GRACE QUIGLEY: Blu-ray (Cannon Films, 1984) Kino Lorber
More disturbing
than awful, and not quite the turkey most critics branded it, director, Anthony
Harvey’s Grace Quigley (1984) is an offbeat and thoroughly macabre,
disposable little nothing, starring Kate ‘the great’ Hepburn as a lugubrious
widow, presumably tired of living, until she discovers her true calling as a
peddler of euthanasia, lending a neurotic hitman purpose to his chosen calling.
There’s a good story here – somewhere –
peppered in moments of lithe comedy, but also extremely sobering opinions about
being old and forgotten in urban-decaying America. How much Hepburn’s 1978, 60
Minutes interview with Morley Safer influenced screenwriter, A Martin
Zweibeck to write this disturbingly frank tale of sad, slow decline – the golden
years, decidedly, not so golden as we were led to believe – remains open for
discussion. But in that interview, Safer questioned Hepburn about her age and
aging in general to which the spry, and, sharp-tongued Hepburn, never short on
opinion, toggled between jovial replies like, “Well…I’m alright…if you don’t
ask for specifics” to equating the elderly, ‘locked away’ in homes for the
aged, to being shuttled off to the gas chambers, suggesting a final solution of
her own. “Just shoot ‘em’.” The final solution in Grace Quigley
is a bit more optimistic – though not by much.
The screenplay
by A. Martin Zweibeck, never entirely comes to life (pun intended), and
Hepburn, playing against type as just a sweet old bag who wants to end it all,
cannot bring that elusive spark of screen magic to what is otherwise a bizarre
and not entirely prepossessing black comedy, too fey for its own good, and not
nearly ferocious enough to be considered ribald, dark humor. It should be noted,
Grace Quigley marked the first on screen appearance of Hepburn since her
Oscar-winning turn in On Golden Pond (1981, and her 4th
Academy Award as Best Actress, still the most honored star of all time). So, a
lot was expected of Hepburn and her alter ego; regrettably, too much for the
picture’s slight premise to sustain. And too noteworthy is how much Hepburn –
at least in physical contents – appears to have aged in these scant 3 years, if
not entirely frail, then, certainly more brittle and slight. The original
title, ‘The Final Solution of Grace Quigley’ proved too dour for most,
so Zweibeck had the picture withdrawn after only a few weeks and re-cut, lopping
off ten full minutes that, presumably, somewhat lightened the mood. Personally,
I think Zweibeck was going for the Harold and Maude approach here.
Except that it doesn’t quite come across as it should. Grace’s ‘cute meet’ with
her angel of death, hiding in the back of professional assassin, Seymour Flint’s
(Nick Nolte) car; then, following him home to propose her own demise at his
hands, is endearing, as are the scenes where Grace mistakes call girl, Muriel
(Kit Le Fever) for Flint’s girl-friend, and further misunderstands Muriel’s profession,
‘turning tricks’, as being a conjurer of magic. This confusion is
cleared up when Grace invites Muriel to ‘entertain’ her elderly friends. Muriel
obliges by doing a striptease to – what else? – Tchaikovsky’s ‘Nutcracker’ ballet!
A better
opportunity exists to find Grace Quigley charming if one applies the French
moniker ‘film maudit’ (a.k.a. ‘cursed’) to its entertainment acumen. The
picture is so far gone from the usual, and so weirdly ambitious to be
different, it manages to find its moments of clarity almost by accident – its
plot, similarly to parallel 1956’s Brit-based, The Green Man, in which
Alistair Sim’s eponymous title character delightfully sets about the art and
craft of knocking off those in society whose only contribution is rank
unhappiness. Grace attempts a similar vengeance, calling on Seymour to off
crude cabby, Max Putnam (Christopher Murney) after he screws her over for the
fare and steals her favorite shoe. Otherwise, the victims in Grace’s grand plan
are all willing participants; friends, actually - careworn, destitute and already
failing in their health. But Harvey’s direction gets mired in a sort of curdled
tutti-fruity froth, more unnerving as the plot unravels. The scene where
Seymour, unable to go through with killing kindly pensioner, Mr. Harvey Jenkins
(William Duell), instead sends Muriel up to Jenkin’s apartment to give him back
his payoff for the job, is hilarious. Just the sight of the slinky Muriel,
perhaps with the promise of another ‘performance’ to come, is enough to give the
old buzzard a fatal heart attack. So, mission accomplished – if through
indirect means. However, the scene where Grace gathers her remaining cohorts,
eager to meet their maker - all except for Emily Watkins (Elizabeth Wilson) -
at the home of wealthy widower, Homer Morrison (Walter Abel) is powerfully disconcerting.
