BEST SELLER: Blu-ray reissue (Orion Pictures, 1987) Allied Vaughn

Don’t expect much from John Flynn’s Best Seller (1987), an occasionally atmospheric, but badly mangled suspense/thriller, written by Larry Cohen; his other ‘gems’ from this period including Maniac Cop (1988) and Bette Davis’ bizarre swan song, Wicked Stepmother (1989: the one where she morphs from old hag into a cat and then, due to Davis’ ailing health, Barbara Carrera). Best Seller ought to have been more than it is - the tale of a semi-retired assassin, Cleve (James Woods at his most unscrupulously slick and treacherous), intent on exacting bloody revenge on his former employer, David Madlock (Paul Shenar). To achieve his goal, Cleve has concocted a particularly inane plan of action: to whet the appetite, then exploit the aptitude of a forthright cop come best-selling author, Dennis Meechum (Brian Dennehy) whom he nearly murdered back in the late 1970’s during a botched heist.  

Cohen’s script ties in the fact Dennis and Cleve have met before during this raid on the police department’s property room – inexplicably accessed through a secret passage via the men’s room at City Hall. Cleve, along with three other men, all wearing Richard Nixon masks leave a bloody trail inside this hidden bunker, murdering three of Dennis’ fellow officers and damn near killing him too. At the last possible moment, Dennis plunges a concealed knife into the gut of his would-be assassin – Cleve – who nevertheless takes a few pot shots before stumbling into the getaway van. Much later on, Dennis, whose policeman’s intuition must be sourly out of whack, finally gets a clue, tearing Cleve’s shirt open to reveal the scar from this encounter. Although having him dead to rights for the earlier crime, Dennis continues to allow Cleve to jerk his chain, Woods playing Cleve like the town bully abusing his junkyard dog. It’s all very over-the-top/under-the-radar, and frankly, insulting to the illusion ‘good cops’ do bad things when provoked beyond the point of no return.

Fast forward to the present – or rather, 1987: Meechum is still on the force, despite his formidable girth and advancing years. Ah, but here he is, plain clothes and involved in a high-security sting operation on the docks. This, predictably, turns ugly, dovetailing directly into a prolonged and not terribly prepossessing chase sequence. It seems every mystery/drama/ suspense thriller from the 80’s had one of these to recommend it. Best Seller’s hot pursuit isn’t all that ‘hot’, but a fairly inarticulate and wasted affair, staged with pedestrian theatrics by director Flynn, occasionally from an interesting overhead or low angle to elevate the overall intensity. Jay Ferguson’s tinny industrial-sounding score never goes beyond the tradition of canned excitement, just something cooked up on a synthesizer to fill the aural gap between heavy breathing and even heavier soles beating across the tarmac. 

Unexpectedly, Meechum is reunited with Cleve, whom he does not recognize at first without the mask. Cleve saves Dennis’ life by executing a drug-smuggling longshoreman (Branscombe Richmond) who nearly puts a bullet in Meechum’s back - very dramatic in a jejune sort of way – Meechum puffing like a rhino in heat while his suspect opens fire on an unsuspecting crane operator (presumably, to illustrate for the audience his gun is, in fact, loaded) before taking to some overhead mechanized rigging in a large hanger, the God spot from which he intends to do away with Meechum once and for all. Cleve’s omnipotent quality (his closest cinema counterpart, Michael Myers from the Halloween franchise, in that he seems to be everywhere all at once/all the time, knowing exactly what is about to happen and how best to effectively diffuse the situation) is more than a little unsettling – at first.

We can almost buy into this notion too, mostly because James Woods is a consummate actor; gutsy, self-involved, egotistical and full of cunning. Believing Dennehy as the rough n’ tumble, burn out of a cop/author with an axe to grind and an almost unquenchable thirst to have Cleve scraped off the pavement, takes a little more convincing, chiefly because Dennehy is always above his character’s limited pugnaciousness and seriously flawed modus operandi. He is a widower, a father, and, a frazzled wordsmith with writer’s block. His ‘relationship’ with Woods’ is a little like Foghorn Leghorn vs. the dog in all those old Warner Brothers cartoons. Dennis, perpetually itches to send Woods’ antsy and preening hitman through a plate glass window or brick wall with his bare fists all the doo-dah day. Dennis does, in fact, split Cleve’s lip wide open during a nightclub brawl. He matches him with half-cocked weaponry during a bedroom confrontation in the wee midnight hour, the moment laced with some cheap Freudian ‘show me yours and I’ll show you mine’ homoerotic subtext, even less convincing than the notion these two warring whack jobs could wind up being friends.

