SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Nice little mob movie. And not a bad little showcase for a few Ratpack members either. Great actors...Elizabeth Montgomery, Henry Silva, Jim Backus, and Telly Savalas to name a few. Silva is in his element here, playing a gangster sent to avenge the deportation of a mob boss who can't get back in the country to settle the score himself. No one plays a better heavy than this guy! So cold and calculating! Silva's Johnny is one creepy character! Perfect! Montgomery is absolutely beautiful and shows the beginnings of a great career. No wonder she became a star!!The film itself I found to be a bit slow and, at times, ever so slightly confusing. Even so, I enjoyed it and would watch it again if only to marvel at the talent of Silva.

***SPOILERS*** Extremely violent mobster movie staring in one of his few, if not only, leading roles the zombie like and ice water for blood Henry Silva as Sicilian gangster Johnn Cool. Johnny is a man on a mission who's job it is to repay those who put his mentor the real Johnny Cool Johnny Colini, Marc Lawrence, out of business by having him deported, with the help of the US Justice Department, back to his native Italy.Arriving in New York City Johnny gets down to business in letting out the word that he's there to put the mob out of business and going about it in the most brutal like fashion. What turned out to be the "Achilles Heel" in Johnny's plan was his involvement with pretty Scarsdale New York divorcée Darien Guinness, Elizabeth Montgmery. Darien fell madly in love with Johnny after seeing him in action, breaking heads, in a swanky New York City bar that she got so stuck up on him that it in the end effected his ability do do his job. ***SPOILERS****It was after Johnny's next to last hit of mobbed up oil man Lennart Crandall, Brad Dexter, that Darien lost her nerve when the rented car,in her name, was ticketed by an L.A policeman. With Darien knowing that the car, which had explosive material in it, would lead to her arrest in the Crandell murder she quickly changed her mind about Johnny and, in order to save her own neck, ratted him out to the police. This also lead to Johnny's enemies in the Mafia to set him up him up in a secret meeting he was to have with Darien at a local New York City restaurant. That's after Johnny posing as a window washer got to knock off Mr. Big himself mob boss Vince Satangelo,Telly Savalas,in a high rise building assassin! Released at the very time of the notorious Joe Valachi hearings before congress on the Mafia's grip on US politics and local police departments the movie was a forerunner to much more popular and bigger gangster films like "The Godfather" and "Valachi Papers" that were released some ten years later. There's also in the film co produced by Rat Pack member Peter Lawford members of the famous Rat Pack of the late 1950's and early 1960's Sammy Davis Jr as someone called "Educated" an exert mob controlled crap shooter and Joey Bishop as Holmes a sleazy as they come L.A TV used car salesman. The movie also has in it as comedy relief a Rodney Dangerfield, before anybody ever heard of him, look and talk alike Hank Henry as Las Vegas bus driver Larry.

