Category Archives: Police Drama

End of the Game (1975)

Posted on May 8, 2024 | 1 comment

endofgame

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Unable to prove crime.

Richard Gastman (Robert Shaw) makes a bet with his young friend Hans (Martin Ritt) that he can commit a crime in front of him, but Hans will be unable to prove who did it. Later Hans’ girlfriend (Rita Calderoni) plunges to her death from off of a bridge. Hans is convinced Gastman did it, but just like he predicted he cannot prove it. 30 years pass and Hans is now a police commissioner with only a few months to live due to suffering from stomach cancer. His Lieutenant Schmied (Donald Sutherland) is found shot to death inside his police vehicle. He’d been assigned by Hans to keep tabs on Gastman as Hans was still intent on making him pay for what he did to his girlfriend, but he again can’t prove that Gastman killed Schmied though he’s certain that he did. Walter (Jon Voight) gets assigned to the case, but Hans can’t be completely honest with him about the case, so instead he sets Walter up to witness firsthand the brutality of Gastman for himself.

The story is based on the 1950 novel ‘The Judge and the Hangman’ by Frederich Durrenmatt who also wrote the screenplay and has a very amusing cameo as a man who plays chess against himself and always loses. The novel was first adapted into a broadcast for German television in 1957 and then again in 1961 for British TV, and then it got adapted for a third time for Italian television and then a fourth as a TV-movie for French broadcast before finally making it’s way to the big screen with this version, which so far has been the last adaptation to date.

The film was directed by Academy Award winning actor Maximillian Schell who was unable to get along with either of his leading actors with Shaw accusing him of being a ‘clockwatcher’ and ‘pocket Hitler’ while Voight described him as being humorless and overly demanding. The film is well directed for the most part, but an unusual reliance on humor almost kills it. The story itself is certainly not meant to be funny, but Schell implements comedic moments particularly in the first half when they’re not needed and almost a distraction. This is particularly evident during Schmied’s funeral and earlier when Schmied’s body is found and another cop drives the corpse to the hospital with Donald Sutherland, in an unbilled bit, playing the dead man and his body twisting around in weird ways as the car goes down the curvy road, which is humorous, but unnecessary and doesn’t help propel the plot. Initially too the corpse is spotted by some pedestrians who stare at it through the car window and seem amused by it, which isn’t exactly a normal reaction people have when witnessing someone who has just died. Possibly this was meant to show the public’s distrust, or disdain for the police, but if that were the case it should’ve been explained and elaborated.

The casting is unusual as it features Ritt in the lead who’s better known as a director, but here ultimately shines and becomes the film’s only likable character though the way he behaves throughout still makes him seem sketchy like everyone else. Shaw, who complained that he never got paid the $50,000 that he was owed for doing this, is commanding as usual, but Voight who wears a shaggy bleached blonde look comes-off as creepy right away. Technically the viewer is expected to side with his character, at least upfront and consider him a ‘good guy’, but right away Voigt telegraphs it in a way that makes him seem ‘off’ and hence kind of ruins the stories eventual twists.

For those who like complex whodunits this might fit the bill. The plot certainly does constantly unravel in surprising ways and no one should be bored, but the characters are cold and unlikable. There’s no one to root for and therefore the viewer is not as keyed into the outcome as they would’ve had they been more emotionally invested. The editing is also quite choppy and there seems to be certain key elements that get left out, which most likely due to the fact that the original runtime was 106 minutes, but the DVD version, the only one publicly available at this time, runs a mere 92 minutes.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: September 21, 1975

Runtime: 1 Hour 46 Minutes (Director’s Cut) 1 Hour 33 Minutes (DVD Version)

Rated R

Director: Maximillian Schell

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 70's Movies, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Obscure Movies, Police Drama

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Blood Relatives (1978)

Posted on February 11, 2024 | Leave a comment

bloodrelatives

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: First cousins become intimate.

Based on the Ed McBain novel of the same name, but with the setting changed from New York to Montreal the story centers around police inspector Steve Carella (Donald Sutherland) who takes on the case of a teen girl named Patricia (Aude Landry). She arrives at the police station, in a bloody condition, late one night saying that she and her cousin Muriel (Lisa Langlois) were attacked in an alley by a strange man. When the cops arrive at the scene they find Muriel dead. Initially Patricia can not identify who the man was, but later after the funeral, she comes forward to say that it was her brother Andrew (Laurent Malet) that did it. She details how he and Muriel were having an illicit affair despite being first cousins and when Muriel tried to break-up with him due to having a romance with her boss (David Hemmings) he snapped and killed her and then tried to do the same with Patricia since she was a witness, but she managed to escape. Carella though still has his suspicions and when he finds Muriel’s diary he begins reading it, which confirms the affair, but also something even more sinister that was lurking beneath the surface.

