My review was written in August 1980 after a press screening in Times Square.
Writer-director Mark Reichert's indie film, "Union City", is a handsomely shot film noir, featuring rock star Deborah Harry of the group Blondie in her dramatic screen debut. Straddling the line between melodrama and camp, the pic emerges as toostudied and lifeless to break out of its underground peg into commercial environs.
Woolrich's dark and fetishistic material is both a source of strength and the undoing of "Union City". His story is similar to Poe's "The Telltale Heart" in structure and while helmer Reichert exploits its strangeness very well, he fails to flesh out the short, one-acter sketch into a full length feature.
Set in Union City, N. J., arbitrarily in March, 1953, pic concerns a paranoid businessman (Dennis Lipscomb) obsessed with catching the mysterious culprit who steals a drink out of his milk bottle that is delivered every morning. His setting a trap for the miscreant is very amusing, while his plain, vapid wife Lillian (Deborah Harry) puts up with his increasingly bizarre behavior.
Ultimately, he captures a young war vet vagrant (Sam McMurray) in the act and releases his pent-up anger and frustration by beating the man's head bloodily on the floor as the vagrant taunts him for impotency re: wife Lillian. The Hitchcockian body removal footage provides fine black humor as Lipscomb hides the corpse in a Murphy bed in the vacant apartment next door.
Meanwhile, Lillian is two-timing him with building super Larry (Everett McGill) and in the last reel bleaches her dark brown hair blonde, to finally assume some of her rock star image. When new neighbors move in next door, Lipscomb is driven to suicide due to his fear of discovery, leading to an ironic conclusion.
Film is carried by stage actor Lipscomb, always credible in his physical interpretation of the "driven little man" lead role. Harry, after appealingly playing herself in "Roadie" is virtually unrecognizable here in brown wig and plain, unflattering makeup. Painfully underdirected and robbed of her icon image as "Blondie", Harry plays most of the film awkwardly. Her best moments come in two silent, autoerotic scenes, well-backed by an "after-hours" jazz score by Blondie teammate Chris Stein and an unidentified sax soloist.
Irina Maleeva, a Fellini actress, steals Harry's thunder in a support role as a wacked-out neighbor.
While Reichert's script is lacking, his direction is mainly on-target, making the most of a low budget by limiting the action to the apartment house, the street outside, a nearby bar and Lipscomb's tiny office.
The real talent to emerge from "Union City" is cinematographer Ed Lachman. After an apprenticeship, usually as assistant cameraman, with Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders and Sven Nykvist, plus films noirs "Scalpel" and "The Last Embrace", Lachman has a major achievement. His handsome compositions, pastel lighting and precise camera movements display a talent ready for the big solo assignments.
