Family Plot (1976)

Family Plot, released in 1976, was Alfred Hitchcock’s final movie. This is definitely Hitchcock Lite, but that does not mean it’s a lesser Hitchcock movie. Some of Hitch’s cleverest and most delightful movies can be thought of as Hitchcock Lite, obvious examples being Young and Innocent and The Trouble with Harry. And of course To Catch a Thief. When I say these movies are Hitchcock Lite I mean that they were intended as lighthearted feelgood entertainment. I like feelgood entertainment if it’s done well, and Hitch did it extremely well.

There are Hitchcock fans who wish that his final movie had been something more in the style of his previous movie Frenzy. But it was not to be, and I think Family Plot was Hitchcock going out on a fairly high note.

Family Plot is essentially a comedic caper movie but the movie it most resembles in tone is The Trouble with Harry. That movie had been a flop because it was at least a decade ahead of its time. It was pure comedy, but it was black comedy. Neither audiences nor critics were ready to embrace such a concept in 1955. By 1976 however audiences were accustomed to black comedy and Family Plot was quite well received by both audiences and critics. By that time they had caught up with Hitchcock.

There are two entirely separate plot strands involving two contrasting criminal couples. We can see early on how the two plot strands are going to intersect and knowing this adds to the fun.

Blanche Tyler (Barbara Harris) is a phoney psychic. Her boyfriend, cab driver, George Lumley (Bruce Dern) helps her out by digging up background details on her clients to help her to convince them that her psychic powers are real. Now they’re hoping for a big score. Mrs Julia Rainbird (Cathleen Nesbitt) is an old lady with a guilty conscience. Thank to her her nephew missed out on his inheritance. And the Rainbird Estate is worth many millions of dollars. If Blanche and George can produce that long-lost nephew Mrs Rainbird will give them a large cheque.

Fran (Karen Black) and Arthur (William Devane) operate on a whole different level. Thy have just pulled off a kidnapping and collected a million dollar ransom.

Blanche and George are not really particularly dishonest or immoral. They really do intend to find Mrs Rainbird’s nephew and it never crosses their minds to try to substitute a phoney nephew. They don’t do that because it would be out of character for them. It would be immoral and cruel. They are just not cruel people and in their own way they have a sense of fair play. They intend to produce the genuine article. They are very much small time. Their score, if it comes off, will amount to a $10,000 cheque from Mrs Rainbird. And they will make an old lady very happy. It’s also significant that they are amateurs and they’re working class.

Fran and Arthur are big time and they’re ice-cold professional criminals. They’re smooth and sophisticated middle crass crooks. They don’t have the ethical qualms that Blanche and George have. I don’t think Hitch had any intention of making a political statement about class - it just adds extra flavour to make the two couples so very different in every way.

What links these two couples was something that happened a long time ago. We, the audience, know all about it. The fact that the protagonists don’t know this crucial fact leads them to make absurd and mistaken decisions. They have no way of knowing that their decisions are absurd and mistaken. That not only adds to the fun, it creates the suspense.

William Devane as Arthur is great fun. He’s not so much a psycho as an old-fashioned scoundrel. A Victorian melodrama villain for the audience to boo and hiss. Karen Black looks like a classic Dangerous Dame.

Bruce Dern had been around for a long time mostly doing B-movies or playing heavies and misfits. This gives him a rare opportunity to strut his stuff as a comic actor and he makes the most of it. He gets so much mileage out of that pipe. George is no genius but he really is a nice guy.

But the movie belongs to Barbara Harris. She does the phoney medium bit to perfection She’s funny and adorable.

We can’t help really liking George and Blanche. They’re only mildly dishonest but really they’re pretty nice and they love each other.

Technically Hitch is in complete command. The film is full of neat little Hitchcock moments. And the highway scene with the car is the sort of thing he’s done before but he manages to make it feel totally fresh, and it delightfully combines whimsy and terror (which is of course very Hitchcockian).

It’s a movie with real charm and wit and a lightness of touch and I manages to be very 1970s as well. This is not a movie made by a tired old man who had lost his touch. It’s a movie made by a man who still had enormous enthusiasm and style.

Family Plot is based on Victor Canning’s novel, The Rainbird Pattern. Canning was one of my favourite thriller writers and a lot of his novels were filmed. He’s not as well known today as he should be. I’ve reviewed his novels The Golden Salamander, Panther’s Moon and Castle Minerva all of which I recommend.

Ernest Lehman wrote the screenplay, having previously written North by Northwest for Hitchcock.

Family Plot is just splendid entertainment. Highly recommended.

It looks great on Blu-Ray.

Les Diaboliques (1955)

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques (1955) was based on Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac’s 1952 novel Celle qui n'était plus (translated into English as She Who Was No More).

The film was a huge hit in France and an international success and its critical reputation grew steadily.

