The Kremlin Letter (1970)

We are dealing with a few sacred monsters, starting with director John Huston (who casted himself in a small role in the film), then Orson Welles and George Sanders. Nigel Green, Richard Boone, Patrick O'Neal, are not sacred monsters, but they do their job well, are good actors. Barbara Parkins (the beauty from "Puppet on a Chain", "Bear Island" and "Valley of the Dolls") is a sexy innocence. Bibi Andersson(a favorite of Ingmar Bergman) makes a great role. Max von Sydow (another favorite of Ingmar Bergman) is brilliant too, as usual. And the great actress Lila Kedrova (Madame Hortense in "Zorba the Greek") has a role too small for her huge talent. A very special film about the sacrifices that spies have to make for their own homelands... or others homelands.

If you like machine-gun edited, absurd, comic-book nonsense like the Bourne trilogy, don't waste your time watching Kremlin Letter. It's a million light-years away compared to that kind of video-game spy flick. You have to watch every second of this film to know what's going on and use your brain to keep pace of the plot twists and turns. Richard Boone and Patrick O'Neil, two underrated actors who never gave a bad performance, are riveting and Barbara Parkins never looked more alluring. The Russian/English over dubbing has been criticized but I enjoyed the technique. I've never seen it used since. The chilling ending begged for a sequel that never happened.

It's extremely convoluted but still worthwhile, THE KREMLIN LETTER is John Huston's take on the cold war spy thriller. A group of semi-governmental agents sneak into Russia to expose a corrupt politician and retrieve a letter that may expose one of them as a traitor. They manage to cross and double-cross each other along the way. Richard Boone and Patrick O'Neal are the head spooks and their team is an odd bunch including terminally ill Dean Jagger, safe-cracker Barbara Parkins, and Nigel Green (whose role is REALLY odd). Also in there is George Sanders as a drag queen/spy. It's a bit slow and rather turgid for its own good, but Huston is a master so the film is also extremely well made. Orson Welles is on hand as the chief Russian villain(?) as are Max von Sydow and Bibi Andersson as a kinky KGB couple. Lila Kedrova plays a duplicitious madam.

This has to rate as one of the worst films ever despite an all-star cast.The plot is extremely muddled. What's with this letter? What is the contents of this?Can you just imagine George Sanders knitting and in drag? No wonder he killed himself 2 years later.This film is living proof that no matter who the cast members are, if the writing is bad, forget it.I found it obnoxious with the Boone-O'Neal relationship of constantly calling one another uncle-nephew. Given the character that Boone was, did he arrange for the murder of of O'Neal's family.The great John Huston directed this mess. He had a very brief part. Better to run from the cameras period.A totally colossal bore. How many films can you sit through and have no understanding whatsoever of the plot? This is the picture.