Best Seller is already a B-grade/C-budgeted effort. As though to prove this point we are introduced to some other nondescript characters, given next to nothing to enliven the plot. Victoria ‘Flowers in the Attic’ Tennant is Dennis’ ice queen/snow bitch editor, Roberta Gillian, her knickers in a ball over Dennis’ lack of motivation to finish another ‘best seller’ on the advance her publishing house has already afforded him. There’s George Coe as Graham, Madlock’s personal attorney with a pocket full of congenial threats that go nowhere fast.  Jeffrey Josephson is Madlock goon, Pearlman, whom Dennis makes fun of for bad hair plugs – a minor amusement. Finally, there’s Edward Blackoff as Thorn, a particularly ineffectual stooge in Madlock’s militia of gun-toting idiots. Thorn’s big moment – threatening Dennis’ sixteen-year-old daughter, Holly (Allison Balson) before having his neck snapped by Cleve, leaves Holly caught in perpetual teary-eyed cringe mode.  And then there are Cleve’s parents (Mary Carver and Charles Tyner) to consider, or rather, to forget. I am genuinely at a loss to explain director, Flynn’s retrospective on Cleve’s childhood, particularly as it intrudes upon the main plot with virtually no tie-in or payoff later. 

As far as thrillers go, Best Seller begins with a nonsensical premise. Dennis discovering it was Cleve who shot and nearly killed him during the diamond heist gone awry nearly a decade ago ought to have spelled the end for their already strained buddy/buddy alliance of convenience. After all, Dennis is the Dudley Do-right of this piece, a little frayed around the cuffs and collar, and increasing getting steamed underneath it, but otherwise, basically, a ‘good guy’ to Cleve’s cookie full of arsenic - unrepentant about killing for hire. Except now, Cleve wants retribution to rain down on the man who made his oily cock-of-the-walk possible. You know what they say about biting the hand that feeds? What it does for the cool cat tempted by curiosity too? Cleve will not come out on top. He really has no options. Instead of explaining away the reasons why an autonomous assassin would expose his identity to the cop he nearly murdered, even out of desperation to have him write a ‘tell all’ to destroy his own arch nemesis, is more than a little fishy. Okay, honestly, it stinks to high heaven. Why Dennis should follow Cleve from L.A. to New York on a whim – or rather, for proof against Cleve – and damn near miss getting blown to bits by a failed car bomb for his troubles is insane. And making a pilgrimage to Cleve’s family home, a little farm where honest-to-betsy, cornfed folk are quite unaware they have spawned the Frankenstein monster, leaves room for major head-scratching. These are moments of introspection in Larry Cohen’s script dealt with in the most clichéd inadequacies of screenwriting 101.

Worse, the central ‘vengeance is mine’ scenario just does not hold up. Cleve wants Madlock dead. So why not do the job himself? Why involve Dennis? The most his book could do is smear Madlock’s nose in the already foul stench of his reputation. But why does Cleve want this instead of Madlock’s blood spilled? Good question. Evidently, Cleve is persona non grata, an exile from Madlock’s criminal organization, now using charitable philanthropy to cloak deeper sins and ongoing political corruption, drug smuggling, etc. Larry Cohen’s screenplay is a little vague into which piles of manure Madlock has stepped into on his own. But why should any of this matter to a big shot like Madlock? He could easily have Cleve rubbed out instead of fired from his organization. Somewhere along the way, Cohen’s script gets very sloppy, to the point where it cannot justify what the story is about or where exactly its characters are within its ever-unraveling chain of events. To bolster the plot, or perhaps confuse and divert the audiences’ attentions even further, we momentarily digress to a spookily lit industrial laundry service, where one of Cleve’s complicit former paramours (Jenny Gago) now fears for her life. Good intuition on her part. For within moments of meeting this scared mountain goat, all hell breaks loose, leaving Cleve and Dennis on the defensive and this young disposable gal on her knees with a fatal knife wound to the chest. Another one bites the dust!  