In 1996 Jeremiah S. Chechik directed another adaptation, Diabolique. It has huge flaws and a trainwreck of an ending but a few interesting elements.

Hitchcock had been very keen to acquire the film rights to She Who Was No More but Clouzot beat him to the punch by a hair’s-breadth. A few years later Hitchcock adapted another Boileau-Narcejac novel, D'entre les morts, as Vertigo.

In his film Clouzot made major changes to the plot and further major changes were made in the 1996 film so if you’re familiar with any of the other versions do not assume that you knew exactly how the Clouzot film is going to end. I’m not going to talk about the plot at all since it does rely on a big twist and I don’t want to offer even the smallest hints.

Clouzot changed the setting to a private boys’ school. This works very well - a school has just the right hothouse atmosphere. Michel Delassalle (Paul Meurisse) is the headmaster. He’s a third-rate headmaster of a third-rate school. And the school belongs to his wife Christina (played by the director’s wife Véra Clouzot). She has all the money.

Michel is having an affair with one of the teachers, Nicole Horner (Simone Signoret).

Christina and Nicole are planning to murder Michel.

This is where the story starts to become strange and twisted. There’s a very odd relationship between the two women. They should hate each other. Instead there’s a weird bond between them. Modern critics and viewers will be tempted to assume they’re lesbians but they’re not and it’s nowhere near as simple as that. The bond is based on the fact that they are sharing a man. Both women love Michel and both women hate him.

There is a hint of sexual perversity. Michel bullies and humiliates both women but something has drawn both women to him.

This a story that deals with female sexuality and desire and emotion in ways that modern viewers might find disconcertingly grown-up, complex and subtle.

Véra Clouzot is extremely good as the neurotic Christina who is guilt-ridden before she’s even done anything. She’s probably been guilt-ridden her whole life.

The standout performer though is Simone Signoret as the ambiguous puzzling Nicole. Nicole thinks she has everything under control.

Les Diaboliques truly was a ground-breaking movie - a movie built entirely around a fiendish shock twist at the end. Since then countless crime and horror movies have employed this technique so a viewer watching this movie today is going to be on the lookout for such an ending. Even if you haven’t been told that this movie has a shock twist at the end you’ll be anticipating such a possibility because it’s become a tried and tested formula. But when Les Diaboliques came out in 1955 it knocked people’s socks off. They simply were not prepared for the possibility that the film had been playing games with them, leading them up the garden path. Sadly Les Diaboliques cannot possibly hit as hard today as it did then but that does not detract from its greatness and its originality or from its boldness.

The movie also benefits from some superbly atmospheric black and-white cinematography by Armand Thirard. This combines with the seedy setting that reeks of defeat and despair to create a superbly unsetting and uncomfortable air. There’s this all-pervasive feeling of wrongness.

The twist is the selling point but it’s the unhealthy emotional entanglements and the growing atmosphere of paranoia that really impresses.

Les Diaboliques is a crime thriller with some definite horror overtones and it’s a magnificent cinematic achievement. Very highly recommended.

The Criterion Blu-Ray looks great and the highlight of the extras is the interview with the always perceptive and entertaining Kim Newman.

I’ve also reviewed the Boileau-Narcejac novel She Who Was No More.

No Mercy (1986)

No Mercy is a 1986 thriller which pairs Richard Gere and Kim Basinger. It could perhaps at a stretch be considered to have a slight neo-noir tinge and also perhaps an erotic thriller vibe although to be honest that’s a lot of a stretch.

As an indirect result of a bungled drugs stakeout Chicago cop Eddie Jillette and his partner Joe Collins stumble upon something much bigger - a planned hit. Eddie and Joe, perhaps unwisely, arrange a meet with a mysterious New Orleans businessman (we will find out that his name is Paul Deveneux) who wants a rival rubbed out. Eddie poses as a hitman. Perhaps Eddie and Joe should have realised the meet might not go smoothly. The guy who wants to hire a hitman doesn’t seem the type. He’s more of an old southern aristocracy type.

This guy has a girl with him. Her name is Michelle (Kim Basinger). She’s the reason for the hit. So it’s not business but a personal grudge, which could get messy.

It does get messy. Eddie’s partner gets disembowelled. He’s not the only one who gets killed. Eddie is off to New Orleans, ostensibly to bring his partner’s killer to justice but in fact his objective is revenge pure and simple.

The problem is that Eddie doesn’t know the identity of the target of the aborted hit. All he knows is that the target was a powerful ruthless man, and that he is Michelle’s owner.

Eddie is going to have to track down Michelle. He finds her, and he finds the man who owns her, Losado (Jeroen Krabbé). He also finds out that everything that he assumed he knew about the case is wrong, and everything that he assumed he knew about Michelle is wrong as well.

Another unpleasant discovery is that the New Orleans cops do not want him in their city. Or rather Deveneux’s brother doesn’t want him in New Orleans. Deveneux is extremely rich. If he’s upset, the New Orleans PD is upset.

