Really. Janet Leigh doing her best Joey Heatherton and Eleanor Parker a drunken shrew. I seriously expected Peter Falk to walk in wearing his rumpled raincoast any second.
Am I anywhere near the imaginary cliff?share
I totally agree Lady Jane! LOL!
sharePlease don't insult that fine tv show by comparing it with this crap. A great cast who turned in some pretty awful performances with only a couple of exceptions. It's not all their fault either. The dialogue is atrocious!
Sheldon:"Was the starfish wearing boxer shorts? Because you might have been watching Nickelodeon."
This movie looks like an episode of McCloud on very bad drugs. Except, very intelligently, Dennis Weaver remained absent for the entire episode.
I think that this is a terrific story -- although the movie is even less 'weird' than the novel, if you can imagine that -- but so many viewers get turned off from the entire movie because they don't understand the context: the 1960's were a strange transition period for the movie studios. It was after the classic golden age, but before the "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" generation came in and re-invigorated things. The studios' economic misfortunes caused them to kick a lot of old craftsmen* to the curb, and so by default the movies started to look and feel a lot like TV shows . . . .
garish lighting devoid of shadows,
saturated colors,
zooms (to overcome the low resolution of TV's 480 scan lines)
harsh music cues (to overcome the tininess of TV set speakers)
But I don't mind this at all. In a 'meta' sort of way, it's Hollywood's way of communicating subtext about itself.
* not just directors, but also cinematographers, art directors, production designers, costumers, editors (all the people we conveniently forget contribute so much to what we see)