THE BEDROOM WINDOW: Blu-ray (De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, 1987) Kino Lorber

In reviewing the late director, Curtis Hanson’s R-rated homage to Hitchcock, The Bedroom Window (1987), I am – ironically – reminded of a quote from the Michael J. Fox comedy, The Secret of My Success, made and released this same year. “Please Lord, get me out of this. I’ll go all over the world telling people not to screw the boss’ wife!” Good advice, regrettably unheeded by this movie’s titular hero, Terry Lambert (Steve Guttenberg, oh ye of the limited acting range), the young stallion sweatin’ up the sheets with not one, but two women. The first is Sylvia Wentworth (Isabelle Huppert who, at intervals, takes on the coloring of a Catherine Deneauve knock-off). Sylvia is Terry's boss’ wife. Not smart. The second...uh...'love interest/sex toy' is Denise (Elizabeth - the Countess of Grantham – McGovern) – who is the near fatal victim of a violent sex crime.  Aside: McGovern is a much better actress than the drivel she is given to recite herein. Hanson’s screenplay is based on English authoress, Anne Holden’s page-turner, The Witnesses. Read it. It's better than this flick. If anything, McGovern’s acting chops balance the anemic quality in Guttenberg and Huppert’s exchanges. The Bedroom Window is a thriller with some stylish touches. Alas, these pay Hitchcock little more than lip service, rather than dividends. Hanson indiscriminately drops hints to a better thriller like breadcrumbs, only to infer better work has been done elsewhere and serving as a cautionary reminder that any attempt to ‘ape’ Hitchcock is as futile as peeling a grape.  Under the modus operandi of ‘oh, what a tangled web…’ – you know the rest – pause, yawn, moving on – The Bedroom Window has some good solid twists to recommend it. But it contains as many woefully undernourished bits of business, played out by this witless ‘twit class’ of whodunit players. The other virtue here is Gilbert Taylor’s noir-ish cinematography, capable of doing a lot of the heavy lifting in atmospheric touches when all else about this tepid little wannabe miserably fails to gel.

I have always had a problem taking Steve Guttenberg seriously – perhaps, because the actor rarely appears to be plying that same level of earnestness to his craft. Guttenberg here is as though he is on the verge of a crying gag or pithy retort. In lieu of any genuine charisma, he has decided glib repartee will do.  If I had to guess, I suspect Guttenberg is attempting to channel the ghost of Hitchcock fav, Cary Grant, who died the year before this picture was released, but could always be called upon to remain dashing, if circumspect about his own male finesse and prowess with the ladies, even in the face of grave danger. Alas, Guttenberg is no Cary Grant – in acting stature, looks or deportment. So, The Bedroom Window is left with a curly-haired, buff, but otherwise gooney sort of jock wannabe. We’ve all seen Terry’s ‘kind’ before, his reach to exceed his grasp, aspiring to be the stud every woman adores.  In the eighties, the definition of ‘leading man’ morphed, or rather, was distilled to a set of firm pecs and strong arms, capable of buffering the whole wad when otherwise not shooting it in a fitful frenzy of indiscriminate passion into the nearest sex bomb actress du jour. Alas, Guttenberg, then being groomed as a Tom Hanks featherweight (isn't that a contradiction?!?), herein unconvincingly plays an amiable Baltimore architect turned amateur sleuth/crime stopper – driving a ‘white’ car, no less, but as though he is the Good Humor man out on a spree. Popsicle anyone? Oh, now that’s subtle!

But frankly, the women who accompany Guttenberg here on his odyssey of sex and crime-solving are not sexpots per say, which is what these roles require. Isabelle Huppert, who, after appearing in just about every ‘foreign’ movie known to reach this side of the pond, became more infamously trademarked as the barely articulate and thoroughly countrified Montana madam in Michael Cimino’s Hiroshima-sized box office debacle, Heaven’s Gate (1980), is the (choke!) sexier of the two. We’ll chalk it up to her being French. Oui? Aside: I’ve given up trying to appreciate Huppert without subtitles! Even with them she cannot turn up enough sizzle beyond a few heaving master shots of sweaty cleavage in half shadow. Alas, a nice 'front porch' does not a great actress make. As for the aforementioned McGovern? Hollywood’s earliest aspirations to transform her from the crystal-eyed ingenue in prestige pics like Ordinary People (1980), and, Once Upon A Time in America (1984) into a kinky little plaything are, frankly, embarrassing. McGovern has an intelligence to far outclass her mousier attributes. Cut either way, she is decidedly NOT a slinky siren.  So, no sale there!

