They Came to Rob Las Vegas [Las Vegas, 500 millones] **** (1968, Gary Lockwood, Elke Sommer, Jack Palance, Lee J Cobb, Jean Servais) –  Classic Movie Review 6392

Director Antonio Isasi’s thoroughly entertaining and involving 1968 heist caper is based on André Lay’s 1967 novel, in which an armed gang crime outfit plans to mount a desert attack on a hi-tech armoured truck chock full of $7 million worth of gambling gold in Las Vegas. It starts when Gino Vincenzo (Jean Servais) escapes from prison and plans to rob a Steve Skorsky (Lee J Cobb) security truck in an armed assault.

It is typical of its Swinging Sixties period apart from two things – the taut writing and tense direction by Italy’s Isasi and the fact that it is a Euro production masquerading as an American movie. It is a co-production of France, Italy, Spain and West Germany, but not the US.

Gary Lockwood (as Gino’s brother Tony Vincenzo) and Elke Sommer (as Skorsky’s secretary and mistress Ann Bennett) are good company in the lead roles, and Jack Palance (as Inspector Douglas of the US Treasury) and Lee J Cobb are just the right men for this sort of job.

Gary Lockwood in 1962, aged 25.

The Las Vegas locations are real, with some location shooting in Las Vegas and San Francisco, but by the magic of the movies the Nevada desert is re-created in Spain at Cabo de Gata and Desierto de Tabernas (both in Almería, Andalucía), though there is also shooting in the studio at Estudios Balcázar, Barcelona, and Estudios Moro, Madrid.

Elke Sommer in Las Vegas.

Also in the cast are Georges Géret, Jean Servais, Fabrizio Capucci, Roger Hanin, Gustavo Re, Daniel Martin, Maurizio Arena, Enrique Ávila, Gérard Tichy and Rossella Bergamonti.

It is written by Antonio Isasi, Joe Eisinger, Jorge Illa and Lluis Josep Cameròn, shot in Technicolor by Juan Gelpi, produced by Antonio Isasi, scored by Georges Garvarentz and designed by Antonio Cortés.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6392

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