Tony Rome (Frank Sinatra) and his buddy Rubin (Pat Henry) are treasure hunting off the coast of Florida. Rubin has a map that is supposed to show the location of 11 Spanish galleons that sunk in the late 1500’s. Tony dives overboard to search the designated area. What he finds at the bottom of the sea is a dead blonde woman with her feet buried in cement. Tony is a private detective who used to be on the police force. He calls his friend Lieutenant Dave Santini (Richard Conte) and reports what he found.
Later Tony’s neighbor gives him a message to meet a prospective client. At the location he finds Waldo Gronsky (Dan Blocker). Gronsky is an ex-con. He hires Tony to find a woman named Sandra Lomax (Christine Todd). Tony thinks that Sandra may be the lady in cement.
Tony goes to Jilly’s, a strip joint, to talk to Sandra’s roommate, Maria Baretto (Lainie Kazan). Maria tells him about Sandra going to a party at Kit Forrest’s (Raquel Welch) house. Tony questions Kit. She calls her protective neighbor, a former mobster named Al Munger (Martin Gabel). Munger threatens Tony unless he leaves Kit alone.
In the meantime, Maria gets murdered. Tony has a run in with Maria’s employer, Danny Yale (Frank Raiter). Later Danny ends up dead too. Tony finds out who the lady in cement actually was, but now he has been framed for Danny’s murder and the police, including Santini, are after him. Tony tries to find out who has been killing people, including the lady in cement.
“Lady in Cement” was released in 1968 and was directed by Gordon Douglas. It is a mystery thriller with comedy undertones and a neo-noir. The film was based on the 1961 book by Marvin H. Albert. It is a sequel to Sinatra’s 1967 film “Tony Rome”. Writer Marvin Albert helped write the screenplay for the movie.
Marvin Albert wrote three Tony Rome novels, “Miami Mayhem”, “Lady in Cement” and “My Kind of Game”. “Miami Mayhem” was done as “Tony Rome”, where Frank Sinatra also starred as Anthony Rome. The filmmakers planned on making a movie from the third book as well, but it never materialized.
The plot is a little involved, but not too bad. It is your average late sixties style detective yarn. Slightly hardboiled but not enough to be noir. There are enough sexy looking women to give it a James Bond feel but it’s not as much fun as a 007 movie.
It’s not a bad movie by any means but it’s not as engrossing as other detective films. Most of the film is just spotlighting Sinatra and his pals. He does a fine job but there have been other films where he was better. The music was a little overbearing. Dan Blocker, who played the Russian criminal Bronski was a bright spot and the main standout in the film.