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Before allegories are indicated, the eponymous rodent is just a critter that scares the Torch Lady off the Columbia pedestal. Jack Arnold's Grand Fenwick like Lubitsch's Marshovia (The Merry Widow), a magnifying glass is required on the Alpine map. ("If guard not on duty, go right in" reads the border sign.) Facing bankruptcy, the nation looks forward to capitalizing on America's fabled largesse toward fallen foes: "We declare war on Monday, we're defeated on Tuesday and by Friday, rehabilitated beyond our dreams." The scheme is hatched by the Prime Minister, approved by the Duchess, and carried out by the timid forest ranger turned field marshal, Peter Sellers three times over in the Alec Guinness tradition. "Great sport," some twenty archers in medieval mesh and a seasick leader, sailing into a curiously unpopulated New York City. "Doesn't seem to be anyone we can surrender to." Arnold's nuclear motif, satirically deployed in a "new super bomb" shaped like a football that vibrates like a fussy pet. The would-be invaders seize it, along with its inventor (David Kossoff) and his daughter (Jean Seberg), "how do I tell that to the President?" Cold War whimsy, a sort of Carry on Doomsday, mild as can be. (The chief beneficiary is not the Kubrick of Dr. Strangelove but the Jewison of The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.) Calisthenics on the ship's deck and twist dancing underground during an air raid, the "germ warfare" of gum on the shoe. "Say, whose side are you on?" "The side of sanity." Diplomats and their board games, disarmament slapstick punctuated by mushroom-cloud inserts. The leading lady is soon off to À bout de souffle, whose cinéaste surely got a chuckle from the Yank officer's earnest declaration ("We've been nice to little countries"). With William Hartnell, Leo McKern, MacDonald Parke, Austin Willis, and Timothy Bateson .
--- Fernando F. Croce |