Eddie ends up in the middle of a bayou, handcuffed to Michelle. They’re lucky to be alive. Losado doesn’t just employ a couple of goons to enforce his will, he has a veritable private army.

Eddie is just one cop on his own in a strange city but by now he’s seriously annoyed. You don’t want to get Eddie Jillette seriously annoyed. And as far as Eddie is concerned if his mission is to be a kamikaze mission, so be it.

He still has to figure out what to do with this strange girl. And Michelle is a very strange girl. Eddie is not just in a strange city. He’s stumbled into a totally foreign world. This is the world of the old French Louisiana. It’s the 1980s in Chicago but here time has stood still for a couple of centuries. And Michelle is like a girl from another planet.

Looking at online reviews I’m surprised that so many people dislike this movie. There’s no shortage of adrenalin-rush action and mayhem with some terrific action set-pieces. There’s good suspense. There’s a weird twisted love story. There’s an exotic setting. As far as thrillers go this one ticks most of my boxes.

I’m also surprised so many people dislike Richard Gere. His performance is very much in that intense edgy wired mode that was so popular at the time but for my money Gere does this sort of thing with more class than most actors of this type. He doesn’t have to shout and wave his arms about and jump up and down to get the message across that he’s a man on the edge. I like him a lot in this movie.

As for Kim Basinger, she has a tricky role. She’s playing a woman who just doesn’t see the world the way women of the 80s see it. She’s like a woman living in two different eras at the same time. I think Basinger is very good indeed in this part.

There’s nothing subtle about Jeroen Krabbé’s performance as Losado but he radiates pure evil and that’s what the part calls for.

The one weakness is that although the acting chemistry between Gere and Basinger is excellent this is a movie that needed a lot more erotic heat.

Richard Pearce is not a particularly big name as a director but he handles matters here with assurance.

No Mercy hits the ground running and maintains the momentum. Whether it’s a neo-noir or an erotic thriller or a plain old action thriller doesn’t matter - whatever it is it delivers the goods. Highly recommended.

The Kino Lorber Blu-Ray presentation looks great.

Topaz (1969)

Alfred Hitchcock’s Topaz came out in 1969 and it’s a movie that was doomed from the start for various reasons that we’ll get to later.

It’s a spy thriller based on a novel by Leon Uris. He’s now entirely forgotten but was once hugely popular. His books were immensely long and there are good reasons that he’s forgotten.

It is 1962. The Americans have a top KBG defector and he’s told them how to get the information they need about what’s happening in Cuba. The problem is that the necessary contact cannot be made by an American. This contact will only deal with the French.

So CIA bigwig Michael Nordstrom (John Forsythe) persuades his friend Andre Devereaux (Frederick Stafford) to make the contact. Devereaux is a French spy, but he can only act unofficially since the French have no desire to get mixed up in America’s problems.

Devereaux has to travel to Cuba, with unexpected personal consequences. He is having an illicit affair with the influential but fiercely anti-Castro Juanita de Cordoba (Karin Dor). She’s also involved with the Cuban chief of security, Rico Parra (John Vernon).

That KGB defector mentioned Topaz but refused to give any information. No-one knows who or what Topaz is, but it’s something very important. And Topaz will also have personal consequences for Andre Devereaux.

There are therefore two espionage plots running in parallel.

So what went wrong? Firstly, there’s no star power here. No star power at all. John Forsythe is the only cast member who had any profile at all in the U.S. and he’s OK but it’s a minor supporting role. Frederick Stafford is dull. He has no charisma. In fact he has negative charisma. John Vernon is great fun but he was not an A-list star. Karin Dor was a huge star in Germany and a fine actress but was pretty much unknown to American audiences. Dany Robin (as Andre Devereaux’s wife Nicole) was a minor star in France.

With zero star power there was no way of effectively marketing this movie. There is a fascinating rumour that Hitchcock wanted Sean Connery and Catherine Deneuve.

The second problem is that it feels so old-fashioned. Hitchcock revolutionised the spy genre with North by Northwest in 1959 but three years later the first Bond movie, Dr No, came out and immediately made Hitchcock’s style of spy movie seem ridiculously old-fashioned. Dr No felt faster, more energetic, cooler and sexier. And Dr No helped to usher in the whole Swinging London thing.

Hitchcock’s 1960s spy movies, Torn Curtain and Topaz, feel very 1950s.

In Topaz the problem is made worse by the fact that it was made in 1969 but set in 1962 which made it seem even more outdated.

The third problem is that at 2 hours and 23 minutes it’s very very long.

A lot of the problems probably go back to the source material. Leon Uris saw everything in simplistic good vs evil terms. As a result the Cubans are portrayed as cartoonish villains, there’s no questioning of the morality of the manner in which the Americans deliberately lie to their French allies and there’s no questioning of the morality of the appalling manner in which the Americans deliberately lie to their French allies and there’s no questioning of the morality of Nordstrom’s manipulation of a man who is supposed to be a friend. I get the impression that Hitchcock was trying here to make a serious hard-hitting spy movie but I think the script needed more work.

