Try to Remember: The Amnesia Trilogy. Part 1: WRECKED

"You should see the other guy!"

To Merriam-Webster Online, amnesia means the following:

am·ne·sia

noun \am-ˈnē-zhə\

1: loss of memory due usually to brain injury, shock, fatigue, repression, or illness
2: a gap in one's memory

But to film fans, amnesia means a surefire way to plunge a movie's main character into a tailspin of paranoia and suspense! For the next three weeks, starting today, I'll be spotlighting three amnesia-driven thrillers from three different decades. Let's kick things off with the newest of these films first, Wrecked, released earlier this year by IFC Midnight.

…You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile….

…You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
“Once in a Lifetime,” Talking Heads

Objects in the rear-view mirror may be more painful than they appear!

Those of you who’ve been reading TotED for a while know that I rarely blog about movies made after 1980, unless it’s a film that’s really set up housekeeping in my heart and gut. The only post-1980 films I’ve discussed in these pages were 1996’s Independence Day (for Team Bartilucci’s disaster film double-feature back in April), and 2007’s No Country for Old Men (as a birthday tribute to my late mom back in January, since we both loved the film). However, director Michael Greenspan’s 2011 psychological survival thriller Wrecked, starring my favorite contemporary actor, Oscar-winner Adrien Brody (for the fact-based 2003 drama The Pianist), is so compelling that I want to recommend it to all of you now—why wait? Besides, as dear friend and fellow blogger ClassicBecky said when I was a guest at our own Clara Fercovic’s wonderful blog Via Margutta 51: “You know I’m also a 13-year-old with a ponytail about Adrien!” Becky, you’re in good company, believe me! (Click here for my Via Margutta 51 guest appearance, including my anecdote about Adrien Brody’s kindness to my daughter and me at New York Comic Con 2010.) 

“Are we friends, George?” With friends like dead bank robbers, who needs enemies?

Not the kind of “rapid transit” our hero had in mind!

Splendor in the grass? Not so much.

If you thought you woke up on the wrong side of the bed today, just be grateful you’re not in Adrien Brody’s shoes as Wrecked’s unnamed protagonist. He wakes up to find himself the pain-racked sole survivor of a horrific car crash! (Nice touch: we see the red insides of our awakening protagonist’s eyelids before he actually opens his eyes.) The Man, as Brody is billed in the credits, is bloody and bruised, with his nose and his right leg broken. His knees are trapped under the dashboard of a silver-gray Chevy. All he can figure out about his location is that it’s somewhere in a huge, dense forest (played by the beautiful Pacific Northwest), including a raging river that momentarily buffets our startled hero about the rapids; bah, wilderness! Oh, and did I mention there’s a bloody corpse in the back seat, apparently buckled in, and the windshield has been smashed, very likely from yet another passenger being thrown through the glass? On top of that, it becomes increasingly clear that our man is suffering from a concussion, resulting in amnesia. Well, how did he get here? And how the hell can he get out of here, preferably alive?

Our guy has a much-needed laugh and epiphany: “I hate mint!”

Brody gives a tour de force performance as our emotionally and physically persecuted man. His organic acting style is perfect for Wrecked; he always comes across as if he’s living in the moment, never hamming it up. When his character is hurt onscreen, you find yourself hurting along with him amid the sheer loneliness and frustration of his surreal ordeal. It helps that Brody has always been especially good at acting with his eyes; you can really read the emotions in those silver-sage orbs of his. Frankly, I couldn’t help wincing and whimpering at our beleaguered protagonist’s every ache and pain as he tries to move and make sense of his nightmarish situation. (Just thank your lucky stars that this blog post didn’t consist solely of me constantly whimpering, “Oh, nooo! Poor Brody! Poor baby!” or “Ooooh, poor boo-boo Adrien!”)

...“Goner,” if he can’t get out of this fix!