This film received a very limited release and was only shown in the theaters for a few weeks before it was removed and has basically sat in obscurity ever since. Much of it may have to do with the incest theme and a couple of really odd moments. One scene was when Donald Pleasance, who appears briefly as a suspect and speaks in a Canuck accent, admits to having an on-going affair with a 13-year-old named Jean (Tammy Tucker) despite him being 46. Carella then goes to the girl’s home to interview her not so much about her being a minor having sex with an older man, but instead in order to vouch for his alibi that he was with her the night of the crime. She’s told that her answers can help get him ‘off-the-hook’ and ‘prevent him from going to jail’ if she can confirm his whereabouts and the whole sex thing she’s having with him is apparently ‘not a big deal’ (they even end up releasing Pleasance once they determine he wasn’t the killer), which for many viewers today will find quite baffling.

Plot-wise the pacing is poor. It starts out alright and is even riveting as we see this young, blood stained teen girl running through the dark streets that’s littered with trash everywhere. However, the flashback moments, done while Carella reads the diary, don’t have the same compelling impact and tends to slow everything down and even manages to turn it into a soap opera. Even though Sutherland is the main character there’s long stretches where he’s not in it and doesn’t seem to have much else to do, but interrogate the witness, particularly Patricia, again and again. His relationship with his own family isn’t captivating though here too there’s an odd moment where his own teen daughter (Nina Balogh) describes her and her father as potential ‘lovers’ as they’re walking outside in public, which again would be deemed a pretty cringey line if said between father and daughter in virtually any other movie.

The acting by Langlois I found to be terrible and helped drag the whole thing down especially during the second act when Sutherland all but disappears. Granted she’s gone on to have a rather successful career and maybe she just needed more experience in order to find her footing, but she delivers her lines in a flat monotone manner and her pretty face seems unable to show any other expression than a vapid smile. Even when she’s getting stabbed she continues to smile and doesn’t even scream, which came-off as unnatural. Though she did very little else after this I felt it was Landry who was the better actress. She is very convincing and has an angelic looking face, so you really see her as an innocent though equally effective when her character’s dark nature comes out later.

Spoiler Alert!

The twist ending I figured out while there was still an hour to go and most other viewers should start to see it well before the ‘big reveal’ occurs. The main issue with Patricia being the ultimate killer is that it really doesn’t make much sense. Supposedly she was intensely jealous of her cousin’s relationship with her brother, but why? Woman usually get envious of someone if they consider them a rival to a person that they have affections for, so is the film implying that she too was having a sexual relationship with her brother, if so it doesn’t confirm it, but should’ve.

A better way to have ended it, in my view, would’ve had Muriel get pregnant, she actually does think she’s pregnant earlier, but it turns out to be a false alarm. Instead it should’ve been the real thing and Andrew would’ve become upset at this and coerced Patricia to kill her in order to get him off-the-hook. He’d promise her that they’d get into a relationship in return (this version would make clear that she had intimate feelings for him and he knew it), but then after the killing gets done, he reneges, which gets her upset, so she implicates him to the police. This scenario would’ve at least given clear motivations to the characters, which is otherwise murky. Sure it would be pretty tawdry and sleazy, but the story was going in that direction anyways, so it might as well go all the way with it.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: February 1, 1978

Runtime: 1 Hour 40 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Claude Chabrol

Studio: Filmcorp

Available: DVD (Region 2) (Dubbed), DVD-R (dvdlady.com)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Novels, Movies from Canada, Obscure Movies, Police Drama

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Garde A Vue (1981)

Posted on January 14, 2024 | Leave a comment

garde1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Interrogation of a lawyer.

Jerome (Michel Serrault), is a rich and powerful lawyer who is brought into a police station late one night during New Year’s Eve in order to be questioned about the rape and murder of two young girls. Antoine (Lino Ventura) is the lead investigator while Marcel (Guy Marchand) sits in the back and assists him during the interrogation. At first the conversation is light and civil, but as Antoine brings more circumstantial evidence to the forefront Jerome becomes nervous yet insists he’s still innocent. Marcel even implements some physical force against him, but Jerome’s stance never changes. In another room Antoine has a conversation with Jerome’s wife, Chantal (Romy Schneider), who confides to him that she secretly suspected Jerome to be in-love with an 8-year-old girl. Once Jerome gets confronted with this his story soon begins to change.

The film is based on the novel ‘Brainwash’ by John Wainwright and shot entirely in a studio soundstage and in chronological order. Why director Claude Miller would want to film a story that had very little if any cinematic elements to it is a mystery and if anything this might’ve fared better as a stage play. I was initially impressed with the police station room as you’d swear it was an authentic building and not just a prop built for the production. The drenching rain seen pouring down outside the windows is impressive as it gives the viewer a claustrophobic feel and I liked how eventually, when the clock hits midnight, you hear car horns honking outside to represent the New Year. However, every interrogation room I’ve seen, and I watch a lot of confession videos on Youtube from real-life cases, the rooms are very small and with no windows and the film would’ve been better served had it reflected a setting like this as it would’ve brought out better the psychological tension of the suspect and his feelings of the ‘walls closing in on him’, which with here you don’t get.