On the other hand it’s a superbly crafted movie. There are so many very Hitchcockian very stylish visual set-pieces. They’re not violent action set-pieces and they are perhaps the sorts of subtle visual flourishes that a mainstream audience will miss. The initial escape is very nicely done. And there’s that one superb moment which I won’t spoil for you, involving the use Hitchcock makes of a blue dress.

On more than one occasion Hitchcock shoots dialogue scenes in which we cannot hear a single word. It’s a clever touch and it works. We can imagine what is being said.

And then there are the endings. Three of them were shot. There’s a ridiculous cartoonish ending, the “duel” ending. That was the original ending but preview audiences hated it. Hitchcock shot a different much bolder ending (the “airport” ending) which he preferred to the original. Eventually a third very conventional ending was chosen. The Blu-Ray gives us the airport ending which makes sense since it’s the one Hitch liked. The others are included as extras. Depending on which ending is used Topaz becomes three different movies, with the airport ending version being by far the best.

Topaz is superbly crafted. Hitchcock had lost none of his visual touch. It’s not a bad movie at all but it’s too slow and it needed more energy and it desperately needed some star power. Certainly not top-tier Hitchcock but worth a look.

Ransom (1974)

Ransom (AKA The Terrorists) is a 1974 British thriller. It was shot in Norway but apparently it was felt that it was best to make the setting a mythical Scandinavian country called Scandinavia. It had a Finnish director (Casper Wrede) and a Swedish cinematographer (Sven Nykvist) but an entirely British cast headed up by Sean Connery. It’s a largely forgotten movie but it’s at least moderately effective.

It’s a hijacking hostage drama made at a time when hijackings and terrorist outrages were regular occurrences.

A British terrorist named Shepherd, along with several of his cohorts, has kidnapped the British ambassador to Scandinavia. They are demanding the release by the British Government of other members of the terrorist gang currently in custody. The British Government intends to accede to Shepherd’s demands but there’s a complication. Other members of this terrorist gang, led by Petrie (Ian McShane), have hijacked a Scandinavian airliner. They are demanding free passage for Shepherd and his accomplices to the airport so that they can all make their escape by air to destinations unknown.

So the hijacking comes under Scandinavian jurisdiction and the Scandinavians intend to accept the terrorists’ demands but double-cross them.

The task of apprehending all of these terrorists without risking any civilian casualties is handed to the Scandinavian chief of security, Colonel Tahlvik (Sean Connery). He thinks that his task is impossible but he’s a soldier and he intends to do the best he can and he most definitely does not like the idea of letting terrorists get away with outrages on Scandinavian soil.

It’s a double hostage drama, with two sets of hostages held in different locations.

The plot gets complicated but it’s perfectly coherent and includes some sound ideas.

There is of course a major twist and it’s signposted by subtle clues scattered throughout the movie. It’s still a pretty decent twist.

Connery as usual exudes charisma.

It should have turned out better than it did. The potential was there. It ends up feeling a bit too much like a TV-movie.

One major problem is that Colonel Tahlvik is the only interesting character. We don’t get any insights into the motivations of Shepherd and Petrie and they’re just not sufficiently menacing. This is a movie that really needed a memorable villain to provide a worthy adversary for Tahlvik, and he needed to be played by an actor with enough charisma not to get totally overshadowed by Connery.

Ian McShane is in fact a fine actor but his performance fails to build up enough steam. He just doesn’t seem to be fully engaged.

John Quentin as Shepherd is a total washout and that is a major weakness.

Most of the movie’s problems would seem to have stemmed from the fact that as director of an action/suspense thriller Casper Wrede was just not up to the job. The action scenes are not exciting enough, the suspense doesn’t build the way it should and there’s a general lack of energy and urgency.

There is some 70s cynicism but it needed to be given a bit more bite.

Visually it’s a fairly impressive film.

This is not by any means a bad movie. It’s decent entertainment but in a TV-movie time-killer sort of way rather than in a nail-biting adrenalin-fuelled feature film sort of way. Worth a look if you can pick it up really cheap or if you’re a Sean Connery completist.

Network’s Blu-Ray lacks extras but looks very good.

Stage Fright (1950) - Hitchcock Friday #13

Alfred Hitchcock retuned to Britain in 1950 to make Stage Fright. From the mid-1940s he had started to become quite experimental in his approach, both technically and in narrative terms, and most of his 1940s experiments were critical and commercial disappointments. Stage Fright was another experiment and it had a decidedly mixed reception.

