THE NIGHT OF THE FOLLOWING DAY *

This kidnap drama from Hubert Cornfield wasn't a hit despite having Marlon Brando leading the cast but it has since become something of a cult movie. He's one of the kidnappers; the others are Richard Boone, Rita Moreno and Jess Hahn and Pamela Franklin is the victim and the setting is France or rather a house by the beach where a lot of the action takes place. This is the one in which Brando sports a blonde hair-do and plays a beatnik very badly. Boone is the sadist in the group and is very good while Rita Moreno almost walks off with the film. Franklin acts as if she's been heavily sedated throughout and Cornfield directs as if he's never actually seen a thriller. The source material was a novel by Lionel White and the whole thing is very bizarre, too bizarre in fact to be just written off as a failure. There's also a kind of jazzy and inappropriate score by Stanley Myers and Annie Ross does get to sing a bit of a song on the soundtrack.