The 1960s and early 1970s were a Golden Age for filmmaking in the former Yugoslavia. In addition to an uptake in the local product, Western European countries and the United States took advantage of the cheap labor costs and the welcome hospitality of the Marshall Tito regime. Several well known movies were shot there including Orson Welles THE TRIAL, GENGHIS KHAN with Omar Sharif, ISADORA with Vanessa Redgrave, NICHOLAS & ALEXANDRA, Mel Brooks’ THE TWELVE CHAIRS, the Viking epic THE LONG SHIPS with Richard Widmark & Sidney Poitier, and FIDDLER ON THE ROOF. After a considerable dropoff in the 1990s during the Balkan Wars, the area has since rebounded this century with well known series like GAME OF THE THRONES now being shot there.
One of the many movies made there during the 1960s that is completely forgotten today is OPERATION TITIAN (1963). The story of a stolen painting and the people involved with it was never released in America in its original version, instead it appeared as 3 different movies. There was PORTRAIT IN TERROR (1965) which was a shortened version shown only on TV. Then it was completely altered, combined with new footage and released to drive-ins in 1966 as part of a horror/sci-fi double bill. It was rechristened BLOOD BATH and now dealt with an insane painter who kills his models and then covers them in wax. It was altered again with additional footage when BATH was sold to TV as TRACK OF THE VAMPIRE with the painter turned into the title character. Check them out on IMDb
For the purposes of this review, I shall deal only with the original which has been rarely seen and deserves better as it is a pretty good movie. It all started in 1962 when legendary B movie entrepreneur Roger Corman went to Croatia (then Yugoslavia) to produce a feature film utilizing local performers and filmmakers. It was to be an International crime thriller involving a stolen portrait by Italian Renaissance master Titian. The two principal male roles were to be played by American actor William Campbell and Irish actor Patrick Magee. They had already worked with Corman on two movies that were shot in Ireland, THE YOUNG RACERS and DEMENTIA 13 which were both released in 1963 (check them out on IMDb as well). TITIAN was filmed in 6 weeks in the Fall of 1963 right after the other 2 movies.
To economize further, the entire film would be shot in and around Dubrovnik. According to Campbell “Being in a seaside resort made it a fun shoot and everyone got along just fine. There were very few problems. It was like a vacation”. However, once the movie was finished, Corman realized that it would be unreleasable in the U.S. There were no big stars to attract an audience and most Americans didn’t even know who Titian was (most probably still don’t). It was then that he and the film’s distributor, American International, decided to turn the movie into something completely different. First a shortened version would be sold to American television and then Corman hired an American director, Jack Hill, to re-fashion it into a horror picture whose running time was 66 minutes (down from 88 minutes).
The storyline of the original involves a mediocre artist, who is descended from an aristocratic Italian family. He makes a deal with an Irish confederate who will steal his uncle’s priceless Titian painting, sell it to a collector, and then they will split the proceeds. As so frequently happens with crimes committed in movies, things go terribly wrong. The Irishman kills the uncle while stealing the painting only to discover that it’s a fake and the real Titian has vanished. So what happened to it and who has it? The artist, his former girlfriend, the Irishman’s overnight acquaintance (an exotic dancer who performed earlier in the movie), or somebody else? Because of the uncle’s murder, the Yugoslavian police become involved and then things spiral out of control. The ending comes as something of a surprise.
While OPERATION TITIAN is nothing extraordinary, the movie is entertaining and, for those who like exotic locales in their movies because they know they will never go there, you get to see the resort city of Dubrovnik in all its glory before the Balkan wars of the 1990s and the break-up of Yugoslavia. All of the principal supporting players were from there. They could speak English so dubbing isn’t an annoyance but their Slavic names were Westernized in the credits. If you enjoy International intrigue and are looking for a little something off the beaten track, then OPERATION TITIAN will fill the bill nicely. It is available on YouTube in the original and TV versions (the latter should be avoided) and as part of a special Blu-ray set from Arrow Video which contains all 4 incarnations.
The Capsule Critic 