Forgotten Book - ...And Presumed Dead

There really ought to be a prize for the most excitable blurb for a crime novel. If there were, then a strong contender would be the Corgi Crime paperback edition from 1965 of a book published a couple of years earlier. The author was Lucille Fletcher, ex-wife of Bernard Herrmann and famed for her radio play (later filmed and novelised) Sorry, Wrong Number. The novel was ...And Presumed Dead.

So what did Corgi have to say? The blurb begins in breathless, conspiratorial fashion: "We are pledged to remain completely silent about the plot of this extraordinary novel." Wow! It gets better."So brilliantly constructed is it that even the smallest preview would detract from its shattering, agonising suspense." Gosh! And a few lines later the blurb concludes with the modest claim that the story "establishes an entirely new landmark in the literature of suspense."

I'm not pledged to silence, so I can say that this is an interesting version of the "woman in jeopardy" novel, and it's set in a fictitious town in Switzerland. The events take place in 1951, and this is significant; it wouldn't have been easy to set this particular story in the 1960s, when it was written. We follow the misadventures of Julia, whose beloved husband Russ was an airman who went missing during the war. She has followed Russ' mother to Alpenstadt, and it soon begins to look as though the older woman has something to hide.

Lucille Fletcher was not only a successful exponent of the suspense story, she was also a pretty good prose stylist. Yes, there are one or two overwrought passages, but there are also several memorable and gripping scenes, some of which have a Gothic flavour (there's even a ruined castle). The solution to the mystery of Alpenstadt does indeed take the story in an unexpected, and on the whole satisfactory, direction. Is this novel a landmark of suspense? I don't really think so. That blurb raised my expectations extremely high, and they weren't met. But even if it's not as extraordinary or as brilliant as Corgi claimed, it's still a good story. A period piece, yes, but worth reading, not least as an example of Fletcher's skill in building and maintaining tension.

Cape Fear (1962) - movie review

Cape Fear is a notable American thriller dating back just over half a century. It was remade in 1991 by Martin Scorsese, but until recently I hadn't seen either version. Nor had I read The Executioners by John D.MacDonald on which it is based. Now I've filled one of these lamentable gaps, by watching the original movie, and it certainly lived up to my expectations.

Those expectations were fuelled in part by the casting of two stars at the peak of their fame. Gregory Peck plays a decent lawyer (at last, a nice attorney!) while Robert Mitchum is the psychopathic ex-convict who bears him a grudge. The cast also includes Telly Savalas as a private eye, long before he too found fame, in Kojak. The film is well acted throughout, but really it's Mitchum who is the outstanding performer, making the most of his menacing role as the ruthless rapist Sam Cady.

Mitchum stalks Peck, but doesn't stop there. He poisons the family dog, and makes it clear to Peck that he is determined to rape his wife and daughter. Peck tries to buy him off, and then to have him beaten up - all to no avail. The tension builds as it becomes clear that only the most drastic measures will save Peck and the woman and child he loves.

Peck's wife is played by Polly Bergen, who died recently, and who was also a singer (her accompanist and boyfriend in the early Fifties later became a legendary composer...) Apparently she and Mitchum were both injured when they filmed a scene where they fight together, so intensely were they caught up in the story.. And the action is enhanced by a characteristically dramatic score written by another legendary composer, the great Bernard Hermann. it all adds up to a film that well deserves its high reputation.

American Gigolo - film review

I watched American Gigolo not too long after it first came out in 1980, and found it a reasonably enjoyable thriller, though not in the same league as Taxi Driver, which also had a screenplay written by Paul Schrader. When it cropped up on the TV schedules,I decided to take another look. It's still perfectly watchable, but it's also a very good illustration of the fact that nothing dates faster than fashion. American Gigolo was quite stylish thirty-odd years ago, but now it is in some respects a period piece.

Richard Gere plays Julian, the eponymous gigolo, and Lauren Hutton, the wife of a rising politician, falls for him in a big way. Unfortunately, Julian is mixed up with some very dodgy people, and is hired to perform with a rich financier's wife while the rich financier, who is keen on violence towards women, watches. A couple of days later, the wife is murdered, and Julian becomes the prime suspect.

