Baffled

In between his iconic small screen and big screen STAR TREK career, Leonard Nimoy headlined this television movie that was really an intended pilot for a British series co-starring sophisticated blonde beauty Susan Hamphire: an ESP expert aiding Nimoy's famous race car driver to channel visions of a veteran actress murdered in a castle where he, reluctantly at first, takes on the case...

BAFFLED! has all the elements of a good mystery but without enough doomed tension. And yet it works from the affable chemistry between Nimoy and Hampshire, brightening up the surrounding ensemble of Agatha Christie-like suspects including a tempestuous Rachel Roberts; Vera Miles as the possibly doomed starlet; and scene-stealing Jewel Blanch as a childlike pre-teen whose personality morphs into a creepy, possessed teenager...

Making the best scenes a "Spock verses THE EXORCIST" kind of thing, and a year earlier. But it's really Susan Hampshire's ride. She energetically tackles the part as if it were truly the beginning of an assured series. In fact this "movie" ends with their next case shaping up. Sadly, it was her show to lose.

BAFFLED is a mystery whodunit in which the twist is that "it" has not been done yet: due to clairvoyant episodes of the protagonist played by Leonard Nimoy, who then promptly teams up with a psychic expert to prevent "it" from happening, the story takes place before "it" is done.

This is a light entertaining film which was apparently filmed as a pilot to a series that never got off the ground. Though much of it plays like a cinematic movie, the credit sequence and ending allow one to guess as much.

The thing that struck me most about this film was the choice of Leonard Nimoy as the lead character in a role that would have been a much more obvious fit with someone like (ideally) Rock Hudson. Nimoy already has quite a serious face, and his close identification with his role as the ultra-serious Mr Spock in the STAR TREK franchise would not naturally suggest him in scenes of lighthearted banter.

However, he does lighten up in the movie, we see him smile frequently, and the initial feeling of the oddness of the choice of the lead does subside eventually. Who knows, had the series got off the ground, his aura of seriousness might even have faded.

The film has some editing issues (perhaps due to time constraints?), there is a car chase which is pretty lame by today's standards (though FRENCH CONNECTION (1971) and its phenomenal car chase scene were filmed the year prior, so we know people could do better even back then), and the supernatural shtick got a bit much for my taste, but nonetheless it keeps the audience guessing with various red herrings while doing a good job of only gradually revealing the mystery.

This is especially for people who want to see Mr. Spock like they've never seen him before, but fans of old-fashioned light mystery films might also enjoy this.

The idea of a race car driver turned ESP detective with his spunky female side kick is an odd one to cast Leonard Nimoy in. He plays the part as if he were a William Shatner type playboy. Though it's fun to see Nimoy play a girl chasing devil-may-care part, it doesn't play into his strengths. He also is forced to wear a horrible array of bad clothing-- witness the pink turtle neck sweater that would be something he'd steal out of his grandmother's closet, or the array of safari type leisure suit jackets he's forced to wear. But this aside, if you can look past these poor and distracting choices what you have is still rather odd sometimes in a good way but often in doesn't-really-work way.

The opening pre-credit sequence is well done--despite poor rear screen car footage--these first precognition flashes to images as he's driving are well done, setting up a "what the hell is going on here?" feeling. Then you have a really awful title sequence with some awkward freeze frames of actors smirking in what seems like it should be tense situations and some terrible Brit sounding jazz pop music behind it all.

So at that point you have pretty much seen the best and worst the movie has to offer, but now the story begins. The lead character doesn't seem all that deeply baffled by his ability to see into what turns out to be the future, more or less. He almost seems to say "Hey man, I guess I have visions now, groovy, so let's have some lunch and hang out."

He heads off to U.K. with spunky gal sidekick and then proceeds to mostly just hang out at a sort of B and B where he meets various but not too compelling or in-jeopardy characters. Nothing much seems to be going on until it seems there is a character who has returned from he dead. This seems like the moment tension will start to build but it seems to have no impact on most of what's going on for a very long time afterwords. It's like the film has no interest in the one really interesting thing that's happened since the pre credit sequence.

There are other occasional flashes of him recognizing elements he saw at the start of the show, and or seeing new things. There is one very nice false lead he gets that's quite clever. It's very late in the show before he and his sidekick sit down to talk about possible suspects, which is a good thing as up to that point it doesn't seem like they are paying much attention to whatever little is going on.

But there is no growing sense of danger to the show and the suspense and style of ESP bits take up very little screen time. The Director does a good job with those ESP bits but the rest of the show is flatly directed and though the music score is bad there is also almost no music to give real context for the seeming random conversations between people that take up much of the running time. And for something intended for commercial television there doesn't seem to any interest in holding the viewer through the occasional fade to blacks where the commercials would have been.

Then there is a decent wrap up to it all, followed by kind of cheesy set up for it to go into series form which it never did.

I watched the recent DVD release and watched the longer of the two versions on there--it certainly felt too long, but I didn't watch the ten minute shorter version mostly because it is a stretched and distorted version of the 4:3 aspect ratio version I had just watched. I hope this is just a manufacturing mistake and they didn't think you'd be fooled into thinking this was truly a widescreen version of the film.

So there you have it, I guess I was satisfied to see it as I had long heard of it, but if you aren't a die hard Nimoy fan you could well be baffled and bored into wondering why you bothered. Nimoy and the girl do have some chemistry but without a consistently involving story it doesn't matter much, especially in a one off movie as it exists now.

Learning that this was intended as a pilot for a tv series actually helps sum up how this movie felt to me. There were hints throughout that the main characters, Spock and his lady interest, either had a prior relationship or were building toward a more involved future one. There are no big surprises here and there is definitely plenty of 70s cheese. But I found myself watching the entire movie and enjoying it. Worth a look if you come across it.

The plot was pretty straightforward, but I thought that the writing, direction, and the acting were actually quite good.

I particularly liked the dialog between the two leads. There was a good chemistry and considering the time and that it was a Telefilm for a pilot, it COULD have simply been tossed off without much thought put into it. But, I liked the humour and interplay between them.

You could tell that they were sort of shooting for a feel similar to the series The Avengers. Between the two of them, her being British and him being a pretty cool fellow, I felt it worked rather well.

There was a decent Mystery too, and I liked the way the story unfolded where they continued to build a sense of tension as the audience tries to figure out what is going on.

Again, considering the time and type of film, the characters were all portrayed fairly well. Usually during that time and with such a low budget production, you would see a lot of overacting and hammy performances, but not here.

It was really nice to see Leonard Nimoy in such a role and see him smiling freely and using humour, which as we all are well aware for a few years there we almost never got to see... : )

All 'n' all I truly felt it was a fun, entertaining movie. If you have the right mindset for the time and what kind of production it is, and you are not expecting too much, then you may very well find some enjoyment here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ MY PARTICULAR WAY OF RATING:

5 - Flawed, but with some entertainment value.

6. A decently passable story maybe worth a watch.

7. A solid film, well made, effective, and entertaining.

And, obviously, you can probably figure out what above and below these would mean... : )