Ed-Shullivan
Hollywood was cranking out a ton of these type of crime movies in the 1960's. I found Assault on a Queen to be one of the better ones. In fact I liked Frank Sinatra's character better in this title than his role in the better known and received 1960's version of Ocean 11. The movie's plot was not as absurd as some critics would like you to think it was. Frank plays Mark Brittain a former navy officer who intends to raise a sunken world war II German submarine, clean it up and repair it then sail it out to the middle of the ocean, and wait for the Queen Mary to cross paths, then board the Queen Mary and steal the ships most precious cargo, cash and gold.Frank meets up with a couple who can underwrite the funding of the German submarine's salvage and repair and who are willing to join the crew to rob the Queen Mary on the high seas. Richard Conte plays an ex navy mechanic named Tony Moreno whose assignment is to get the submarine sea worthy. Virna Lisi is the attractive Italian financier and her male companion is a young and good looking Anthony Franciosa. Anthony plays a bit of a slime ball boyfriend named Vic Rossiter who treats Virna Lis's character Rosa Lucchesi as more of a possession than as his soul mate. Rosa invariably falls for the strong and true character of Mark Brittain which causes more than a little tension on the submarine between Mark and Vic.Without spoiling the ending suffice to say that there is some drama and danger on the high seas when Sinatra's crew board the Queen Mary. The plan was to go off like clockwork, but they encountered more than a bit of rough water if you get my drift. (No pun intended)I thought the movies criminal plot was very original and the acting of the three main characters played by Frank Sinatra, Virna Lisi and Anthony Franciosa was excellent. The movie moved along at a great pace because the story line was original, and the acting was stellar. Not a very big cast, and the scenery is limited to mainly life on the submarine, but I enjoyed the story line for a 1960's crime movie that is well worth watching if you like the adventure/crime genre.
djb896328
First of all, this poster for this movie is incredible. One of my all time favorites. This movie was really hard to find until recently (just came out on blu-ray April 2012) so years ago I found an old paperback of the Jack Finney novel and read it. Loved the story. Then, finally, I was able to see the movie ... disappointing. My biggest complaint is the direction: absolutely flaccid, dull and without any creativity. Not surprisingly the director, Jack Donohue, was a hack TV director almost his entire career and only directed a handful of movies - none of them good. And so Assault on a Queen feels soooo slow when it really should be fast paced and have high energy. The great Rod Serling wrote the script from a fun novel, so I'm not going to blame the writing. And the acting was fine too. The only other problem was the music: poorly used and sparse and never seemed appropriate for the scene. I suppose I can blame the director for this too since he'd be the one overseeing where it was used.Anyway, worth watching for fans of 60s heist movies. I like it, but wish it were better.
Bill Walch
I rated this movie as a 10, not so much because it was one of his best, but it's surely much better than some of his other much less popular movies that have transferred to DVD.I am dumbfounded why this hasn't been re-released on DVD. Admittedly, its a little dated, lacking in many of the photographic tricks available in that time, but it is a good story, has a relatively good cast, and also has a fine score by Duke Ellington.Over the years, I've written may times to the Sinatra family, and what I believe to be the copyright holders, but I've never received a reply (not that I expected to anyway). My fear that many popular films with A-List stars like this one, will be lost to obscurity.In my opinion (for what its worth), there is a lot of dud movies being released on DVD these days, and it makes no sense why some of these lost gems are being bypassed.
bandini2
Well I saw this movie shortly after is was made, when I was in junior high school and loved it. I will not attempt to review the plot here since there has just been too many decades that have intervened since. I will say however, that I remember that several of my friends also saw it and we even used this movie as some kind of class project in seventh grade English class where we had to outline and develop a screenplay. Even so, we were just kids and easily impressed. I have never seen the film since, even on the late movie, but it would be interesting to see if it survived the ultimate test...the test of time. It is true that Francis Albert Sinatra, much like is often said of John Wayne, usually just played himself.
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