The New Pictures

I, the Jury (United Artists), the whodunit by Mickey Spillane which has sold 3,500,000 copies in soft covers and put sadism within reach of the average pocketbook, has now been made into a movie which should reassure all readers who think that Spillane's brutal yarns are just a bloody bore. The film, the first to be made of a Spillane work, is so triumphantly bad as to foster the hope that it may be the last.

Mike Hammer, Spillane's kill-crazy shamus, is portrayed by a young heavy from TV named "Biff" Elliot. "I'll kick your teeth all over the floor," he snarls at one point. When the teeth splash, they splash into the audience's lap, because I, the Jury is made in 3-D.

The film follows the book as closely as the censor would allow. A friend of Mike's is murdered, and the beer-swilling private eye goes barreling off in all directions after the killer. After 90 minutes of mashing the ladies and bashing the men, Mike ends up in the arms of the most gorgeous psychoanalyst (Peggie Castle) who ever used a couch after office hours.

"Go on, Mike," she murmurs, toying with the buttons of her blouse. "Ride your imagination. Get it all out . . ." She lifts her lips to his. Gently he squeezes the trigger and blows a hole in her belly (the dame had it coming to her). "Then she went down like soft rope," says Mike as the film ends, "and there was only one thing left to do. Order a basket."

Dream Wife (MGM) is a merry little barbecue of Adam's Rib. When the lights go down, Gary Grant comes up looking shy, eligible and enormously wealthy as a big U.S. importer who has dropped in on a Middle Eastern oil kingdom to make a dicker of some vague sort. While at the Bukistanian court, Importer Grant spots an item he would love to pay duty on: the Khan's sexy daughter, Princess Tarji (Betta St. John).

The Princess, the Khan informs Grant, "has been taught from birth the greatest art known to woman--how to make a man happy. Every secret and every skill of 5,000 years have been imparted to her every day and every night of her life." Grant gulps, but remembers that he is about to be married to another beautiful girl( Deborah Kerr), a brainy careerist in the U.S. State Department.

He flies back home--and lands hard in the middle of the war between the sexes. Career Girl Deborah greets him abstractedly. "The oil situation," she explains, "is a little tense right now." Then, brooding over the state of the world, she tells him: "Darling, I think we should postpone the wedding . . . We can wait; the Middle East can't."

Next day, remembering the Princess and what her father said, Grant cables a proposal of marriage. Three weeks later he gets his answer--a flock of goats is deposited in his office. Explains Deborah: "It's your dowry."

From there out, poor Grant discovers that getting a dream wife can be something of a nightmare, especially if a big international oil deal is riding on the bride's bouquet. The Princess arrives with 6 ft. 6 1/2 in. Buddy Baer as a chaperon, and Grant is informed that, by Bukistanian custom, he cannot even kiss her until they are married. When he tries to sneak into her bedroom "just for a chat," he creates an international incident. Worst of all, his old flame Deborah, assigned by the State Department as official interpreter between Grant and the Princess, puts the burn on him at precisely the tenderest moments.

In the end, Grant begins to long for the good old comfortable days when a man knew exactly where he stood--under a woman's thumb. Meanwhile, Deborah has tucked in her thumb and pulled out aplomb enough to win him back.

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