Cinema: Junk

The Poppy Is Also a Flower is another James Bond movie made without James Bond, and many will wish it had been filmed without film.

As it is, the picture offers one interesting scene: the screen credits. They reveal that Poppy was developed from an idea proposed by Author Ian Fleming, who mercifully died before he could see what happened to it; that the man principally responsible for what happened is Director Terence Young, who in Dr. No struck the first big Bondanza and that what happened is performed by an awful lot of people who ought to know better: Senta Berger, Stephen Boyd, Yul Brynner, Angie Dickinson Hugh Griffith, Jack Hawkins, Rita Hayworth, Trevor Howard, Trini Lopez E. G. Marshall, Marcello Mastroianni Anthony Quayle, Gilbert Roland, Omai Sharif, Barry Sullivan, Nadja Tiller Eli Wallach.

Poppy's plot is poppycock. Two U.N narcotics agents (Howard and Marshall) assigned to trace a shipment of radio activated opium from the poppy field of Persia to the junk shops of Harlem whip out their trusty Geiger counter and go lickety-click from Teheran to Geneva to Naples to Nice. En route they run a grim gauntlet of all-too-familiar thriller scenes (bang-bang on the Blue Train, hugger-mugger on the bad guy's yacht, hack-the-stripper in a nudie nightspot) and unpleasantly overripe chestnuts ("How'll we get there-take the midnight camel?"). By the time the heroes get the heroin the customers may find themselves in something of a narcoma. The very best that can be said about this picture is that it's junk, but hardly habit-forming.