I may appear to be trashing The Bedroom Window, but actually I rather enjoyed it for what it was worth, rather than what it could have been with a better script, tighter acting, and less emphasis on the bump and grind. What is it with thrillers – intertwining sex and murder – each, presumably, to be considered illicit acts on the varying scale of the ‘naughty/naughty’? Get your knickers out of a ball, folks, because a body is going to fall into your lap at any moment. And, predictably, one does here too, leaving Terry to fly solo on a confession to the police, albeit, without ever having witnessed the crime first-hand. That is just the first development in this careening thrill ride that expects, and ironically ‘earns’ our brawny suspension of disbelief with its crisp, cavalier and crafty bravura. In theory, the premise of a lover, civic-minded and nobler than most, covering up for his illicit paramour, ought to have been more than serviceable. And good thrillers – or, at least, those competently made – thrive on throwing up as many roadblocks as necessary to delay the dénouement until all viable alternatives have been thoroughly exhausted. Alas, all great thrillers, like the devil himself, vacillate in the details, while The Bedroom Window just seems to be filling a lot of screen time with too many contrived derailments, the obfuscating smoke and mirrors taking precedent over any of it making the grade in basic logic. Case in point: under cross-examination Terry’s shortsightedness is exposed. He could not have seen the crime taking place just under his window because he did not have the time to put in his contact lenses, much less rub the sleep from his eyes. What? The guy doesn’t own a set of specs?   

At nearly two-hours, The Bedroom Window begins to lose a little steam mid-way, before thoroughly letting the air out in its grand finale. In the meantime, the chemistry generated between Guttenberg, Huppert and McGovern is enough to sufficiently delay our ennui. And this one comes with a moral too – something about ‘not screwing the boss’ wife’ lest she entangle you in a thoroughly muddled attempt to do the right thing, if to thoroughly f@%k it up – literally, and figuratively. There are some very suspenseful moments here to be gleaned, admired and then, filed away under the banner of ‘been there/done that’. I will give this much to Hanson – he reworks the stock clichés of the classic thriller with just enough deviation and finesse to make us pause and immediately recognize we have seen it all before. In a nutshell, Terry is attracted to his boss’ wife, Sylvia and she to him. They go back to his apartment for a little badinage, but while he is in the bathroom, she hears blood-curdling screams outside and decides to approach the window completely naked. Witnessing a man, Carl (Brad Greenquist) brutalizing a woman, Sylvia throws opens the window and frightens off the attacker. However, when news reports break the next day of another murder of a young woman just around the corner from Terry’s flat, his civic-minded duty will not rest. Sylvia must come clean about what she saw.  Alas, as she is unwilling to do this – for obvious reasons of being found out in her extramarital affair – Sylvia instead convinces Terry it would be better if he claimed he saw the attack. She provides him with all the details.

Alas, never having seen the man before, Terry cannot pick him out of a police lineup. More curious – neither can Denise, the victim who survived the attack under his window. Nevertheless, and despite the flimsiest evidence against him, the case goes to trial. However, under cross-examination, Carl’s attorney (Wallace Shawn) proves unequivocally Terry’s short-sightedness could not have contributed to a positive I.D. of his client.  Evidently, the jury concurs with that assessment. Carl goes free, leaving Police Detectives, Jessup (Fredrick Coffin) and Quirke (Carl Lumbly) as chagrined as they are baffled, along with Denise and Sylvia by Terry’s incompetence. Alas, in court, Carl clearly recognizes Sylvia as the woman in the window. Determined to protect Sylvia, Terry follows her to the ballet and implores her to accompany him to the police. She is disgusted and orders him out of her private box. But only moments later, Terry spies Carl’s distinctive pick-up parked outside. Rushing back to warn Sylvia, Terry finds her fatally stabbed. She gasps for air and dies in his arms. Now, Terry retreats to the relative safety and comfort of Denise’s apartment. She seduces him, but then demands satisfaction via revenge. Terry agrees. Carl must be stopped. So, together, they devise a relatively straight-forward plan to ensnare Carl. Denise, disguised in a cheap wig and dressed provocatively, and, overly flirtatious to boot, attends a seedy watering hole Carl is known to frequent. Sure enough, he arrives and is most receptive to her advances. Now, Denise leaves the bar alone, knowing Carl cannot resist her bait. Terry shadows her.  Carl predictably attacks Denise. Only he has underestimated the plan. Terry and Denise thwart the attack. Carl flees, but is picked up Jessup and Quirke, previously tipped off by Terry.

