Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966)

Directed by Bernard Girard. Starring James Coburn, Camilla Sparv, Nina Wayne, Aldo Ray, Rose Marie, Robert Webber, Todd Armstrong, Marian McCargo.

Crime pic nonsense with Coburn assuming different voices/personas as a con artist bedding and fleecing women of their valuables, then “graduating” to armed robbery by assembling a crew to knock off a bank. Made between Flint flicks, Coburn does what’s expected with a light touch in a tongue-in-cheek twist on a heavy genre, but is never fully credible as a seductive swindler. Some diverting vignettes and a humorous surprise ending, but it clumps together with too little rhyme or reason to the excessively-involved plot particulars. Written by the director. Harrison Ford makes his (unbilled) film acting debut in a walk-on part as a bellhop—only a clairvoyant would have tapped him as a future marquee movie star.

57/100