The willingness to experiment was part of Hitchcock’s genius and he would certainly have been aware that it was extremely risky. A director who has several flops in quick succession can find himself reduced to making cheap B-movies for Poverty Row studios. But if you don’t take risks you don’t learn anything and while Hitchcock made mistakes he never made the same mistake twice. And without his willingness to take risks we would never have had towering masterpieces like Rear Window, Dial ‘M’ for Murder, Vertigo, Psycho and The Birds.

In Stage Fright he utilises a certain plot device that makes this his most controversial and divisive film. I can’t describe the plot device because it would constitute a huge spoiler and if you haven’t seen this movie before it’s best to approach it without knowing about it. Knowing about it can prejudice the viewer against the film. And there are those who consider the device to be a masterstroke rather than a flaw.

Hitchcock himself considered it to have been a very serious mistake. What he was trying to do was perfectly valid, but after the movie was completed Hitch realised that the device did not work as he had intended it to work.

The movie begins with a young man, Jonathan Cooper (Richard Todd), on the run from the police. He is suspected of murder. The murder victim was the husband of major show business star Charlotte Inwood (Marlene Dietrich). Jonathan and Charlotte are lovers. There’s blood-stained dress that Jonathan will need to destroy.

Jonathan is involved with another young lady, aspiring actress Eve Gill (Jane Wyman). Even is hopelessly in love with Jonathan. She will do anything to help him prove his innocence. She considers Charlotte to be a very bad woman.

Jonathan is a man caught between two women, a sexy femme fatale and a good girl. Eve is a woman caught between two men. She’s in love with Jonathan but now she’s met Detective-Inspector Smith (Michael Wilding) and he’s such a nice kind man and so charming and rather good-looking and she thinks he’s a bit of a dreamboat.

Eve however still has to help Jonathan prove his innocence and she persuades her father Commodore Gill (Alastair Sim) to help. The Commodore thinks it’s all foolishness but it could be fun and he’ll do anything for his daughter.

A lot depends on that blood-stained dress. Maybe it could be used to break down Charlotte’s resistance and persuade her to confess.

This is a movie that feels very very English. It’s very similar in feel to Hitch’s great 1930s British movies. There’s also plenty of very English humour.

It benefits from a great cast. Michael Wilding is very solid and Richard Todd manages to be rather jumpy, as you would expect from a man with the police after him. Sybil Thorndyke is fun as Eve’s dotty mother. I have never liked Jane Wyman but I must admit that she’s excellent here. She somehow manages to be both mousy and feisty.

But the standout performers are of course Alastair Sim and Marlene Dietrich. Sim is in fine form playing the eccentric irascible loveable rogue Commodore Gill.

Dietrich gives one of her best performances. She’s delightfully seductive and wicked and scheming and manipulative but oddly enough she’s rather kind to Eve when Eve goes undercover as her dresser. Charlotte is incredibly self-centred but not gratuitously cruel. Marlene singing I’m the Laziest Girl in Town is definitely a highlight.

The final scenes are very well shot and very Hitchcockian, and very tense with the highlighting of the eyes.

How well the plot works depends entirely on how you feel about that notorious plot device, and whether or not you think it makes the ending difficult to accept. Either way Stage Fright is rather enjoyable and it’s recommended.

Dead Calm (1989)

Dead Calm is a 1989 Australian suspense thriller directed by Phillip Noyce, based on a novel by Charles Williams.

It’s a nautical thriller. John Ingram (Sam Neill) is an Australian naval officer whose son was killed in a car accident. His wife Rae (Nicole Kidman) survived the accident. The accident was not her fault. They both need time to recover. A cruise on John’s yacht seems like the perfect answer.

They spot a black schooner. A guy in a dinghy rows across from the schooner. He is Hughie Warriner (Billy Zane). He claims to be the sole survivor of a bizarre tragedy. The other five people on board the schooner died of food poisoning. Hughie claims the schooner is slowly sinking.

John is no fool. He’s spent twenty-five years at sea. He isn’t the slightest bit convinced by Hughie’s story. He locks Hughie into a cabin and rows across to the schooner to investigate. It becomes apparent that very bad very strange things went on aboard that schooner. Meanwhile Hughie has escaped and he’s hijacked John’s yacht, with Rae aboard.

John is stranded on the schooner. There is no wind and the engine doesn’t work. Rae is stuck on the yacht with a guy who could be merely a bit unbalanced but could be a total psycho. The latter seems more and more likely. Either way he’s extremely dangerous.

There are now essentially two stories going on. John, on board the schooner, tries to unravel what really happened on that unlucky vessel. It seems to have been some sort of sex cruise, with some very dangerous games being played.

Rae, on the yacht, has to find some way to subdue or trick Hughie so that she can stay alive and rescue her husband. This is becoming rather urgent. The schooner is slowly sinking.

Hughie’s intentions are frightening because they’re unknown. He might be a killer, he might have been a victim. He may be sexually obsessed with Rae. Or, more worrying, he may have created some weird romantic fantasy in his head, a fantasy in which he and Rae sail the South Pacific together. He may intend to kill Rae. He may intend to rape her.

