Caprice Reviews

A dumb Day comedy filmed a few years after she should have retired her brand of humor. In this one, she plays an espionage agent ostensibly employed by a cosmetics firm. Her duties include murdering rival agents who may be involved in the narcotics trade. She meets charming agent Harris, who saves her from a skiing mishap engineered by an enemy assassin. Harris is rather mysterious himself, but the couple fall in love and eventually trace their way to the lab of cosmetics genius Walston, who is responsible for the murder of Day's secret agent dad. The comedy is predictable, and the film tries hard to be a contemporary 1960s comedy, but it is hopelessly square. In one ludicrous scene, Day attempts to cut off a lock of hair from the head of one of Walston's mistresses (to discover what kind of spray she uses), dangling from the underside of a high-perched sun-deck; she is splashed with water and then staggers backward down a steep Hollywood hill, her minidress hiked high to reveal the thighs of a middle-aged woman, not the sleek femme fatale she is playing. Day stands in the middle of a dusty mountain road, dripping, unglamorous, unsightly, and decidedly ungainly, an awkward portrait that must have shocked the blonde warbler when viewing the rushes--and certainly prompted her decision to retire.