Category Archives: Kidnapping Movies

Night of the Juggler (1980)

Posted on May 19, 2014 | 3 comments

night of the juggler 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: A father’s relentless search.

Sean Boyd (James Brolin) is a divorced man and retired cop now working as a truck driver and raising his twelve-year-old daughter Kathy (played by Abby Bluestone who now works as a talent agent) in the not-so-nice section of New York City. Gus Soltic (Cliff Gorman) lives in a rundown building slated for destruction and kidnaps Kathy mistakenly thinking she is the daughter of a rich man who can pay him a high ransom. Instead he now must contend with Sean who will stop at nothing to get her back and stalks Gus with a relentless determination to find her.

The film is based on the William P. McGivern novel who was a noted mystery writer who brought an extra degree of realism to his stories. Director Robert Butler nicely keys in on this by not having a loud, pounding music score and instead relying on the natural ambience to create the tension. The film has an incredible amount of action that almost seems non-stop. The car chase that goes through park pathways and even crowded city sidewalks is amazing. The climatic foot chase in the catacombs of the underground city tunnels is atmospheric as is the foot chase through abandoned properties where Sean not only pursues Gus, but must also fight off a Hispanic street gang that are right on his heels. The scene where Dan Hedaya seemingly destroys every display window in the city with his automatic rifle aimed at Sean’s head is both effective and amusing.

Despite its strong gritty nature the film does manage to have a few amusing scenes including Sean stealing a street preacher’s car with the preacher still in it as he pursues Gus.  I also liked the scene where Lieutenant Tonelli (Richard S. Catellano) is enjoying a dish of yogurt until the vendor tells him how it gets made. Unfortunately there are a few moments that end up being funny in an unintentional way including Sean’s intense confrontation with strippers (played by famous 70’s/80’s porn stars Serena and Sharon Mitchell) while inside an adult peep show.

Brolin physically looks perfect for the role especially with his black beard and mustache that gives him a Charles Manson-like quality, but overall he is a bit sterile. Gorman is effective as the psycho and even has a few moments of unexpected tenderness. Castellano comes off best as the tubby, but stoic detective.

The film has its share of flaws including having Gus grab the girl in broad daylight in the middle of a park with dozens of other people around, but no one except for her father does anything to try and stop him. I realize that the city was still under the stigma at the time of the Kitty Genovese case in which a woman was raped and murdered and many witnesses either saw or heard it and did nothing to help, but this scene  is still a bit unrealistic. Also, Gus kidnaps the wrong girl because both girls were wearing blue overalls, but the chances of two pre-teen girls living in a cosmopolitan city wearing overalls especially when one of them is from a rich and snooty area seems slim-to-none.

Overall despite all the action the film still comes off as jarring and jumbled and strangely uninvolving. The incessant focus of showing New York as bleak and apocalyptic becomes one-dimensional. The story itself is run-of-the-mill and forgettable.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: June 6, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 41Minutes

Rated R

Director: Robert Butler

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: VHS

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Posted in 80's Movies, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Kidnapping Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Police Drama, Thrillers/Suspense

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Tattoo (1981)

Posted on April 7, 2014 | 3 comments

tattoo

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: He tattoos her body.

Karl Kinsky (Bruce Dern) is a tattoo artist hired to put tattoos on some models for a fashion shoot. There he becomes obsessed with one of the models named Maddy (Maude Adams). The two begin dating, but when he starts to show signs of being too possessive she breaks it off, which angers him. He then drugs and kidnaps her and takes her to an abandoned house where he becomes determined to put his ‘mark’ on her by spending weeks creating a tattoo that will eventually covers her entire body.

Bob Brooks who was best known for directing award-winning commercials particularly in the U.K. shows a rather lifeless effort here in his one and only cinematic effort. I thought it would have been more interesting to have given the viewer a close-up and clinical understanding of how a tattoo is implemented and the basic overall procedure, but unfortunately the film breezes past this part and tries turning it into a conventional thriller, which lacks tension or intrigue.

Dern’s character resembles that of a psycho caricature and the way he unravels so quickly is uninteresting. The story and pace meander badly and Joyce Bunuel’s script is more like an outline than a character or plot driven story.

Adams is badly miscast. For one thing she is a weak actress that fails to add any extra dimension to either the character or role. She is also too old. Most stalkers tend to prey on younger women and equate their perceived virginal innocence with a better ability to dominate and control them not a jaded 35-year-old woman who has already openly slept with a lot of different men and whose incessant, vapid yammering would be a turn-off to any guy.