Seymour has rigged an ingenious apparatus from the exhausts of a pair of
vintage sports cars in Morrison’s garage to the central air system in his house,
effectively to asphyxiate the group as they ebulliently crow ‘When Irish
Eyes are Smiling’ around the piano. Harvey’s direction here is tasteful, if
utterly creepy; the moment staged entirely from Grace and Seymour’s reaction,
as they pensively wait just beyond the parlor for voices to grow faint and
eventually cease altogether. “But Seymour,” Grace insists, “There’s
another verse.”
The lovably
good – if slightly warped – nature of Hepburn’s Grace, and the reluctance of
her guilt-riddled cohort, who gets nose bleeds and headaches every time he
murders, makes for an endearing combination in this movie. Nick Nolte, despite
his own rising status in the picture biz, is playing second fiddle here and doesn’t
seem to mind it for a second. Seymour’s growing devotion to Grace, eventually
calling her ‘mom’, provides Grace with a reason to live. And Nolte offers us a
refreshingly frank portrait of this paid assassin, living on the edge, and
indulging in psychotherapy with his as neurotic therapist, Dr. Herman (Chip
Zien), who is more amused by Seymour’s phobias than dedicated to finding a
cure. The plot of Grace Quigley begins with our heroine being tormented by the
new landlord of her building, Mr. Argo (Harris Laskawy). Aside: there is a
genuine disconnect between the main titles – which take place in the dead of
winter – and this scene that immediately follows, obviously shot in summer.
Argo suggests if Grace cannot pay her rent on time, he will not hesitate to
evict her, even though she offers him her social security check to cover last
month’s rent. Noticing her parakeet, Oscar, chirping in the background, Argo
orders Grace to get rid of the bird or he will get rid of her. No pets – it says
so in her contract. Deeply wounded, Grace goes across the street, buys a
newspaper and parks herself on a bench to begin searching for a new home.
Mercifully, before she has to make a decision, Grace witnesses Argo getting
into his car, where he is promptly executed by waiting hit man, Seymour Flint.
At first
startled by the incident, Grace hurriedly sprints away from the assassination,
taking refuge in a nearby parked car whose back door just happens to be
unlocked. As luck would have it, the car belongs to Seymour who gets into the front
seat without first checking to see if the coast is clear. Racing through the
city streets, Seymour arrives at his own building, removes the fake Arizona
plates from his car and retires to his apartment, leaving Grace to formulate her
plan. In short order, she pays Seymour a call and reveals all. She saw him commit
the murder, but has no intention of turning him in. Why? Well, it seems Grace
has come up with the perfect solution to end her loneliness. She will hire this
professional killer to off her – albeit, in the most humane way. Seymour is rattled
by Grace’s no-nonsense approach; moreover unimpressed, even when she offers him
her entire life’s savings, $270.00, to do the job. Seymour asks for $1000, certain
Grace will not be able to come up with the amount in time, and therefore,
getting him off the hook. Instead, Grace orchestrates an arrangement with
Harvey Jenkins, who agrees to pay Seymour $2000 to have himself put to rest.
Grace explains that a good many of her friends are in the same situation – forgotten
by their families, isolated and alone, sick and/or ailing, and basically tired
of waiting for the inevitability of Mother Nature to take its course.
Refusing to take
any of Grace’s subsequent phone calls, even after she has the money to pay for
her murder, Seymour retreats into his therapy sessions with Dr. Herman, hoping
to draw some clarity from this bizarre turn of events. Grace inadvertently
meets Muriel, whom Seymour has hired to come over and ‘relieve’ his anxieties. Ushering
the girl away on the pretext Seymour has the flu, Grace misunderstands Muriel’s
profession of ‘turning tricks’ to mean she is an illusionist. Hence,
Grace now invites both Muriel and Seymour to a party across the hall, where she
introduces them to Harvey Jenkins, Emily Watkins, Homer Morrison, Sarah
Hodgkins (Frances Pole), Sam Pincus (Truman Gaige) and Dorothy Trugert (Paula
Trueman). At Grace’s innocent request, Muriel performs a striptease for the guests,
much to everyone’s delight. Grace then coolly suggests that if Seymour wishes
never to have a dull moment again, he should marry Muriel. And, indeed, on her
advice, he does just that – especially after getting cold feet for sending
Muriel up to Jenkins’ apartment to return the money, resulting in Jenkins
keeling over from a fatal heart attack. Temporarily cured of his guilt complex,
Seymour and Grace become close. He calls her ‘mom’ and she, having found a new
lease on life, decides to turn their alliance into a growing business concern,
posting ads on the bulletin boards of retirement homes and hospitals everywhere,
offering the elderly a ‘solution’ to their woes.
