Cinema: Playing the Palace

The Secret of My Success. “Believe in people, have faith in mankind, and never search for evil,” says James Booth. That is his secret, drilled into him by the monstrous little eccentric he calls Mother (Amy Dolby). Booth plays a bungling British constable who sees all women as embodiments of virtue and makes his fortune by mistake. His principal errors involve: Stella Stevens, as a slatternly village dressmaker who tricks him into entombing her murdered husband; Honor Blackman, irrationally seductive as a mad neo-Nazi entomologist who breeds spiders the size of St. Bernards; and Shirley Jones, as a revolutionist who enlists Booth’s aid to overthrow a Central American republic while pretending to make a movie about it. Comedian Lionel Jeffries labors throughout in four lunatic minor roles.

Abetted behind the scenes by dear old Mother, Booth advances from obscurity to quasi nobility as inheritor of a fabulous English country seat—actually Blenheim Palace, where much of the filming took place, marking a ruinous setback to the dignity of Britain’s stately homes. Hollywood Writer-Director Andrew Stone’s handiwork, billed as a black comedy, hues to the popular misnomer for any movie that dares to flaunt some inept waggery or mishandle a corpse. Secret obviously deserves a description of another color. “Green-sickly” might do.