LAST EMBRACE: When Harry Met Ellie

"It begins with an ancient warning.  It ends at the edge of Niagara Falls.  In between there are 5 murders.  Solve the mystery.  Or die trying."

Harry DOES believe in spooks!

The poster for Jonathan Demme’s 1979 thriller Last Embrace grabbed me during its release in 1979!  The multi-Oscar-winner The Silence of the Lambs was Demme's first major suspense thriller, but it wasn’t the first film he’d made in that genre. That honor goes to Demme’s 1979 thriller Last Embrace (LE), which I first saw and loved during its original theatrical run. 

Despite the romantic beginning,  Last Embrace means business!
Poor Harry and Dorothy Hannan should've gone to Westworld instead!

At the time, LE was touted as a romantic Hitchcockian thriller. While LE definitely has strong elements of Vertigo and other Hitchcock classics, I’ve always considered it to be more of a paranoia thriller with film noir touches, which, as a friend quipped, perhaps makes LE

a kind of  “film shachor.”   Roy Scheider, cool and craggy yet suave, had long been one of our family’s favorite tough-guy actors.  At first glance, he might not seem vulnerable enough to be convincing as a beleaguered paranoia film hero.  However, Scheider proved to be perfect casting as Harry Hannan, a government agent with more baggage than Louis Vuitton. Harry is still heartbroken and guilt-ridden about his beloved wife, Dorothy (Sandy McLeod from Romancing the Stone, and Demme's Something Wild), getting killed while she accompanied him as cover on one of his assignments.   After he spends time in a Connecticut sanitarium recovering from his nervous breakdown, Harry has barely had a chance to lose his institutional pallor when he’s almost shoved in front of an express train. When he returns to his spy agency in New York City, his slippery spymaster Eckart (Christopher Walken from Pulp Fiction; Oscar winner for The Deer Hunter; and Oscar nominee for Catch Me If You Can; and so much more!) keeps him at arm’s length.  Maybe Eckart thinks Harry’s sharp cream-colored suit makes him too conspicuous for undercover work. Worst of all, Harry discovers he’s one of several Jewish men getting death threats written in Biblical Hebrew from an unknown “Avenger of Blood”…and so far, he’s the only one still alive!
 

Don't mess with New York commuters, especially spies!

Everyone scoffs at poor Harry’s jitters. Who can he trust? Certainly not his brother-in-law (Charles Napier from The Blues Brothers; Melvin and Howard; the animated TV sitcom The Critic), a fellow spook who blames Harry for his sister Dorothy's violent death: “You’re careless with people, Harry.”  I think it's safe to say holiday dinners at the Hannan household are tense at best! Our hero eventually joins forces with Ellie Fabian (Janet Margolin from David and Lisa;  Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run;  Annie Hall).  Ellie is a pretty New York grad student who sublet his apartment while he was in the sanitarium.  But the vulnerable Ellie seems to have her own issues and secrets.  Will that spell doom for both Ellie and Harry? And how does a turn-of-the-20th-century Jewish brothel figure in the sinister fix Harry has found himself in?

"Next time, we're taking the bus!"

 Scheider and Margolin had fine chemistry together; their characters’ sensitivity and wariness made me feel for them, and they even had playful moments along the way.  Ms. Margolin was at her loveliest, too. (Sadly, she died of ovarian cancer in 1993 at the age of 50. Janet, we hardly knew ye.)  Scheider, Margolin, and Walken are aided and abetted by a rogues’ gallery of stellar New York character actors, including John Glover as Ellie’s insecure professor boyfriend; Marcia Rodd as Harry’s nervous agency contact; David Margulies (best known to Team Bartilucci as the Mayor of New York City in Ghostbusters, and Michael Caine's psychiatrist colleague in Dressed to Kill) as a rabbi with connections; Joe Spinell and actor/director Jim McBride as thugs; Captain Arthur Haggerty as a bouncer waiting to use the phone; Mandy Patinkin and Max Wright in bit parts as commuters who may or may not have some ’splainin’ to do; and one of my very favorite character actors, scene-stealer Sam Levene (from After the Thin Man; The Killers; Crossfire; The Mad Miss Manton) as the crotchety but likable head of a secret Jewish society; and director Demme himself cameo-ing as a stranger on a train.
 

As Sam Urdell, Sam Levene can still give any
stranger on a train what-for!

Either the milkman is a lousy speller,
or Harry's getting death threats in Hebrew!

It's Christopher Walken, yes indeed, as Harry's spymaster!

No spy work for Harry?  At least they can enjoy a few bars of "Singin' In The Rain!

Super Harry leaps over the sidewalks of New York in a single bound!

Wine thing, you make Harry's heart sing!  Is Ellie dressed to kill, or what?

In the bell tower, bells are ringing for me and my prey!

