RipDelight
This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.
InformationRap
This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
Ortiz
Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.
Staci Frederick
Blistering performances.
edwagreen
You would think that from the title of this 1957 film, you'd be seeing racetracks and jockeys in abundance. This is not the case as the film turns out to be a rather routine story of smuggling drugs.Believe it or not, Robert Taylor and his co-star Dorothy Malone sing at the piano.For a couple that has supposedly divorced, they seem very compatible when together with the exception of one scene.Martin Gabel plays the heavy in this film and how ironic it is to see him in one scene with Jack Lord. Go know that fate would play such a trick on both men as they later succumbed to Alzheimer's.The mid to late 1950s was not a good time for Taylor. His young good looks were going and the heavy lines possibly from heavy smoking, which later killed him, were showing. No wonder he switched to television in the 1960s with the highly successful The Detectives.Marcel Dallio attempts to bring some comic relief to the film, especially when he reverses I thank you from the bottom of my heart.These films dealing with people having to confront their fears are usually not the best. This is not an exception to that rule.
sol
***SPOILERS*** One of Actor Robert Taylor's forgotten movies that I suspect he hoped would stay forgotten in him playing WWII and Korean war hero Llyod Tredman who lost his nerve as a pilot in him sending scores of USAF fighter pilots to their deaths in the Korean War. Feeling that he's a complete failure in life Tredman dropped out of sight and became a full time moocher in far off Madrid Spain. Staying at his good friend and sidekick's as well as fellow moocher Toto, Marcel Daio, pad Tredman just gets himself drunk and reminisces about old times.It's when Tredman tried to divorce his wife Phyllis, Dorothy Malone, in him feeling he's not good enough for her that he opened up a can of worms in having her fly to Spain from Navada to see if there's anything wrong, in the head, with her estranged husband. Trying to make money betting on the horses, to show Phyllis what a big time gambler he is, Tredman puts his last 1,000 in Spanish currency on a horse he 's a part owner of only to have the horse and its jockey Alfredo, Jimmy Murphy, tripped up in the stretch with both, horse and jockey, ending up dead. Broke and facing eviction Tredman finally gives into mobster Bert Smith, Martin Gable, offer to fly a plane with 85 pounds of British 5 pound notes, worth some 200,000 dollars, from Cairo Egypt and then on the return trip drop them in an empty field outside Madrid for Smith and his hoods to grab! For this dangerous mission Smith offers Tredman $25,000.00.Things get even more complicated then they already are with Tredman's good friend and Air Force buddy Jimmy Heldor, Jack Lord, taking up Smith's offer in that the yellow bellied Tredman doesn't have the stomach to do the job. It's when Jimmy almost lost his life, by getting himself lost over the Mediterranean Sea, in a dry run that Tredman decides against his better judgment to do the flying! That's only if Toto, who never flew a plane in his life, agrees to be his co-pilot.***SPOILERS*** The movie gets overly confusing and ridicules with a at first scared out of his wits Tredman suddenly getting his courage, in flying an airplane, back as he flies rings around, on land as well as in the air, those trying to stop him in his secret mission for gangster Bert Smith. It's only later that Tredman finds out that Smith is actually using him to smuggle heroin not British 5 pound notes back into Spain that really turns him off! In the end Tredman sets Smith, who planned to murder him as soon as he landed, up by having the Madrid police and INTEPOL Agents nab him and his henchman before they could make their successful getaway. Now with both his courage and wife Phyills back Tredman can go back to the life that he abandoned back in Korea by getting his job back as a commercial pilot instead of being the leach and good for nothing bum that he had since become.
mamalv
Tip on a Dead Jockey, is a good introspective movie with character studies of people in turmoil. Robert Taylor plays a former fly boy that has lost his nerve, his love and his honor. He moves to Spain to get away, and forget how afraid he is of everything. He has a house guest, many parties, many days at the races and little of anything else. Lloyd Tredman (Taylor) is a very troubled man. He has divorced his wife Phyllis (Dorothy Malone) without any explanation and she goes to Spain to find out why. The reason he says, is because he is all used up, too many times he sent flyers out to certain death, and there is just nothing left for him to give. Martin Gabel offers him $25,000 to fly in and out of Spain and drop a package filled with money, but Lloyd can not go, too afraid, so he gives the job to Jimmy (Jack Lord) his best friend. Lloyd thinks he is love with Paquita (Gia Scala), Jimmy's wife. Gabel tells him this is his chance with her if Jimmy does not return. He leaves, runs away, but is summoned back to console Paquita when Jimmy is 3 days late. Phyllis accuses him of trying to murder Jimmy because of Paquita, and he goes over the edge and slaps her. This scene is worth the whole movie. Dorthy Malone, as the embittered and confused ex-wife is great in this scene, with Taylor at his best as the accused. In the end he flies the plane, after he regains his courage, and finds that Gabel has hidden heroine in the package. He alerts the authorities and they arrest Gable and his helpers. He then goes to Phyliss to mend the marriage. Robert Taylor is always good as the man with the hidden past as in "High Wall", "Rogue Cop", and "Ride Vaquero".
art_27
A wooden treatment of a shell shocked Korean war vet expatting it in Madrid. Malone barely registers ennui, disillusionment, or any other weight of the world characteristics; he acts more like the suburban dad opting not to shave all weekend. Dalio, the Casablanca croupier, is reduced to playing Malone's colorful sidekick, but a little goes a long way. Jack Lord and his Kennedyesque hairdo go through the motions. Bits of the script, co-written by Shaw, stand out, especially Malone comparing his domestic situation to a Balzac story, "too many people." The title drew me in, and I got a pig in a poke.