You can’t help but connect this movie with The Offence, which starred Sean Connery and was directed by Sidney Lumet. That movie came out 8 years before this one, but had the exact same theme of a suspect being brought in over the murders of some school girls. That movie was well directed but did annoy me for the fact that in that one the suspect, played by Ian Bannen, did nothing, but give off this smirk the whole time.  This one has a much better back-and-forth between the investigator and suspect, which helps keep it compelling as more evidence gets introduced. However, in the Lumet film it had constant shots of this big bright light shining into the camera giving the viewer a point-of-view feeling of what someone in that situation would feel and thus helping hype the sense of urgency of wanting to get out of there, or say anything one needed to in order to stop the pressure, which this film doesn’t do very well. Both films though have cutaways showing the dead girl’s bodies from a distance in a secluded area, which are visually creepy, though again Lumet’s film scores a bit higher in that category too.

Spoiler Alert!

Ultimately the ending is a letdown and rather baffling as it features Jerome caving and admitting to a crime that he really didn’t commit due to the perceived police pressure. For one thing it’s hard to imagine that a seasoned lawyer would be that dumb and wouldn’t just ‘lawyer up’ himself and demand counsel of his own when interrogation got to be too much. I’ve seen a lot of true life interrogations where the pressure put on the suspect was far worse and those people refused to buckle, so seeing the character fall to pieces so relatively quickly especially when he was educated to know better makes the whole thing pathetic.

Didn’t quite get why the wife shoots herself at the end either. Supposedly it’s because she feels guilty about tabbing him for the murder when the real killer eventually gets exposed, but she did it out of honesty as she really felt he had a thing for young girls, so why should she feel tortured about saying something she truly believed? It would’ve been more surprising if she had pulled the gun on Jerome himself as he got into the car and shot him as she would feel, even if he hadn’t been arrested for this crime, that he still had some dark perversions and thus should be killed before he goes and carries out his fantasies on some other girl. Of course if she lied about him having a thing for an 8-year-old in order to get back at him over their contentious marriage then her guilt and suicide would’ve been more plausible, but I didn’t get that from watching it, so if that was ultimately her motivation then the filmmakers should’ve done a better job at intimating it.

This is the rare case where I’d say the Hollywood remake, which came out in 2000 as Under Suspicion and starred Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman was much better done. It had a better visual balance that didn’t keep the whole thing stuck inside a police room and it better tied-up loose story ends that this one leaves open.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: September 23, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 27 Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Claude Miller

Studio: AMLF

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Foreign Films, French Films, Movies Based on Novels, Mystery, Police Drama

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Strange Shadows in an Empty Room (1976)

Posted on January 5, 2024 | Leave a comment

strange

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Cop’s sister dies mysteriously.

Tony (Stuart Whitman) is a tough-as-nails veteran cop who gets the shocking news that his younger sister Louise (Carole Laure) is found dead at a party she had attended. Initially he presumes it’s George (Martin Landau) a middle-aged doctor whom she’d been having an affair with and who gave her a injection at the party, but later he realizes there might be more to the story than he thought and begins investigating other avenues that leads him to a wild and completely unexpected conclusion.

The film was directed by Alberto De Martino who had done other Italian produced films that were rip-offs of better known Hollywood hits with this one clearly being inspired by Dirty Harry. It was filmed in Montreal and Ottawa, Canada, but done by an Italian film crew making it seem more like an overseas production with very little Canadian elements to it. Overall the quality looks cheap and the story has a lot of twists that don’t make a lot of sense, or are believable.

Two that stood out right away to me is during the party scene where Louise fakes illness simply to get George’s attention to make him come over there and away from his wife. Then when he tries to help her she lets him know it was all a gag. A few minutes later she passes out for real and he responds in a worried way, but you’d think since he got taken advantaged of just moments earlier he’d presume this was just another prank and not take it seriously. Also, at her funeral Tony begins to suspect there’s more to her death than what is known and requests an autopsy be done, but an autopsy is standard procedure that should be done after any unexplained death, especially since the victim was so young, and thus seems absurd that he should have to request it only as her body is already in the casket and ready to be buried.

Whitman, who was nearing 50, looks too old for this kind of thing and it’s hard to imagine he would, in reality, be able to physically keep up with these much younger suspects who force him to chase them around in airports, along crowded city sidewalks, and even in hospitals. He’s not the most ethical guy either as he has no problem drowning one of the men he’s questioning in a sink of water as a method of interrogation, which should normally get an officer in trouble. There’s also no glimpses of his personal life, so we never learn anything about him, or see any other dimension except for his rough cop persona. Most other cop movies, or at least the good ones, do have a few scenes dealing with the policeman’s private side, but here there’s none, which makes the character flat and uninteresting. Having the victim be his sister didn’t make too much sense since she was clearly quite a bit younger than him and making her his daughter would’ve been more believable and more devastating when he has to come to terms with her darker side.

The supporting characters are, just like with Whitman’s, poorly fleshed-out. It’s hard to be intrigued who the suspects are when they all seem alike and say and do nothing that’s interesting. The film does have one long car chase, which has some impressive stunts, but it seemed unnecessary as the man driving away from the cops really didn’t have much to hide and is essentially not interrogated once Whitman catches up to him, and he offers only a little piece to the puzzle, so why tear up the city streets and completely destroy two cars if he’s not in dire trouble? Better to have saved this for the finale with the bad guy who really is the culprit than just some minor player who isn’t seen, or heard of again.

