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| Images courtesy of VCI Entertainment |
Detroit,
Michigan based director for hire and frequent television worker Ron Winston who
dabbled in everything from The Johnny
Carson Show to The Twilight Zone
worked very briefly in theatrical film production starting with the 1966
wartime drama Ambush Bay before
culminating in 1970 with his rather loose take on Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 1866
novel The Gambler. Renamed The
Gamblers with the action and locations moved to Dubrovnik and starring Torso actress Suzy Kendall alongside Don
Gordon, Pierre Olaf, Kenneth Griffin and Richard Ng, the semi-autobiographical story
of a card playing swindler who becomes swindled himself has been adapted
numerous times over including but not limited to an opera by Sergei Prokoviev
and a Lenfilm adaptation. Those looking
for Dostoyevsky or even The Last of
Sheila will come away from this lightweight crime caper a bit underwhelmed but
for the most part the Yugoslavian locations remain picturesque as ever.
Though
sort of lacking a forward narrative thrust, merely following card playing shark
Rooney’s (Don Gordon) double dealings with his partner in crime Goldy (Stuart
Margolin) as they zero in on a luxury cruise ship liner aiming to swindle an
aristocrat of his life savings, crossing paths with sexy socialite Candace
(Suzy Kendall) and annoying troublemaker Kobayashi (Richard Ng) on the
way. As the card playing shenanigans
carry off into the sleepless nights with all manner of double-crossings and
chicanery along the way including some unexpected forays into martial arts by
Kobayashi, the film becomes less interested in who actually comes out on top
than merely treating it as a vacationing promenade through Dubrovnik and all of
its scenic glories.
Co-adapted
by Ron Winson, this pretty but ultimately flat excursion into luxurious
white-fanged competition with the overly confident Rooney slowly finding his
opponents getting the better of him is a little bit of a yawn. Despite lovely location photography by
Croatian cinematographer Tomislav Pinter of No
Man’s Land and a suitably light score by legendary The Elephant Man composer John Morris, this The Gamblers take is unfortunately kinda much ado about
nothing. The cast gives it their all
with accomplished character actor Stuart Margolin having the most fun second to
Richard Ng’s Asian fighter stereotype and Suzy Kendall not having much more to
do than frolic about scantily clad in either a bathing suit played for awkward
laughs when she has to slide by in her tight fitting bikini across a group of
men.
VCI
Entertainment and MVD Visual have given this underseen little crime caper
loosely based on the great Russian novelist’s sardonic tale of the hunters
becoming the hunted a nice restoration including a running audio commentary by
film historian Robert Kelly and Dostoyevsky completests will likely indulge in
the blu-ray. But for the rest of us will
unfortunately come away feeling like an opaque cloud passed through them with
little to no consequence or trace of it ever having existed. For all of the scenic beauty, luxuriousness
and the inspired performance by Stuart Margolin, there’s not a whole lot of a
hook to this promenade and at times the finished piece feels like it was
tailored for the television audience to which its director Ron Winston would
inevitably return to making films for.
An unfortunate mediocrity but it was nice to walk around in here and
there.
--Andrew Kotwicki
