99 & 44/100% Dead

Bet you haven't heard of this one.  1974's 99 AND 44/100% DEAD is probably one of the most obscure movies I've reviewed on this blog. This is despite its lead actor being Richard Harris and its director, John Frankenheimer.   I first learned of it in Leonard Maltin's almanac of capsule reviews.  He hated it, even called it "the pits."  I don't concur, Mr. Maltin, though I have to lament what is ultimately a failure of a movie, one with an unfortunate identity crisis.  What begins as a loopy crime spoof that sustains a pleasantly goofy vibe for a little while transforms into Just Another Crime Drama, with chases, rescues, and showdowns.  And even those standard tropes are not executed as well as they should've been.

Harris plays hit man Harry Crown, called by an old accomplice named "Uncle Frank" (Edmond O'Brien) to come help him stop a rival named Big Eddie (Bradford Dillman, lip smacking) for muscling on his turf.  There's also a psychotic who goes by "The Claw" (Chuck Connors, mildly amusing) so named as he lost an arm due to Harry some time back.  He likes to torture his victims with various prostheses (knives, whips, machine guns) to that arm.  Inevitably, there's also love interest - Buffy (Ann Turkel, in need of acting lessons), schoolteacher by day, party girl by night. 

I could tell you about some of the other characters, like a white suited guy named Tony (David Hall), who becomes Harry's partner/valet of sorts, or Baby (Katherine Baumann), an escort who falls for Tony.  Or Dolly (Constance Ford) who runs the brothel. They are potentially colorful, but Robert Dillon's script gives them, and everyone else, little to do. The women, in fact, are beautiful but boring.

Here's is a movie that aspires to some pop art aesthetic (check that poster and the opening credits) and drops the ball early.  But those early scenes are great fun.  Harry narrates as we see underwater graveyards of various classes of folks wearing cement shoes.  A conversation outside a limo as a sniper repeatedly fires on it.  Some guy who approaches the limo with dynamite.  An underground city under The City. Too bad the school bus chase and the diffuse-the-bomb in the classroom scenes fall short.

This is clearly lesser Frankenheimer, though his direction as times is quite skillful. He could've concocted a golden cult classic, but it only resembles one in moments.   Some of Henry Mancini's scoring is effective.