I did enjoy the foot chase through the hospital that comes at the end and even goes through a maternity ward and ultimately onto the roof of the place. The story does feature many twists and I did appreciate the way it shows how policeman can make the wrong guesses on who they think is guilty and go on many long tangents that don’t lead anywhere before they realize their mistake. However, more effort should’ve been made to create unique characters as the ones provided here are wooden and banal.

Alternate Title: Blazing Magnum

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: March 9, 1976

Runtime: 1 Hour 39 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Alberto De Martino

Studio: Fida

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cult, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Foreign Films, Italian Films, Movies from Canada, Mystery, Police Drama

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Night Game (1989)

Posted on July 4, 2023 | Leave a comment

nightgame1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Baseball score and murder.

Mike Seaver (Roy Scheider), a police detective, is put in charge of investigating a series of bizarre murders where women, some of them prostitutes, are murdered along the beaches of Galveston, Texas after each Houston Astros home game where pitcher Silvio Baretto achieves a victory. There are initially no suspects and it all seems to be a coincidence until Seaver ties the clues together and hones in on the killer while quarreling with Witty (Lane Smith) a state investigator brought in to help him with the case, but who has opposing ideas as to how to approach it.

The story is a strange mixture wanting to feed-off of the slasher films of the 80’s while also tying it to a sports themed flick, that was also popular during that decade, but manages to fail on both ends. The killings aren’t imaginative enough to attract a horror audience while the gore is much too graphic for those just looking for a slick thriller and thus both types of viewers will get put-off with this pretty quickly. Fans of sports movies won’t like it either as the baseballs scenes are brief and fleeting. While it’s kind of fun to see the Astros old color bar uniforms as well as watching actual game footage shot inside the old Astrodome, which at one time was coined ‘the 8th wonder of the world’ it hardly seems necessary especially since a TV-movie ‘Murder at the World Series’, which came out in 1977, had a very similar storyline that also included the Astros and Astrodome making this seem like a cheap, uninspired rip-off of that one.

The plot at least, while still dated especially on the technology end, takes a realistic approach to being a detective and how hard it is to find clues that can help piece the case together and lead to an actual suspect. Scheider, who was 57 at the time and looking it, manages to give it some energy and this was helped no less than by casting Richard Bradford as his nervous and pensive superior whose white hair and old school ways helps to offset Scheider’s wrinkles despite the fact that Scheider was in real-life 2 years older. The side stories though dealing with Smith coming in to butt heads with Roy doesn’t get played-up enough to be interesting and Scheider squabbling with his mother-in-law over a color TV that he got her drags the pacing down and hurts the tension of the mystery, which is where the sole focus of the script should’ve stayed.

Spoiler Alert!

What really ruins it though is the stupid ending. For one thing people in big cities, and Houston is the 4th largest one in the US, get murdered all the time, so having a cop able to somehow tie it to when a pitcher wins a game was too much of a stretch as technically there’s likely to be a murder happening somewhere whenever ANY pitcher wins a game and there needed to be more direct clues, like the killer sending cryptic notes to the police, or media, stating what his intentions were for it to realistically come together for the investigators.

The man playing the murderer, Rex Linn, who is supposedly a former pitcher who got cut from the team and then ultimately loses his hand in an accident and has it replaced with a hook, looks more like an disheveled, beer bellied truck driver who never played a sports game in his life. His motivations, to kill someone whenever the pitcher, who replaced him on the rotation, wins a game, in order to steal media attention away from the new pitcher’s success, is poorly thought out. It would’ve made more sense had the disgruntled man gone after the pitcher directly by either threatening his life, or those of his family, or maybe even attempting to kill the general manager, or owner, since they were the ones directly responsible for cutting him instead of no-name hookers who usually don’t get a lot of news attention anyways when they’re killed and thus making the whole premise pretty vapid.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: September 15, 1989

Runtime: 1 Hour 35 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Peter Masterson

Studio: Epic Productions

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Tubi

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Posted in 80's Movies, Movies that take place in Texas, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Police Drama, Slasher/Gore, Thrillers/Suspense

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The Onion Field (1979)

Posted on May 26, 2023 | Leave a comment

onion2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Guilt over partner’s death.

Los Angeles police detectives Ian Campbell (Ted Danson) and Karl Hettinger (John Savage) are on-duty driving around in an unmarked police car when they spot two men, Gregory Powell (James Woods) and Jimmy Smith (Franklyn Seales), driving suspiciously, so they pull them over. While Campbell is talking to Powell, Powell is able to pull out a gun he had hidden in his trousers forcing Campbell to drop his weapon. Hettinger is then told to give up his weapon as well, which he does, or risk seeing his partner get shot. The two cops are then taken at gunpoint to an remote onion field where in the darkness of night Campbell is shot and killed, but Hettinger escapes and manages to run 4 miles until he finds someone and gets help. While the two criminals are eventually apprehended and found guilty it is Hettinger that suffers the most from the guilt of surviving when his friend and partner didn’t and from the humiliation of being the subject of a police video detailing what not to do when stopping a vehicle, which leads him to a severe mental breakdown in both his personal and professional life.

