In 1957 The Girl From The Kremlin was inflicted on the American movie going public just as the Red Scare was dying down and Joe McCarthy was dying. Just the fact that one of the stars is Zsa Zsa Gabor playing a dual role is enough to tell you this is a camp classic.
Zsa Zsa plays two roles, one as the nurse to none other than Joseph Stalin who faked his own death and had some plastic surgery done. He also absconds with a lot of rubles the better to have a comfortable retirement and maybe even get a plane ticket to Argentina where his old pact pal Hitler is rumored to be.
The nurse's twin sister is worried about sis so she hires Lex Barker private detective and former OSS agent with a few behind the iron curtain contacts.
The gist of it is that some of the toadies in the Kremlin have gotten tired of Stalin's paranoia and are getting more than restless. So Stalin decides to take a powder, maybe come back another day. Though I have to say Maurice Manson doesn't look like he's ready for a comeback as Stalin or his alias Count Molda. He looks like he's enjoying being Count Molda as much as you can with several million people on the planet liking very much to wring your neck.
No one's got any great enthusiasm for this project it looks like. Especially William Schallert playing Stalin's long lost son Jacob. Schallert looks like he's about to heave if he says one more word of the inane dialog.
The Girl In The Kremlin was directed by Russell Birdwell, noted right wing activist in Hollywood and pusher of the blacklist which was starting to crumble. Birdwell was a writer and a publicist and John Wayne made the colossal mistake of having Birdwell in charge of the publicity campaign to gain The Alamo some Oscars. It backfired in titanic fashion, the gist of the campaign was that you were some kind of subversive if you didn't think The Alamo should win best picture.
This film is a cold war dinosaur, bad in spectacular fashion. It's a real hoot.
Zsa Zsa plays two roles, one as the nurse to none other than Joseph Stalin who faked his own death and had some plastic surgery done. He also absconds with a lot of rubles the better to have a comfortable retirement and maybe even get a plane ticket to Argentina where his old pact pal Hitler is rumored to be.
The nurse's twin sister is worried about sis so she hires Lex Barker private detective and former OSS agent with a few behind the iron curtain contacts.
The gist of it is that some of the toadies in the Kremlin have gotten tired of Stalin's paranoia and are getting more than restless. So Stalin decides to take a powder, maybe come back another day. Though I have to say Maurice Manson doesn't look like he's ready for a comeback as Stalin or his alias Count Molda. He looks like he's enjoying being Count Molda as much as you can with several million people on the planet liking very much to wring your neck.
No one's got any great enthusiasm for this project it looks like. Especially William Schallert playing Stalin's long lost son Jacob. Schallert looks like he's about to heave if he says one more word of the inane dialog.
The Girl In The Kremlin was directed by Russell Birdwell, noted right wing activist in Hollywood and pusher of the blacklist which was starting to crumble. Birdwell was a writer and a publicist and John Wayne made the colossal mistake of having Birdwell in charge of the publicity campaign to gain The Alamo some Oscars. It backfired in titanic fashion, the gist of the campaign was that you were some kind of subversive if you didn't think The Alamo should win best picture.
This film is a cold war dinosaur, bad in spectacular fashion. It's a real hoot.