Greenspan and newbie screenwriter Christopher Dodd really sweat the small details of our man’s ordeal. When he isn’t fading in and out of consciousness, he becomes so hungry that even a mint on the car floor looks good to him—and being unable to reach that mint has him as maddeningly frustrated as if he was grasping for gold in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The excellent work of Greenspan, Dodd, and Brody’s compelling performance truly makes you feel his world shrinking to the size of the car’s interior. And yet even in this dire situation, they manage to slip in nuggets of wry comedy relief. One of my favorite bits: our hero finds he’s able to start the car enough to hear its radio, and…well, you may never listen to Tiny Tim’s rendition of “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” quite the same way ever again (presuming you can pry it out of your head at all!). Even our suffering hero manages to crack a smile! I’m guessing our guy stumbled across a Dr. Demento broadcast.

Oh, shoot! Bad man, or scared man?

Trail-mix-toting angel of mercy, or devilish hallucination?

Our hero’s physical condition improves bit by bit, and gradually he’s able to cobble together a makeshift splint for his injured leg. He also manages to find a couple of credit cards in the car, one with the name “Raymond Plazzy” embossed on it, the other sporting the name “George Weaver.” Too bad neither name rings a bell with our frustrated fella. He becomes grateful for little things, like managing to catch some rainwater to drink from the car’s ashtray (some of it splashes onto his face, too, cleaning him up a tad so we can see more of Brody’s angularly winsome punim). When he finds a cell phone later (which might be his, or might belong to the dead men), it doesn’t work, what with the deep woods location and later, his rapids ride. But at least he finds an OTC pain reliever in the wreckage to dull his considerable aches and pains. Greenspan and Dodd even went to the trouble of showing our full-bladdered protagonist *ahem* relieving himself during his forced captivity in the wrecked car. The promise of seeing more of Brody may intrigue those of us who are warm for Brody’s form as well as his fine acting, but sorry, folks, his bathroom break is only heard, not seen!

Desperation gives “money to burn” new meaning.

A boy and his possibly imaginary dog  

See, he’s a good boy! The dog’s cute, too!

Our hero’s odyssey gets odder when he spots an attractive brunette, played by Canadian actress Caroline Dhavernas, who played private eye Brody’s blonde Girl(friend) Friday in the 1950s-set docu-noir Hollywoodland, about Superman actor George Reeves’ mysterious death. Our man is so overcome with gratitude at seeing another human being—with a plastic bag of trail mix, no less—just feeling the woman’s face melts our man into tears of joy and relief, sobbing, “So warm. So warm.” The woman soothingly says, “Everything’s going to be all right now. I promise.” And then he wakes up! Aw, man! (Is it me, or does Brody’s face look like a tragedy mask when he cries? I’ve noticed that about him in other films, too, like The Pianist, The Jacket, and The Brothers Bloom. As far as I’m concerned, Brody’s still got a cute face even when he’s all sad and anguished, so there! But I digress….) Then a brown dog with a husky/shepherd build comes along. Is he a good dog? A bad dog? Or just another figment of our beleaguered, concussed protagonist’s imagination? The dog and the woman seem so real, only to periodically appear and disappear just when our guy thinks maybe he’s not hallucinating. Comfort and hope morph into despair, then back again. On top of that, the image of a frightened bank teller who looks like the woman flashes into our poor mixed-up guy’s mind. Is this what Nick Lowe, one of my favorite singer/songwriters, meant by “Cruel to be Kind”? Still, it’s nice to see Brody and Dhavernas together again onscreen. Judging from their chemistry in Hollywoodland, I wish they'd team up again onscreen, maybe for a more lighthearted movie, like a witty romantic comedy-thriller. (This is why Team Bartilucci needs to run the world! But again, I digress….)

“Ants on a log?” Would you settle for ants on a dashboard? Where’s Andrew Zimmern when you need him?

