Watch Caprice For Free

Thanks for the memories!

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Caprice marks 20th Century Fox's attempt to enter into the spy caper stakes already occupied by the likes of Charade (1963), The Prize (1963) and Arabesque (1966). At the time, Doris Day was the world's number one box office star; little did she know that her 'kooky blonde'-routine was about to fall foul of a rapidly changing cinematic landscape. This was the age of Bonnie & Clyde, The Graduate, The Wild Bunch, and Midnight Cowboy. The world wanted depressing, downbeat character dramas; not cutesy caper films about nutty industrial spies. The only room left at all for comedic spy capers was already taken by the increasingly humorous 007 films and the Flint movies with James Coburn. Caprice is a desperate effort which suffers from too many jarring mood swings and a tortuously confusing plot. Day only made the film to fulfil a contractual obligation and would later label it her worst film. Co-star Richard Harris was so sure that the film was destined to bomb that he allegedly refused to watch it, ever! Even at the time of his death, he had never seen Caprice.Patricia Foster (Doris Day) is an industrial spy working for Femina Cosmetics. Her father also used to be in the espionage game; he was an Interpol agent until his unsolved assassination in the Alps. Patrcia is ordered by her boss Sir Jason Fox (Edward Mulhare) to steal a secret formula for rival company May Fortune. The formula can apparently create a water-resistant hairspray which will be the next big thing in the world of fashion and beauty. Things take a darker turn when counter-agent Christopher White (Richard Harris) enters the scene. Is he ally, enemy, or something else altogether? To add further to the mystery, Patricia also discovers that vast quantities of drugs are being smuggled between the cosmetic companies in the guise of a 'harmless' face powder. Soon, the long-ago murder of her father rears its ugly head once more as Patricia uncovers one secret too many and finds herself targeted for elimination.Directed by former Warner Loony Tunes maker Frank Tashlin, Caprice has a good deal of cartoon-like energy but lacks the required finesse to be a good film. The scattershot narrative is a nightmare to follow; the back projection work, intended to suggest an exotic feel, looks horribly fake; and the performances seem generally tired and disinterested. Often Caprice seems to be mimicking earlier and better movies, right down to Doris's chic wardrobe (her sunglasses in particular are clearly modelled on Audrey Hepburn's in Charade). All this achieves is to draw unwanted attention to the fact that she's a fortysomething woman trying to come across like she's in her 20s. There are a handful of individually effective action sequences and the film is at least mercifully brief. However, as a whole it is a muddled mess, pitched at a level of hysteria from the very start which only gets more and more out-of-control as the film progresses. Is it as bad as that absolute nadir of zany '60s caper movies, John Goldfarb, Please Come Home? No, not quite... but it sure is a pretty rotten movie just the same.

Surely Fox had intended this one for Raquel Welch but dusted it off when Doris needed to complete her three picture deal with the studio. She had saved their necks at Christmas time in 1963 with MOVE OVER, DARLING (the re-tooled SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE), but two years later she was rewarded with DO NOT DISTURB, a second-rate farce based on a third rate play. Then along came this attempt to turn Doris into a go-go mod spy with BATMAN trimmings. Well, Doris is always watchable and there are a few funny and/or exciting set pieces, and the photography is gorgeous, but really, I am shocked that a major MAJOR talent like Doris Day settled for this feeble outdated-the-minute-it-was-released effort. There isn't even a decent ending! The way films were being made and watched and reviewed and studied was changing rapidly (mostly for the good) in 1967, and it is a shame that an iconic performer like Miss Day could not ride the wave to a nice third act to her movie career. Still, this does have the makings of a cult film, and perhaps when viewed in context of the time it was made and released (Spring of 1967) future audiences will appreciate it for what it is rather than what it is not. Watch anyway!

