Lady in Cement (1968)

Frank Sinatra is "Tony Rome", a gent swimming along minding his own business when he comes across a body, a lady's body - wearing concrete Wellingtons. How came she to such a watery end? Well, he sets off to find out in this really pretty crummy follow up to "Tony Rome" from a year earlier. His character is really pretty undercooked and there really isn't much chemistry between himself and co-star Raquel Welch who isn't really on very good form either. The detection element of the storyline here is almost incidental, and though that plot - what there is of it - moseys along well enough, it's all just a bit too insubstantial, even contrived, to sustain much interest once the benchmark for his wise-cracking, to cool for school look, has been established. There is quite an amusing scene when he sits watching telly with Dan Blocker and you hear the "Bonanza" theme tune, but for the rest of it, this is merely an adequate vehicle for two stars who both appeared to me to have wished that they were somewhere else.

Stay Loose! Lady in Cement is directed by Gordon Douglas and adapted to screenplay by Marvin H. Albert (from his own novel) and Jack Guss. It stars Frank Sinatra, Raquel Welch, Richard Conte, Martin Gabel, Lainie Kazan, Maria Baretto and Dan Blocker. Music is by Hugo Montenegro and cinematography is by Joseph F. Biroc. While diving for sunken treasure, Private Investigator Tony Rome (Sinatra) finds the body of a gorgeous blonde, her feet stuck in a block of cement. When he is hired to find a missing woman by Waldo Gronsky (Blocker), Rome thinks there might be a connection with the lady in cement. Soon, though, Rome finds himself mixed up with dodgy underworld types and the beautiful Kit Forrest (Welch)… A sequel to the previous year's hit Tony Rome, this follow up mixes raw cynicism with a colourful tone to present a Chendleresque detective thriller. The Florida settings are most pleasing, and act as a sort of bum steer since they hide some of the murk that Rome has to wade through. Sinatra quips away hard-boiled style, Blocker steals the film as a serious muscle head, while Welch is a sex bomb picture. This was the winding down period of Sinatra's movie career, and thus there was a tendency of critics to suggest he was just marking time here in this one. This isn't so, he's having fun in the role (again), and since he also made the far darker (and superior) "The Detective" this same year, he was hardly sleep-walking through his roles. Lady in Cement keeps itself busy, violent and cheekily sexy, whilst simultaneously giving us a detective mystery that never bores. 7/10