The Bedroom Window is stylishly executed, and that is, presumably, much of its charm. We have to hand it to Hanson who, in an era where body count is king in the thriller genre, staunchly resists the urge to go gruesome on us, and instead invests his time and energies on creating a darkly purposed tale of entrapment, mostly shot in half-shadow, but with only 3 corpses to its credit, and one – the first victim – only inferred as a tabloid headline. According to Steve Guttenberg, the original camera crew was replaced by producer, Dino De Laurentiis with another who only spoke Italian. As this proved unmanageable, Curtis Hanson then insisted on hiring Gilbert Taylor as his cinematographer – a request, begrudgingly granted by De Laurentiis. A moment’s pause here to acknowledge the late, and arguably ‘great’ Italian producer who, along with his contemporary, Carlo Ponti, was instrumental in bringing post-war Italian cinema to the forefront of international fame. 

In a career spanning an impressive 7 decades, Dino De Laurentiis produced more than 500 features with a staggering degree of critical and financial success: 38 were Oscar-nominated – hardly what you would expect from a Naples-born youth who grew up peddling his father’s pasta and, much later, would return to these roots by opening a high-end grocery chain in Manhattan. Crossing the Atlantic in 1976, though already to have made his mark on this side of the pond a decade earlier, De Laurentiis ambitiously formed his own indie company in Beverly Hills, responsible for such memorable fare as Serpico (1973), Death Wish (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975), The Shootist (1976), Ragtime (1981), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Blue Velvet (1986) and Breakdown (1997), to name but a handful. But De Laurentiis' name would also be linked to some of the biggest albatrosses of his generation - including the 1976 remake of King Kong, a movie that raked it in at the box office but was famously trashed by the critics, and the uber-camp classic, Flash Gordon (1980), not to mention David Lynch's costly and calamitous, Dune (1984). In private, De Laurentiis suffered the heartbreak of a brutally bad first marriage, an amicable divorce from his second wife, actress, Silvana Mangano, and, much later, the death of their son, Federico, in a plane crash in 1981. He was justly honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award and the America Award of the Italy-USA Foundation. His death, in 2010, at the ripe old age of 91, marked the final bow in a legendary career at a time when such vigorous longevity was considered a thing of the past.

The Bedroom Window may not represent the apex of De Laurentiis’ picture-producing prowess. Indeed, he is often referenced in the grand tradition of making the ‘big’ movies. But it nevertheless speaks to his unprejudiced ambitions to make all sorts of movies, regardless of their genre, scope or budget. The Bedroom Window’s soundtrack is predictably front-loaded with hit pop tunes of its generation, Ava Cherry’s Beautiful Thief, Robert Palmer’s Hyperactive, Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Cold Shot, Mark Stein’s You Keep Me Hangin’ On, and, Rick James’ Sweet and Sexy Thing. While the story is, presumably set in Baltimore, the ballet sequences were actually lensed in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The picture was only a modest success, taking in $12,640,385 on an $8.5 million budget. Kino’s Blu-ray has been around since 2019 and, in revisiting it recently, the image holds up rather well. Color depth is a curiosity. Exteriors deliver some rich and startling clarity, but interiors lean to a green/brown bent.  With only a modest bit-rate, it’s quite obvious nothing in the way of any major preservation/remastering has been done to ready this one for hi-def.  A few instances of compression artifacts intrude – never a good sign – and contrast is a tad anemic, though otherwise, serviceable. The DTS 2.0 audio is, like the image, functional without ever being distinctive. Save a few flourishes of Patrick Gleeson/Michael Shrieve’s orchestral underscore, dialogue is front and center, clear and audible. Perhaps the best feature of this disc is its audio commentary by Peter Tonguette, a decided devotee of Hanson who regards The Bedroom Window as one of the director’s best and offers a sharp and witty analysis of all the elements gone into making it. We also get a trailer. In the last analysis, The Bedroom Window is a B-thriller with A-list trappings and Hanson’s expertise to highly recommend it. Hanson is pulling for all it’s worth and largely takes an otherwise pedestrian plot and really finds some innovative ways to sell it as suspenseful art. Recommended with caveats.  

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

3.5

EXTRAS

1