My thoughts on The Fourth Man
The Fourth Man (1983)
Gerard, an alcoholic, bi-sexual novelist with fantasies of murder (can you tell this is a Verhoeven movie?) becomes convinced that Christine, a rich, lonely widow with whom he has become involved, has killed her previous three husbands & that he will be her next victim ...
The one thing I can say about Paul Verhoeven's lurid melodrama is that it certainly isn't boring. Shallow, adolescent & flashy maybe, but never boring. According to the text notes on the DVD the film was envisaged by its director as a calling card designed to show Hollywood what he could do & its true that the film rarely misses an opportunity for a flashy camera move or lighting effect (Jan de Bont was the cameraman). As the novelist who sees portents of death all around him Jeroen Krabbe is fine as Gerard & embraces the story's demands for full frontal nudity & gay sex scenes with gusto. But the character remains for the most part a selfish, unsympathetic jerk about whom it's difficult to care all that much. By contrast the beautiful Renee Soutendijk as Christine is much more interesting. By turns seductive, glamorous & vulnerable, her performance suggests a woman concealing a lot of pain & maybe something more. The film is at its most interesting & engrossing when we see a tentative relationship between these two hurt souls begin to blossom. But being a Verhoeven movie it isn't long before this stuff gets elbowed aside in favor of the mad Dutchman's fondness for sex & violence. Christine turns out to have another boyfriend who Gerard has the hots for, leading to a hilarious scene in the family crypt where Gerard's delight at persuading the young man to give him a blowjob is somewhat, ah, dampened by the sight of Christine's three husbands sitting opposite him in little vials (they've been cremated)!
Gerard's belief that Christine is out to murder him - & indeed killed her three previous husbands - is where the film fails to convince because there's not really anything that does peg Christine as a murderess (unless her penchant for shooting cine film of her husbands counts). Ultimately you come away with the impression that it's all in Gerhard's mind & that what this sexually frustrated alcoholic really needs is the salve provided by religion. Perhaps that was Verhoeven's intention all along but if so it's a shame more of an effort wasn't made to render Christine as threatening to the audience as she evidently was to Gerhard. I don't know what else to say except that watching The Fourth Man reminded me a bit of Don't Look Now as directed by an early career Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson. In other words it's all for shocks & laughs & not much else. On the other hand at least you won't be bored watching it.
Tartan's R2 DVd has an adequate looking transfer with solid encoding. A handful of text bios & the original trailer comprise the skimpy extras package.