Grimerlana Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Senteur As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Allissa .Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

judithh-1 Tip on a Dead Jockey looks at the plight of a veteran pilot who is suffering from what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder. Lloyd Tredman (Robert Taylor) has decided to drift along in life, hiding away from family and friends in Madrid. His wife (Dorothy Malone) was about to divorce him, at his request, but changes her mind and goes after her man. Taylor is living on the fringes of Madrid society, giving rowdy parties and avoiding work. He is also carrying on a mild flirtation with his neighbor (Gia Scala) wife of his service buddy (Jack Lord). After losing his shirt when a jockey is killed during a race, Taylor is handed an offer by Martin Gabel--a simple matter of flying some currency from one point to another--illegal but not dangerous. He at first refuses then accepts the offer to save Lord from doing it and becoming a criminal. Taylor has to overcome his terror of flying to help his friend. Marcel Dalio provides some comic relief as does Joyce Jameson as a drunken lady who doesn't know how she ended up in Taylor's bed. Nothing goes smoothly, of course. Drugs enter the picture and Taylor has to decide what he will or will not do. The film was originally scheduled to be directed by Orson Welles but he dropped out and Richard Thorpe took over. Not a great film but solid entertainment done professionally by a very good cast.

sol ***SPOILERS*** One of Actor Robert Taylor's forgotten movies that I suspect he hoped would stay forgotten in him playing WWII and Korean war hero Llyod Tredman who lost his nerve as a pilot in him sending scores of USAF fighter pilots to their deaths in the Korean War. Feeling that he's a complete failure in life Tredman dropped out of sight and became a full time moocher in far off Madrid Spain. Staying at his good friend and sidekick's as well as fellow moocher Toto, Marcel Daio, pad Tredman just gets himself drunk and reminisces about old times.It's when Tredman tried to divorce his wife Phyllis, Dorothy Malone, in him feeling he's not good enough for her that he opened up a can of worms in having her fly to Spain from Navada to see if there's anything wrong, in the head, with her estranged husband. Trying to make money betting on the horses, to show Phyllis what a big time gambler he is, Tredman puts his last 1,000 in Spanish currency on a horse he 's a part owner of only to have the horse and its jockey Alfredo, Jimmy Murphy, tripped up in the stretch with both, horse and jockey, ending up dead. Broke and facing eviction Tredman finally gives into mobster Bert Smith, Martin Gable, offer to fly a plane with 85 pounds of British 5 pound notes, worth some 200,000 dollars, from Cairo Egypt and then on the return trip drop them in an empty field outside Madrid for Smith and his hoods to grab! For this dangerous mission Smith offers Tredman $25,000.00.Things get even more complicated then they already are with Tredman's good friend and Air Force buddy Jimmy Heldor, Jack Lord, taking up Smith's offer in that the yellow bellied Tredman doesn't have the stomach to do the job. It's when Jimmy almost lost his life, by getting himself lost over the Mediterranean Sea, in a dry run that Tredman decides against his better judgment to do the flying! That's only if Toto, who never flew a plane in his life, agrees to be his co-pilot.***SPOILERS*** The movie gets overly confusing and ridicules with a at first scared out of his wits Tredman suddenly getting his courage, in flying an airplane, back as he flies rings around, on land as well as in the air, those trying to stop him in his secret mission for gangster Bert Smith. It's only later that Tredman finds out that Smith is actually using him to smuggle heroin not British 5 pound notes back into Spain that really turns him off! In the end Tredman sets Smith, who planned to murder him as soon as he landed, up by having the Madrid police and INTEPOL Agents nab him and his henchman before they could make their successful getaway. Now with both his courage and wife Phyills back Tredman can go back to the life that he abandoned back in Korea by getting his job back as a commercial pilot instead of being the leach and good for nothing bum that he had since become.

thebluespaul A late-in-his-career movie for a classic actor, Robert Taylor is just the man for this role-he wants to make some money but finds out it is "bad" money, and how will he fix the situation?....Dorothy Malone is, well, a 50's actress that was put into a lot of movies in the decade-this is one of them........overall, this is a "fly the plane in and out of fields late at night" movie, and it does it's job well.....(and Mr. Taylor's side kick was in two Bogart movies, Casablanca and To Have and Have Not, so he has good credentials). A Recommended movie.

art_27 A wooden treatment of a shell shocked Korean war vet expatting it in Madrid. Malone barely registers ennui, disillusionment, or any other weight of the world characteristics; he acts more like the suburban dad opting not to shave all weekend. Dalio, the Casablanca croupier, is reduced to playing Malone's colorful sidekick, but a little goes a long way. Jack Lord and his Kennedyesque hairdo go through the motions. Bits of the script, co-written by Shaw, stand out, especially Malone comparing his domestic situation to a Balzac story, "too many people." The title drew me in, and I got a pig in a poke.