FOUL PLAY: Blu-ray (Paramount, 1978) Paramount Home Video

Colin Higgins' Foul Play (1978) attempts to pay homage to the Hitchcockian-styled thriller via a Blake Edwards’ twist, wink and nudge that increasingly trades suspense for the kook fringe. At the time of its release, the picture was well received. Today, it has dated rather badly, despite a bright-eyed performance from Goldie Hawn as amiable ditz, Gloria Mundy and Chevy Chase as her klutzy knight in shining armor - Lt. Tony Carlson. The plot, written by Higgins, quickly unravels from high-stakes chases into a sort of lumbering and quirky, extended ‘Laugh-In’ skit, embroiling Gloria in a series of ill-timed mis-directions to effectively make her the prime target of a goon squad fronted by an albino hitman, Whitey Jackson (William Frankfather), his kung-fu-fighting accomplice, Gerda Caswell (Rachel Roberts) and short/bald/moustache-ed chauffeur, Turk Farnum (Ion Tedorescu). The high-concept plot of a political assassination of the Pontiff during a San Franciscan opera house performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado is overwrought with juxtapositions between this magnificently staged spectacle and Gloria and Tony’s various vehicular faux pas, exchanging multiple modes of transportation to get across town, totaling his own car, a Dodge Ram shorn of its plywood roof-shingled cabin, and finally, a taxi/limo service, the latter involving two kidnapped Japanese tourists speaking no English, nevertheless to become orgasmic in their elation over Gloria’s explanation they are in a Kojak-styled race against time. On route to this ridiculous finale, Gloria mistakenly assaults a midget Bible salesman (Billy Barty), is nearly seduced by sex-pervert, Stanley Tibbets (Dudley Moore – the funniest thing in this movie), who also happens to be the opera house’s conductor, and, is repeatedly terrorized by Whitey and Turk who, first, murder Bob ‘Scotty’ Scott (Bruce Solomon) the stud Gloria picks up on the side of the coastal highway after his car breaks down.

Foul Play ought to have been a movie of supreme hilarity. But the laughs here are overplayed and undernourished. Goldie Hawn’s naïve blond wears pretty thin after the first 15-mins. Gloria’s gal/pal and fellow librarian, Stella (Marilyn Sokol) gets more chuckles as she illustrates the various ‘defensive’ must haves for any self-respecting woman of the 1970’s – two (a pulsating alarm and a can of mace) later effectively utilized by Gloria to subdue Turk. The other is brass knuckles. Burgess Meredith is in this one too as Gloria’s sage and fatherly landlord/anthropologist, Mr. Hennessey who also keeps a pet python in his apartment. Given his second billing in this puff pastry, and his renown for brilliant deadpan, Chevy Chase does not surface in Foul Play until almost 20-minutes into the plot and then, only intermittently to offer either a not terribly pithy jab or flat one-liner, but otherwise, playing it safe and straight as the ‘love interest’.  Foul Play’s initial set-up, the assassination of Eugene Roche’s benevolent Archbishop Thorncrest by his twin brother, Charlie (also Roche), and our introduction shortly thereafter to Gloria Mundy, about to make a wrong turn in love on Stella’s ‘just go for it’ advice is well thought out and ably abetted by David M. Walsh’s pseudo-noir cinematography. Ditto for the set-up to follow, as Scotty is hunted down by Turk and Whitey, resulting in his planting some microfilm in a pack of cigarettes he then smuggles into Gloria’s purse before attempting an escape from his assailants.  Gloria, already seated in a darkened theater running an old Alan Ladd flick leads to Scotty’s late arrival with a fatal knife wound already in his chest. Unable to inform Gloria, he dies in her lap, setting a palpable tone for terror/comedy never again to be duplicated.  

From this point on, Colin Higgins aim for a comedy/thriller/romance hybrid begins to unravel – fatally so. For Gloria knows nothing of the danger she is in. Even after momentarily being terrorized by Don Calfa’s Scarface, a red herring of a baddie, easily dispatched by Whitey, she still does not realize she possesses a copy of the assassin’s well-laid plans for this Hitchcockian-like ‘Man Who Knew Too Much’ styled coup on the Pope. So, the cigarettes fall out of Scarface’s pocket and into Gloria’s potted plant next to the fireplace, never to be discovered by anyone, and, eventually, to be tossed into the fire by an unknowing Mr. Hennessey – depriving us all of the ‘big reveal’. The same can be said of the planned political assassination. This basically amounts to Whitey interminably hiding in an airshaft, emerging on cue to take Gloria hostage and hurry her to the catwalks suspended high above the opera house stage until, after fatally shooting a cop attempting to intercept them, Whitey is also executed by Tony, resulting in the two bodies becoming tangled in the rigging and suspended in mid-air, much to the attending audience’s confusion…until, the dotty Pope begins to applaud the effort, unaware it is not part of the performance.

