The House of the Seven Hawks (1959)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Good start, but then it gets ruined

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I enjoyed watching this film as I am a big fan of film moire. It is what in a book I would call a page turner. The actors are good their craft, the setting in beautiful. It contains sailing and captains, I am a sailor. My father grew up in Holland and I have visited there just love the country. I like the number of twists in the plot, it kept me wanting to see what's next, then what's next and the double of a role of one of the character was a good technique. The only slightly negative thing I noticed about the film was the plot seemed to be a bit of a veiled cover of "The Maltese Falcon". That movie came out in 1946, and this one in 1959. I don't why that was. Since it is set "across the pond" perhaps the author sold the rights twice. Or the movie producers used their rights twice. Or it is just a remake. Otherwise, bottom line, I enjoyed it and would recommend checking it out.

House of the Seven Hawks was released in December 1959, when its star, Robert Taylor, was forty-eight years old. It is a mystery based on Victor Canning's best selling book, House of the Seven Flies. The plot concerns John Nordley, an American ex-pat who lives in Britain and runs a charter boat. Captain Nordley is flung into a convoluted situation involving dead policemen, ex-Nazis, scheming women, creepy crooks and innocent daughters.The New York Times called the movie "a satisfying labyrinthine plot and carefully placed direction and underplaying that adds up to a modest but truly taut and absorbing diversion." The director is Richard Thorpe, who had worked with Taylor before in six other movies, including The Crowd Roars, Ivanhoe and Knights of the Round Table.Despite being basically a suspense film House of the Seven Hawks has a considerable comic undertone. Robert Taylor plays Nordley as the only sane man in a nest of loonies. No one is what they are supposed to be, with people assuming false identities and numerous double-crosses.Other than Taylor, the cast is European. Nicole Maurey plays the love interest. Linda Christian is a one of the double-crossers. Donald Wolfitt and Gerard Heinz are policemen. David Kossoff, Eric Pohlmann and Philo Hauser are villains. The story ends with a diving expedition to recover stolen treasure and a satisfying shoot-out.I'm not sure Robert Taylor took this movie terribly seriously. He wears the same costume throughout the film, including an Eisenhower jacket that he had made for himself. He does a little mugging, especially when Nordley is being asked to believe one fantastic lie after another. Far from being wooden, he displays considerable facial flexibility. Mr. Taylor does look as though he's having fun.MGM seems to be insisting that Mr. Taylor is much younger than his actual age. Nicole Maurey is too young for him. He is referred to in one scene as a young man. As in so many films the story gets him out of his clothes. The Taylor body is in good shape for a 48 year old, but it's not the body he had twenty years earlier. Nonetheless this film provides good, undemanding and ultimately satisfying entertainment.

This sort of film could only have been made late in Robert Taylor's career. That's because under the old studio system, he was one of MGM's stars and the pictures they put him in were all very well written and produced. "The House of the Seven Hawks", in contrast, is not particularly well written or produced and shows just how far Taylor's career had sunk after he finally left MGM. Although this film was distributed by MGM, it was made by a crappy old film company in the UK and Holland--a far cry from his fancified MGM roots.In this film, Taylor plays a schooner captain who is willing, when needed, to skirt British law. In this case, a Dutch undercover policeman offers to pay Taylor the then princely sum of 500 pounds to sneak him into Holland--and Taylor has no idea he's a cop. However, on the way, the man is found dead in his bunk--seemingly from a heart attack. When he reports this death to Dutch officials, he is taken into custody. After all, the authorities want to know why this man was trying to sneak back in the country. In addition, suddenly Taylor has acquired some 'friends' who also are very curious about what has happened not only to the dead man but some key he supposedly had on him or some mysterious overlay.All in all, the film has only a moderately engaging plot and is very low energy. As a result, it just plods along until it ultimately ends. Nothing fancy or special about this one--just a journeyman performance by an actor who deserved better.

This movie just doesn't have the most exciting or best mystery-elements around. It's a rather dull movie that lacks most of the required genre elements. Although it tries in parts- this is no film-noir but even for a 'standard' thriller type of movie this one just isn't good enough.The story isn't the most interesting one around but it's even worse how the story is told. Some of the sequences go on for far too long, without anything interesting happening in it. Problem is that the story felt the need to put in way too much (redundant) dialog. Guess that they just desperately tried to make the movie longer, since it's a quite short one (92 minutes). The movie really isn't build up well and in the beginning it's too unclear were the movie is trying to head to.The movie picks some weird and unbelievable plot-lines. Besides that, the movie also doesn't offer any real surprises. It's pretty clear from the beginning on who are going to be the good and bad guys and gals of the movie. It's true that the movie gets better toward the end but it's all too late to still fully save the movie. In its build up the movie simply lacks all the things needed to make a good and tense genre movie with. For a thriller this movie is just too dull and totally not interesting enough to follow. The characters all remain too flat and the only established actor in this movie is Robert Taylor, who does his very best but just can't carry this movie on his own. I mean this movie is not even good or really interesting to watch for the most hardened Robert Taylor fans.For me it was a big plus that the movie is set and actually filmed- and almost entirely set in The Netherlands. It was all very recognizable. It's locations and atmosphere works well for the movie, although it's too bad that they didn't made the trouble to cast Dutch actors in the roles of Dutch, not even for the bit parts, which was a bit distracting but obviously only should be so when you're Dutch yourself.By no means the worst genre movie I've ever seen but just not among one of the best or most refreshingly original ones either. Somewhat watchable but not really recommendable to anyone.5/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/