MASTER PLAN: steal a formula for water resistant hairspray. The director and star of "The Glass Bottom Boat" returned for another stab at comical intrigue. This one starts as a seemingly serious thriller about someone getting killed on the snowy Alpine slopes and others involved in some sort of espionage in Paris; the ski chases even precede the ones in the James Bond thriller "On Her Majesty's Secret Service"(69). But, we soon find out it involves corporate espionage, not the other kind; it's all about stealing formulas for perfumes and fragrances, with Doris Day playing a private secret agent in the employ of a tycoon (Mulhare). We're not sure who Richard Harris works for; he might be working for Mulhare's character; or, for one of his enemies; or, both; then again, he might be working for someone else entirely. Walston (of "My Favorite Martian" and "Picket Fences" TV shows) is the intense chemist and odd ladies man, obviously a little sinister. They all take the proceedings quite seriously, as if he who ends up with the special formula for hairspray shall rule the world. I found it difficult to get too excited as the story wore on, especially since I was expecting to laugh for a good portion of it. There is some mystery attached, I will give it that, as we wait for everyone to reveal what they're really doing by the conclusion.This is a bit more stylish than "The Glass Bottom Boat" and has some real nice sets, trying to capture the elegance of a James Bond-wannabe suspensor, but it also lacks the breezy qualities of the previous Doris Day comedy. Since it is supposed to be a comedy when all is said and done, it fails to capture that easygoing tone of the better laughers, with barely any chuckle-inducing scenes, despite some silly slapstick involving Day's clumsiness (again). This is probably because it has trouble deciding what it wants to be - a comedy or a thriller - and the two tones scrape against each other uncomfortably rather than jell. Day and Harris have no chemistry and Harris was obviously miscast - this type of role is for Rock Hudson, James Garner or Rod Taylor to breeze through; Harris is known for his intense dramas & realistic thrillers, and his intensity still seeps in despite his efforts to be carefree. When he and Day are telling the audience that they've fallen in love in the last act I didn't buy it for a second; I expected him to start slapping her or just shoot her as the movie was ending. There's also not much surprise as to who the real villains are; Mulhare, for example, was best known for his dastardly role in "Our Man Flint" at this point. The actress Tsu was quite cute in a secondary role and it's too bad she didn't have a bigger career. Watch for actor Pollard ("Bonnie and Clyde") hamming it up as Tsu's boyfriend in one scene. The filmmakers also broke a fourth wall here by having Day's character in a theater which is playing the movie "Caprice." This was the one genuinely amusing moment. Heroine:6 Villain:6 Male Fatales:5 Henchmen:4 Fights:4 Stunts/Chases:5 Gadgets:5 Auto:5 Locations:6 Pace:5 overall:5

This late Doris Day effort is a truly awful film ,a fact which is initially disguised by an excellently filmed pre-credits sequence in which a skier in white is chased down mountainous slopes by a sinister black-clad skier wearing a reflective visor and toting a high-powered rifle. Much of this sequence, and a second that appears near the end of the film, is shot with a hand-held camera. In fact it looks as if the cameraman was skiing down the mountain himself as he took the footage. It's a terrific piece of filming that immediately immerses the viewer in the action – but after this superlative opening and a cleverly designed credits sequence, the film falls flat with a resounding thud.Doris Day was about 42-years-old when she made this flick and, thanks to some ill-conceived make-up and atrociously synthetic looking wigs, she looks every day of those 42 years. Already at least fifteen years too old for the part, she's made to wear the type of outfits that shouldn't be seen on a woman over twenty-five, and doesn't look like she's having a good time at all. It's a shame, because she was still a good-looking woman at the time, as can be seen in WITH SIX YOU GET EGG ROLL, which she made the following year. No wonder she doesn't like to talk about this film anymore.Her co-star is Richard Harris, who is also woefully miscast as a light leading man. Whoever convinced Harris he was suited to comedy roles was either inept or pandering to Harris's ego. Either way, all concerned made a big mistake when he signed up for this film. There's no chemistry whatsoever between him and Day, they never look like people who would be attracted to each other, and the manner in which their relationship develops is both poorly conceived and ineptly handled.Director Frank Tashlin's career was in irreversible decline when he made this film (which can have only accelerated the slide) and he made only one more feature after this. He manages a couple of decent scenes, but the light touch he brought to a number of minor classics in the fifties just isn't there anymore. To be fair, the script doesn't give him much to work with – for a comedy it is remarkably unfunny – and the unnecessarily convoluted plot doesn't seem to know where it is going before eventually descending into absurdity, which is a shame because it contains the nugget of a good idea. Day didn't like this one, Harris didn't like it and, in all probability, neither will you.