After The Fox

After the Fox (Italian: Caccia alla volpe) is a 1968 English-Italian heist-comedy movie directed by Vittorio De Sica and starring Peter Sellers, Victor Mature and Britt Ekland.

Plot

Outside of Cairo, Okra uses a bikini-clad accomplice as a distraction and hijacks $3 million in gold bullion. The thieves need a way to smuggle the two tons of gold bars into Europe. Interpol considers only four criminals who can handle the assignment of whom: the first a Frenchman who is so crippled he can barely move his wheelchair; the second is an Irishman so nearsighted he is arrested after he accidentally tries to rob a police station (thinking its a bank); the third is a German so fat he cannot move through a door. The last is Aldo Vanucci, a master of disguise known as The Fox, but he is in prison in Spoleto, Umbria. Aldo doesn't want to escape because he only has six months left to serve, but when he learns that his sister, instead of going to school, is an actress, out of pride he decides to escape from prison.He arrives in Rome and returns home to his mother who runs a gambling den where people play clandestine bingo; he discovers that his sister Gina aka "Gina Romantica" is merely acting in a low-budget movie shooting on the street. Vanucci realizes that the smuggling job will improve his family's life. He makes contact with Okra and his female accomplice and agrees to smuggle the gold into Italy for half of the take. Two policemen are constantly on Vanucci's trail, and he uses disguises and tricks to throw them off.

After watching a crowd mob the over-the-hill American matinée idol Tony Powell, it strikes Vanucci that movie stars and movie crews are idolized and have free rein in society. This insight forms the basis of his plan. Posing as an Italian neo-realist director named Federico Fabrizi, he intends to bring the gold ashore in broad daylight as a scene in an avant-garde movie. To give the picture an air of legitimacy, he cons Powell to star in the movie, which is blatantly titled The Gold of Cairo (a play on The Gold of Naples, a movie that De Sica directed in 1954). Powell's agent, Harry, is suspicious of Fabrizi, but his vain client wants to do the movie. Fabrizi enlists the starstruck population of Sevalio, a tiny fishing village, to unload the shipment, but when the boat carrying the gold is delayed, Fabrizi must actually shoot scenes for his phony movie to maintain the ruse.The ship finally arrives, and the townspeople unload the gold, but Okra double-crosses Vanucci and drives off with the gold in a fog machine truck. A slapstick car chase ensues and Okra, Vanucci and the police crash into each other. Vanucci, Tony Powell, Gina, Okra and the villagers are accused of being co-conspirators. Vanucci's "movie" is shown as evidence in court, where a movie critic proclaims the disjointed footage to be a "masterpiece". Vanucci confesses his guilt, thereby exonerating the villagers, and is sentenced to five years, but he is already ready to escape from prison again on 1 April at 3 o'clock. He escapes by impersonating the prison doctor again, this time tying the doctor up in his cell and walking out of the prison in his place. But when he attempts to remove his fake beard, Vanucci discovers that the beard is real and exclaims, "The wrong man has escaped!"

Cast

• Peter Sellers as Aldo Vanucci / Federico Fabrizi
• Victor Mature as Tony Powell
• Britt Ekland as Gina Vanucci / Gina Romantica
• Martin Balsam as Harry Granoff
• Akim Tamiroff as Okra
• Vittorio De Sica as himself
• The band The Hollies sang the title song together with Peter Sellers.
• The humorously animated title sequence was designed by Maurice Binder, best known for the titles of the James Bond movies.
• The movie was partly shot in the village of Sant'Angelo during the peak tourist season. The villagers were so busy with tourists that residents of the surrounding settlements had to be used as extras.