When permitted, Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase have reasonable on-screen chemistry. Their scenes together are intermittently charming, but go nowhere fast. Curiously, Higgins’ screenplay does its level best to keep the couple apart, Tony spending the bulk of his time with a disbelieving partner, Inspector ‘Fergie’ Ferguson (Brian Dennehy) while Gloria and a sympathetic, and Kung-Fu-fighting Mr. Hennessey piece together the clues to solve the mystery ahead of the police. With such ineffectual law enforcement on tap, this isn’t hard to do! David M. Walsh’s plush and high-key-lit cinematography make for some attractive moments to mask the minor comedy. Alas, any comparison to be made between Foul Play and those classic screwball whodunits of yore, sleekly assembled and expertly executed, is purely coincidental as Higgins relies too heavily on the charm of his two big stars to carry the load. Tragically, the mystery and its big ‘MacGuffin’ never crystalize into a cohesive thriller with laughs, causing whatever incidental amusements to suddenly evaporate long before this movie has run its course into a dead-end, pointless ‘happily ever after’.

There are some hilarious vignettes and a few nail-biting bits of tension. But none of it goes beyond putrefied parody or a diffused sort of adrenaline rush. And then, there are the very transparent send-ups to Hitchcock, albeit with none of the master’s flair, only to remind us of better work done elsewhere. As example, Scarface’s brutally botched ‘scarf strangulation’ of Gloria and her subsequent stabbing him in the gut with a pair of knitting needles recalls to mind Grace Kelly’s near-fatal escape with a pair of scissors from Dial M for Murder (1954). Reportedly, Higgins based Foul Play on a script entitled ‘Killing Lydia’ with Goldie Hawn always slated for the lead. Ill-received until Higgins acquired cache from Silver Streak (1976), Higgins then resurrected the project as a vehicle for Farrah Fawcett at Paramount. Alas, Fawcett could not be disentangled from her Charlie’s Angels contract. And thus, Higgins fell back on Hawn again. As for the part of Tony – Higgins had first envisioned Harrison Ford (who had actually been his carpenter) and then, Steve Martin. Neither was interested. The role of sexual deviant, Stanley Tibbets was first offered to Carol Burnett alumni, Tim Conway, who also turned it down. However, Dudley Moore, in his movie debut, created a sensation as the clumsy pervert, and, subsequently became rife for an even more enriched parody of the amiable playboy in Blake Edward’s 10 (1979).

Foul Play begins with the assassination of Catholic archbishop Thorncrest in his rectory.  We cut to a fashionable house party overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge where recent divorcée/wallflower librarian, Gloria Mundy is hit on by Tony. Gloria isn’t ready for love the second time around. So, she shoots Tony down. But she does wind up picking up Scotty on the side of the highway after his car has overheated. Slipping microfilm into a pack of cigarettes and smuggled in Gloria’s purse, Scotty vows to meet for ‘a date’ later at the movies. At first, Scotty is a ‘no show’. Gloria, unaware Scotty is being tailed by murderers, enters the darkened theater alone and is startled when a disheveled Scotty joins her shortly thereafter. Misconstruing his dying in her arms for foreplay, Gloria realizes her date has been stabbed after he bleeds into her popcorn and warns her to ‘beware of the dwarf’.  Given the high-profile location of the murder, nobody notices when Scotty’s body mysteriously disappears while Gloria seeks assistance from the theater manager. Returning to her apartment, Gloria tries to tell her elderly landlord, Mr. Hennessey of her misadventure. The next afternoon, as she prepares to close up the library, Gloria is attacked by Whitey Jackson in the stacks. She manages a daring escape and takes refuge in a singles’ bar where she almost immediately meets Stanley Tibbets who mistakes her pleas to be taken back to his apartment for…you know. Once ‘safely’ in Stanley’s apartment, Gloria hides behind the curtains, using binoculars to scan the streets below for Whitey and Turk. Meanwhile, Stanley, having misperceived Gloria’s advances, proceeds to transform his innocuous apartment into an S&M den of iniquity, stripping to the Bee Gee’s Staying Alive. When Gloria discovers Stanley’s intentions, she quietly admonishes him before hailing a cab for home.

Alas, there will be no rest tonight. For, once inside her own apartment, Gloria is brutally attacked by Scarface who, at first, attempts to strangle her, then, drops the cigarettes containing the microfilm into Gloria’s potted plant as she stabs him with her knitting needles in self-defense. The wound is merely superficial. After telephoning the police, Gloria realizes Scarface is still after her. He is fatally subdued by Whitey who vanishes without a trace, leaving an unconscious Gloria to be discovered by Lt. Tony and Inspector Fergie. Neither believe Gloria’s tale of terror. It is, after all, fairly far-fetched. Gloria is then abducted by Turk Farnum but manages again to escape her attacker, this time by spraying him with a can of mace leant to her by Stella.  Meanwhile Tony, who is attracted to Gloria, uncovers Scotty was an undercover SFPD inspector murdered while investigating contract killer, Rupert Stiltskin - alias ‘the Dwarf’ (Marc Lawrence). Realizing Gloria was not making anything up, Tony takes her to his houseboat for safe keeping and the obligatory sex scene.  Now, Tony and Fergie trace Turk’s limo to Archbishop Thorncrest, unknowing his identical twin, Charlie, has taken Thorncrest’s place. The plot thickens as the police learn the target for the assassination is Pope Pius XIII (Cyril Magnin). Rupert kidnaps Fergie in an attempt to lure Gloria into a trap. Instead, the resourceful Gloria ducks into a nearby massage parlor, momentarily to be reunited with Stanley before Whitey and Rupert abduct her yet again.

