Movie Monday: Hot Millions

Hot Millions - Directed by Eric Till, Starring Peter Ustinov, Maggie Smith, Karl Malden, Bob Newhart

I recently showed my girlfriend Michael Curtiz's 1955 film We're No Angels, and she fell in love with it. And the part she loved the most was Peter Ustinov, who delivers a wonderfully strange comedic performance. So I thought we'd try some other Ustinov movies, and when I saw this film's cast, I knew this had to be next.

Ustinov plays Marcus Pendleton, who is just being released from prison for embezzlement. Pendleton is a crook, sure, but he's so smooth and charming that he even does the books for the prison warden! Released into a world heavily dominated by computer, Pendleton meets programmer Caesar Smith (Robert Morley) and convinces him to pursue his lifelong dream of hunting moths. He then assumes Smith's identity and gets a job at a huge corporation run by Carlton J. Klemper (Karl Malden). He buts heads with the company's top computer man Willard C. Gnatpole (Bob Newhart), who distrusts Smith and scoffs at his supposedly superior knowledge of programming.

It doesn't take long for Pendleton/Smith to start running a scam which involves getting the computer to write and send checks to various false companies, all over the world, owned by him. In the meantime, he meets a nice, if nervous, young woman named Patty (Maggie Smith). After just a date or two, they fall for one another, even though Pendleton isn't honest with her about why he has to travel so much and what he's really up to.

The noose starts to tighten around Pendleton, and at the same time Gnatpole makes a play for Patty (at one point they go shopping at one of the Beatles' Apple stores, a failed experiment that only lasted a few months--Hot Millions features some of the only surviving footage of one of the stores). Eventually Pendleton and Patty have to leave England, and are chased by Klemper and Gnatpole. The customs agent they deal with is played by Caesar Romero, defying anyone who wouldn't believe that celebrities as disparate as Karl Malden, Bob Newhart, and Caesar Romero were ever in the same room before:

Hot Millions is very silly and light as air, and the final scenes are that, only more so. Patty has more upstairs than people think, and she figures into the story more prominently than just being the love interest. She and Ustinov have a real chemistry, and there's a very sweet, wordless scene where he starts playing the piano and Patty joins him on the flute.

Despite his funny character name, Bob Newhart sort of plays the heavy here. He seems the only person to doubt Pendleton's veracity, and tries to steal Patty away from him to boot. The film seems to regard corporate bureaucrats like Gnatpole with real disdain, choosing to side with the charming--if admittedly completely crooked--Pendleton, who does what he wants and knows how to get it, silly little laws be damned.

Hot Millions is a very slight film, and not worth spending a whole lot of effort to track down. But it is a nicely diverting couple of hours, and I have to say it is fun watching this very unique cast put through its paces. If you're a particular fan of Peter Ustinov--as we have become--you'll enjoy it.