The story is based on the actual incident that occurred on March 9, 1963 with the traffic stop happening on the corner of Carlos Avenue and Gower Street in Hollywood and the murder happening off of Interstate 5 near Bakersfield. It was written into a novel by former cop turned author Joseph Wambaugh in 1973. I remember reading it when I was 14 and finding it captivating from beginning to end. While the film stays faithful to it I still felt it wasn’t as effective and in a lot of ways not as gripping. Even though it was a long time ago I remember the part about Powell’s ‘disguise’ where the only thing he changed about his features was putting a distinctive mole on his left ear lobe, which sounded completely absurd. This is discussed in the movie, which gets a subtle eye roll from Smith his partner, but the irony is, which is talked about in the book and not the film, is that the witnesses from the robbery that Powell was in described the mole to the police and this litrerally threw the detectives off for awhile as they kept searching for a man with a distinctive mole that Powell had since removed, so as silly as it sounded, his idea had actually worked, but the movie never gives this pay-off.

The chase through the onion field is also really hurt. I remember finding this section the most captivating part of the book and finding it a truly tense and horrifying moment that seemed to go on forever and a major element of the story, but in the movie this moment gets trimmed down significantly. Years ago, when I first saw the movie on TV, I thought it was because they had edited it down due to time constraints in order to get more commercials in, but when I finally viewed the full version on DVD I found this wasn’t the case. For whatever reason the chase in the onion field lasts for only a few minutes and not done from Hettinger’s perspective, which is what made it such an intense reading and it’s a real shame as it makes the movie much less impactful then it could’ve been. It turns the whole onion field incident into a side story instead of the main event.

The performances by Woods and Seales are outstanding and the element that really gives the film its energy they also look exactly like the people they’re playing to the point it’s almost freaky. Woods is especially creepy and he literally demands your attention with each moment he’s in it. Seales though, whose career never really took off and he died at the young age of 37 from AIDS, is excellent too as he plays someone who is very timid especially when initially with Powell, but brazen at other points and the way his and Powell’s relationship evolves both through their criminal and then when behind bars is quite fascinating. The scream that he lets out when Campbell gets shot, which was not in the script and completely improvised, has a very riveting effect and the one thing about the film that I had remembered from watching it decades earlier.

Unfortunately the two leads, the people we’re supposed to be the most connected with, are quite boring. It’s not like it’s the actors faults either. Danson, this was his film debut, is not bad, but his character isn’t fleshed out enough. Other than enjoying playing the bagpipes we don’t learn much else about him and nothing he says his captivating, or interesting. The same with Savage his inner turmoil and mental breakdown really doesn’t have the intended emotional impact in fact his moments bogs the movie down and you can’t wait until they get back to the bad guys who as rotten as they are what gives the movie its liveliness. I realize that Wambaugh felt it was very important to get Hettinger’s story out there and it was the whole reason that motivated him to write the book, but I came away feeling, at least movie wise it would’ve worked better had it just focused on the two crooks and their weird ‘friendship’.

On the whole it’s still an adequate production that holds enough interest and makes some good points about an important event that shouldn’t be forgotten, but at times it also seems like an overreach. Wambuagh’s insistence that everything be as accurate as possible gives the narrative a cluttered feel particularly with all the various court proceedings with each one having a different set of attorney’s, judges, and courtrooms which becomes dizzying instead of riveting. Pairing certain elements down would’ve helped as it’s not quite a completely effective, despite the great effort, as it could’ve been and without question another incidence where the book is far better.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: September 19, 1979

Runtime: 2 Hours 6 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Harold Becker

Studio: AVCO Embassy Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 70's Movies, Court Drama, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies Based on Novels, Police Drama

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Bedroom Eyes (1984)

Posted on May 18, 2023 | Leave a comment

bedroom1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Voyeur witnesses a murder.

Harry Ross (Kenneth Gilman) is a businessman who enjoys taking a late night jog in the Toronto neighborhood in which he lives. One night he steps in dog poo and as he’s trying to scrape it off he notices a light coming from a nearby window. Out of curiosity he peers in and sees a half-naked woman (Jayne Catling) dancing provocatively. It turns him on and he decides to make it a point to peer into the window each night when he goes for a run. He though begins to feel guilty about what he’s doing and thinks he may be a ‘pervert’ and thus schedules an appoint with Alex (Dayle Haddon), who is a psychiatrist, so that they can talk it through. During their sessions he also becomes attracted to her and things slowly work into a relationship. While this is going on he continues to look into the window each night, but eventually witnesses the woman getting murdered and now must go into hiding inside Alex’s apartment as not only the police, who mistakenly think he did it as they get his prints off of the window, are after him, but so is the killer.

