cult film freak: ORSON WELLES & OLIVER REED 'I'LL NEVER FORGET WHAT'S'ISNAME'

Oliver Reed in I'LL NEVER FORGET WHATS'ISNAME Year: 1967 Rating: ***

Another 1960's collaboration from director Michael Winner with actor Oliver Reed, I'LL NEVER FORGET WHATS'ISNAME has an obvious and incredibly intended message from the get-go as Reed, a young and successful ad man, comes to work wielding an ax, destroying his own desk before quitting to his literally big boss Orson Welles, who, with every significantly-spoken one-liner, represents and even embraces the evils of commercialism...

The movie feels like either a direct sequel to an original story... that could have shown how Reed's Andrew Quint became a success and why he wound up hating that success... or one that started twenty-minutes in... Either way, with so much anger towards this occupation right off the bat... or ax... the writer has more things to say than the characters...

Carol White in I'LL NEVER FORGET WHAT'S'ISNAME

In this case Peter Draper, author of Winner/Reed's first and overall greatest joint, THE SYSTEM aka THE GIRL-GETTERS, which took time to flesh-out Reed and his cronies strategically chasing girls...

Not much different in Reed's specific case: while he quit a lucrative job for an old position writing for an indie magazine, he still loves (and is loved by) the ladies, including separated wife Wendy Craig, seductive lover Marianne Faithful and this film's innocent, virginal ingenue in POOR COW actress Carol White...

Carol White and Oliver Reed in I'LL NEVER FORGET WHAT'S'ISNAME

The latter who's the best thing going here, naturally portraying a comparably naive witness (the jerks are jerks and the good guys perfect idealists) for both Reed and the audience as director Winner... using surreal/psychedelic montages and flashbacks popular in this era, herein showcasing London's Swinging Sixties... traipses through a partial mind-trip sporadically weaving in and out of reality...

Before ultimately finding a genuine plot-line when Reed, forced back into working for the monopolizing Orson, finds his revenge by making a loaded, telegraphed thus predictable commercial in a counter-culture study that's often easier on the eyes (creatively intriguing visuals) than ears (forced, didactic wordplay).