It’s Rae’s story that becomes the main focus. That puts a lot of pressure on Nicole Kidman who was at that time a young relatively inexperienced actress and unknown outside Australia. She is more than equal to the challenge. This is the movie that demonstrated that Kidman could easily carry a film as a lead actress. And Rae is an interesting character. She’s no action heroine, just a resourceful woman fighting for survival. And she’s fighting to save her man. That will make her fight very hard indeed. Kidman makes Rae likeable and convincing. Rae could make things easier for herself by simply killing Hughie but, quite realistically, she is very reluctant to take that step. She’s an ordinary woman. Killing does not come naturally or easily to her.

Rae has one thing going for her. She’s a Navy wife. She knows boats and she knows the sea.

While Kidman is the standout performer both Sam Neill and Billy Zane are excellent.

These three people are the only significant characters in the movie, in fact for most of the running time they’re the only characters. The three leads had to be good and they had to work well together. They’re all equal to the job.

The cinematography is gorgeous. The location shooting was done on the Great Barrier Reef and the natural beauty nicely counterpoints the unnatural horrors.

The only character developed in any detail is Rae. Having lost her only child she comes to the realisation that her husband is all she’s got, but she loves him so that’s enough. She will do whatever it takes to save him. Nicole Kidman never goes over-the-top but she does a fine job letting us know what makes Rae tick.

We don’t know exactly what makes Hughie tick but that’s a plus rather than a minus. It makes him more frightening. It also means that Rae cannot reason with him.

Dead Calm doesn’t try to do anything too fancy. It’s a suspense thriller and it doesn’t get bogged down with extraneous details to any great extent. It just happens to be an extremely well-executed suspense thriller. It’s obviously a must-see if you’re a Nicole Kidman fan. Highly recommended.

The DVD release is barebones but the transfer is very good. There’s been a Blu-Ray release as well.

Philip Noyce went on to direct the criminally underrated erotic thriller Sliver (1993).

Nightmare (1956)

Nightmare is a 1956 film noir written and directed by Maxwell Shane. It is based on a Cornell Woolrich novella and it’s very difficult to make a bad movie when you have a Woolrich story as your source material.

What’s interesting is that Shane’s first feature film, Fear in the Night (1946), was based on the same Cornell Woolrich novella. A decade after that film Shane decided that he could do a much better job with the material and Nightmare is certainly more ambitious and more accomplished. Nightmare would be Shane’s final feature film so his directing career began and ended with the same story.

For his 1956 remake Shane switched the scene of the action to New Orleans which was a rather good move. For some reason New Orleans had been under-used as a noir location but it’s the perfect setting for a movie with a slightly spooky mysterious vibe.

It also offered the opportunity to give the movie a more jazz-fuelled feel.

Stan Grayson (Kevin McCarthy) is a jazz musician and he’s just had a terrible nightmare about killing a man in a strange mirrored room. In the struggle (in the nightmare) Stan rips off one of the buttons of his victim’s coat. What worries Stan is that when he wakes up he is clutching that button. He also has a key which he has never seen before. Could Stan be a murderer? But why would he have killed a man he has never seen before?

Stan decides to ask his brother-in-law Rene Bressard (Edward G. Robinson) for advice. Rene is a Homicide cop. Rene assures Stan that he’s just suffering from overwork. Then Rene, his wife Sue, Stan and Stan’s singer girlfriend Gina (Connie Russell) go on a picnic. Trying to avoid a downpour they are led by Stan to an empty house. Stan has never been to this house but he knows how to get there and he knows where the spare key is hidden. There’s a mirrored room in the house - the room from Stan’s dream. And that mysterious key fits the locks in that room.

Rene now figures that Stan really is a murderer and Stan figures the same thing. But there are major plot twists to come.

Stan of course has considered the possibility that he has gone crazy. There are other possibilities. The nightmare was obviously very significant.

Changes were made to the plot for the 1956 remake and both film versions differ in some ways from Woolrich’s story.

One thing that should be noted is that the poster for the movie (reproduced on the Blu-Ray cover) gives away the entire plot of the movie. I’m not going to do that but if you’re concerned about spoilers just don’t look at that disc cover!

Kevin McCarthy is excellent as the confused and worried Stan, a nice guy whose whole world is suddenly falling apart. Edward G. Robinson gives one of his kindly wise older man performances, mixed with one of his aggressive tough guy performances.

The actresses are fine but the focus here is very much on Rene and Stan and McCarthy and Robinson are both so good that the female stars inevitably get overshadowed.

This is a visually rather impressive movie. The New Orleans locations are used well. The camerawork combines with the music to give that crazy disturbing jazzy feel that the story requires. There’s a nice use of mirrors. Not just the mirrored room, but there’s another very cool mirror shot early which doesn’t advance the plot but just adds subtly to our sense of unease.