When we finally get to see the finished tattoo at the end it looks like the most garish thing imaginable and second only to the awful one that he has on his back. Watching their tattooed bodies gyrate together during sex seems almost comical.

The film achieved some notoriety during its initial release when Dern stated during interviews that the sex the two had was real even though Adams insisted that it was simulated. Personally I think it was faked and Dern merely said this as a way to generate more interest in the movie. Either way it doesn’t matter because it’s a lousy movie anyways.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: October 9, 1981

Runtime: 1Hour 43Minutes

Rated R

Director: Bob Brooks

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: VHS

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Posted in 80's Movies, Kidnapping Movies, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Thrillers/Suspense

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Sky Riders (1976)

Posted on April 4, 2014 | 1 comment

sky riders

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Rescued by hang gliders

Businessman Jonas Bracken (Robert Culp) living in Greece comes home one day to find his wife Ellen (Susannah York) and three children kidnapped by a terrorist group. The police can seem to make no headway so Ellen’s ex-husband Jim (James Coburn) gets involved. After analyzing the background of one of the photos of the victims taken by the kidnappers he realizes that they are being held hostage inside a mountaintop monastery and the only way to get to it is by air, so he hires a crew of hang gliders to fly into the locale and rescue the family.

The film is fast-paced it gets right into the story from the very beginning and never slows down. The kids are pretty cute especially the precious little girl, which helps the viewer emphasize with their predicament and urgency to get out. The Greek locations are exotic and help give the film an extra flair.

The biggest problem is the script. The Coburn character has never hang glided before and yet somehow manages to be trained well enough in only a couple of days to fly into the steep mountaintop location without a hitch, which seemed farfetched. It also seemed highly implausible that this group of hang gliders who work at the local circus would be willing to take on such a dangerous mission or even know what to do once they landed and had to take on the gun toting bad guys. I would have expected a lot more missteps and mistakes from this novice bunch and yet they handle everything like they were a group of seasoned commandoes.

Coburn’s performance is misguided as well. Normally I love his toothy grin and throaty chuckle, but here he does it while watching the hang gliders perform at the circus even though his ex-wife and son are being held hostage. I would have thought he should have been so nervous and tense that he wouldn’t have smiled at all and been instead in a perpetually serious manner.

The scene of when they fly into the locale is done with a darkened lens to simulate nighttime, which beside being annoying makes it hard to see and lessens the dramatic effect as well as the excitement.

On the whole it’s a very basic action flick and an empty-headed one at that. The terrorist group and their ‘cause’ are quite generic and the thin plot and cardboard characters barely camouflage the fact it’s just an excuse to show off some nifty hang gliding footage and nothing more.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: March 26, 1976

Runtime: 1Hour 27Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Douglas Hickox

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD (Regions 1 & 2)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Action/Adventure, Kidnapping Movies, Movies with a rural setting, Police Drama

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The Tiger Makes Out (1967)

Posted on March 30, 2014 | Leave a comment

tiger makes out 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Mailman kidnaps suburban housewife.

Ben Harris (Eli Wallach) is a middle-aged mailman living in a crummy, rundown basement apartment. He is bitter and angry at the world around him, which he feels is filled with a lot of vapid followers to a rigid and dehumanizing system. When his upstairs neighbor puts a hole in his roof and both his landlord and the housing authority refuse to do anything about it he decides to kidnap a young beautiful women as a form of insurrection. Instead he mistakenly nabs middle-aged housewife Gloria (Anne Jackson) who has similar issues and the two slowly form a budding friendship.

The screenplay is written by Murray Schisgal and is based on his one-act, two-character off-Broadway play ‘The Tiger’. The film is filled with a lot of diverting, offbeat humor some of which works and some of it doesn’t. I liked the part where Gloria’s neighbor Leo (John Harkins) gets his entire family on their knees to pull out crabgrass from their otherwise ‘perfect’ lawn and we eventually see them tear the entire lawn to bits from a bird’s-eye view and in fast-motion. Wallach’s confrontation with Sudie Bond inside the housing authority office is also amusing, but his attempts at kidnapping a woman come off too much like Wiley E. Coyote trying to get the roadrunner and turn the film into an ill-advised live action cartoon.

