Lady in Cement (1968)

This film sees the return of Miami private investigator Tony Rome. As the story opens he is scuba diving at a site that a friend assures him is the final resting place of a number of Spanish galleons; he doesn't find and wrecks… just a naked blonde with her feet set in a concrete block! Soon afterwards he is hired by a large man named Waldo Gronsky to find a blonde named Sandra, who he assures him is not the one he found earlier. The last place Sandra was seen was the house of Kit Forrest, a wealthy and attractive young widow. She had been throwing a party but didn't recall if Sandra was actually there as she had been drinking. She doesn't really want to talk so calls her neighbour; retired gangster Al Mungar. His investigation takes him to a go-go club where the manager is murdered shortly afterwards leading to the police wanting to arrest Tony for murder! If he is to clear his name he will have to stay a step ahead of the police and solve the case he was paid for.Frank Sinatra returns for a second, and sadly final, time as Tony Rome. He does a fine job as this likable detective; cool but not too cool. The case is interesting and provides several potential suspects including Kit Forrest, Gronsky and Mungar as well as more victims. For the most part the movie still feels fresh with its bright Miami locations and cool '60s feel but in other ways it has dated; most notably portrayal and treatment of homosexual characters, including by the protagonist… something that almost certainly wouldn't be accepted in a modern film. The secondary cast are solid enough; Raquel Welch is fine as Kit Forrest, her introduction where she exits a pools wearing a bikini is certainly impressive! Unfortunately she isn't quite as good a female lead as Jill St.John was in the first 'Tony Rome' film; she was sexy but lacked a certain something. Overall I'd recommend this to anybody wanting some '60s fun; if you liked the first Tony Rome film you should enjoy this too.

A few days ago, I watched Frank Sinatra's film "Tony Rome". Now just watched "Lady in Cement"--a sequel in which our incredibly relaxed and quite glib private detective hero investigates a VERY strange murder. When the film begins, Tony is scuba diving and discovers a body! But it's no ordinary body--it's a nude blonde whose feet were planted in cement! Obviously, the woman had been murdered--and disposed of in a very elaborate fashion. The trail leads to a gorgeous lady (Raquel Welch), a giant of a man (Dan Blocker) and an ex-mobster. Can Tony sort it all out and avoid getting himself killed? I liked "Tony Rome" a lot and "Lady in Cement"--just not quite as much. It's a good film but occasionally the plot seems a bit convoluted and far less interesting than the characters themselves (particularly Sinatra). The music was also a bit too much after a while. It is also a LOT more sexually charged than the first film--earning an R-rating for nudity and strong language. But it also had a really nice underwater sequence, plenty of action and LOTS of smug comments from Tony. Worth seeing.

If you can buy the idea that a balding, pudgy 50ish perpetually broke private eye who looks a bit like Frank Sinatra can still get the ladies, then the other logical shortcomings here are tolerable. Sinatra is a pro and gives an assured performance, but the rest of the movie is pretty routine 1960s vintage murder mystery stuff. A beautiful woman is found dead. The cops hassle the private eye to see what he knows. The private eye starts poking around and stirs up a hornet's nest of suspects and motives. That sort of thing. The style is perfunctory, and rather notably non-psychedelic for the mid-1960s, and there is nothing unusual about the storyline. This sort of hard boiled P.I. stuff was all over the place then. Still, the Florida setting is well used to create a look of decadent glamor and if you like this sort of thing, it's an okay time-passer.

With a few exceptions such as French Connection II sequels don't have a high strike-rate in terms of success and this is no exception. Whilst it is indisputable that Sinatra COULD act when he put his mind to it - From Here To Eternity, The Manchurian Candidate - the fact remains that he put his mind to it all too infrequently and often - The Naked Runner, The Detective - the best he would do would be to check his ring-a-ding-ding persona with the Assistant Director before walking on set.Part of the problem was that his millions of fans, including myself, would (and probably still will) watch him in anything which albeit, as in my case, not uncritically, left him free to be self-indulgent and walk through too many movies. I for one and speaking as a lifelong fan never really found him believable as a private eye in either Tony Rome or this sequel; it's just Sinatra perpetuating the image he had created since his 'comeback' as the super-cool, super-hip Jack-the-lad, ogling the girls, tossing off the one-liners and having as much of a ball as possible whilst shooting a movie more or less on time and under budget. Any movie that begins with a blatant rip-off of Farewell, My Lovely with ax extra large man (Mike Mazurski, Dan Blocker) hiring a private detective (Dick Powell, Frank Sinatra) to find the girl friend who disappeared whilst he was in the slammer is clearly struggling and the fact that it then abandons the plot developments of the Chandler story in favour of something more inept doesn't help in the least. Okay, if it's a choice between this and Mr. Bean then fine but other than that it's really just for Sinatra completists.