and a very young Maggie Smith. Anyone who liked Alec Guinness in the "Lavender Hill Mob" should also like this one, and Ustinov's role is similarly understated and brilliant. Bob Newhart and Karl Malden also have a great parts as bank employees, putty in Ustinov's fingers.
Besides the caper/con theme, this movie also touches on early computerization. How fun to see Ustinov's character grapple with the new technology of those giant old computers, and give the "expert" (Bob Newhart) a run for his money!
Thoroughly enjoyable!

My best friend raved about this move to me when we were in high school, and when I finally had a chance to see it, I fell completely in love. It's not an exaggeration to say that I base friendships on whether people love this movie. If someone doesn't appreciate "Hot Millions," they are to be spurned forthwith.

There have seldom been two actors as charming as Peter Ustinov and Maggie Smith; together, they push the charm quotient through the stratosphere. Whether prattling about curry ("It's vile, i'n't it?") or realizing how lonely they are (and how to solve that problem) they are astonishing. They seem to have been born from the head of the same muse - in their timing and relation to each other they're like the most comfortable of old vaudeville partners. The freeze-frame close-up of Ustinov at the end and his sweetly concerned "Are you all right?" is one of the most lovely, moving things of its kind - almost on a par with Chaplin at the end of "City Lights."

Even the redoubtable Karl Malden gives a nice little performance here; the scene between him and Caesar Romero in Brazil is an absolute gem. And Bob Newhart is marvelously snide as the fly in Ustinov's ointment - not quite Iago, maybe, but we all know the type.

This is a movie so filled with little pleasures and wonderfully askew comic sequences playing off each other that it seems like a classic in the vein of Lubitsch and Wilder ... especially now, with the state of our movie comedy no laughing matter.

When, o when, will this darling film be made available - in widescreen - on DVD?

This is a Warner Archive product. That means it is a manufactured-on-demand DVD-R. There have been numerous reports of this particular film having the problem of "the purple ring of death". Always carefully inspect your Warner Archive DVD-Rs as soon as you get them. If you see this purple ring, your DVD-R will not play in any player. If you buy the product new, either from an authorized retailer or from Warner Brothers, you can get a replacement disc. However, if you buy this one used that may or may not be the case. Warner Brothers had so much trouble with so many copies of this particular film that they actually took it out of production for a while. I'm not sure if it is back up for sale again on their site, but for the first ninety days after release they are the only authorized dealers of these discs.

Just keep this in mind before you make such an expensive purchase. As for the film, it is very much worth having. Peter Ustinov is simply wonderful as a computer age thief, and I highly recommmend the film itself.

In 1968 two comedies were released that concerned themselves with larceny and became sleeper hits. Most are aware of "The Producers" but "Hot Millions" reputation is more obscure. In a nutshell it's an outright hoot. Peter Ustinov plays an embezzler who lands a job with a multi-national in London and utilizes their mainframe computer to issue himself checks to bogus companies. What would interest people today would be what was considered high-tech in the Sixties. The mainframe looks like a large metal box with a police siren on top. The film is an outright delight with witty dialoge abounding. The ensemble on hand here is top-notch. Notable are Maggie Smith as Ustinov's seemingly flighty secretary, Karl Malden as the pill-popping CEO, and there's a brilliant cameo by Cesar Romero as a Brazilian baggage inspector. "Hot Millions" gets my unqualified recommendation.

I watch this film every year at least once. It is a movie that I return to when I need a bit of an uplift. Funny and yet a very insightful commentary and prediction of the sort of financial messes we have got ourselves into. The computer (in this early representation of the technology) is massive and no one really understands how it operates. By the end, it is difficult to explain where the money came from and where it all went. Sound familiar?

This has quickly become one of my favorite "little" films. The stars are uniformly excellent...Peter Ustinov, Maggie Smith (I would watch her read the phone book!), Karl Malden, and Bob Newhart. Ustinov is a con man running a delightfully goofy embezzlement scam on a large industrial company, and Smith is his next door neighbor who can't keep a job. The story unfolds in a wry script co-written by Ustinov and features a fun music score by Laurie Johnson who did the memorable theme for "The Avengers". The movie is all wonderful British fun aimed at a more adult audience, and despite the family friendly rating this is probably not going to thrill the kiddies. The humor requires some intelligence and there are no special effects or explosions. But there are plenty of chuckles to be had and I loved the chemistry between Smith and Ustinov. They are wonderful actors who get every nuance possible out of this very amusing and off-beat story. It's taken a while for this to get to DVD and I was only too happy to make this a part of my movie collection.

I resisted buying this because of the high price for a long time, but just relented. Quality of DVD was excellent and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing this classic movie again. Love it! If you're a fan, just go ahead and get it. .... it's good to go.