This film was directed by William Fruet, a prolific writer/director from Canada, who shot to fame with the excellent Wedding in White and then followed that up with a lot lame thrillers and horror films. While some of those were diverting this one isn’t and the tacky set-up is the biggest problem. The fact that Harry isn’t portrayed as being a life long voyeur, but instead quite literally just ‘stumbles’ upon it is farfetched and the character would’ve had more depth if this had been a constant trait that he had to deal with. Having him ‘panic’ that he was afraid this made him a ‘pervert’ was ridiculous too as I’d think just about any heterosexual guy would get aroused seeing a hot lady cavorting around erotically. The way he peers in, the camera captures it from the inside looking out, is quite obvious as his face is fully light, from the indoor lamps, and thus all the people needed to do was glance up briefly to see him, which I would think would’ve occurred at some point especially since he continues to do it over multiple nights. The fact that they always leave the window shade half open seems like they’re inviting someone to look in though the movie acts like this is unintentional and just a ‘coincidence’. The place is lit in a way that makes it seem like it’s a set for soft core porn flick and the woman behaves like an adult actress, which completely ruins any sliver of plausibility.

Initially I liked seeing Haddon, who was at one time a super model before she got into acting, cast as the therapist as this was traditionally at that time still more of a man’s profession, so she was playing against type, but having Harry immediately asks her out on a date was dumb. Due to this being a professional doctor and patient relationship he should’ve at least waited until after several sessions before he got up the nerve to do it and even then it’s putting her in an unethical spot and he should’ve known that. Fortunately she tells him ‘no’ the first couple of times, which is what she should’ve done, but I knew, going by how stupid this script had already been, that she’d eventually cave and of course she does, which makes the whole premise become even more ludicrous. Having her spot him at a fancy restaurant was too coincidental in such a big city and having his girlfriend perform a sexual act while inside the place with all sorts of people around was over-the-top. If anything Haddon should’ve just been cast as his girlfriend, who just happens to work as therapist, and he could’ve still spoken to her about his voyeurism in private when they were together and this would’ve helped made it more believable.

It does get a bit intriguing for a few minutes when the police begin to close-in on Harry and I enjoyed the inner-rivalry of the police department where the two lead detectives became irritated at how a young ‘wet-behind-the-ears’ kid (Alf Humphreys) was always coming up with new leads and clues before they did, but other than that there’s very little to recommend. The climactic sequence in which the killer ties Harry up while he’s inside Haddon’s apartment, is quite boring and the female actor who plays the culprit shows no panache and thus making her scenes quite dull. In 1989, at the request of no one, this was made into a sequel, but with a completely different writer, director and actors with the only thing connecting the two being the Harry Ross character.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: November 30, 1984

Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes

Rated R

Director: William Fruet

Studio: Pan-Canadian Film Distributors

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 80's Movies, Erotica, Foreign Films, Movies from Canada, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Obscure Movies, Police Drama, Thrillers/Suspense

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Too Scared to Scream (1984)

Posted on May 8, 2023 | Leave a comment

tooscared3

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Who’s killing the tenants?

Female tenants living in a New York City high-rise building are turning-up dead in brutal fashion. Lieutenant Alex Dinardo (Mike Connors) and his younger, female partner Kate (Anne Archer) are convinced that the culprit is Vincent (Ian McShane) who works as the overnight watchmen at the apartment building and since all the crimes happen during his shift he quickly becomes suspect number one. Though getting enough evidence in order to arrest him becomes a delicate matter. Alex then decides to asks Kate to move-in to the building as a new tenant and thus keep tabs on what Vincent is doing and hopefully lure him into a situation where he’ll incriminate himself, but Kate soon finds herself in over-her-head as the killer is on-top of what’s going on and he soon bates her into a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse where Alex and the other policemen are not able to help her.

The film was an attempt at creating an American version of an Italian giallo complete with gory murders and an intricate mystery where you don’t know who the real killer is until the final twist ending. It’s also the only film to date to be directed by actor Tony Lo Bianco. Severely straddled during production as it was shot in 1982, but due to the production studio that financed the project going bankrupt it was never released until 3 years later where it was given little fanfare and came and went with few people seeing it.

The biggest problem with it is that it plays-up McShane’s role too much. Granted he’s a gifted actor who’s best known today for his work in the TV-series ‘Deadwood’, but by overemphasizing his character it makes it seem right from the start that he’s the culprit and thus making the investigation uninteresting because you feel it’s just a matter of time before he’s found out and thus little mystery, or intrigue. Granted there are a couple of other suspects, but they seem thrown-in simply as red herrings and aren’t seen much. The story would’ve had better tension had the suspects shared equal screen time and a more balance of clues making it seem like any one of them could’ve done it and thus some genuine interest at getting at what the truth is versus having it seem like it’s all spelled-out from the start. If anything Maureen O’Sullivan, who plays McShane’s near comatose mother whom he takes care of, is far more captivating, despite the fact that she doesn’t speak any line of dialogue and trapped in a wheelchair, then anything McShane himself does.