Those Blues Brothers are driving me crazy!

Some critics complained that despite Demme’s obvious affection for the Hitchcockian material, LE could have used more of The Master of Suspense’s zest, wit, and verve. I won’t deny that the pace slows down at times, but with Roy Scheider at his peak and Janet Margolin’s touching, multifaceted performance, I was willing to be patient.  Demme and screenwriter David Shaber (adapting Murray Teigh Bloom’s novel The 13th Man) make up for the film’s flaws with plenty of appealingly quirky Demme-style characterization.  Judaism’s key role in LE’s plot was fresh and intriguing, as well as making excellent use of an elaborate, well-crafted red herring. The settings contribute to the film’s Demme-ness; his ace Director of Photography Tak Fujimoto really makes the New York City and Princeton, NJ locations integral to the plot and its Hitchcockian motifs, especially the bell tower sequence and an exciting climax at Niagara Falls (I can hear you making lewd jokes). The film brims with only-in-New-York characters and situations; for instance, the competition for living space in Manhattan provides amusing undertones to Harry’s first awkward encounters with Ellie, kind of like The More, The Merrier with edgy film noir trimmings.  Miklos Rozsa’s swooningly romantic yet forboding score pulls together the film’s emotional undercurrents beautifully.  Between Last Embrace and Still of the Night, if I’d been Roy Scheider, I’d have stayed out of Central Park and environs for fear of elusive assailants!  If anyone knows of a soundtrack for Miklos Rozsa's  Last Embrace, let me know, won't you?

Harry and Ellie fall in love -- but can love last
when the girl of your dreams  has a centuries-old vendetta?

 

 

Can this romance be saved, or will their love be on the rocks?

Find out more about Last Embrace at the MGM Archives: http://www.mgm.com/view/movie/1084/Last-Embrace/

Here's a fond farewell to Roy Scheider from a fan:

http://youtu.be/_WfBMJsHqn0

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!

Part 1 of 2 - Movies That NEED Remaking: How STILL OF THE NIGHT Could Have Been a Quality Hitchcock Pastiche

(Caution! Still of the Night Spoilers Ahead!)

With Alfred Hitchcock having long since gone to that big movie set in the sky, it seems like every filmmaker and his Aunt Lillian have tried their hand at a Hitchcock pastiche, hoping to catch lightning in a bottle.  Sometimes they’ve even succeeded, with such stylish entertainments as Stanley Donen’s Charade and Arabesque, Brian DePalma’s Dressed to Kill, and Mark Robson’s The Prize, the latter borrowing liberally and gleefully from Ernest Lehman’s North by Northwest screenplay.
You don’t need to slavishly imitate Hitchcock to make a quality suspense film inspired by The Master of Suspense, unless you’re doing so for the purposes of affectionate spoofing, as with Mel Brooks’ High Anxiety, Danny DeVito’s Throw Momma from the Train, or even D.J. Caruso’s Disturbia.  But you do need a director and writer with a real sense of the theatrical, even a gonzo touch. Failing that, make sure your characters are as engaging as all get out. Your audience has to identify with your protagonists—which, of course, does not have to mean they must be squeaky-clean goody-two-shoes types. The characters Cary Grant and James Stewart played in Hitchcock’s films weren’t always 100% lovable. Even the characters played by the bewitching Grace Kelly and Ingrid Bergman were complicated women, not just window dressing.  Hitchcock had a knack for tapping into the dark side of his glamorous stars.

That’s why it frustrates me when a promising suspense story, especially one that goes out of its way to evoke Hitchcock’s style, misses the mark. Of all the unsuccessful off-brand Hitchcock wannabes I’ve seen and found wanting, the one that disappointed me most was Robert Benton’s 1982 Hitchcock salute, Still of the Night (SotN). I wanted to like it, really I did; it came so close! To paraphrase North by Northwest, it could tease a moviegoer to death without half-trying. The trouble was that it stopped trying, or at least didn’t quite try hard enough. Despite a great cast and several promising moments, SotN had too many promises and not enough moments.

No one will be seated during the
Weird Guitar-Shaped Shadow in the
Elevator scene!

For those who may not remember that far back, SotN was directed and co-written—with David Newman—by Robert Benton, fresh off his Oscar-winner Kramer Vs. Kramer. Benton also made one of my favorite films of the late 1970s, The Late Show.  SotN’s original, more pulse-pounding title was Stab, but it didn’t fly with preview audiences. The way I heard the story, Stab supposedly began life as a slasher movie spoof that would reunite Benton with his Late Show leading lady Lily Tomlin, but it evolved into a straight-faced Hitchcock tribute re-teaming Benton with Kramer…’s Meryl Streep. SotN had a helluva cast going for it; Streep was joined by one of my favorite actors, Roy Scheider, as well as The Birds star and future Oscar-winner Jessica Tandy, not to mention such fine character actors as Josef Sommer, Joe Grifasi, and Sara Botsford. Plenty of talented people behind the camera with Benton and Newman, too, including director of photography Nestor Almendros, production designer Mel Bourne, and composer John Kander, whose piano-heavy main title theme has always been one of my favorites. To top it all off, SotN was filmed in and around New York City. Those who know me well can attest that I’m a sucker for New York-set films, especially when the filmmakers go to the trouble of actually filming on location!

