Senta Berger

Stephen Boyd

Yul Brynner

Angie Dickinson

Georges Géret

Hugh Griffith

Jack Hawkins

Rita Hayworth

Trevor Howard

Trini López

E.G. Marshall

Marcello Mastroianni

Amedeo Nazzari

Anthony Quayle

Gilbert Roland

Harold Sakata

Omar Sharif

Barry Sullivan

Nadja Tiller

Eli Wallach

Laya Raki

Jocelyn Lane

Luisa Rivelli

Sylvia Sorrente

Howard Vernon

Marilù Tolo

Grace Kelly

Violette Marceau

Gilda Dahlberg

Morteza Kazerouni

Robert Cunningham

Ali Oveisi

Yvan Chiffre

Georges Douking

Paolo Magalotti

Charles Millot

Jean-Claude Pascal

Michel Thomass

Terence Young

Jo Eisinger

Adolf Eder

Euan Lloyd

Karl Spiehs

Ian Fleming

Edgar Rosenberg

Peter Thornton

Henry Richardson

Georges Auric

Henri Alekan

Monique Bonnot

John Shinerock

Crime

Drama

Mystery

The Poppy Is Also a Flower

Comet

Telsun Foundation Inc.

United Nations

France

Austria

United States of America

CinemaSerf

The opening dose of earnest monologue from Princess Grace of Monaco gives us a clue as to what we might be in for here. It's a clunkily stitched together series of cameos built around the process of identifying and stopping those bent on exporting opium from Iran to, ultimately via Europe, the United States. Yul Brynner ("Col. Salem") starts off the process working with the Imperial authorities in Iran where poppy farming is completely outlawed. Needless to say, though, if the money was right then there were those who would bend the rules and here we can look "Salah Khan" (Hugh Griffiths - a performance straight out of "Ben Hur"). The police, though, have devised a plan to inject his resin with a radioactive isotope enabling it to be tracked and them to destroy the distribution network. Helping the colonel with his task is the doughty "Sam Lincoln" (Trevor Howard) and as they follow the trail we are introduced to a cast of dozens of famous faces adding their visage, if little else, to the potency of the message set out by HSH at the top of the film. It's quite an interesting theory, the journey is well documented as are the difficulties faced by those trying to thwart this most lucrative of trades, but the style of presentation is so very disjointed and the narrative spends just a little too much time pontificating and not enough time engaging the audience. After about forty minutes I had the gist and the baddie firmly in my sights - the remainder delivered little better than an half-baked "007" adventure (Ian Fleming was involved here too). It is not without it's tragedies - this is not a sterile depiction and characters do get bumped off to illustrate just how ruthless these dealers are - but none of that really enlivened what is essentially rather a dull drama.

English