Pity, none of these loose narrative threads are tied up with any degree of finality, much less competence. Madlock’s arsenal of supposedly high paid mafia-styled protection are the equivalent of the Keystone Cops, bumping into furniture and each other as they struggle to escape Cleve’s dead aim. And then there is Cleve. Who is he? Practically psychotic during the diamond heist prologue. Later, it is revealed as he slit the throat of a New York City cabbie, Foley (William Bronder) inside a photo-mat booth (the most gruesomely unexpected moment in the movie), after learning from Foley that Madlock paid him to abandon Cleve and Dennis in the backseat of a taxi with a bomb about to go off. Cleve takes Dennis to a brownstone on the lower east side merely to prove to him he has been there before and murdered its former owner, pleasantly bribing the current proprietor (Anne Pitoniak) into letting them in. He then picks a bar fight he can’t win without his gun against a Texas-styled longhorn (Michael Crabtree) over a silly young blonde, dumb as a post but bumped out in all the right places, and who ultimately winds up splayed for the obligatory thirty-second nudie shot, reading a magazine in Cleve’s bed.

But again, who is Cleve? James Woods gives us some compelling insight peppered with that usual self-assured neuroticism that infiltrates virtually all the actor’s finely wrought characterizations. Too bad Cleve is less three-dimensional than a variation on a very flatly premised mama’s boy, never quite able to crawl out from under the Midwestern angst and pall of being just a good ole boy desperate to be a tough guy. So, Cleve’s a freak, as Meechum goads, drawing out his volatile bipolarity in the movie’s climax, a balls in/guts blasted out finale at Madlock’s palatial beachfront home, playing host to some sort of underprivileged children’s house party.  Remember, Cleve is a ruthless killer. He enjoys it. But knowing Dennis has suddenly made him soft – mostly, in the head causes him to lose his edge, rescuing Holly twice, taking out Madlock’s bumblers with ease, while demanding to know their names before each kill. But then, Cleve unexpected develops a heart. It costs him his life. Does Cleve want to die? Nothing about the character indicates as much. And Madlock is hardly the kind to get his hands dirty at the point of a gun. That’s what the hired help is for – however ill-conceived for the job they may be.

It’s frankly painful to watch Woods and Dennehy go through the motions of this last act finale, so unsatisfying and contrived, both actors must have set their artistic integrity from ‘stun’ to ‘comfortably numb’ with a good bottle of scotch after cashing their paychecks. Best Seller achieves a level of mediocrity few thrillers have by misfiring at even the most basic level. Suspension of disbelief is one thing. But Best Seller strains the audience patience for even a straight forward suspense yarn. Larry Cohen ought to have steered clear of the twists and turns because all of them ultimately lead to one big ‘dead’ end. ‘Clever’ is so obviously not his thing! Ditto for director, John Flynn, whose post Best Seller career speaks for itself, badly achieved B-grade shoot ‘em ups with Stallone and Seagal and a quickie schlock horror flick.  Best Seller is about as captivating as watching pudding curdle. Nothing wrong with that if you like your tapioca runny or your smooth vanilla with more than a few chunky lumps mixed in. But honestly, there is better work out there to feed your fix for a solid two hours. This one has excised two from my life I can never get back. Regrets!

Okay, moment of truth for the folks MGM, a holding company now, and, the custodians of this old Orion Pictures 1080p transfer. ‘F’ doesn’t stand for fantastic. Best Seller was originally farmed out to Olive Media for its first Blu-ray release. Now, Allied Vaughn– a label I’ve not heard of before, has assumed the distribution honors. It’s still the same careworn print master, the best of which can be said, that it is properly framed in 1.85:1. The opening optical dissolves and montages are very unstable, with amplified grain, a loss of fine detail and wan – even faded – colors. Thereafter, colors brighten up and grain seems to fall in line - mostly. There doesn’t appear to be an untoward DNR. But black crush is everywhere and contrast in general is anemic. Fine details improve marginally, but there are a lot of ‘soft’ shots interpolated throughout. Best Seller's DTS 2.0 audio sounds competent, but unremarkable with tinny dialogue and heavy-ish sound effects.  None of this will impress. Extras? Forget about it! Bottom line: show’s over, folks. Nothing new to see here.  

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

2.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

2.5

EXTRAS

0