After
asphyxiating the rest of Grace’s friends at Morrison’s estate, all except for
Emily Watkins, who has last minute regrets, the symptoms of Seymour’s guilt
complex return; headaches, nose bleeds, etc. Indeed, he has decided he does not
want to kill anyone any more. But Grace, badly mistreated by cabby, Max Putnam,
now orders Seymour to perform an assassination on her behalf – merely to rid
the world of a vial man. Seymour cannot do it. Indeed, all he wants now is to
go legit. So, when Grace attends the funeral of her friends, Seymour reasons
that the only way to end it all is to finish the job he originally started by offing
Grace. Alas, Emily intervenes. She too has had a change of heart, discovering
her daughter only wanted to see her to ask for money, and now wishes Seymour to
kill her instead. Panicking, Seymour takes off on his motorcycle, pursued by Emily,
who steals one of the hearses in hot pursuit. The other three hearses, along
with the cars in the funeral procession, make chase through the Manhattan
streets, culminating with Emily losing control of the wheel and barreling off the
pier into the Hudson River where she drowns. Seymour confesses he could not
kill the woman he has come to regard as his ‘mom’. The pair depart on his motorcycle. Only now, Grace
feels guilty about Max Putnam, whom Seymour earlier informed he has killed on
her orders. Attempting to take her own life by leaping off the roof of a
building, Grace is saved by Seymour now, who explains to her that he could not
go through with the job. Relieved, even as she realizes their professional association
is at an end, Grace and Seymour hail a cab driven by none other than Max Putnam
– kismet, that Grace and Seymour elect to find charming.
Grace Quigley is a very odd
duck indeed: a comedy about assisted suicide, though not the first. Herein, I
am reminded of Frank Capra’s wicked satire, Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
that forced an increasingly befuddled Cary Grant to come to terms with the fact
his two spinster aunts were poisoning pensioners for their money. Alas, Grace
Quigley is too far gone down this rabbit hole to be considered even mildly
amusing in its premise; Grace, perverting a brute assassin into becoming the Jack
Kevorkian of his time, somehow more hair-raising than hilarious. During the shoot,
Hepburn crashed her car into a tree, resulting in a fractured ankle. This gave
Grace her unusual gate. Alas, Hepburn would never fully recover from this
injury. But the short-term fallout is arguably evident in her performance
herein. There is an absence of that feisty resolve in Kate’s Quigley, augmented
by a connotation of human frailty for which Hepburn, at least in her prime, was
not prone to accept. What remains controversial here is the actual premise of
our story – assisted suicide made over as silly rather than serious; perhaps a
Herculean hurdle that not even Hepburn at her heights in screen popularity
could have effortlessly assailed. In the wane of her former recalcitrant self, Hepburn
here just appears rather forlorn and fallen on hard times. We ache for the
Hepburn that once was, rather than Grace, who has, by the end of this movie,
discovered there is more to life than merely orchestrating her death. Hepburn
who, for nearly all of her professional life, was perennially beloved by fans
for that stubborn resolve in doing things her own way – and convention be
damned – in Grace Quigley gives us the first signs that her seemingly
Teflon-coated can-do spirit is banking on the vapors of steam already used up
elsewhere. I love Katharine Hepburn. But Grace Quigley is a far cry from
her finest hour. And yet, it’s Kate, and well…enough said. Permit us to
worship. Immediately following Grace Quigley, Hepburn turned to
concentrate on writing her memoirs, as a septuagenarian, never losing sight of
the fact that just ‘being’ was an accomplishment in and of itself, and,
could be – under the right circumstances and attitude applied – a lot of fun. Were that this movie could make the same
claim.
Grace Quigley arrives on
Blu-ray via Kino Lorber and a new 2K scan performed on an interpositive by its
current rights holder, MGM. Grace Quigley was made for the defunct
Cannon Pictures. The 1080p remastering
results here are fairly impressive. Not only is the image free of age-related
debris, but colors throughout are fully saturated and vibrant. The main title
opticals are the weakest, looking soft and occasionally blurry. But once we move
into the main body of the piece, the image becomes tight, clean and superbly
resolved with razor-sharp fine detail, film grain looking indigenous to its
source, and, excellent contrast with solid blacks and clean whites. Flesh tones
can appear slightly reddish at times. But otherwise, and truly, there is
nothing to complain about here. The 2.0 mono DTS audio is adequately
represented. It’s flat, as expected, but otherwise gives an accurate representation
of its vintage. The only extra is an audio commentary by Daniel Kremer. It’s
worth a listen, but light on facts. Bottom line: Grace Quigley is a
strange picture to digest. It has its moments,
but you really have to look for them to appreciate Harvey’s subtler art in this
exercise of comedic subterfuge. The Blu-ray is very solid and will surely
impress. Judge and buy accordingly.
FILM RATING (out
of 5 – 5 being the best)
2.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
4.5
EXTRAS
1
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