In 1944 during World War II, American tank corps Sergeant "Boysie" Oakes stumbles and unwittingly shoots and kills two men attempting to assassinate British Intelligence Major Mostyn in Paris. Mostyn mistakenly believes Oakes was lethal on purpose.
Twenty-one years later, Mostyn (now a colonel in British Intelligence) and his boss are in trouble due to a series of embarrassing security disasters. To save his job, the chief orders Mostyn to hire an assassin to illegally eliminate security leaks without official authorisation. Mostyn recruits Boysie, now living in England, into the Secret Service without first telling him what his employment will entail, luring him in with a lavish apartment and a fancy car. After Boysie passes a training course, Mostyn informs him that his code name is "L", and that it stands for liquidator. Unable to resign and not a killer himself, Boysie secretly hires a freelance professional assassin named Griffin to do the dirty work.
Things go well until Oakes persuades Mostyn's secretary Iris to spend the weekend with him on the Côte d'Azur, though Mostyn has warned him that any contact between spies and civilian employees is a serious criminal offence. Boysie is captured by enemy agents led by Sheriek, who firmly believes he is on assignment and wants to know who his target is. However, Sheriek's superior, Chekhov, is coldly furious that he has gone beyond his orders to merely watch Boysie, thus endangering a much more important operation. He has Sheriek arrange for Boysie to escape.
Then Quadrant arrives with a new mission for Boysie. He is to stage a fake assassination attempt on the Duke of Edinburgh, when he visits a Royal Air Force base, to test the security. Boysie finds that he has been duped: Quadrant is actually an enemy agent, and the bullets in his sniper rifle are real. Mostyn shows up in the duke's place and is able to locate Boysie, but while they are distracted, Quadrant and a pilot steal the real target: the Vulture, an advanced new aircraft which the duke was to inspect. Boysie manages to shoot Quadrant and board the plane as it is taking off. To his surprise, the pilot is none other than Iris, who informs him that she is the coordinator of the operation. He is able to overpower her and, with radio help, return the aircraft to the base, dumping the aircraft into the grass by accident.
Producer Jon Pennington brought Australian screenwriter Peter Yeldham to the project after both had cooperated on The Comedy Man (1963). Yeldham recalled that Pennington acquired the novel, read it on an airplane and set the film into production in four or five months. As with the first of a projected Jason Love series Where the Spies Are (1966), also filmed in MGM-British Studios, MGM planned a Boysie Oakes film series. Producer Sydney Box spoke to Yeldham and wished him to write two more scripts in the projected series.[4]
Richard Harris was initially approached for the role but after negotiations chose to do The Heroes of Telemark (1965) instead.[5] Taylor insisted on playing the role with an American accent because he was more comfortable with it by that stage in his career.[6]
The film opens with animated titles by the Richard Williams studio.
The Liquidator was also filmed in MGM-British Studios. Cardiff recalled that the censors made them delete one of Taylor's lines: "it smells like a Turkish wrestler's jockstrap".[7]
Release of the film was held up a number of months due to a legal conflict between producer Leslie Elliot and MGM. Jack Cardiff thought this hurt the final box office result of the film, which was disappointing.[10]
Critical reception
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "After a promising beginning, with a gravel-voiced Trevor Howard putting his private executioner through the niceties of his assassination programme, it is not long before this further sortie into sub-Bondian territory begins to look like a very poor relative. The cast make what they can of a script that strives after witty effect and ends up looking only like a pastiche of the spy film formula. Rod Taylor looks a little flabby as the reluctant assassin, but he does manage to make the character appealing, and Trevor Howard wickedly proves how dialogue can be made to sound better than it is; and there is an amusing interlude in the shape of Akim Tamiroff as a blundering torturer doing his best to look villainous. But these are the only flashes of light in a generally gloomy film."[11]
The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 2/5 stars, writing: "This is one of dozens of Bond ripoffs, right down to Shirley Bassey belting out the title number. ... Very swinging 1960s in tone, with jet-set locations, snazzy cartoon titles and willing ladies in mini-skirts."[12]
Home media
The Liquidator was released to DVD by Warner Home Video on 6 September 2012 via the Warner Archive DVD-on-demand service.
References
^"Big Rental Pictures of 1966", Variety, 4 January 1967 p 8
^"The Liquidator". British Film Institute. Retrieved 11 January 2024.
^p.31 Taylor, Tadhg Peter Yeldham Interview in Masters of the Shoot-'Em-Up: Conversations with Directors, Actors and Writers of Vintage Action Movies and Television Shows, McFarland, 14 October 2015
^p.152 Callan, Michael Feeney Richard Harris: Sex, Death & The Movies Robson, 30 November 2004
^Vagg, Stephen (2010). Rod Taylor: An Aussie in Hollywood. Bear Manor Media. p. 115. ISBN978-1-59393-511-5.
^Bowyer, Justin (2003). Conversations with Jack Cardiff. Batsford. p. 190. ISBN0-7134-8855-7.
^"The Liquidator soundtrack liner notes". Film Score Monthly. 9 (16). Lukas Kendall. November 2006.
^Spencer, Kristpher (2008). Film and Television Scores, 1950–1979: A Critical Survey by Genre. McFarland & Co. pp. 72–73. ISBN978-0-7864-3682-8.
^Stephen Vagg, Rod Taylor: An Aussie in Hollywood (Bear Manor Media, 2010) p118
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