As with T-Men, the plot revolves around the investigation of a counterfeiting ring threatening, in this case, to destabilize currencies around the world, though considering that the fake dough is being printed on a single, peddle-driven printing press, such dire prophecies are a bit hard to swallow.

What makes The File of the Golden Goose so astoundingly awful primarily is the fault of the clumsy, disengaged direction of expatriate American Sam Wanamaker. Wanamaker's career as an actor was just getting started when he was blacklisted by Hollywood during the hysterical anticommunist movement of the 1950s. He moved to England and continued acting, giving especially good performances in Give Us This Day (also known as Christ in Concrete, 1949) and, years later, with another blacklist victim, Lee Grant, in Voyage of the Damned (1976). He became almost obsessed with building a reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, which finally opened in 1997, four years after his death. (Wanamaker is also the father of popular character actress Zoë Wanamaker.)

He also supplemented his acting with directing, initially American and British episodic television but eventually also four theatrical features: The File of the Golden Goose, The Executioner (1970), Catlow (1971), and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977). None has good direction, and Golden Goose has by far the worst of the four. Wanamaker consistently positions the camera at odd or uninteresting angles, and the cutting between shots within scenes borders on inept. Actors-turned-directors usually at least get decent performances out of their casts but here even the acting is dull and disinterested. Wanamaker also seems unaware how ridiculous certain scenes would play as filmed, and as a result, there are several moments of Ed Wood-type unintended hilarity, though mostly the picture is merely deadly dull.

Kino Lorber's Blu-ray, licensing a newish HD transfer, looks fine, but the direction and camerawork are against it, making the movie appear far cheaper than it was. At a guess I'd say this probably had a budget of around $750,00-800,000 but the look is closer to the sleaziest, cheapest British exploitation films of the period, made for a quarter that amount or less.

Secret (and, presumably, Treasury) Agent Pete Novak (Yul Brynner) is on a date with longtime girlfriend Ann Marlowe (Hilary Dwyer, of Witchfinder General). Sitting in a badly-lit parked car, she wants to get married but he refuses due to the hazardous nature of his work. For some never-explained reason assassins target Pete but fatally shoot Ann instead. (The script suggests the counterfeiters were tipped off to Pete's assignment, but how could they have known?)

Wanamaker's bad direction is immediately apparent. Ann is sitting in the passenger seat of the car when the shooting starts, and Novak tells her to "Get down!" Yet, somehow, she winds up dead near the car's front bumper. How'd she end up there?

Pete eventually travels to London's New Scotland Yard, convincing Supt. Sloane (John Barrie) to let him infiltrate the gang (wherever they might be). Sloane agrees, but insists that another investigator, family man Arthur Thompson (Edward Woodward) tag along. With little to go on, the pair travel to Liverpool.

The counterfeiting ring is infiltrated with unbelievable ease. In what seems like two or three days Pete and Arthur are given grand tours of distribution centers choking with stacks of $100 bills. Later, Pete works his way up the ladder further, to chief distributor Harrison, alias The Owl (Charles Gray), by claiming to be in possession of high quality engravings certain to compliment their superior printing paper.

From its opening credits, pointless footage of a boy walking along a beach to spritely music until he stumbles upon the body of a dead prostitute (shot from an awkward angle, naturally), The File of the Golden Goose stinks. The picture couldn't have been that cheap; Yul Brynner was still a fairly big Hollywood star, albeit a somewhat diminished one, and yet the film abounds in out-of-focus camerawork (by Ken Hodges, The Ruling Class, never this bad before or since), mismatched continuity, and an air of complete disinterest. Like a junior high school student's essay assignment, the movie finally just stops, with no concluding paragraph, so to speak.

Throughout are little moments that leave the viewer wondering if Wanamaker & Co. realized how ridiculous their footage would come off. In one scene Woodward's character is beaten and thrown against a wall where, bloodied, he barely stands in profile with his mouth wide-open. Behind him, however, on the wall, is a naked centerfold, the photograph of the woman's breast positioned right where Woodward's mouth is. Was Wanamaker trying to be ironic or was it merely inept staging? Heck if I know.

Charles Gray's villain is described as a "queer queer," and in one sequence set in a Turkish bath the pale, flabby and freckled actor is nearly completely nude. This serves no purpose except to alarm moviegoers at a sight that cannot be unseen. Another bit has a gangster falling from a tall building to his death many stories below. Shot from three different angles, the fall is so badly edited it almost appears the villain stops halfway down, in mid-air.

Video & Audio

In 1.66:1 widescreen, The File of the Golden Goose looks good for such a shoddy movie, if a bit tepid color-wise. The audio, DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono (English only, no subtitles), is adequate. Region A encoded.

Extra Features

Just a trailer.

Final Thoughts

Given its cast, I wasn't expecting The File of the Golden Goose to be quite as bad as its reputation, but it turns out to be far worse instead. For genre masochists only. Rent It.

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, is now available.