There’s a lot of Freudian stuff. It’s half-baked Freudianism, but Freud’s Freudianism was half-baked as well so it doesn’t matter. Freudian nonsense always adds some fun.

You might think I’m being persnickety about that poster but I do think it weakens the movie. The movie works better if you don’t know the answer to a couple of the key questions which cause Rene and Stan so much anguish and bewilderment, and the poster makes those answers much too obvious. Perhaps Shane really did want us to know the answers, but the way he structures the movie suggests to me that that was not the case.

Is this film noir? I would say no, but it’s definitely noirish. Always bear in mind that the movie was made in 1956 when no-one had heard of film noir, so it was never intended as a film noir and there’s no sense complaining that some of what are now seen as essential noir ingredients are missing. This is an entertaining psychological crime thriller and it’s recommended.

Kino Lorber have provided a very nice Blu-Ray transfer.

To Catch a Thief (1955)

If ever a movie was a surefire commercial hit it was Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief, released by Paramount in 1955.

Cary Grant and Grace Kelly were huge stars at the time. Hitchcock had worked with both of them before. He knew they would have the right onscreen chemistry and that Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in love would be box-office gold. He knew the story had all the right ingredients for a lighthearted suspense movie/romance. He knew that that was the sort of thing he could do, and do very well. It could not fail. And it was indeed a major hit.

John Robie (Cary Grant) lives in the south of France. He is a retired cat burglar. Now someone has been pulling off robberies using Robie’s standard modus operandi. The police will obviously believe he is guilty. They do believe he is guilty. Even his friends assume he is guilty.

It’s obvious to Robie that his only chance of proving his innocence is to catch the real cat burglar himself.

He gets hold of a list of women who own very expensive jewels. They’re the mystery cat burglar’s obvious next targets. Robie (who is pretending to be an American lumberman from Oregon) intends to set a trap for the burglar.

One of the women on the list is Jessie Stevens (Jessie Royce Landis). She has a daughter, Francie (Grace Kelly). Francis has had the finest education money can buy. She is poised and sophisticated. She’s also a bit of a spoilt brat. She seems to have set her sights on Robie. She doesn’t believe he has ever been anywhere near Oregon. She believes he’s the cat burglar. This excites her (she’s that kind of girl).

They spend the night together. This scene is a great example of Hitchcock making it blindingly obvious that two characters have had sex whilst somehow never quite technically stepping outside the bounds of the Production Code.

While Robie hopes to trap the burglar he has a whole bunch of people out to trap him. There are the police. There are his olds friends from the Resistance. They were all criminals as well. They fear that Robie will cause them problems with the flics. And of course the real cat burglar is out to trap John Robie as well.

The identity of the actual burglar is very obvious but I won’t say any more for fear of revealing spoilers.

To be honest To Catch a Thief, apart from the obviousness of the criminal’s identity, is not a great suspense thriller. It’s more like his wonderful early film Young and Innocent - the real focus is on the romance. It’s a terrific romance movie, and manages to be rather sexy for 1955. There’s plenty of romantic and sexual tension. Cary Grant and Grace Kelly get to trade some very witty very risqué dialogue.

Grace Kelly is superbly dressed and is breathtakingly beautiful and glamorous.

This movie looks gorgeous. The colours are not just stunning, they’re used imaginatively to give a weird other-worldly feel to the strange rooftop world of the professional cat burglar. The sets and costumes are magnificent.

Hitchcock was determined to have as little as possible to do with the deplorable fad for location shooting. Despite the exotic setting the film has that classic shot-on-a-sound-stage look. There are lots of process shots. These are not flaws. Hitchcock did not make movies set in the real world. He made movies set in Hitchcock World, a much more attractive and interesting world. This movie is not supposed to look realistic.

There was one tricky element in the plot. The Production Code was still in force. The movie had to have an unequivocal crime does not pay message. On the other hand to make John Robie an entirely innocent man would be boring and would be a misuse of Cary Grant’s talents. It would be much more fun to make Robie a retired, rather than a reformed, criminal. It would also be much more fun to make him totally unapologetic about his criminal past. Cary Grant had a particular knack for playing likeable rogues and he was at his best playing a character who was a genuine rogue.

The solution was to emphasise over and over again that Robie had fought with the French Resistance during the war. He was a hero who had risked his life for freedom and democracy. As long as it was also made clear that Robie had given up his criminal career Cary Grant could get away with playing him as a man who had enjoyed every moment of his life as a cat burglar. He could also get away with playing Robie as anything but a Robin Hood figure. John Robie did not steal from the rich to give to the poor. He stole from the rich to give to John Robie.

This solution allowed Grant to have some real fun with this role. It also allowed him to be a handsome sexy bad boy.

This is Hitchcock Lite but it's a visually stunning romance movie with Grace Kelly absolutely at the top of her game. Highly recommended.