Director Arthur Hiller does a fabulous job of disguising the fact that this was originally a play. The editing is quick and the locales varied particularly at the beginning. The pace has a kinetic late 60’s feel, which gives it a certain time capsule quality. However the choice of music, which includes a studio group singing the film’s theme, is quite sterile.

Wallach gives a flawless performance and Jackson is also good. The two have been married since 1948 making them Hollywood’s longest lasting couple. Unfortunately the scenes of the two of them inside the apartment are rather stagnant and the one-time that the film gets boring.

There are also some great supporting performances including Rae Allen as a paranoid woman who thinks every man is a potential stalker and Charles Nelson Reilly as a goofy college registrar. The film also marks the film debuts of Dustin Hoffman and Mariclare Costello as his jilted girlfriend, Bob Dishy as an exasperated husband and John P. Ryan as an escort to a female impersonator. You can also spot a young Joe Santo inside the housing authority office and Frances Sternhagen as a passenger on a bus as well as Barbara Colby who in 1975 ended up getting murdered in mysterious and yet unsolved circumstances.

The one error that I noticed in the film is the gaping hole in Ben’s apartment ceiling somehow gets strangely taken care of and is nonexistent when he comes back to the place with his victim. I realize this movie borders on the bizarre and quirky to begin with, but I still felt there needed to be some explanation for that and none is given.

tiger makes out 2

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: August 18, 1967

Runtime: 1Hour 34Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Arthur Hiller

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: None at this time.

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Posted in 60's Movies, Kidnapping Movies, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Obscure Movies, Quirky

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Fleshburn (1984)

Posted on March 4, 2014 | Leave a comment

fleshburn 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Lost in the desert.

Calvin Duggai (Sonny Landham) is a Vietnam vet sent to a mental hospital when four psychiatrists insist he does not know the difference between right and wrong. Eventually he escapes from the place and proceeds to kidnap the four people who had him put away and takes them to the middle of the hot desert where he forces them to try and survive the harsh elements with nothing more than their wits to rely on.

Based on the Brian Garfield novel ‘Fear in a Handful of Dust’ the film moves at a brisk pace and manages to be relatively gripping. The pounding rock music-like score helps build the tension. The idea that the four people decide to remain where they are and not go searching through the desert for help seems slightly odd, but the characters at least come off as real people and some of the things that they do to survive is innovative and yet still believable. The viewer genuinely starts to care for these people and wants to see them survive, which helps keep the film captivating.

70’s adult film star-turned-actor Landham isn’t bad in the lead. His muscular physique is quite intimidating and he has a threatening presence. Steve Kanaly best known for his work on the ‘Dallas’ TV-series is solid as the one who takes over and tries to help the others beat the elements. His best moment comes when he spits out a sharp shell like object that he has hidden in his mouth and into his hand where he uses it to cut the rope that is binding him to a rock.

There is some interesting flashback sequences at the beginning particularly the one showing the Karen Carlson character having an affair with Kanaly much to the dismay of her husband who is also one of the victims and yet the film doesn’t follow-up with it even though it could’ve and should’ve. Despite the story’s vindictive theme it really comes off more like a basic survival saga that could easily have worked as a TV-movie. The film is competently produced and directed, but fails to be distinctive or memorable.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: May 24, 1984

Runtime: 1Hour 30Minutes

Rated R

Director: George Gage

Studio: Crown International Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Drama, Kidnapping Movies, Low Budget, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a rural setting, Outdoors, Thrillers/Suspense

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High and Low (1963)

Posted on November 3, 2013 | 6 comments

high and low

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Pay ransom go bankrupt.

Kingo (Toshiro Mifune) is an executive of a shoe company who finds out that his chauffeur’s son has been kidnapped and comes under tremendous pressure to pay the ransom even it will make him bankrupt.

As with all of Akira Kurosawa’s films the production values are solid and the story is well paced. The very methodical police work and investigation is interesting and enlightening. It’s certainly nothing like today’s CSI shows, but well done for its period. The ending scene where Mifune faces the kidnapper leaves a strong and memorable impression.

