Review: The Midnight Man


Burt Lancaster, a former cop who has recently served time for the manslaughter of his wife and her lover, has to take the crummy midnight shift of a security guard gig at a small town (in South Carolina) local college. It’s the closest thing to his natural line of work that he is allowed to do. His buddy Cameron Mitchell (also a former cop) got him the gig, and shares with Lancaster a need to snoop where it’s not wanted, and likely hazardous to his health. Not surprisingly, Lancaster discovers the dead body of a co-ed (Catherine Bach), daughter of a powerful Senator (Morgan Woodward), and with connections to a Psych professor (Robert Quarry), and earns him the ire of not only local sheriff Harris Yulin (who thinks it’s an open and shut case when an ‘obvious’ culprit is quickly found), but just about everyone else in town. Susan Clark is his one ally, his foxy parole officer whom he strikes up a relationship with. Charles Tyner is a perverted, religious zealot janitor (i.e. Prime suspect numero friggin’ uno!), Ed Lauter is one of a trio of local rednecks somehow involved in the plot, and Lancaster’s friend and frequent co-star Nick Cravat has a brief cameo as the campus gardener.



1974 crime-mystery flick written and directed by both Roland Kibbee and star Lancaster (Kibbee being the screenwriter of several Lancaster films including “Vera Cruz”, “The Crimson Pirate” and “Valdez is Coming”, whilst Lancaster had previously directed “The Kentuckian” back in the 50s), features an overly confusing (but interesting) plot, and a slow pace, but an interesting array of characters and performances.



Mitchell steals his every scene, Tyner has a terrific showy part, and Bach (Daisy Duke gets to play a bit of a bad girl here) is particularly startling as the deceased, but everyone’s pretty much fine here. You’ll keep watching it even when you’re lost with the plot. Lancaster’s back-story is especially poorly integrated into things, and the backwoods family seem to come in from a different story altogether. Based on a David Anthony novel, it’s pretty compulsive viewing.



Rating: B-

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Hellraiser (2022)

Recovering junkie Odessa A’zion accompanies scuzzy boyfriend Drew Starkey on a break-in where all they find is a weird puzzle box. A’zion later opens the box and after some weird shit happens, A’zion and Starkey figure it might be a good idea to learn more about this messed up trinket. Goran Visnjic plays a millionaire who possessed the box before our protagonist nicked it.   Is there any point in remaking/rebooting “Hellraiser” when the 1987 adaptation of Clive Barker’s original text was written and directed by Barker himself? And is considered a horror classic? On evidence here, absolutely not. Directed by David Bruckner ( “The Signal” ) and scripted by Ben Collins ( “The Night House” ) and Luke Piotrowski (ditto) this is an entirely tedious affair. I took a long time to get on board with the 1987 “Hellraiser” , I have to admit. It was wildly imaginative and original, like a nightmare transplanted on to film. However, the characters were stone cold and left me similarly chil...
Read more

Review: Cinderella (1950)

The story of poor young Cinderella (voiced by Ilene Woods), treated as a servant by her nasty stepmother (voiced by Eleanor Audley), and dismissed by her thoroughly rotten, ugly stepsisters. Her only friends are a group of mice, who are forever being menaced by a cat named Lucifer (or as I call him, Grumpy Cheshire Cat). The King (hoping to find a wife for his charming son) is throwing a ball and every available young woman is invited to attend, and Cinderella is most excited to go. However, her stepmother and stepsisters do all they can to prevent this from happening. But with help from the mice and one fairy godmother (voiced by Verna Felton) later, and Cinderella looks set to attend the ball. You know the rest, folks.   Lovely 1950 Disney animated movie from directors Clyde Geronimi ( “Peter Pan” , “Lady and the Tramp” ), Wilfred Jackson ( “Fantasia” , “Alice in Wonderland” , “Peter Pan” ) & Hamilton Luske ( “Pinocchio” , “Fantasia” , “Peter Pan” ), that is a bit t...
Read more

Review: Jinnah

The story of Mohammed Ali Jinnah (Sir Christopher Lee) the politically moderate founder of Pakistan. A Muslim lawyer, Jinnah fought to form a separate nation from India for the Muslim minority, whilst Mahatma Gandhi (Sam Dastor) wished for India to stay united and proposed Jinnah as the new PM as a compromise. James Fox plays British viceroy Lord Mountbatten, Indira Varma plays Jinnah’s wife, and veteran bit player Vernon Dobtcheff plays a British dignitary.   Although Christopher Lee’s title performance received some critical notice and the actor himself was very proud of the work, this modestly budgeted 1998 biopic from director Jamil Dehlavi ( “Immaculate Conception” with Melissa Leo) and co-writer Farrukh Dhondy ( “Red Mercury” with Stockard Channing and Ron Silver) was largely ignored at the time and still very little-known today. Part of that is probably due to the poor marketing of the film, and difficulty in finding a distributor. It’s hard to get people to talk abo...
Read more