The Moon Spinners

(1964, USA, 118m)
d James Neilson p Walt Disney sc Michael Dyne ph Paul Beeson ed Gordon Stone ad Anthony Masters m Ron Grainer cast Hayley Mills, Eli Wallach, Peter McEnery, Joan Greenwood, Pola Negri, Irene Papas, John Le Mesurier, Paul Stasino, Sheila Hancock

The combination of Walt Disney and Hayley Mills is rather a hindrance to rational critical response. Throw in a Mary Stewart source novel with a Cretan setting and plenty of local colour, aunt Joan Greenwood as Mills’ traveling companion, intrigue and jewels, a colourless juvenile male lead and a puckish local urchin, and Sunday afternoon is well taken care of, albeit in an entirely insubstantial way. Eli Wallach is a bit out of place, promising more menace than he delivers, and Pola Negri, tempted out of her 20-year retirement, steals the ending as the former washer-woman now cruising the med in her yacht, complete with pet cheetah. Jolly.

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