"The Drowning Pool," "Night Moves," Melanie Griffith and 1975

(aka ecarle)

The movie business is famous for "two of the same movie" reaching theaters in the same year, sometimes around the same time. Neither of the two studios would back down, so we got two volcano movies(Volcano and Dante's Peak), two meteor movies(Deep Impact and Armageddon),a nd, as I recall, THREE farm movies(one with Mel Gibson, I can't remember the others.)

Something like this happened in 1975, but rather than happening with a "high concept" plot(volcano, meteor) it was an OVERALL ambiance situation.

The two movies were "Night Moves" with star Gene Hackman and "The Drowning Pool" with Paul Newman.

Consider:

In both movies, a Los Angeles private detective (Newman returning in his role from 1966's Harper; Hackman rather nifty as an ex-NFL player) travels to the Deep South on a case (Louisiana for Newman, Florida for Hackman.)

In both movies, a young "barely legal" (but sometimes quite nude) Melanie Griffith appears as a jailbait beauty out to bedevil the older detective (who, in both films, sternly turns her down.)

In both movies, the Griffith character also TURNS AGAINST the older detective, and tries to frame him as a predator.

In both movies, the detective maintains a relationship with a more age-appropriate female love in the Southern State(Newman's real-life wife Joanne Woodward in The Drowning Pool; rugged Jennifer Warren in Night Moves).

In both movies, the villains are middle-aged males who rather look alike from movie to movie -- another reason it is hard to keep the two apart.

In both movies, the mystery is fairly confusing -- but REALLY confusing -- almost unsolvable -- in "Night Moves" -- which gave it art film cred and a greater place of honor in movie history. In face, on balance, because of its characterizations, its deeper sense of drama(Newman acts a little goofy sometimes), and its spectacular violent-at-sea finale...Night Moves(by Bonnie and Clyde director Arthur Penn) is considered the more classic of the two films and worthy partner to Chinatown the year before.

No matter. The bottom line thing about Night Moves and The Drowning Pool is that -- back then especially -- it was really damn hard to separate one movie from the other.

Melanie Griffith was the key confusing element -- I just saw Night Moves so I know she was nude in that, I can't remember if she took it off in "The Drowning Pool," but in both movies her fresh-faced natural sexuality(and questionable age) rather gave her control of the entire movie. (Indeed, it is sad to see EXACTLY how un-lined and smooth her face was at that age...she rather acclerated age through substance abuse.)