This movie looks terrific on Blu-Ray - this is one of those rare cases where it really is upgrading to Blu-Ray.

Twisted Nerve (1968)

Twisted Nerve is a 1968 British suspense thriller starring Hayley Mills, although it’s a bit more than just a straightforward suspense film.

Martin Durnley (Hywel Bennett) is a slightly odd young man. His brother Georgie had to be put away in a home. Georgie suffers from a genetic abnormality. He still has the mind of a toddler.

There are perhaps a number of reasons for Martin’s oddness. His father died, his mother remarried, and he hates and despises his stepfather. The family is extremely rich, so Martin has always been coddled and spoilt and the family money has always come to his rescue when he gets into scrapes. It’s also possible that he has suffered from anxiety, fearing he might be abnormal in some way as well. HIs mother has always feared that might be the case - perhaps her anxieties have rubbed off on Martin. Martin is in fact rather intelligent, but he’s irresponsible, difficult, rebellious and trouble-prone.

Quite by accident he encounters a very pretty very charming young woman, Susan Harper (Hayley Mills), in a toy shop. Martin steals a very cheap toy and is caught. He pretends to be simple-minded and pretends that his name is Georgie. In fact he has in a way adopted his brother’s identity. It works. The store manager is sympathetic and Susan feels sorry for him that she pays for the stolen toy. Martin has no difficulty in fooling people into thinking that he has the mind of a five-year-old.

Martin starts following Susan. He meets her again. Susan lives in a slightly unusual household as well - she lives with her mother Joan (Billie Whitelaw), a young Indian medical student who is the lodger, and also Joan Harper’s live-in lover Gerry Henderson (Barry Foster).

Martin turns up on the doorstep, in the pouring rain, more child-like than ever and apparently with nowhere to go. Susan insists that he be allowed to stay. So he moves in.

This is where the movie gets interesting, with all sorts of disturbing sexual tensions. Both Susan and her mother Joan think Martin has the mind of a small child but they also cannot help noticing that physically he is a very attractive young man with a rather nice body. Susan isn’t at all sure how she feels. Martin does get a bit physically affectionate at times. Joan is definitely sexually attracted to him, which of course makes her rather confused and uneasy.

We know this is not going to end well. What makes it more interesting is that we really don’t know at first just how genuinely child-like Martin is. Intellectually, in some ways, he’s an adult. Physically he’s an adult. We always have to keep in mind the complexity of the characterisation. Martin is pretending to be child-like both intellectually and emotionally but he really is child-like emotionally.

It’s obvious that his mother has never wanted him to grow up, and it’s obvious that he has discovered certain advantages in not growing up. He can get away with being irresponsible. He can behave like a naughty small boy (as he does when he steals the cheap toy) and get away with it. He can remain in many ways a spoilt little boy.

It’s very clear that this has had consequences for his sexual development. He has never learnt to deal with women on adult level. He has never even got as far as dealing with girls on the level of an awkward teenager. He deals with females on the level of a small child but he is physically mature and has normal male sexual urges. It’s obvious that he regards sex with guilt, shame and fear.

He is not only probably a virgin - he appears to have major guilt, shame and fear in regard to any kind of sexual arousal, so he cannot even satisfy his sexual urges through self-pleasuring. The early scene with the mirror, and the final scene with another mirror, make it obvious that a soon as he becomes sexually aroused the guilt, shame and fear kick in and he can go no further. He has at least two opportunities for sex in the movie and in both cases he cannot go through with it.

As a result he feels inadequate, which accounts for his odd fixation on Tarzan and on bodybuilding. They’re wish-fulfilment fantasies of normal masculinity.

The writing credits include two very notable names. Roger Marshall was one of the greatest of all British television writers, the man who created the best TV private eye series ever made, Public Eye. Leo Marks wrote the notorious (and superb) Peeping Tom and there are definite similarities between Peeping Tom and Twisted Nerve. The experienced and reliable Roy Boulting directed.

This was an incredibly fascinating era in British cinema. British censorship in the 60s was draconian. This started to relax right at the end of the decade. By the late 60s British filmmakers were increasingly restive under these restrictions. They wanted to make grown-up movies, and they wanted to deal with love, sex and human relationships honesty and openly. This led to a spate of fascinating movies including All the Right Noises (1970), Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (1968), Baby Love (1969) and the superb I Start Counting (1969). And although it’s usually dismissed as a sex comedy I would add Pete Walker’s excellent Cool It, Carol! (1970) to the list.

It was also a time of media frenzy about the “permissive society” which led to interesting if depressing movies such as Her Private Hell (1968) and Permissive (1970).

Twisted Nerve is a very dark extremely well-executed suspense thriller with a nicely subtle sense of creeping menace. Highly recommended.

Umbrella’s Blu-Ray offers a lovely transfer with a number of extras.