The Moon-Spinners

Release Date: July 8, 1964

Watch Date: July 5 – July 6, 2024

“Start with a fortune in stolen jewels. Add a dash of danger. A pinch of romance. Season with Hitchcock-like intrigue and comic flair. What do you have? A mystery thriller for the whole family. Set against the sun-bleached beauty of the Isle of Crete, the story pits a young English tourist (Hayley Mills) against a wily Greek jewel thief (Eli Wallach). Mistaken identities and perilous escapes — including a nail-biting battle with a windmill — lead the junior-miss detective to a final confrontation aboard the yacht of an eccentric millionairess (Pola Negri) with a passion for priceless gems and pet cheetahs!”

---

   I was not looking forward to re-watching this movie, and I feel like my feelings were still pretty accurate on a second viewing. What I will say is that, knowing what to expect, I didn’t hate it as much as I did the first time.

   And it’s not that I hated it the first time – because I didn’t. I just found it boring. The only surprising twist is that the love interest isn’t a spy, he’s a banker out to get his job back, which is possibly even more boring? The romance isn’t romantic enough. The mystery isn’t mysterious enough. The action isn’t action-y enough. This movie just is.

   Bob was intrigued at first. He thought I was being too harsh on the film, but by the time we got to the second half he was completely over it. Hayley Mills, he thought, was playing one of the most annoying characters to ever exist. All she did was scream and worry and yet continue to make choices that dragged her deeper and deeper into the problem.

   My biggest gripe, and this is so weird of a complaint, is why does Stratos want no one staying at the inn? Clearly, that’s a lot more mysterious and strange then just having visitors who don’t actually care about the emeralds you stole. The title has really nothing to do with the film, other than that there’s a folk song it’s named after, and the aunt is going around Greece collecting folk songs for the B.B.C. But then again, the aunt really has very little to do with this movie either.

   There seems to be, briefly, a bigger bad guy that’s introduce, but all he seems to do is try to get him out of the country, and he’s not mentioned at the climax of the film either. The evil lady on the yacht who made her fortune in mysterious ways, is less evil and more just annoyed that people are complicating her life.

   The movie doesn’t even come to a real end. Does Mark get his job back? Are he and Nikky going to be together? Does Stratos and his accomplices get in trouble? I don’t know. Because, again, it feels like they just decided the movie had run long enough. And I promise you, we could have cut out half the wedding celebration and had more of a resolution to the end of this film.

   Is it the worst thing I’ve ever watched? No. There’s a beginning, middle and end. There’s attempts at romance, and character development. But it’s boring, and that’s almost more of a cardinal sin in my eyes. I think Hayley Mills is only back for one more film on this list, and I can only hope that the character they’ve given her for her big finale is a lot more interesting.