The unusual pairing of a 60-something male cop alongside a female one that appears to be only around 30 should’ve been what the film focused on as I found their contrasting personalities and different ways they approached their police work to be something that could’ve been played-off of more. Unfortunately the film taps into this just slightly and then quickly moves on and thus misses the opportunity for what could’ve lead to captivating confrontations and debates. Connor does seem a bit too old for this kind of thing and seeing him trying to chase down a young athletic man who was only 20 came-off as almost laughable and I was surprised he didn’t just fall over from a heart attack, or exhaustion before he ever managed to get near the guy. Having him lose a fight to the younger guy and have to depend on his partner to bail him out of it was realistic, so it gets props there, but the way he goes about his police work, which includes physically beating-up on suspects, is highly unethical and should’ve gotten him demoted, or fired.

Spoiler Alert!

I had issues with Archer’s character as well. This comes when she agrees to move into the apartment and work undercover, but seems woefully unprepared for it. She manages to carry a gun with her when she goes down to the basement of the building to do laundry, but then when she gets back to her place she does a goofy aerobics workout where she gets caught off-guard, but wouldn’t a seasoned cop know to carry a weapon on her at all times especially when she’s intentionally making herself a target to the killer? Also, what kind of person walks into their apartment and then doesn’t turn around and immediately lock the door once they’re inside? If you want to argue that this was intentional (I don’t think it was) because she wanted to lure the killer inside, so as to apprehend him, then fine, but she should then make damn sure she was a gun in-hand, pointed at him, when he does, which in this case she didn’t.

You must likely won’t be able to guess who the true killer is, but it’s not worth sitting through. The script doesn’t offer any clues, or hints either, so even an alert viewer won’t figure it out, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good mystery because it really isn’t. The story is sloppily put together without much imagination, or character development. Unlike a true giallo the murders are quick and without much blood, so if you’re a gorehound this thing won’t suffice. The concept had potential, but the execution is half-hearted.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: September 28, 1984

Runtime: 1 Hour 40 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Tony Lo Bianco

Studio: International Film Marketing

Available: Blu-ray (Import), DVD-R

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Posted in 80's Movies, Gay/Lesbian, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Obscure Movies, Police Drama, Thrillers/Suspense

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The Swinging Barmaids (1975)

Posted on March 8, 2023 | Leave a comment

swinging

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Killer stalks cocktail servers.

With a script written by Charles B. Griffith, better known for having done Little Shop of Horrors, the story centers on Tom (Bruce Watson) a serial killer who stalks women who work at a bar called The Swing-a-Ling Club. His first victim is Boo-Boo (Dyanne Thorne), whom he felt ‘disrespected’ him when she referred to him as ‘sonny’ when she served him his drink, so he quietly followed her home and attacked her and afterwards took photos of her in provocative poses. He then changes his appearance and gets a job at the bar as a bouncer. He proceeds to kill two more of the waitresses, Marie (Renie Radich) and Susie (Katie Saylor) before setting his sights on Jenny (Laura Hippe). However, with Jenny he begins to admire the fact that she insists on staying faithful to her fiancée Dave (Jim Travis) and therefore he considers her to be ‘pure’ deserving of respect instead of a gruesome death. While visiting her at the home of her parents (Milt Kogan, Judith Roberts) he tries to convince her to dump Dave and get with him and he won’t take ‘no’ for answer. Will Lieutenant White (William Smith), who’s been investigating the case and does not consider Tom as a suspect, be able to connect-the-dots before it’s too late?

For an exploitation flick this one doesn’t seem all that titillating. The film’s promotional poster seen above alludes to ‘loose women’ having indiscriminate sex, the film was later reissued as Eager Beavers, which pushes this concept in an even more explicit way, but really you don’t see much of that onscreen. The women, who appear to be around 30 and looks-wise are okay, but nothing that would be considered stunning, come-off as basic working-class folks just trying to do their hum-drum jobs and not oversexed vamps in any way. Their personalities are indistinguishable from the other and their conversations deal with run-of-the-mill issues that aren’t compelling, or original. They also speak in a cliched, Flossie-like tough girl way of a New York street hooker, which I found annoying.

Having it shown right away who the killer is doesn’t help matters. Part of the fun of a slasher film, which this isn’t as it was made before that concept came into vogue though still follows the same basic formula, is trying to guess who the bad guy is, but having that quickly revealed losses the potential mystery element that could’ve made it more intriguing. We learn nothing about the killer, other than a police detective ‘profiling him’ as being someone with ‘mother issues’, but this is something the viewer needs to see and learn visually instead of having it explained to them. Smith as the good-guy is weak too. He’s been great in some of his other film roles, but he’s rather detached and downright irritable in this part and there’s long segments where he’s not even seen.

Gus Trikonis’ direction helps to give it a few extra points. While the killings lack blood I did like the way the hand-held camera follows the victim around as she gets chased through her apartment, particularly during the first attack, which lends an authentic, vivid feel as she tries to fight-off her attacker. The underwater photography showing one of the victims getting drowned is impressive as well, but there are some directorial mistakes here too.

