RT Obscura, the exclusive column by renowned critic Kim Newman, sees the writer plumbing the depths of the RT archive in search of some forgotten gems. In his seventh column, Kim rediscovers The "Human" Factor a 1975 sub-grindhouse adventure featuring terrorists, the early internet and Naples.

This shouldn't be confused with Otto Preminger's 1979 The Human Factor, based on the novel by Graham Greene, though it is also one of those "international" thrillers common in the 1970s -- with a minor American "name" toplining a disparate bunch of actors from all over the shop, European locations, a Hollywood exile director and a general sense of not originating anywhere.



The "Human" Factor (note the pointless quote marks in the title) is a post-Death Wish revenge fantasy, but the Naples backdrop might have done for a gutsier, if less nuanced Italian schlock movie from someone like Umberto Lenzi or Sergio Martino. In essence, it's vigilante nonsense, but a few trace elements of themes float about frustratingly in the stew without being developed in an interesting way.

John Kinsdale (George Kennedy) is a civilian who works for NATO in Europe as some sort of computer whizz, developing wargames scenarios for the big brass to play with. One day, while John is at work larking around with British colleagues Mike (John Mills) and Janice (Rita Tushingham), a new nanny (Haydée Politoff, a starlet with cool Euro-horror credits like Queens of Evil and Count Dracula's Great Love) shows up at his home ... then suddenly John's wife and three adorable children have been shot dead (and, worst of all, his daughter's huge doll Shaki-du has been stolen!). The local cops (led by Raf Vallone) are puzzled, but John filches a few clues from them -- including a red hair with a particular type of dirt on it -- and uses the Naples-based component (named, unfortunately in retrospect, 9/11) of NATO's super-computer to identify that dirt as New York's regular pollution, then accessing police and travel records to identify suspects. Meanwhile, the nanny and her terror squad sadistically wipe out another innocent American family, and John horns in on the investigation, planning not to assist the authorities but to execute the terrorists himself.



Big, bearlike George Kennedy was busy in the 1970s, parlaying his Best Supporting Actor Oscar (Cool Hand Luke) and solid credits like the Airport series and The Dirty Dozen into a minor career as a sub-Charles Bronson action man. In an interview included as an extra on the DVD, he admits that the producers would rather have had someone like Burt Lancaster in the lead, and he is unusually cast both as a happy family man and an action hero -- but he's rather good in the latter stages of the film, at once a flabbily pathetic giant in a rumpled suit and credibly formidable in one-on-one battles with much smaller terrorists. However, he can't quite play the moment where he finds Shaki-du (pronounced Shaggy-Doo) in the terrorists' apartment and blubs like a girl at the memory of happier times. Then again, I doubt if Anthony Hopkins or Robert DeNiro could have pulled that off either. And what did the terrorists want with the grotesque-looking floppy toy?