The picture reunited Mankiewicz and star Rex Harrison after the costly disaster that was Cleopatra (1963), though Harrison, as Julius Caesar, was easily the best thing about that troubled production. The Honey Pot also faintly echoes another Rex Harrison film, the Preston Sturges classic Unfaithfully Yours, (1948). In that film Harrison played a rich classical conductor who thrice fantasizes then tries to realize various forms of revenge against his wife, whom he believes has been unfaithful. In The Honey Pot, Harrison plays a wealthy man who seems to be plotting an elaborate revenge on three women hungering after his millions.

The dialogue, as with Sturges's film, is witty and intelligent and Harrison is excellent, though the screenplay gets a little too clever for its own good toward the end. A simpler, less cluttered approach, like Hitchcock's underrated, straightforward (if 3-D) adaptation of Knott's Dial M for Murder had done a dozen years before. Still, it's awfully good in many respects with much to recommend it.

Kino's Blu-ray, licensed from MGM, plays like composite elements were utilized. Sometimes the image looks great, while at other times the picture is a bit soft, grainy, and shows minor signs of damage. The problem-plagued production may partly be to blame. It opened in London at 150 minutes, but trimmed so significantly prior to its U.S. release, to 132 minutes (the running time of the Blu-ray), that at least one prominent actor billed during the end credits and in some advertising, Herschel Bernardi, doesn't appear in this cut at all.

Without giving too much away, the story opens with out-of-work actor William McFly (Cliff Robertson) accepting an offer by millionaire Cecil Fox (Rex Harrison), who resides in a luxurious 17th century palazzo in Venice, to masquerade as his personal assistant in an elaborate practical joke, inspired by the play Volpone. Fox has summoned three former lovers - much younger movie star Merle McGill (Edie Adams), cash-strapped Princess Dominique (Capucine), and needy, Seconal-addicted Texas millionaire "Lone Star" Crockett Sheridan (Susan Hayward) - to his residence with word that he is terminally ill.

The former lovers arrive - Sheridan with her protective, spinster nurse, Sarah Watkins (Maggie Smith),in tow - apparently hoping to impress the "dying" Fox to will his entire vast fortune to each alone. Eventually the story turns a dark corner as one character appears to have been murdered while a second or third life is threatened. A local police inspector, Rizzi (Thunderball's Adolfo Celi), a family man who enjoys watching Italian-dubbed episodes of Perry Mason, investigates.

Knott's clever play was not a success, closing in London less than three weeks after it opened and never making it to Broadway. (Noteworthy in the cast was a young Jeremy Brett as McFly.) The film version was equally problem-plagued, with cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo dying midway through production, his position assumed by camera operator Pasqualino De Santis, himself later a famous director of photography. Harrison's actress-wife, Rachel Roberts, hoped to play Maggie Smith's part and, when she didn't get it, attempted suicide. Beyond cutting 18 minutes from the film after its London premiere, causing confusion with references to Bernardi's now nonexistent character, Mankiewicz seems to have tinkered endlessly with the material from the start.

In the shorter cut, at least, there are a few awkward bits where, in voice-over, the audience alternately "hears" what Fox and Sarah are thinking, but only briefly and during the last act, creating some unnecessary confusion. Harrison's voice also is heard at the very end of the film, breaking the fourth wall and referencing movie clichés, apparently part of other jettisoned ideas of Mankiewicz's that included onscreen memos from theater owners commenting on the plot and Noises Off-type interaction between the characters onscreen and a stage manager character positioned behind the set, almost as if the movie were a filmed performance of Knott's play.

Hitchcock's film of Knott's Dial M for Murder was uncharacteristically lacking in Hitchcock's visual flair (for the most part) but a model of simplicity otherwise. He let the material and the performances carry the piece, but Mankiewicz stacks his deck with a bit too much cleverness toward the end. While most of the script is admirably unpredictable, ironically its final scenes are very predictable because it's obviously trying so very hard to outsmart the viewer but, in the end, this attempt backfires.

For the most part, however, The Honey Pot is very good, with Harrison being especially delightful as the calculating, sardonically articulate, wistful millionaire, the kind of performance that's difficult to imagine any other actor pulling off so well. Cliff Robertson, whose performance reminded this reviewer of Robert Forster's excellent work in Tarantino's Jackie Brown, strangely enough, is likewise very good. I tend to find Robertson a bit overly conscious and actorly in some of his most celebrated film and TV work (e.g., as Charly), but he's working at Harrison's high level throughout. Maggie Smith is likewise great in her pivotal part.

Capucine, producer Charles K. Feldman's girlfriend at the time, makes little impression, while Hayward is borderline hammy with her emphatic Texas drawl, but The Honey Pot does afford Edie Adams with one of her best film roles as sexy, ditzy Merle.

I wonder if After the Fox ever played on the bottom of a double-bill with this?

Video & Audio

Kino's Blu-ray, using a 1.85:1 high-def master of the shorter version licensed from MGM, is generally fine. At times the image is impressively sharp but, image-wise, the film is uneven, with grainy sections and even signs of minor damage here and there, though some of this may be due to the last-minute trimming. The 2.0 mono DTS-HD Master Audio (English only) is likewise okay, though John Addison's score is often mixed way too low, another inherent issue perhaps; no subtitles or other audio options and the disc is Region A encoded.

Extra Features

The lone supplement is a trailer, also in high-def.

Parting Thoughts

Flawed but very worthwhile for its writing and performances, The Honey Pot is Highly Recommended.

Stuart Galbraith IV is the Kyoto-based film historian and publisher-editor of World Cinema Paradise. His new documentary and latest audio commentary, for the British Film Institute's Blu-ray of Rashomon, will be released this September.