'THE WALKING STICK'...........THE CANE MUTINY.......

The Walking Stick (1970)......arrived at the very tail end of Britain's domination of international pop culture and cinema......

             But boy oh boy, was it fun while it lasted......

             James Bond. The Beatles. The Rolling Stones. Carnaby Street fashions. All the gifted, exciting new movie stars.....Peter 'O Toole, Richard Harris, Albert Finney, David Hemmings, Julie Christie, Sean Connery......to name only a few.

               As the 70's kicked off, it seemed like all the worldwide filmmaking attention had shifted to Italy and France.......British filmmaking slid down to the point of making movies strictly for  home consumption, with numerous film versions of popular local TV shows.

              Exceptions still existed, such as this film, taken from a novel by the prolific Winston Graham, author of "Marnie" and the Poldark series.....

              Similar to 'Marnie', "The Walking Stick also presents a romantic relationship corrupted by the criminality of one of the lovers. In this case, it's the man.

              The sheltered, vulnerable Deborah (Samantha Eggar), a polio survivor, ambles about with a her walking stick and a guarded heart.  But it doesn't take long for struggling artist Leigh (David Hemmings) to break down her defenses and commence her first love affair.

                Leigh's love and affection, it turns out, comes with a huge ulterior motive.......he's part of a gang who plan to rob all the expensive goodies from the auction house where Deborah works. And guess whose inside information on guards and alarm systems they desperately need?

                And this is where the movie expects you to take a giant leap of faith. Faced with such a monumentally cruel betrayal by the man she thought loved her for herself, Deborah allows herself to be talked into helping Leigh and his bunch pull off their caper.  If you can swallow that, then you're still along for the sour ride this movie takes you on. If not, you probably shouldn't even start watching it.....

                We haven't read the book, but we're assuming that Winston Graham makes the romantic obsession here more palatable........and hence the plot twist more believable. It's clear the film version needed the same go-for-broke all out romantic abandon that Hitchcock brought to "Marnie".....a admitted risky move that leaves "Marnie" still either celebrated or ridiculed, all these years later.

                 You're not getting any of that craziness from "Walking Stick"s director Eric Till, who keeps the film on a low key, steady-as-she-goes course right up to the end.

                 The film never amounts to much of a thriller or a romance. When it at last chugs along to its finale, the last camera shot seems more inevitable than surprising.

                 For the simple pleasure of watching David Hemmings and Samantha Eggar still in their youthful prime, we'll scrape together 2 stars (**)......a faint reminder of how London ruled the world back in the swingin' 60's........