One day, our guy is cutting off the seat belts so he can use them to keep his makeshift splint in place. The radio broadcasts a news update about escaped bank robbers wanted in connection with the deaths of a female teller and a security guard. They were last seen in a silver-gray Chevy, and the bad men in question are named Eric Stapleton…and George Weaver…and Raymond Plazzy! When our fella manages to check the trunk, sure enough, there’s a whole bunch of money inside. But a man wearing hunting/survival gear and carrying a high-powered rifle apparently robs him and runs off. Is he another figment of our guy’s confused imagination and jigsaw memory? Is our hero in fact a villain? Yikes! Say it isn’t so! Say it’s just exhaustion and his scrambled memory messing with him. Or perhaps the filmmakers are messing with us? But one thing’s for sure: Wrecked sure keeps us viewers on our toes! Life is too short for a terrific film like Wrecked to wait for years or even decades to earn its classic status—check it out on DVD and Blu-Ray now!

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ENDING SPOILERS!

In a final flashback sequence, our protagonist learns/remembers his name: Simon. Apparently the woman is either Simon’s wife or girlfriend. They’d had some kind of unspecified spat in their car, and then Simon went inside a store. When he came out, the woman was sitting on a bench waiting for him. He opens his mouth as if he’s about to apologize or explain whatever they were arguing about, but whatever it was went by the wayside after Simon is unlucky enough to get in the way of the escaping bank robbers, who promptly take him hostage, then burn rubber escaping while the horrified woman screams out Simon’s name. Eventually, on a mountain road, Simon manages to wrest the steering wheel away from the robbers, the car goes out of control, and you know the rest! Luckily, he's rescued by forest rangers. Simon asks about his dog, and the ranger says he didn't have one. (Wonder if he and his honey will get one once they get home?)

Cougar on the prowl, and we don’t mean Courtney Cox!

Go green: recycle dead homicidal bank robbers as cougar chow!

"Hi, hon, it's me, Simon. My captors are dead and I need a lift. Can you come to the middle of nowhere and get me? Thanks, you're the ginchiest!"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Extra special bonus photos for those of you who'd rather see Adrien Brody looking happy and charming instead of miserable and disheveled:

Yes, this is a real dog!  Not the movie, smarty!

Photo taken in Central Park by Brody's renowned photographer mom Sylvia Plachy

Beyond the forest, nicely-groomed stubble!

Look at that winning smile!

THE GAZEBO: Home Sweet Homicide with a Hidden Hitch

Caution! Spoilers at Work!

In the mid-1980s, Ted Turner was colorizing every black-and-white movie he could get his mitts on. George Marshall’s MGM comedy The Gazebo (1959) was no exception. Frankly, when I first watched the colorized version on TBS years ago (the colorization looked strangely washed-out to me), I was surprised it wasn't filmed in color to begin with. Thanks to Warner Archive, The Gazebo is now available on DVD, and thanks to TCM, this wicked little comedy will be on tonight at 8:00 p.m. EST as part of Summer Under The Stars’ Debbie Reynolds Day!

If you can’t get Adrien Brody as your pianist, Debbie Reynolds and chorus boys will do!

Despite the gallows humor of its storyline, The Gazebo is one of those frenetic farces that 1950s Hollywood usually filmed in bright postcard colors. Who was more bright, colorful, and energetic, then and now, than Debbie Reynolds, The Gazebo’s unsinkable leading lady? Nevertheless, the film was made in black-and-white, with Helen Rose nominated for an Oscar for Best Costume Design, Black-and-White, for Reynolds’ smart, perky costumes (which tastefully yet alluringly showed Debbie’s darling derriere to delicious advantage, if I may say so!).

George Wells adapted a script by Alec Coppel, who’d also worked with Alfred Hitchcock on Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and uncredited contributions to To Catch a Thief. Fittingly, The Gazebo’s hapless hero Elliot Nash (Glenn Ford), is a TV writer who’s currently working on a Hitchcock script. He’s happily married to Broadway musical star Nell Nash (Reynolds), but said happiness is jeopardized by blackmailer Dan Shelby (we never see his face, but character actor Stanley Adams provides his voice. Fans of the TV version of The Odd Couple will remember Adams as chain-smoking pool-player Sure-Shot Wilson in the “Hustler” episode; but I digress….). Shelby has been shaking Elliot down, threatening to publish risqué photos of Nell when she was a hungry young artists’ model before she became a star, unless Elliot comes up with hush money. Does anybody really get blackmailed that way anymore, considering so many celebrities out there seem almost eager to air their dirty laundry every chance they get, as long as their names are spelled right? In any case, the blackmail threats result in a murder plot, a dead body and a panicky Elliot making like a mole to hide the corpse in the new gazebo that Nell bought for the Nashes’ Connecticut home (Nell’s one of those gals who never met a garden tchotchke she didn’t like, bless her heart).