At Gloria's behest, Stella unearths information about the ‘Tax the Churches League’, a spurious organization devoted to unmasking the church as corrupt, founded by Delia Darrow and her husband. Stella reveals all to Tony who pays Thorncrest a call with Mr. Hennessy.  In the wine cellar, Tony liberates an imprisoned Fergie who informs him the Darrows hired Stiltskin to assassinate the Pope. Before anything can be done, Tony is attacked by Rupert. Mercifully, Tony manages to kill his attacker in self-defense by toppling wine shelves on top of him. However, the archbishop's fake assistant, Gerda Caswell (Rachel Roberts), actually Delia Darrow, holds Tony and Gloria at gunpoint. Detailing their contingency plan for the Pope’s murder gets Mr. Hennessy mad. He subdues Charlie and then, with the precision of Bruce Lee, manages to pummel Delia in a hilarious display of martial arts. Tony and Gloria escape and make their way to the opera house, changing vehicles several times. As the performance of The Mikado is already underway, Tony sets about to learn the whereabouts of the albino assassin. Too bad, Gloria is nabbed by Jackson first. Only this time, she too has had enough. She and Jackson struggle, allowing Tony to make his kill shot atop the stage scaffolding. Jackson and a newly murdered security guard become entangled in the stage rigging overhead, causing a pregnant pause in the performance, defused only when the Pope assumes it’s all part of his night’s entertainment and begins to applaud. The dumbfounded audience follows suit.  As Gloria and Tony now find themselves on stage, they take their bows with the principle cast of the show as Stanley sheepishly looks on from the conductor’s pit.

Foul Play is a fairly idiotic and silly entertainment. Screwball certainly has its place in the 1930’s and, in the mid-70’s, actually experienced something of a minor renaissance, thanks to movies like 1972’s Up the Sandbox and What’s Up Doc? leading the charge. Regrettably, Foul Play never rises to their level of sustained believability. However, …screwy…screwball comedies get, they need to be anchored in a sort of uber-reality, leaving the audience to believe whatever is unfolding on the screen might at least have a snowball’s chance of actually happening. Foul Play just goes for the all-out insanity of its thoroughly contrived situations. These runs amok of the special oddities ascribed its weird characters. So, it makes sense only in the insanity of this piece, Stanley Tibbett is a harmless and slightly emasculated sex freak, incapable of taking advantage of women, who later resurfaces in a kinky massage parlor just when Gloria needs an alibi to escape her attackers, and then, most implausible of all, to re-reappear yet again, conducting the San Franciscan opera house symphony during The Mikado. The aged, and barely mobile Mr. Hennessy, who stumbles about his apartment at the outset as a benevolent father-figure to the otherwise parentless Gloria, and, is set up as a book-worm scholar, suddenly transforms into the agile martial arts expert, able to diffuse a dire assault from Gerda at the archbishop’s abode. The awkward and thoroughly bumbling Tony, whose skills as an investigating officer of the law leave a great deal to be desired, inexplicably takes on the role of Gloria’s competent and cracker-shot defender during the climax. The only character who does not suddenly ‘switch sides’ or become more than she is, is Hawn’s Gloria. Awkward and ditzy at the outset, Gloria never quite gains anything more than a toe-hold of understanding as she finds herself in one unpredictable situation overlaid onto the next. This makes her character the anchor of the piece. But it is a very weak anchor indeed. And in the end, she cannot sustain the craziness otherwise violently swirling around her without the other incompetents in her midst stepping in to do the heavy lifting. Foul Play may have had its virtues back in the day. But today, it just does not rise to the occasion as anything more enlightening than ‘dumb fun’. The characters are having more fun than the audience…not good. Not good, at all!

Better news for the new-to-Blu from Paramount Home Video. Paramount has actually given us a very competent new remaster that is, mostly free of debris and age-related artifacts. Colors are bold, rich and fully saturated. There is, however, a strange anomaly in the image, occurring just after Tony meets Gloria in her apartment to investigate her claim of a murdered assailant. There is some problematic edge-enhancement and aliasing. The image also takes a sudden, if brief, down-tick in sharpness and contrast, as though this element has been derived from a second or third generation print. Not certain what is going on here. Mercifully, it doesn’t last for more than a few moments before the image snaps back with crisp and refined detail and excellent contrast for the remainder of this presentation. The 2.0 DTS audio is adequate with Charles Fox’s underscore, as well as the repurposed Mikado cues sounding magnificent. Dialogue is front and center. SFX are well integrated. This is a bare-bones effort from Paramount. So, no extras. Bottom line: Foul Play is for Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase fans only. The Blu-ray is a valiant effort from the mountain, but the movie is little more than pretty-looking pulp with zero staying power. Judge and buy accordingly.

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

2.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

3.5

EXTRAS

0