The Girl in the Kremlin (1957, Lex Barker, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Jeffrey Stone, Maurice Manson, William Schallert) – Classic Movie Review 10,124

Director Russell Birdwell’s 1957 Cold War film noir The Girl in the Kremlin tells a memorably outlandish stinker of a mystery tale about private detective and former OSS agent Steve Anderson (Lex Barker) finding that Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin faked his own death in 1953 and is still alive and living in Greece with a new face and loads of money in Soviet currency.

The Girl in the Kremlin gets no help from the performances of Maurice Manson as Stalin alias Count Molda, Jeffrey Stone as a one-armed agent, Mischa Rimilkin, William Schallert as Stalin’s long lost son Jacob, or even Zsa Zsa Gabor in twin roles as Lithuanian sisters, Lili and Greta Grisenko, one of whom is Stalin’s nurse and lover while the other hires Steve Anderson (Barker) to help her to find her sister missing since Stalin’s apparent death.

The Girl in the Kremlin is impressively inept and ridiculous, an amusing trash cult camp classic from producer Albert Zugsmith. It tries to turn the clock back to the infamous blacklist and Red Scare era and fails ignominiously. It is bad in so many ways.

Gene L Coon and Robert Hill’s screenplay is based on Harry Ruskin and DeWitt Bodeen’s story.

Carl E Guthrie shoots in black and white.

Also in the cast are William Schallert, Peter Besbas, Gabor Curtiz, Elena Da Vinci, Natalie Daryll, Vanda Dupre, Phillipa Fallon, Michael Fox, Charles Horvath, Kurt Katch, Aram Ketcher, Alfred Linder, Della Malzahn, Wanda Ottoni, Richard Richonne, Franz Roehn, Henry Rowland, Norbert Schiller, Carl Sklover, Albert Szabo and Dale Van Sickel.

Birdwell was paid a salary of $3,300. He was a Hollywood publicist and right-wing activist who in the mid-1950s began a relationship with Anne Baxter and took control of her career. He directed her in The Come On (1956) and they formed Baxter-Birdwell Productions. He was later hired by John Wayne on the publicity campaign for The Alamo (1960).

The Girl in the Kremlin comes from producer Albert Zugsmith.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,124

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com