The Gazebo's origins were British, but it was Americanized for Hollywood. I think it probably would have worked best with a British cast, but the American cast takes to black-comedy slapstick like a New York pigeon takes to bread crumbs, namely the scene-stealing Herman, who becomes a member of the Nash household after being mildly injured in Broadway traffic. Heck, Herman even gets a screen credit! Indeed, there are enough bird gags in The Gazebo (my favorite being Elliot’s power to make Herman and the neighborhood birds shut up on command. Too bad he couldn’t do that to the blackmailer so easily!) to make me wonder how long Hitchcock had been developing his 1963 film adaptation of The Birds.

Glenn Ford is amiable enough as our highly anxiety-stricken hero, but I can’t help feeling that Danny Kaye or Jack Lemmon would have been better choices to play the increasingly manic Elliot. Well, maybe they were busy, or maybe they simply weren’t under contract to MGM. Fortunately, Ford and Reynolds had previously co-starred in another Marshall comedy, It Started with a Kiss (1959), and their chemistry went a long way. (Click here for more about Ford and Reynolds’ relationship on and off the set.) Carl Reiner (with hair) makes a fine pesky friend as Harlow Edison, the Nashes’ friend, who also happens to be the District Attorney. The ever-jolly Harlow makes no bones about his unabashed crush on Nell, up to and including driving miles out of his way just to drop by for friendly nightcaps.

Still, I found The Gazebo’s perky American stars to be quite engaging. I’m accustomed to seeing Ford playing stolid heroic types, but here he acquitted himself nicely as a man who’s determined not to let his frayed nerves keep him from protecting his beloved wife. Despite not being Danny Kaye or Jack Lemmon, Glenn Ford was a pleasant surprise as our frantic hero Elliot. As the initial blackmail target (more on that momentarily), Debbie Reynolds is as pert and winsome as ever. Since she plays a musical comedy star, she’s given an energetic Bob Fosse-style song-and-dance number, “Something Called Love.” One quibble: charming though “Something Called Love” is, was it really necessary to have Reynolds hum it throughout the movie? Well, maybe the producers figured it had a crack at a Best Original Song Oscar nomination.

These are hip boots? Where’s Nancy Sinatra when you need her?

Perhaps it’s because they were under contract to MGM, but the great supporting cast is practically a North by Northwest reunion. Martin Landau, in his pre-Oscar days, played a heavily Noo Yawk accented thug, The Duke. Until then, I’d only seen Landau on TV’s Space 1999, in which his performance was rather wooden, so I was pleasantly surprised by his range and flair for comedy in The Gazebo. From that day forward, I was a full-tilt Landau fan! Then there was Landau’s fellow North by Northwest henchman Robert Ellenstein as Elliot’s peripatetic agent (no, not a secret agent!).

Since Elliot writes TV mysteries, is it any surprise that he keeps referring to Alfred Hitchcock? To wit:

* “I gotta finish that script I’m writing for Hitchcock….”

* “What would Hitchcock do at a time like this?” Luckily, at this point, Hitchcock calls Elliot to check on the progress of their screenplay, giving our hapless hero an opportunity to work out a solution with Hitch under the pretext of working out their script. We don’t hear Hitchcock’s voice, of course; use your imagination! :-)

* “To England and Connecticut and Alfred Hitchcock!” This comes after Elliot toasts the new gazebo with the corpse nestled snugly in the foundation. Of course, at this point our hero hasn’t confided in Nell about the body under the gazebo, so she and Harlow just give Elliot funny looks and chalk it up to too much champagne too early in the day.

