For years now, I've been trying to see and review every horror film from the '70s and '80s, as listed in my Aurum Encyclopedia of Horror; I've ticked off the majority of the best known titles, and have now entered the 'mopping up' phase, with just a few hundred less-well-known movies to see before I am done. The problem is that the ones I have left to watch are either extremely difficult to find, are often not very good, or aren't what I consider to be horror. Harlequin is NOT horror in my opinion: it's a strange contemporary retelling of the story of Grigori Rasputin, the Russian mystic who gained influence over the family of Nicholas II in the early 20th century.
Robert Powell plays Gregory Wolfe, who works his way into the life of senator Nick Rast (David Hemmings) after he cures young Alex Rast (Mark Spain) of leukaemia. After performing this apparent miracle, Wolfe becomes companion to Mrs. Rast (Carmen Duncan), but is the man's magic real or illusion? Nick Rast's superiors claim that Wolfe is a fraud, while the magician tells Nick that he is being used as a political puppet. But who is speaking the truth?
The only genuinely scary thing about Harlequin is Wolfe's fashion sense: he wears a studded black leather and silk outfit that wouldn't seem out of place in a Las Vegas show (the ensemble completed with painted nails and glittery eye-brow make-up), and he dons a very silly, padded, multi-coloured harlequin costume for the final act. However, Powell's quirky Bowie-esque outfits are in perfect keeping with the overall tone of the film, which is quite simply bizarre, the film frequently making not a lick of sense (the levitating marbles in Alex's room, the grimy portrait of Wolfe on the kitchen floor, and little Alex's transformation at the very end).
4/10. Just about worth seeking out if cinematic strangeness is your thing. But it's not horror.
