Humphrey Bogart is my favorite classic film actor; actually he's my favorite actor altogether. "The Maltese Falcon" is right up there on my list of Bogey favorites, so having that one under your belt probably gives you a leg up on the stuff going on in 'Bogart's Face'. Most of the references are right out there, like the 'Eyes of Alexander' sapphires in place of that evil black bird. But there are subtler ones as well, like Sam Marlow (Robert Sacchi) hiding a note in the bedpost, in an aside to "Casablanca". Even some of the characters parallel the greats - Buono for Greenstreet, and Lom for Lorre, but the depth of the talent doesn't carry on down the line. As the two detectives tailing Marlow and the gems, Richard Bakalyan and Gregg Palmer don't have the personality to parry with Marlow the way Barton MacLane and Ward Bond did in the original. As for Sacchi, he's a credit to Bogart and his mannerisms, and if you're watching a slightly fuzzy VHS copy of the film, there are a few scenes where he's a complete dead ringer. But he did overdo it with the facial grimace; Bogart did it for emphasis and effect. Sacchi just does it, all the time, and it gets a bit tedious. Still, you can have some fun with this one, Bogart fan or not. My recommendation - play it Sam, play it one time.

This movie is a very enjoyable homage to the Bogart and other detective films of old. Robert Sacchi nails it as Bogie and Michelle Phillips is a truly timeless beauty as Gena Anastas. However, the most noteworthy portion of this film involves the longest belly dancing scene ever produced in a Hollywood film. One well-known professional instructor commented that nothing else in cinema comes close for dance excitement. The scene, which ends up being an important part of the plot, occurs in a lushly beautiful Middle Eastern nightclub and is by all accounts mesmerizing. The pulsating music, the swirling veils and ringing finger cymbals, free-flowing undulations and beautiful costumes - and a surprise twist involving the seductive Sybil Danning - build tension and excitement until the very end. The three talented and beautiful professional nightclub dancers are led by exotic brunette beauty Kamala Almanzar, one of the US' leading belly dancers since the mid-1970s. She was hand-picked by famed Armenian musician Guy Chookoorian to travel with his orchestra on the road. Guy's ensemble is the live band that the dancers perform to in the scene. If you watch the trailer on this site, you will see a glimpse of Kamala (playing the finger cymbals behind Sybil Danning). If you're not yet a fan of belly dancing, you will be after watching this movie, and if you're an aficionado, it holds up very well after repeated viewing.

This movie should have been called "The Eyes of Alexander", and they should have done away with the Bogart concept altogether. The film started out with a lighthearted approach to Bogart's legacy and some comical moments with his surgery oriented face, but after the first 15-30 minutes it morphs into a more serious thriller, where two palm size sapphires, purportedly laid as eyes into a marble headpiece of Alexander the Great, for him, and seen by him, right before his death. So the gems are of great value not only because of their quality and size, but also because of the tie to the Greatest conquerer the world has ever known. Being an expert on Alexander qualifies me to say that this is wholly and completely a fiction, but it makes for a good movie anyway. So the film winds around some early silliness and stumbles along with all sorts of Alexander allusions in both the foreground and background (which I really liked), ending with a dated shark attack (you couldn't go to a movie in '79-'80 without some shark showing up to menace the audience). There is a yacht named Euridice (Alexander's father's young wife), a man named Alexander, Philip, Cleitus?, (it's been about 5 years since I've seen the film, so can't remember all the details), Olympias, some street names, and many others. It was fun to watch the film just to try to catch all the background details that the director (obviously an Alexanderphile himself) put in. When all is said and done, the eyes are retrieved and the camera pans in on them on a bed as the credits roll by. Kind of a neat ending. What would have been more fun would be if they went the Indiana Jones way and had an action adventure. There were many, many real artifacts that could have been used to make this more interesting, or instance, the hand-annotated (by Aristotle) version of the Iliad that Alexander kept with him all his life, even on his many journeys across Asia (would be of incalculable value if found today). Olivia Hussey (my all time favorite b-movie actress)is killed off way too early, and should have been the main actress throughout, not the girl from the Momma's and the Poppa's...though she was herself easy on the eyes. If you can find this flick, it might be worth checking out for the historical stuff and to see Olivia Hussey in an extremely funny deadpan humor bit early on, but beyond that, I'd pass on it for something more entertaining.Yours, Nick

Ex-cop turns private eye after he has plastic surgery to look like his movie hero. Send-up of 40's Bogart films will probably offend fans. Skewers familiar film noir scenes and characters, sometimes with subtlety. Similar to "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" (1982) and "The Cheap Detective" (1978). (Rating: B+)