The Gazebo definitely has all the earmarks of British stage farces: slamming doors, falling-apart contraptions, wacky misunderstandings, and matter-of-factly cuckoo dialogue. For instance, when the Nashes find themselves up against it, Nell laments, “I wish this had happened in Los Angeles…They’re always finding bodies out there; they don’t think anything of it!” There’s also a funny running gag about running water—that is, the Nashes’ plumbing, which Elliot keeps trying to sabotage in hopes of making Nell eager to sell the house so Elliot can give the proceeds to the blackmailer (this is before Elliot resorts to murder).

Whatever Norm Abrams can do, John McGiver can do funnier!

In addition to Landau and Ellenstein, other Gazebo scene-stealers include the hilarious Doro Merande as Matilda, the housekeeper who yells every word at the top of her lungs because she’s used to communicating with her hard-of-hearing mother (you might also remember Merande from The Snake Pit and Clifton Webb’s The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker and Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell); John McGiver (Fitzwilly, Mame, and Midnight Cowboy, among others) as Mr. Thorpe, the Nashes’ phlegmatic handyman who keeps calling the gazebo a “gaze-bo”; and Mabel Albertson as determined real estate agent Mrs. Chandler, best known and loved by Team Bartilucci as Darren’s mother on Bewitched and wealthy Mrs. Van Hoskins in Peter Bogdanovich’s 1972 screwball comedy What’s Up, Doc?

Hope these lovebirds won’t end up dead pigeons!

My favorite Gazebo scene answers the musical question, “How do you solve a problem like a blackmailer?” No, the answer isn’t “Keep paying the creep until you’re bankrupt.” It’s “Just say no!” Here’s the scene, all transcribed nice and pretty for your reading pleasure:

Harlow: “Certainly an ideal subject for blackmail, brand-new star on Broadway. I’m surprised Shelby never called you.”

Nell (cheerfully): “Oh, he did.”

Elliot (understandably shocked, but trying to hide it): “He did?”

Nell: “Mmm-hmm. He came to the theater about two months ago, and he brought the pictures, and he threatened to publish them unless I gave him ten thousand dollars in cash.”

Elliot: “Well, what did you do?”

Nell: “Well, I laughed in his face! Wouldn’t you?”

Elliot: “Oh yes, I…I…” (He trails off into incoherent fumferring.)

Harlow: “Still, it would’ve been quite a story for the scandal sheets.”

Nell: “Oh yes, it would have, but you know what would have happened then? You couldn’t buy standing-room-only for the next five years! I dared him to do it.”

Elliot (weakly): “Good girl.”

For Nell and Elliot, home is where the hearse is!

Good old Elliot, the world’s luckiest dope!

Yum! I've Been Given The Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award!

To my surprise and delight, our own Caftan Woman has chosen me as a recipient of the Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award (ISBA)! And of course, everyone, Caftan Woman can always be found at:

http://caftanwoman.blogspot.com/

Following the provisos and quid-pro-quos of this delicious-looking award (suddenly I have a hankering for gluten-free strawberry shortcake!), here are the 7 Things You Lovable ISBA Folks Have Apparently Always Wanted to KnowAbout Me* 
*(but were afraid or too busy to ask! :-)

1.) I was born in New York City on June 8th, 1963 (the same year one of my favorite movies, Charade, came out), and lived back and forth in the Bronx and Manhattan until...

2.) ...I met and married my sweet, funny, devilishly clever hubby Vinnie Bartilucci, whom I met at the NYC branch of the improv group Chicago City Limits. We recently celebrated our 22nd wedding anniversary and look forward to many more, not to put the whammy on it! Anyway, when Vin's job moved to PA, we moved along with it, and we've lived there for a decade now.

3.)  My colorful, lovable parents (both deceased, alas) were Jacqueline Kehoe (then Tenore, née Cherry), a vivacious model-turned-medical/legal secretary, and Peter James Tenore, a bookie-turned-restaurant manager.

