Lady in Cement
Picture: B
Sound: B- Extras: C+ Film: B+
Director Gordon Douglas made two Tony Rome pictures
starring Frank Sinatra, with Lady in
Cement arriving in 1968 following the first film simply titled Tony Rome. Rome is one of those ‘got to get to the bottom of this’
detectives dead-set on solving the case and while Lady in Cement is fairly cliché and has more intentions on putting
hot chicks on screen than anything else for Sinatra to parade around, there are
still some other minor redeeming qualities.
I liked his role here as much as in From
Here to Eternity and The Manchurian
Candidate, and that’s a good compliment considering this film nowhere
compares to those two classics.
Consider also that during this Swingin’ 60’s time that the
James Bond movies were using babes left and right and Lady in Cement would capitalize on Raquel Welch, Virginia Wood, and
Lainie Kazan for its power. The film
starts out pretty interesting as Rome is out diving and discovers, you guessed
it, a woman at the bottom of the ocean with cement shoes on. So that puts the film into motion as he is
out to find out just how she got there and what a beautiful woman like herself
would be the subject of such waste. He
is then sent on a wild spree through the film and ends up on the trail of the
killer.
The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 scope image looks
better than expected and you can also check out the review for Tony Rome and The Detective on this site as well for their comments. With some softness here and there being the
only real problem there is little question that this film has been well
preserved. Colors look really good and
even viewed on a High Definition system it still is impressive.
The film has both Dolby 2.0 Mono and Stereo sound mixes to
choose from with the stereo mix being more on the money than the mono. Even the sound has a nice dimension and
depth to it and the right money must have been spent at the time to get a nice
recording and good preservation to keep the film in good condition and keep the
original magnetic tracks clean. The
extras are all trailers including a few for this film and a ton for other
Raquel Welch films all of which are also Fox titles, two of which are also on
this site (Myra Breckinridge and Mother, Jugs & Speed).
- Nate Goss