However, on the negative side the set-up to the kidnapping happens too quickly without any type of buildup or tension. Almost the entire first hour takes place inside the living room of Kingo’s hilltop house and it would’ve helped to have some cutaways to other locales.  Mifune, who is billed as the star and gives a great performance disappears during the second hour only to finally reappear at the very end and I felt it would’ve been stronger had he been involved more in the investigation. Also, the revealing of the kidnapper is unexciting and a big letdown.  I had a hard time understanding why a guy who was so very crafty and sophisticated in every facet of his planning of the kidnapping would suddenly get so conveniently dumb and sloppy at the very end.

This is a decent Kurosawa entry, but in my opinion not one of his best. Yet it is still good enough to keep you captivated from beginning to end.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: March 1, 1963

Runtime: 2Hours 23Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Studio: The Toho Company

Available: DVD, Blu-ray (The Criterion Collection)

6 Comments

Posted in 60's Movies, Black & White, Classic, Drama, Foreign Films, Kidnapping Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies from Japan, Mystery, Thrillers/Suspense

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The Strange Vengeance of Rosalie (1972)

Posted on October 4, 2013 | Leave a comment

the strange vengeance of rosalie

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: She can’t be trusted.

This is an okay obscurity about an Indian girl named Rosalie (Bonnie Bedelia) whose grandfather has just died and in an attempt to stave off loneliness tricks Virgil (Ken Howard) a traveling businessman into coming back to her isolated ramshackle place. Once there she breaks his leg in order to trap him and hopes that in the time it takes to heal he will learn to love her.

Critic Leonard Maltin calls this film “farfetched” and going “way off base” yet nothing could be further from the truth. If you accept the initial premise then the rest of the film is carried out in a plausible and believable fashion.

Director Jack Starrett certainly has a vision here. The remote desert like local is captured well and gives it a distinct feel. The premise is static, but the story keeps moving and new elements are added in nicely. The second hour does begin to meander, but it is finished off by a surprise ending that comes out of nowhere and is completely unexpected. You have to watch it all the way through to really appreciate it yet it does help the film come together and even helps explain its title.

The similarities between this and Misery are quite evident and in some ways this film wins out. It is not as slick or polished, but it is also not as formulated either. This is not your standard thriller as you have no idea where it is going. It runs the gamut between drama, adventure, and even human interest. There is also the added sexuality element and a genuine relationship between the two, which Misery did not have.

The best thing is the Rosalie character. She is young and beautiful. Her intentions and motivations are constantly surprising. In some ways she is like the Barbara Eden character in ‘I Dream of Jeannie’. She is naive and trusting, but also headstrong, self- sufficient and cunning and Bedelia is perfect in the role.

Being made in the early 70’s and at the height of political awareness there is some thought to there being meaning to the fact that she is Indian and Howard the typical white businessman. She is constantly trying to win approval of this white man who otherwise seems oblivious to her conditions or needs. He is also too self-absorbed and too locked into his mindset of minorities being ‘inferior’ to realize how consistently she outsmarts him. Like with a lot of minorities there is a great deal of frustration with the attitudes of the establishment. Howard is just too stuck in to his preconceived notions to ever see her as an equal no matter how hard she tries.

Overall this is a decent film especially when compared to other low budget, independent films of that same era. The twist ending helps, but you have to stick with it.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: June 16, 1972

Runtime: 1Hour 47Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Jack Starrett

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: Amazon Instant Video (Edited Version)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Drama, Kidnapping Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a rural setting, Obscure Movies, Thrillers/Suspense

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The Deadly Trap (1971)

Posted on September 17, 2013 | 6 comments

the deadly trap

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: They have their kids.

Philippe (Frank Langella) works at a high-tech job in a large corporation. For years he has been giving trade secrets to a mysterious organization that pays him handsomely for his efforts. Now that he is married and has children he has decided he no longer wants contact with this underground entity, but they refuse to leave him alone. When he is no longer willing to corporate they kidnap his two children, which sends his emotionally and mentally fragile wife Jill (Faye Dunaway) over-the-edge.

Dunaway’s amazing performance is the one thing that really helps propel a film that is otherwise too laid-back. I have always been an admirer of hers, but her performance here is great because it is so different from any of the other characters that she has played. Normally she is cast in parts of strong or manipulative women, but here she plays someone who is very fragile and does it with amazing effectiveness. I felt like she was a completely different person and showed a side to her that I didn’t think she possessed. Her face and expressions accentuate the fragility and she looks quite beautiful.