Bynum's recurring nightmare. Little kids with eyeballs
painted on their eyelids: Instant Creepy!

The film starts promisingly in classic Hitchcock style: after a simple but elegant opening credit sequence showing the phases of the moon, the film opens in, appropriately enough, the still of the night on a quiet midtown Manhattan street. (Yes, even midtown Manhattan streets can be relatively quiet if it’s late enough.) A car thief attempts to ply his trade, discreetly trying the handles of each parked car. He finally finds one that’s unlocked, and opens the door—but his triumph is short-lived as a bloodied corpse falls out. See, folks, crime doesn’t pay! 
From then on, the viewer gets to play “Name That Hitchcock Flick” as The Master’s familiar beloved tropes parade across the screen. The dead man is George Bynum (Sommer), a bigwig at the auction house Crispin’s, and a patient of psychiatrist Dr. Sam Rice (Scheider). You can tell Sam is a decent, down-to-earth guy because he likes baseball and insists on treating a financially-strapped patient gratis. After Bynum’s murder, Sam has a visitor: Brooke Reynolds (Streep), a soignée, aristocratic blonde. Unlike Hitchcock’s usual cool, unflappable blonde ice maidens with hidden fires, poor Brooke is a jumpy bundle of nerves. Maybe the nicotine from her ever-present cigarettes is getting to her. Maybe it’s the fact that Brooke and her boss, the married Bynum, were having an affair; Brooke claims she dropped by so Sam could give Bynum’s widow a wristwatch he’d left at their love nest. Or maybe Brooke’s so nervous because NYPD Detective Vitucci (Grifasi) is on the lookout for an aristocratic blonde who, according to witnesses, was arguing with Bynum a few hours before he was murdered.

Sam goes over his notes/flashbacks on his therapy sessions with Bynum. We see that Brooke’s reputation preceded her. Seems that Bynum, another chain-smoker, was a sleaze in gentleman’s clothing. (In fact, all the smokers in SotN have terrible emotional problems. Were Benton and Newman trying to give audiences some kind of anti-smoking message?) Turns out Bynum had discussed Brooke with Sam at length during their sessions, with tales of mysterious goings-on in her apartment (“She moved into the building behind mine, which I find very significant,” Bynum intones dramatically. Sheesh, everybody’s a therapist!). Shades of Rear Window as Bynum sees Brooke’s window across the way and spots her stripping before a portly gent (sorry, fans, this dude is Asian, not British). Bynum hints that he’s learned a terrible secret about Our Miss Brooke. Need I say it involves murder?

"Sam, your collar needs
my lipstick on it. Come here, you
big sexy psychiatrist you!"

This ominous hint is accompanied by one of the film’s highlights, a dream sequence (you can never have too many Spellbound homages, I always say!) in which Bynum finds himself trapped in a big old house at night. There, a small green box slips through his fingers, and a little blonde girl with a bleeding teddy bear and unnerving stare terrorizes Bynum without saying a word. Bynum even tauntingly implies that Sam himself has become obsessed with Brooke. Score one for Bynum: against his better judgment, Sam finds himself falling in love with the gentle, fragile Brooke, and it seems the feeling is mutual. That makes Sam all the more determined to prove Brooke isn’t the killer. Quiet, methodical Sam becomes an increasingly obsessed amateur sleuth, snooping around in Brooke’s drawers (in her desk at work, smarty, though snooping in the other type of drawers might have added more sizzle to the story), and following her around Manhattan on a trail leading him to Central Park—and a mugger. Sam gives the creep his coat in hopes of leaving the park alive. He does, but the mugger isn’t so lucky. Detective Vitucci points out that the pattern of the dead mugger’s wounds is the same as Bynum’s. Sam’s gonna need more than a new coat to get out of this mess!

