Madame Sin (1972) - film review

Former CIA agent Anthony Lawrence is mooching around London when he is accosted by a man who offers to buy his services.  When he refuses, Lawrence is rendered unconscious and taken to an old castle on a remote Scottish island.  Lawrence’s abductor  is Malcolm De Vere, aide to the ruthless criminal mastermind Madame Sin, who has been behind some of the most outrageous crimes of the century.  Madame Sin gains Lawrence’s grudging support by telling him that his girlfriend, Barbara, also a spy, was betrayed by her paymasters.   Having convinced Lawrence that his own side now regards him as a security risk which has to be eliminated, Madame Sin offers him sanctuary on her island.  All that she asks in return is that he goes out and hijacks a Polaris submarine for her...

Never one to turn down a chance to demonstrate her versatility as an actress, Bette Davis threw herself into this lunatic venture with such enthusiasm that you just wish there was a special category at the Oscars to reward the nuttiest performance of the year.  Davis would surely have won that award with this film, in a turn that has Fu Manchu, Cruella De Vil and Bond villain written all over it, in blood red lipstick and bright turquoise eyelid makeup.  By this stage in her awesome career, Davis had acquired a reputation both as a supremely capable performer and as a tyrant, someone who would always get her own way.  It feels highly appropriate that, in her twilight years, she should get to play the ultimate female villain.  There’s more than a hint of self-parody in Davis’s portrayal of a character who lives the high life bathed in delusions of grandeur, with an entourage of sycophants to amuse and annoy her.

Madame Sin was originally conceived as a weekly television series, in the same fantasy thriller mould of such shows as The Avengers, The Prisoner and Department S which had been highly successful in the 1960s.  This pilot film was made by ABC and broadcast on television in the United States in January 1972.  It was not a success and so plans for the series were immediately scrapped.  The film was then subsequently released as a feature film in foreign markets, where it received mixed reviews and enjoyed a limited success.  Robert Wagner co-produced the film with Julian Wintle, who is perhaps best known as the producer on the penultimate, and arguably best, series of the The Avengers. 

Madame Sin would be laughably bad were it not for the fact that it never takes itself too seriously.  There is a camp, larger-than-life quality to just about every aspect of the production, which makes even the risible dialogue ("You are not a woman!  You’re a disease!!!") palatable.  Here is just some of what the film offers: Robert Wagner being attacked by sonic pistols;  Gordon Jackson losing his mind and his Polaris submarine in the same day;  Denholm Elliott as the smoothest henchman ever;  Robert Wagner being attacked by sonic pistols again;  a seductive Catherine Schell putting the fatale into femme fatale; Roy Kinnear trapped in a phone box with a deaf Robert Wagner; and, best of all, Bette Davis ruling the world in a gorgon-themed hair-do.  Some people would pay good money to see all this, and indeed they did.  It’s almost a shame that it never made it as a TV series...

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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