There's murder and mayhem to spare in this wild ride through the underworld of the early 1960s.There's simply no one who could play a merciless killer better than Henry Silva, with his beady black eyes, and that inimitable smirk which plays across his face as he dispatches his victims. Here he's put to perfect use as a remorseless "messenger boy of death" sent by deported mobster Johnny Colini (Marc Lawrence) to settle scores with Colini's former associates in the US.In the odd and somewhat awkward opening scenes of "Johnny Cool", we're introduced to Silva's character as a young boy in Sicily. When fascists kill his mother, he's adopted by the hill bandits who rescued him. Next we see him as a bandit chief, a sort of Sicilian Robin Hood who's an honored guest at a local wedding. Which makes Silva's seemingly easy transition to a cold-blooded hit man a bit inexplicable, after Colini on his own initiative bribes the authorities to fake the bandit's death. I have a feeling there's something missing here; maybe the novel explained it better.But once Silva -- who at the mobster's behest has taken Colini's name for his own -- hits New York, the movie shifts into high gear, and from that point on it never lets up. Bouncing from New York to Vegas to LA and back, the new Johnny Colini -- or "Johnny Cool" as he's inevitably nicknamed -- eliminates his targets with icy aplomb, leaving a trail of corpses to mark his journey through the underworld.Along the way, he gets involved with bored little rich girl Darien 'Dare' Guiness (Elizabeth Montgomery), who demonstrates dramatic chops which may come as quite a surprise to those who only know her as Samantha from the TV series "Bewitched". Though she's basically a decent person, something within her is fascinated by the darkness she senses in Johnny, and she's swiftly drawn into the violence that swirls around him. He loves her, but of course in traditional "Beauty and the Beast" fashion, it will be his undoing.Besides being produced by Peter Lawford and featuring a couple of songs by fellow Rat Pack member Sammy Davis, Jr. as well as cameos by Davis and Joey Bishop, this film sports a striking assemblage of actors in supporting roles: from up-and-comers like Telly Savalas to noir and gangster flick icons like Elisha Cook, Jr. and Robert Armstrong, to some not-so-obvious choices for mob bosses in Jim Backus and Mort Sahl. In his brief appearance Sahl leaves quite an impression, as he greets the prospect of his imminent death with a sort of weary, good-humored resignation. He correctly divines Johnny's fate, offering him some rueful advice that he really should have taken.And Silva's final scene is unbelievably wrenching, incredibly disturbing for all that it lacks any gore or overt violence. I guarantee you, you will never forget it.This is a neat little film, compact and brutal as a sawed-off shotgun. While not as stylishly executed as later gangster revenge sagas like "Point Blank" or the original "Get Carter", this one still carries one hell of a punch.

Henry Silva is Johnny Collini, aka Johnny Cool. Adopted by the deported gangster Marc Lawrence in Sicili, he's sent to America to take over all of his former businesses, wiping out the current managers if necessary. It becomes necessary.Swept up in Johnny Cool's serial assassinations is Elizabeth Montgomery as Darien Guiness from Scarsdale -- great WASP name. She becomes Silva's love slave. We all know what great lovers Italian men are, even if they're not necessarily great actors. She aids and abets his crimes, up to and including murder by dynamite. Finally, as the agents of social control are closing in on her, she gets drunk and the next day decides to drop the dime on her boyfriend.First of all, what a cast! Movie historians will be impressed -- John Dierkes, Elisha Cook Jr., John McGiver, Robert Armstrong ("King Kong") inter alia. One of the executive producers was Peter Lawford, which may account for the Rat Pack character of some of the cast -- Joey Bishop, Sammy Davis Jr., and a reference to Jilly's, one of Sinatra's favorite bars in New York.Most of these celebrity appearances are in bit parts. The story depends on the leads, Henry Silva and Elizabeth Montgomery. Silva isn't a bravura actor nor a particularly interesting one. He's much better as part of an ensemble, in smaller roles, especially villainous ones. He was great as "Mother" in "A Hatful of Rain" but those glistening, quartzite irises can't carry a film on their own. He's given no help by the script. Not a tag line in a cartload.Elizabeth Montgomery overacts volcanically when she's not chirping away in her "Bewitched" persona. This may not be her fault. The director ought to shape the performance of a newcomer, and Montgomery was quite good in a later made-for-TV movie, "The Legend of Lizzie Borden." Besides, she's so damnably cute and sexy, in the way that Jane Fonda was at the time, that she gets a pass.The film strives for the essence of "cool" as the word was understood in the late 1950s.The score by Billy May is a good example of what I mean. It's jazz oriented but not challenging. More like big band swing, the kind of backing that Sinatra had from Nelson Riddle. I swear that the climactic phrases in the score feature Maynard Ferguson's trumpet. He's the only guy I've ever heard who can run a trumpet up into the stratosphere, like a dog whistle.But, as I say, the cool we see here is 1950s cool. It now seems a little dated. The general concept involves expensive suits, styled hair, smoking, big tips, American cars that are forty feet long, stylish mannerisms and digs, an excess of self confidence, dames (or, more commonly, "broads" or "mouses"), shades, a stride that has a bounce in it, and an air of unflappability. Think Las Vegas. Sinatra embodied it. You didn't have to be rich, though. Marlon Brando was cool in "The Wild One." Steve McQueen in "Bullet" was neo-cool.