The Lady in Cement [M]

Whilst scuba diving for supposed sunken treasure, renegade detective Tony Rome comes across the body of a beautiful blonde woman anchored by a block of cement. After alerting the authorities, Tony’s hired by a man named Gronsky to find a missing girl and he’s got a sneaking suspicion that the dead blonde and the missing girl might be one and the same. His suspicions are aroused further when everyone he talks to in relation to the case either winds up dead or out to kill him. 

This movie is so 70s! From the music at the beginning accompanying the aerial shot of the boat to the fantastic jumpsuits and big hairdos, The Lady In Cement is as 70s as a ride in a Cadillac with funk on the stereo! And I think it’s for that reason that I found it so entertaining. 

Whilst scuba diving for supposed sunken treasure, renegade detective Tony Rome comes across the body of a beautiful blonde woman anchored by a block of cement. After alerting the authorities, Tony’s hired by a man named Gronsky to find a missing girl and he’s got a sneaking suspicion that the dead blonde and the missing girl might be one and the same. His suspicions are aroused further when everyone he talks to in relation to the case either winds up dead or out to kill him. 

As far as narrative and all that jazz goes, this is a pretty generic detective story. A sequel to Tony Rome, which I admittedly have not heard of let alone seen, The Lady in Cement works relatively well in its development of plot and its balancing between action, comedy, and mystery. 

As much as I loved the groovy 70s soundtrack, the fact that this upbeat music was playing all the time (even in the more dramatic and climactic scenes) was a bit of a no-no. I mean, there’s a lot of plot misdirection and suspense and drama and stuff, but to have this music playing over the top was really contrasting and it just didn’t make you take anything that was happening seriously. 

I’ll be honest, there’s not really an awful lo to say about this without giving too much away. It’s a pretty generic action-packed detective movie. I did like the injection of the homoerotic that it was given though. We have these camp characters that are really a lot of fun to watch and Frank interacts with them so nonchalantly that is quite funny. 

Frank Sinatra is Tony Rome and he’s really just going through the motions now. That’s the feeling I get. By this stage in his acting career, Frank had played the detective role, more specifically the smartarse off-centre detective role, a fair bit so it felt like he really did breeze through this. 

Starring Raquel Welch, Richard Conte, Martin Gabel, Lainie Kazan, Pat Henry, Steve Peck, Virginia Wood, Richard Deacon, and Frank Raiter, The Lady in Cement is an entertaining movie filled with action, romance, plot misdirection, and comedy. I found it entertaining enough, but it’s nothing really all that special and if you went your whole life without seeing it, it’d still be complete.