Brooke looks less and less like Ms. Right as Vitucci deduces that the killer is a woman. With the help of his spunky mom and fellow therapist Dr. Grace Rice (Tandy), Sam decodes Bynum’s dream. Sam isn’t the happiest of campers when the dream evidence seems to prove that Bynum must have been afraid of a jealous woman. Grace asserts that this woman “seems childlike and innocent but is capable of extreme violence.” Sam walks in on a naked Brooke during one of her meetings with the Asian man. Turns out he’s only her masseur, treating her chronic back problems. As Brooke mmms and oohs over his magic hands and Sam somehow manages to maintain a gentlemanly demeanor, she invites him to an auction at Crispin’s that night. While Brooke fields bids, Sam swipes her keys, goes through her desk, and finds pictures of Brooke and clippings from an Italian newspaper about a man’s suspicious death. Now it’s Brooke who’s the unhappy camper when she walks in on Sam and the clippings. Still, when Vitucci arrives with a bartender who can I.D. Brooke as the lady who’d quarreled with Bynum, Sam goes north by northwest, bidding on a Jim Dine painting in order to pass Brooke a warning note on his receipt.

Brooke flees so fast, even Sam doesn’t know where she went, until Brooke’s coworker Gail Phillips (Botsford), who’d given him a tour of Crispin’s earlier in the film, reveals that Brooke probably went to her Glen Cove weekend home. Sam arrives to find an upset Brooke sitting in the dark, smoking. She still feels betrayed after the way Sam went through her desk. The increasingly fed-up Sam gives her the ol’ “Come to Jesus” talk in my favorite bit of SotN dialogue:

“Now listen to me! On account of you, I’m an accessory to something—I don’t know what. I’m withholding evidence. I’m obstructing justice. I’m gonna get my license revoked if I’m not thrown into jail first. And on top of that, I’ve just spent fifteen thousand dollars for a painting I don’t even like!”

Relieved, Brooke falls into Sam’s arms. As they embrace, she finally spills her guts—no, not literally! For a movie almost titled Stab, SotN doesn’t have much bloodshed (or suspense, I’m afraid, but more on that in a moment). Brooke’s subsequent lengthy monologue could have come off like a speech in an student actor’s handbook, but Streep performs it quite poignantly and made me feel for her.

Brooke explains that the man in the Italian newspaper was her father. Papa married alcoholic Mama for her wealth and moved to Florence with young Brooke after Mama’s demise. In a note among her personal effects, Mom revealed that Pops was a charming but dangerous schemer who’d do anything for the money Brooke inherited. Daddy Dearest brought Brooke to a bell tower, never a safe place for any Hitchcock character. When he found out about the incriminating note and tried to push her to her death, she leapt aside in time for Bad Dad to take the fall. Despite surviving the murder attempt, Brooke has been racked with guilt (and cigarette coughs?) ever since Bynum found out and held the guilty secret over her head, hence her nervous loner nature.

SotN gets a much-needed jump-start when Brooke finally turns on the lights, and Sam realizes that this is the house in Bynum’s dream, which he proceeds to recount to his beloved. Brooke has a different interpretation of the green box in the dream. Her Crispin’s coworker Gail has a bank phobia (nowadays, who could blame her?), and she carries her entire cashed paycheck around with her, leading Bynum to nickname her “Greenbacks”! Sam tries to call Vitucci with this info, but the knife in the detective’s back makes it awfully hard to reach his beeper. Yes, Gail was the killer after all, and now that she’s bumped off poor Vitucci, she’s on her way to Glen Cove to kill Brooke. Looks like it doesn’t pay to make friends with your coworkers, either!

The climax takes us viewers into slasher territory as Brooke runs from a knife-wielding Gail while Sam lies unconscious from a stab wound. “Jump!” Gail growls as she pins Brooke against her balcony overlooking the surf. Luckily, Sam regains consciousness before Gail gets too into her Mrs. Danvers routine, startling the murderess into conveniently falling over the side. Brooke tries to save Gail by grabbing her sleeve a la Saboteur, but perhaps Gail’s Crispin’s salary wasn’t enough to buy really well-made clothes. Sleeve rips, Gail plummets to her death, and the movie ends on a lingering shot of a weeping Brooke and an exhausted Sam embracing as the theme song timidly starts up again.

"How many times do I have to tell you:
there's nobody named 'George Kaplan' here!"

To paraphrase the old NYNEX Yellow Pages commercial, SotN could have been beautiful in the right hands; unfortunately, in this case, Benton didn’t seem to have the right hands.  I could have forgiven the killer’s identity coming out of left field if only the film had more life of its own. All too often, I got the feeling that Benton figured all he had to do was trot out the Hitchcock homages, and the nostalgic audience would be so enthralled that they’d add the spark and emotion themselves. If only it were that easy!

It seemed to me as if Benton and Newman, stuck for an ending, happened to peer over somewhere in the middle of the screenplay and, snapping their fingers, said “Hey, Gail doesn’t have much to do. Let’s make her the killer!” Since then, however, I’ve been told by usually reliable sources that on an awards show, Streep had jokingly spilled the beans before the film’s release, revealing that Brooke was indeed the killer. Oops! Back to the drawing board, er, editing room!

Next Time: Part 2, in which I suggest what I'd do if I had the money and clout to remake Still of the Night!