4.) Before I discovered the wonderful world of blogging, Vinnie introduced me to the Internet and Amateur Press Associations (APAs) before that. For me, blogs were the writing equivalent of a gateway drug! :-)

5.) On October 30th, 1996, Vinnie and I became the proud and busy parents of Siobhan Maggie Bartilucci. As a toddler, she was diagnosed with ADHD and Asperger’s Syndrome, but to our relief and joy, Siobhan has become a smart, funny, high-functioning, high-spirited young lady with an affectionate nature, a love of animation, and excellent grades in her Inclusion classes, in a mainstream school with lots of resources for Aspies and other kids with special needs. She's a great swimmer; in fact, we like to swim together at local pools and the Y. And she's starting high school this fall! The mind boggles! :-)

6.) Some of my favorite people, living or dead (besides my friends and loved ones) include authors Donald E. Westlake, Craig Rice, Richard Prather, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler; director/producers Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks, and the Coen Brothers; all-around entertainer Danny Kaye (who really deserves a renaissance); and Oscar-winning actor Adrien Brody, who is not only a talented actor but also a kind, considerate person, as he proved at last year's New York Comic Con (NYCC). To make a long story short (who said "Too late"?), when Brody was doing a signing at NYCC and the lines went all kablooey, the folks running the show almost cut us out of the line for lack of time. Our fellow fans were kind enough to intervene on our behalf, and apparently Brody got wind of this, because he went out of his way to make sure we got face time and autographs even though the con folks were applying pressure. He was really sweet, even praising Siobhan for being so patient during the whole mishegoss! Such a mensch, bless him!

7.) I'm currently working with ghost editor Nicole Bokat, polishing my first novel The Paranoia Club, a witty, character-driven romantic thriller and novel of manners. Don't take my word for it, ask our own ClassicBecky! :-)  If you'd like a taste of PClub (as I've nicknamed it), I ran Chapter One on TotED a while back; feel free to check it out here:


http://doriantb.blogspot.com/2010/08/paranoia-club-by-dorian-tenore-chapter.html

I'm also only a couple of chapters away from finishing my second novel, Suburban Outlaws, set in the Riverdale section of the Bronx.


And now for the hard part: winnowing all my favorite bloggers down to a mere 12! Without further ado, the richly-deserving ISBA Recipients:

1.) ClassicBecky's Brain Food
http://classicbeckybrainfood.blogspot.com/

2.) Thrilling Days of Yesteryear
http://thrillingdaysofyesteryear.blogspot.com

3.) MacGuffin Movies
http://macguffinmovies.wordpress.com/

4.) My Love of Old Hollywood
http://myloveofoldhollywood.blogspot.com/

5.) Twenty-Four Frames
http://twentyfourframes.wordpress.com/

6.) Noir and Chick Flicks
http://dawnschickflicks.blogspot.com/

7.) Another Old Movie Blog
http://anotheroldmovieblog.blogspot.com/

8.) Laura's Miscellaneous Musings
http://laurasmiscmusings.blogspot.com/

9.) ...in so many words
http://yvettecandraw.blogspot.com/

10.) Is That Really Desirable?
http://itrd.blogspot.com/

11.) Classic Film and TV Cafe
http://classic-film-tv.blogspot.com/

12.) The Girl with the White Parasol
http://thegirlwiththewhiteparasol.blogspot.com/

My daughter Siobhan and my sister Cara in Florida in the Early Aughties

Now everybody go spread the love amongst your favorite 12 bloggers, prepare to share 7 fun facts about your fine selves, and go for a swim while the summer's still here! :-)

Part 2 of 2 - Movies That Need Remaking: How STILL OF THE NIGHT Could Have Been a Quality Hitchcock Pastiche

The maddening thing about Still of the Night (SotN) is that there were so many things director/co-writer Robert Benton and company could have done to make SotN a truly exceptional thriller as well as an affectionate salute to Alfred Hitchcock. If by some bizarre twist of fate, some producer gave me unlimited money and resources to remake SotN as the sleek, suspenseful thriller it could have been, here are the changes I’d make:

1.)    More emotion, please! What SotN desperately needs is more warmth, urgency, wit, passion—in short, more emotion! The cast tries hard, but the combination of aloof direction and a script with more emphasis on set pieces than characterization leaves them (and the audience) cold as a corpse in the Antarctic. Even the Spartan art direction, with its muted color scheme of blues and the occasional earth tone, adds a distinct chill to the emotional climate; more about that shortly.