One is when Tom kills Marie and then poses her naked body on a deck chair outside on the patio. The club owner Zitto (Zitto Kazann)  comes along and finds her there with Tom hiding behind the bushes and could’ve easily escape undetected, but instead he proceeds to attack Zitto, who is his boss and could identify him, so why not just get away from the crime scene instead of making things potentially worse for himself?

Another segment has Susie inside a film studio looking up towards a bright spotlight where Tom is standing, but because the light is so bright she must shield her eyes and cannot make out who’s talking to her.  When the viewer though is shown a point-of-view shot we can easily identify him, but if we’re really supposed to be seeing things from her perspective then the light should be blinding for us as well.

Another flawed moment has Jenny’s mother getting a call from a Smith warning her that Tom could be dangerous. She’s to pretend that she’s talking to someone else on the other end, so as not to tip-off Tom, who is sitting close by and can overhear what she’s saying. However, in the film the viewer can hear Smith’s voice through the receiver making it seem that if we can hear it then Tom should be able too. To have prevented this the film should’ve cut away every time Smith spoke showing him at the phone booth and therefore never would’ve heard his voice through the receiver.

Some may enjoy the sleazy storyline and Grindhouse reputation, but even on that level, there’s more explicit and violent stuff out there and it all gets handled in a highly routine way. In fact the only unique thing about the production is that both of the leading actors ended up committing suicide. Hippe’s was in 1986 and Watson, who suffered from manic depression, was in 2009.

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Alternate Title: Eager Beavers

Released: July 16, 1975

Runtime: 1 Hour 28 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Gus Trikonis

Studio: Premiere Releasing Organization

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 70's Movies, Drive-In/T & A, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Police Drama, Thrillers/Suspense

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The Take (1974)

Posted on January 21, 2023 | Leave a comment

take1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Black cop accepts bribe .

Terence Sneed (Billy Dee Williams) is a San Francisco cop brought to Paloma, New Mexico to help take down local crime boss Victor Manso (Vic Morrow). The only problem is that Manso invites Sneed over to his place and offers him a significant amount of cash to get on his ‘payroll’ and thus allow him to get away with his crimes. Sneed is also informed that another top official in the police department, Captain Frank Dolek (Albert Salmi) is on the take as well. Sneed accepts the cash, but then double-crosses Manso by having Dolek secretly tailed where he finds out who all of Manso’s connections are and uses this info to try and bust Manso’s drug operation, which ends up being a tall order that gets Sneed in hot water not only with Manso, but with his police supervisor Chief Berrigan (Eddie Albert) as well.

The film is based on the 1970 British novel ‘Sir, You Bastard’ by Gordon Frank Newman, which became a bestseller and set-off a series of three books that he wrote around the Sneed character. There were though differences between the book and movie as in the novel Sneed was white and worked in Scotland Yard. The one thing though that remained the same was Sneed being unscrupulous and working outside the system.

The fact that the protagonist accepts bribes and most of the way it’s unclear whether he’s even a good guy at all is what makes the movie interesting and helps differentiate it from the other early 70’s cop action flicks. This is the complete opposite of Serpico where the cop refused all bribes and vigorously fought against it. Here we see the other angle. Instead of the main character being on the outside looking in he’s a part of the corrupt system and in order to survive in it must be willing to play along, which I found more realistic and insightful as someone who’s able to totally rise above the evil environments they’re in is rare and therefore we get more of an everyman’s perspective here. It also works against the ‘Save the Cat’ book, which has become the bible of today’s screenwriters, which insists that the main character must be likable for the movie to work. Here Sneed is anything but and at certain points when he forces an overweight suspect (Robert Miller Driscoll) to take-off his clothes and do jumping jacks in humiliating fashion to the amusement of the other cops he becomes downright nasty, but in-turn it makes the movie less formulaic, which too many movies today have become.

Williams’ skill as an actor helps to keep the character engaging and he gets great support not only by Eddie Albert as his exasperated superior, but also surprisingly by Frankie Avalon who has a small, but memorable bit as a drug dealer who initially comes-off as quite cocky, but melts dramatically once inside the interrogation room. Unfortunately for Vic Morrow, who’s played some classic villains in his career, his presence here doesn’t work. This is mainly from his get-up including dyed blonde hair and at one point a pseudo cowboy outfit, which looked campy. I also didn’t like that it’s shown right away that his character has heart problems, which telegraphs a major vulnerability that instantaneously sets the viewer into expecting that this will predictably lead to his eventual demise.

As for the action I felt it started well particularly the opening courthouse ambush, which is well choreographed with a funky score, but it becomes rather pedestrian after this. Having the main character misjudge things like when he tries the intercept Manso’s transporting of illegal goods, but ends up chasing down the wrong van each time, which were intentionally being used as decoys, was refreshing because in too many other police movies the hero cops always gets things right the first time and his hunches are never proven wrong, which again is just not how things work in reality. Either way it’s not as exciting as it could’ve been with a lot of car chases and action scenarios that ultimately prove to be generic in nature.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: May 5, 1974

Runtime: 1 Hour 32 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Robert Hartford-Davis

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 70's Movies, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Movies Based on Novels, Police Drama

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