GAYS GET PEPPARD-ED, PART TWO.......BQ MOVES IN TO "HOUSE OF CARDS"

House Of Cards (1968) .........and so BQ moves on to George Peppard's next 1968 thriller......and we're off to Europe.......with George essentially playing the same two-fisted, hard luck tough guy he just played in "P.J." (see the previous day's post).........

               No Private Eyewash this time.......we're now in scenic France, where Frances Lai's lush romantic melody plays over a corpse bobbing along in the Seine.........great opening.

                 Peppard? He's an expatriate washed up boxer and sometime novelist who ends up as a babysitter to wealthy French family's fatherless tyke......

                 But oh, what a viper's nest he stumbled into. The whole family's a bunch of sinister, threatening alt-right, neo-Nazi colonials who got kicked out of Algeria in the uprising. And under the leadership of their Jabba The Hut boss, (who else but Orson Welles), they're planning a comeback......

                  The tyke's poor American mom (the stunning but sad-eyed Inger Stevens) is a virtual prisoner in this House Of Thugs.......but not if our boy George can help it......

                  As you'd expect, Peppard and Stevens go on the run, but not before Jabba The Orson has framed Peppard for the murder of Peppard's best bud........

                   I won't spoil any more of the fun you can have with the plot machinations and twists......except to point out that once again, as in "P.J.", Peppard ends up pitted against an oozingly nasty gay villain.

                  Only one Gay Baddie this time, but he proves a far more effective threat than that entire bar crowd who pummeled Peppard in "P.J."

                  Smoothly played by William Job, he's Orson The Hut's prime blade-wielding minion......fashioned along the lines of Martin Landau's snaky 'Leonard' from 'North By Northwest'. And just like 'Leonard', he engages in a lover's spat with the Big Boss.......(and with Orson,  we mean literally big....)

                  In the film's memorable showdown at Rome's Colosseum, Peppard sneers at Job, calling him 'Sweets', but changes his tune when Job comes at him with a sword. No doubt still smarting from that "P.J." gay bar beatdown, Peppard unleashes some good ole-fashioned  heterosexual American fisticuffs on Job's sophisticated ass.........enough to make Mike Pence stand up and cheer.......

                  Slick fun overall, stuffed with Hitchcock-type tropes and one of BQ's long lost favorites.
3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2).  There's a pristine copy posted on YouTube, so seek it out by all means.