2.)    Fill in those plot holes! For instance, I know Con Edison bills are high in NYC, but doesn’t anyone in this movie ever turn on their lights? How did Gail Phillips (Sara Botsford) get from Manhattan to Glen Cove so darn fast? (Was North by Northwest’s Roger Thornhill driving?) Speaking of Glen Cove, would a fiercely private person like the enigmatic, easily spooked Brooke Reynolds (Meryl Streep) really have a big sign outside her house with her last name on it for all to see? For that matter, would she allow her name to be listed in the Manhattan White Pages, where Sam finds out her address? Which brings us to….

3.)    Fewer “idiot plot” devices, please! Most of SotN’s “idiot plot” devices (as coined by Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel back in the day) involve our love-struck hero Dr. Sam Rice. Since Sam was played by Roy Scheider—who I’d always liked because he came across as tough, suave, sensitive and sensible all at once—the actions the script required of him seemed that much sillier. The things Sam must do simply because it’s in the script include sitting alone in a dim, creepy basement laundry room when a killer’s on the loose (with the lights going out to boot); sneaking into Brooke’s office during the auction (“This is dumb,” Sam mutters to himself. No argument from me!); and after dark, following a woman across the street who he thinks might be Brooke, never mind that the distance and her scarf render her unrecognizable. But Sam has to follow this mystery woman despite his better judgment so he can tail her to Central Park at night, so his coat can be stolen, so the mugger can wear it, so the killer can kill the mugger thinking he’s Sam…c’mon, that’s just lazy writing! And many of these idiot plot devices wouldn’t have been necessary if the script had….

4.)    More scenes with Sam and Brooke together, deepening their emotional bond and adding some much-needed romantic sizzle. Whenever Hitchcock made a romantic thriller in which one of the lovers seemed to be up to no good, among them The Lodger, Spellbound, Suspicion, Notorious, and North by Northwest, he made sure he threw the lovers together at every opportunity, leaving audiences titillated and terrified at the same time. Until SotN’s denouement, the so-called romantic leads are in surprisingly few scenes together, only kissing two or three times, tops.

For crying out loud, Sam and Brooke don’t even have a real date over the course of the film. The auction doesn’t count, as Brooke is working and thus separated from Sam. A friend scored me the novelization of SotN, and there was actually more romance and sex between Sam and Brooke in the book than in the movie; they should have filmed that! If I was in charge of a remake, I’d give the lovebirds more “getting to know you” time. For example, we find out Sam once wanted to be a Major League baseball player. How about a scene with him taking Brooke to a ball game? Let’s have fun with this; maybe Sam and his therapist pals play ball every weekend in Central Park. It’d be a great opportunity for humor (Brooke had a privileged upbringing; maybe she could call on her polo skills) and revealing banter as our protagonists get more comfortable with each other. Another opportunity for suspense: someone (Gail?) could follow Sam and Brooke after the game. Maybe Brooke panics when she sees something that reminds her of being nearly murdered by her dad, such as Delacorte Castle. A little heartfelt yet tastefully-rendered sex couldn’t hurt, and I don’t mean Sam’s comfy psychiatrist couch. One evening, Sam could sub for Brooke’s masseur, one thing can lead to another….

5.)    Better foreshadowing! If Benton and Newman had their hearts set on Gail being the killer, they should have given her more scenes and therefore more foreshadowing. Make Gail a three-dimensional character, not just a plot convenience. Drop more hints about Gail’s relationship with that cad Bynum, since it turns out that philandering Bynum had dumped Gail for Brooke, setting jealous Gail off on her murder spree. Why don’t male filmmakers think women can handle broken romances without turning violent? Anyway, Gail and Brooke could be out on their lunch break on payday and run into Sam, who’d accompany Brooke to the bank while “Greenbacks” declines; psychiatrist Sam could offer to cure her bank phobia. Gail could even run into our happy couple on the street and chat, maybe after following them in the park: “Oh, I was just on my way from lunch at the Boathouse, and I couldn’t help noticing your exciting ball game…”

6.)    Hell yes, we want Jess! Benton and company should have given the indomitable Jessica Tandy more screen time. SotN’s coldness thaws beautifully every time Tandy is onscreen. I would have loved to see Tandy and Streep share a scene or two; think of the give-and-take in Spellbound with loving but worried psychiatrist heroine Ingrid Bergman, her kindly old mentor Michael Chekhov, and tormented amnesiac hottie Gregory Peck.