Langella is good on the opposite end. He plays a cynical and aloof man who snaps at his wife in an annoyed manner at regular intervals. The contrasting personalities and dialogue between them is interesting. In many ways he seems to playing an extension to the character that he did in Diary of a Mad Housewife and given the fact that Eleanor Perry wrote the screenplays for both films makes me believe that there had to be more than just a passing connection there.

The story has some interesting underlying elements that manage to retain a modicum of intrigue, but Rene Clement’s direction is too leisurely. The first hour gets bogged down with too much conversation and certain tangents that go nowhere. It is only in the last half hour that things finally get going and has some interesting twists, but by then it is too late. It would have been better had we seen some sort of face to the organization instead of having them portrayed in such a vague way. The movie is also in need of a lot more action although the part where Jill and her kids get into a car accident and get thrown from the vehicle is impressive since actual bodies where used, which is something I had never seen done before.

Spoiler Alert!

The film features several loopholes that will end up confounding anyone. One is that when the children are kidnapped they are locked in an upstairs room that has a loaded gun stashed away in the closet. The children get their hands on it and use it against their captors, but you would think that a sophisticated and large criminal group that this organization supposedly is wouldn’t be so utterly careless as to leave it there. Also, when it is found that the couple’s downstairs neighbor Cynthia (Barbara Parkins) has a connection to this organization and kidnapping the police shoot her dead at point-blank range instead of just arresting her and interrogating her in order to find the whereabouts of the kids. The biggest problem though is the ending itself where the kids are saved and everybody becomes one big happy family, which doesn’t jive at all with the rest of the film that had a constant murky undertones and a couple that was always squabbling. By having this otherwise dark thriller suddenly become ‘The Brady Bunch’ at the end is jarring in tone. It also doesn’t answer the fact that the organization was never caught and therefore will continue to harass him again, so why should they be all happy when the bad guys could strike at any moment?

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: June 9, 1971

Runtime: 1Hour 36Minutes

Rated R

Director: Rene Clement

Studio: National General Pictures

Available: VHS, Warner Streaming

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Posted in 70's Movies, Drama, Foreign Films, French Films, Kidnapping Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Mystery, Obscure Movies, Thrillers/Suspense

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Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting (1969)

Posted on July 14, 2013 | 6 comments

daddys gone a hunting

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Don’t kill his baby.

Cathy (Carol White) moves from England to San Francisco and almost immediately meets Kenneth (Scott Hylands) and the two get into a relationship. Cathy though slowly sees a dark side to him that she doesn’t like so she breaks up with him, but only after she finds out that she is pregnant. Since she is struggling to make it on her own she decides to have an abortion, which her friend Meg (Mala Powers) informs her is no worse than having a ‘hangnail’. When Kenneth learns of this he becomes enraged and promises revenge. He continues to stalk her from afar as she gets into a new relationship and then eventually marries prominent politician Jack Byrnes (Paul Burke). When she becomes pregnant again Kenneth reappears and tells her that this baby must be killed to make up for the one she ‘murdered’. After the baby is born he kidnaps it setting off a police manhunt throughout the city to find him and save the child.

Although this is a thriller you would hardly know it at the beginning as the movie starts out with a bouncy jazz score that does not create any type of menacing mood. It also initially dwells on Cathy and Kenneth’s early courtship and even has a sappy love song played over scenes of them kissing and walking hand-in-hand, which is awkward and even corny. I believe all thrillers should give some clue or warning to the tension and horror that is coming right from the start and this one doesn’t, which is weak.

However, after the first fifteen minutes it starts to get going from the suspense end and the rest of the way it is good if not excellent. I liked how the viewer is kept in the dark as to whether Kenneth is really stalking Cathy or it is all in her paranoid mind, which helps add an extra level of intrigue.

Director Mark Robson’s career was up and down, but he really scores here. The shot of a close-up of a cat’s eye showing the reflection of Cathy and Kenneth making love on a sofa was novel. I also liked how the abortion sequence is handled by showing a stark shot of the operating table coupled with Cathy’s nervous expression, which is surprisingly quite effective and brings out the horrors of the procedure, but without going overboard. I also appreciated that a real infant is used and not just a doll wrapped in a cloth like with some films. Showing a real live kicking and crying baby especially in close-ups makes it all the more emotionally compelling for the viewer when Kenneth tries to harm it.

