Kaleidoscope (1966)   Starring: Warren Beatty, Susannah York and Clive Revill Digital Classics RRP: £15.99 1006DC Certificate: PG Available 20 April 2009

Barney Lincoln is a suave and very successful American card shark who uses marked cards to win games across Europe. His unbelievable run of luck brings him to the attention of the young and beautiful Angel McGinnis. When Barney falls for Angel’s charms he does not realise that she is related to Inspector 'Manny' McGinnis who plans to use Barney’s method of cheating to strip a particularly nasty drug baron, Harry Dominion, of his wealth. But when they come to the final game, a switch of the decks means that Barney can no longer cheat, and the game takes on deadly consequences...

Kaleidoscope (1966 - 1 hr, 38 min, 37 sec) is a crime comedy, very loosely based on Ian Fleming's Casino Royal (pub. 1953). The film was written by Robert Carrington and Jane-Howard Carrington and directed by Jack Smight (The Illustrated Man (1969), Midway (1976), Damnation Alley (1977)). It’s a light hearted affair which is set against the backdrop of London in the swinging sixties.

Warren Beatty has starred in a few really good films (Splendour in the Grass (1961), Bonnie and Clyde (1967)) and though his efforts here could not be described as bad, it is, after all, a solidly written caper film. It can be described as effortless as you get the feeling that Beatty is pretty much playing himself throughout the film. Suzanna York has never looked so radiant, playing Angel as vivacious and beguiling. Barney’s reaction to her is made all the more believable by her performance, in fact she was nominated for a Golden Laurel for best female comedy performance.

Like most of the films of this era it also has a plethora of English character actors filling in the lesser roles - best of which is Eric Porter, who obviously delighted playing the ever so slightly demented Dominion, a cruel man with a Napoleon complex. His presence adds a delicious touch of menace to the final card game, when Barney realises that a change of decks means he can no longer cheat. For the audience this level of over-the-top malice has already been established when Dominion, in best Bond villain style, earlier off’s one of his own henchmen via a flame thrower.

The disc is a bare bones affair containing no extras, audio is 2.0. That’s not so bad until you realise just how bad the print is in places. There has been no effort made to clean up the picture which suffers from a lot of evident dirt in some of the earlier sequences.

Apart from that there is little to fault the film, it is a product of its era. I’m pretty sure the swinging sixties didn’t make much of a mark outside the capital. One of the most interesting things about the film, and something which spoils part of its overall original ambience, is its presentation which is full of the things that the Austin Powers films so lovingly took the rise out of; making the film unintentionally funnier than was intended.

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Charles Packer