The crime plot is straightforward, and not terribly interesting, something which originally was quite well disguised by the sexy style of the film, but which is now rather more obvious. Lauren Hutton is a woman of legendary beauty, and Richard Gere is a very good-looking man, and (although the likes of the equally charismatic Julie Christie, and also John Travolta, were considered for the parts at one time) their appeal helps to explain why the film was, and I think remains, quite popular. Nina van Pallandt (remember the singing duo Nina and Frederick?) also features, but although the film has quite a few good moments, overall it now seems excessively long, with less to it than meets the eye.

There's an interesting contrast between the music used in Taxi Driver and the soundtrack of this movie. Bernard Herrmann scored Taxi Driver, and although at the time he was coming to the end of his career, and had been abandoned by Hitchcock, there is a timelessness about his music which helps to make it memorable. Giogio Moroder composed the soundtrack of American Gigolo, and although I like his work, again that electronic sound now has a very Eighties feel about it. This is not by any means a bad movie, and is still a perfectly good time-passer. But the fashionable flourishes that were integral to its original success are now more like an encumbrance.

Twisted Nerve - film review

Twisted Nerve is a controversial film from 1968, a horror story about a psychopath in sub-Hitchcock vein. It combines a number of excellent ingredients with some questionable taste. It's almost always a mistake to judge films, or books, from the past by the standards of today, but even in 1968, I think there was something rather disturbing about this movie, not least in its rather dodgy (and, I think, unncessary to the plot) science about the nature of psychopathy and its relationship with disability. It's directed and co-written by Roy Boulting, but much, much darker than the Boulting Brothers' usual fare.

When I first saw this movie, as a student in the Seventies, I was startled to find that the lead character, played by Hywel Bennett, was an ex-Oxford man called Martin. To say that I didn't identify with him would be an under-statement. Not only was the young Hywel Bennett conspicuously handsome, he was playing a character who is seriously disturbed and very dangerous indeed.. A weird, baby-faced guy with an affluent but troubled family background, he becomes obsessed with a pretty young librarian (Hayley Mills) and concocts an elaborate scheme which involves him conning his way into the large house in which her mother (the superb Billie Whitelaw) takes paying guests, and contriving an alibi so as to stab his stepfather (Frank Finlay) to death.

The murder is investigated by a jaundiced cop played by Timothy West, while one of Martin's fellow lodgers is played by Barry Foster. By any standards, it's a terrific cast, and the Hitchcock connection is emphasised by the fact that Foster and Whitelaw appeared in the great man's late film, Frenzy - also about a sociopathic killer - as well by the haunting score, written by Hitchcock's favourite soundtrack composer, Bernard Herrmann.

Twisted Nerve is rather strange, not least because it is slow-moving with occasional bursts of lurid action. Yet it is undeniably chilling, in all sorts of ways. As for Hywel Bennett, his health problems have been well documented for a long time, but in his hey-day in the Sixties, he was not only very good-looking but also a very fine actor. It's sad that he wasn't able to maintain the brilliant standards of the first part of his career, but his best performances are genuinely striking..

Sorry, Wrong Number

Sorry, Wrong Number is a 1948 film starring Barbara Stanwyck as the rich and spoiled invalid wife of Burt Lancaster. Alone at home, she overhears a phone call which seems to be about a murder plot. It’s a classic set-up and I enjoyed the movie, which is dark both in photography and plot.

The ‘overheard conversation’ is a staple of a good many crime stories, one example being Philip Macdonald’s The Nursemaid Who Disappeared, which predates Lucille Fletcher’s very successful radio play on which the film is based. In the movie, the main story is told through a series of flashbacks, but this doesn’t stop the tension mounting, thanks to Stanwyck’s performance, at her highly-strung best.

The story involves a fraudulent scheme featuring a dodgy guy called Morano – played by William Conrad, who later played Frank Cannon, the rather obese TV gumshoe. Lancaster is in moody, and pretty effective, form, but the film belongs to Stanwyck.

Fletcher turned her story into a novel, and she wrote a number of others, none of which I’ve read. As an aspiring radio writer, she met a young composer, who became her first husband. His name was Bernard Herrmann, and he became one of the best composers for crime films of all time. But his great scores for Hitchcock came after the marriage ended.