Hylands is fantastic in the lead and one of the reasons this film works. He has the perfectly creepy face and menacing ability and this is by far his best performance in his long, but otherwise undistinguished career. White is also really good although she was far from being the producers first choice. Her blonde hair, accent, and angelic features make a perfect contrast to Hyland’s. Paul Burke is solid as the husband. It’s a bland part, but he tends to be good in those.

Although the abortion issue continues to be a hot and emotional topic for most this is not a political film and the emphasis is on being a thriller. However, when you couple this with screenwriter Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive movies you can probably assume he has an agenda in this political arena. Some may enjoy the way Kenneth relentlessly torments Cathy and refuses to allow her to forget what she did. He also kills the doctor who performed the procedure and what he does with the dead body afterwards is well…interesting.

Cohen and co-scripter Lorenzo Semple Jr. put their very creative minds in full gear here. The scenarios are well thought out and the tension builds at a great pace. The climatic sequence that takes place on top of the Mark Hopkins hotel at the Top of the Mark bar is exciting and visually well captured.

The only major flaw I saw with the film is at the beginning when Kenneth first sees Cathy standing on the sidewalk in downtown San Francisco he grabs some snow that is on a nearby car, makes it into a snowball, and then throws it at her to get her attention, but why in the world would there be snow on a car in downtown Frisco? This is never explained, but I felt it should have been.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: July 2, 1969

Runtime: 1Hour 48Minutes

Rated M

Director: Mark Robson

Studio: National General Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD (Warner Archive), Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 60's Movies, Kidnapping Movies, Thrillers/Suspense

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Frantic (1988)

Posted on April 29, 2013 | 3 comments

frantic

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Where is his wife?

Dr. Richard Walker (Harrison Ford) and his wife Sondra (Betty Buckley) travel to Paris where he is to take part in a medical conference. They find when they get to the hotel room that they have a suitcase that looks like theirs, but is the wrong one. They call the mistake into baggage claims, but think nothing more of it. As Richard takes a shower his wife gets a call and then disappears. When Richard gets out of the shower he can’t find her anywhere. Asking around he finds some clues that leads him to believe that she was kidnapped and that it may have something to do with the mysterious suitcase.

The film starts out well with an interesting premise and some good Hitchcockian touches, but eventually it becomes just another conventional thriller that gets overblown and is full of loopholes. One that really annoyed me the first time I saw it has to do with Richard going to a local bar to ask if anyone has any information. He does this twice and both times a bar patron that is sitting next to him overhears the conversation and comes up with a crucial bit of information. If this were to happen once it would be considered a really lucky break, but to happen twice makes it seem too convenient and coincidental. However, the biggest plot hole is when the bad guys come to the hotel to kidnap the wife and hold her for ransom until they get their suitcase when instead they should have just taken the suitcase since it was RIGHT THERE to begin with.

Ford’s brash demeanor doesn’t seem particularly right for the part. Normally he can get away with it and even make it charming in a caustic sort of way, but here it doesn’t work. I did like that everything is seen from his point of view and the viewer is as perplexed as he is about the circumstances. One part has him crumpling up a piece of paper and eating it and I kept wondering how many takes they made him go through on that one before they got it right.

Emmanuelle Seigner, who at the time was director Roman Polanski’s girlfriend, comes off best. The two married about a year after the film was released and now 23 years and 2 kids later they are still a couple. She plays Michelle who Richard meets along the way and helps him find the bad guys with her inside information. I liked her youthful appeal and the contrasting ages and perspectives between her and Ford’s character make their scenes together interesting. However, the punk outfit she wears does nothing for her and looks tacky and at this point woefully out of style.

The on-location shooting in Paris helps give the film an extra appeal. I realize this is mainly because of Polanski’s exile there, but it is to the film’s benefit. I liked how the viewer mainly just sees the street scenes and local pubs and roadways giving the whole thing a sort of tourist perspective.

There is one exciting and very well filmed sequence showing Richard walking on a narrow and steep rooftop in order to get into Michelle’s apartment that proves to be the film’s most intense moment. Otherwise this thing never clicks and tends to get less suspenseful as it goes on. For basic entertainment it is okay, but there is little if any payoff. This pales badly alongside Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’avventura, which is another film with pretty much the same premise, but instead that one takes things in a much more offbeat, fascinating, and mind-expanding direction.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: February 26, 1988

Runtime: 1Hour 59Minutes

Rated R

Director: Roman Polanski

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Foreign Films, French Films, Kidnapping Movies, Mystery, Thrillers/Suspense

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