{"id":11,"date":"2007-12-28T12:21:09","date_gmt":"2007-12-28T12:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mattblake.wordpress.com\/2007\/12\/28\/hello-glen-ward-house-dick\/"},"modified":"2007-12-28T12:21:09","modified_gmt":"2007-12-28T12:21:09","slug":"hello-glen-ward-house-dick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/reviews\/hello-glen-ward-house-dick\/","title":{"rendered":"Hello Glen Ward, House Dick"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was a film I originally reviewed for the EuroSpy Guide<\/a><\/i> some years back, but then we had to cut it out because we ran out of space (and it\u2019s not really a spy film, to be honest). It\u2019s one of those films that feature a slightly hapless lead getting involved in some kind of international crime shenanigans, a kind of espionage film without the espionage but with dashes of the adventure and giallo genre to make up for it.<\/p>\n

Glen Ward (Ray Danton) is a hopeless hotel detective who, sacked from his last job, goes to visit an old friend in Jamaica. When he arrives there, however, he discovers his mate\u2019s body in the bathroom. As he\u2019s the most obvious suspect – in the eyes of the police at any rate – he decides to start investigating for himself, and soon meets with Martinez (Beni Deus), his late chum\u2019s employer, who turns out to be a hotshot mafioso, hanging out prior to testifying against his former associates. Meanwhile, his research has also bought Glen to the attention of a pair of killers who have been hired to assassinate Martinez, and there are several other dubious characters wandering as well\u2026<\/p>\n

Directed by Mel Welles (rather than the credited Julio Salvador, who seems to have been a Leon Klimovsky style \u2018name for hire\u2019), this is decent fun, if nothing particularly special. It\u2019s all put together professionally enough, and benefits from a winning cast. Ray Danton is particularly good in the lead role\u2026 by this stage of his career he was perfectly happy taking the piss out of himself, and he does it with some aplomb (see also Lucky the Inscrutable<\/b>). There\u2019s good support from English actress Pamela Tudor and Luis Davila as a random FBI man.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, it\u2019s rather obscure. It was released in the US at the time, but the only version I could get hold of was Spanish language and with a print that was far from sparkling. If you\u2019re willing to persevere, though, it\u2019s not an unenjoyable way to spend an hour and a half.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was a film I originally reviewed for the EuroSpy Guide some years back, but then we had to cut it out because we…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}