The Italian Job
(1969), an amusing caper comedy about a mastermind (Noel Coward) who
organises a huge gold bullion robbery while still serving a prison sentence,
was Collinson's most successful commercial film, although its popularity
owed much to a spectacular car chase sequence actually staged by second-unit
director Phillip Wrestler. Collinson subsequently developed a frenetic,
all-stops-out style of filmmaking as, without the benefits that studio
control might have brought him, the dangers signalled in the earlier
films were allowed to develop unchecked into full-scale deficiencies.
These were particularly apparent in the chillers he made, although at
least Fright
(1971) and Straight
on Till Morning (1972), both greatly aided by the bravura performances
of their female leads, Susan George
and Rita Tushingham respectively, never let up.
But his two remakes of 1945 suspense classics, And Then There were
None (1974) and The Spiral Staircase (1975), are flatly done, with all
the tension of worn-out elastic. He hit an all-time low with two films
involving Oliver Reed, The Sell
Out (1976), Tomorrow Never Comes (1978), the former of which contains
a car sequence somewhat after the one in The Italian Job; then alas,
the only object seems to be to aim the vehicle at every object in sight
on the pavement. The intricacies of The House on Garibaldi Street (1979)
gave some evidence of hope for a more caring director; but then cancer
killed him at 44.
