The Moon-Spinners

This is one of Hayley Mills' Disney era pictures she did as a teenager. When I watched this as a kid she was the only actress I knew, despite Joan Greenwood as her aunt, Eli Wallach as the villain, Irene Papas as the inn owner, and Pola Negri as a rich woman that Mills meets late in the picture.

Mills is Nikki, who travels with her aunt (Greenwood) to the Mediterranean island of Crete. They take in the local color while her aunt records folk songs for her anthropological studies. Nikki spies an attractive young man, Mark (Peter McEnery) whom she later discovers has some kind of secret. It involves the menacing/friendly Stratos (Wallach, playing Greek) and stolen jewels. The young couple have to find proof that Stratos is a thief while also evade being kidnapped and shot.

The Nikki character is inquisitive and daring, exactly what we expect of a Disney/Mills character, although later she turns more into a damsel in distress and too trusting of characters who seem too good to be true. Wallach is not bad as the foreign villain, although his accent sounded a little on the Hispanic side. The Greek locations are much more authentic than anything found in a Nia Vardalos picture. This is a better-than-most Disney family picture of that era, with adventure, humor, a little romance and a little culture thrown in, showing that Hayley Mills was able to grow into more mature roles through the Disney camp as well as in films made by her father John Mills.