7.)    A little less conversation, a few more visuals! Remember that long monologue wherein we learn Brooke’s shattering secret? Meryl Streep’s intense emoting was superb as always, but since film is a visual medium, this scene still cried out for more visual interest. (Granted, the sight of the luminous young Streep might be enough visual interest for fans.) In the film, it’s just Streep standing against the starless night sky, smoking, crying, and occasionally gesturing. If Streep’s monologue was indeed the result of a new last-minute ending as mentioned in Part 1, that would explain it. If I could remake SotN, I’d opt for a new scene, maybe even a suspenseful flashback or prologue, that would show—not just tell—what happened in Florence. Brooke’s big speech might even be kept in the scene as a voiceover.  More foreshadowing throughout the film would give this part of the plot more momentum and impact. For instance, let’s see those pictures of young Brooke (a.k.a. the little girl in Bynum’s dream) and her family at various points in SotN. Maybe Sam could see them during a little tête-à-tête at Brooke’s place in one of those hot new romantic scenes from Suggestion #4.

Sam and mom solve murders the family way!

8.)    Color SotN’s world! Speaking of visual interest, the usually capable Mel Bourne could have dressed up his sets a bit. No one in SotN seems to have heard of primary or pastel colors. Okay, Streep wore a dark blue dress toward the end of the movie, but that’s about it. Even the occasional bloodstains are invariably seen in dim light, so they could have used chocolate sauce a la Psycho for all I know. Were these dark colors intended to show off Streep’s shiny Hitchcock blonde tresses? Benton and company used similarly stark art direction in Kramer Vs. Kramer (except for the pastel sky in young Justin Henry’s bedroom), which helped dry out some of that sentimental tale’s overly soap-opera-ish elements. But if you’re aiming to emulate Hitchcock, you’ve got to go for his visual sense as well, and he usually provided plenty of eye appeal with handsome and colorful sets, costumes, and locations, except in his glorious black-and-white films, of course.

9.)  Lighten up, Meryl! To be fair, it’s hard to tell how much of leading lady Meryl Streep’s jumpiness could be attributed to her character Brooke Reynolds, Streep’s acting style, or Robert Benton’s direction. I wouldn’t be surprised if the most likely culprit was Benton and Newman’s script; Bynum has a line about how *ahem* “tense” Brooke is, and Sam wonders about it himself. Or maybe it is all those cigarettes. But seriously, the end result is that Brooke comes across as so afraid of her own shadow that she not only gets on one’s nerves, but any mystery buff worth his/her hemlock knows she can’t possibly be the killer; she’s just too obvious a suspect. It’s a relief when she finally smiles!

Yes, I know I should probably be using all this time, space, and ink to write more of my own stories instead of going into all this detail about a 28-year-old movie (I’m editing my first novel now). It’s just that I hate to see a project with such potential turn out so disappointingly. Even as is, SotN has enough glimmers of gold (hard to see through all those dark colors and dim lighting, but they’re there) to put a little ache in my thriller-loving heart. Well, who knows, maybe there really is some parallel universe where The Beatles filmed Joe Orton’s Up Against It, Winona Ryder played Mary Corleone in The Godfather: Part III…and Still of the Night turned out to be a crackerjack romantic suspenser after all. Anyone got a time machine they’re not using? I’ll bring it back in one piece, I promise!

For the record, if a SotN remake was green-lit today and I was in charge, I’d cast Adrien Brody as Sam, Nicole Kidman as Brooke, and as a tip of the hat, Meryl Streep as Grace. Any fun dream-casting choices you’d like to share? Don’t be shy!