FOUL PLAY: 4K UHD/Blu-ray (Paramount, 1978) Kino Lorber

A bumbler’s attempt, desperately reaching at Hitchcockian thrills, Colin Higgins' Foul Play (1978) aims for a high-styled thriller, but disintegrates as a mashup a la Blake Edwards’, without the actual twisted finesse or ‘wink and nudge’ that increasingly trades suspense for the kook fringe. Coming, as it did, after nearly a decade’s worth of bleakly appointed dark thrill rides at the cinema, the mirth and merriment of Foul Play was well received by audiences and critics alike. Today, its 'sex farce' elements have dated rather badly, despite a bright-eyed performance from Goldie Hawn as amiable ditz, Gloria Mundy, with Chevy Chase as her klutzy knight in shining armor - Lt. Tony Carlson. The plot, written by Higgins, quickly unravels from harrowing whodunit 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 the 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 pointlessly overwrought with juxtapositions between a magnificently staged show, and, Gloria and Tony’s various vehicular faux pas to get to the opera house before the murder can occur, exchanging multiple modes of transportation, totaling 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 preposterous denouement, 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 (a pulsating alarm and a can of mace) later effectively utilized by Gloria to subdue Turk. Burgess Meredith is in this one too as Gloria’s fatherly landlord/anthropologist, Mr. Hennessey who also keeps a pet python in his apartment. Given his second billing in this puff pastry, his stature on TV’S SNL, and, his international renown for brilliant deadpan, after only a modest intro that has him demolish an open bar with clumsy aplomb, Chevy Chase does not re-surface in Foul Play until almost 20-minutes into the plot. Even then, his Tony Carleson only intermittently reappears. Pity, the screenplay cannot decide whether his presence is for the pithy jab or straightlaced ‘love interest’. Instead, Chase attempts to toggle from one extreme to the other, portraying neither convincingly. 

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 – literally and figuratively - 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 narrowly escaping 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 of her imminent peril, Scotty 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. Exactly how the killers remove Scotty’s remains from the theater unbeknownst to anyone in the audience, especially after the houselights have been brought up, and, with spit-second precision, remains just one of the mysteries never unraveled hereafter. For Gloria knows nothing of the danger she is in beyond Scotty’s murder. 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, buried behind a potted plant in Gloria’s apartment, eventually, to be tossed into the fireplace 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 to intercept them, Whitey is also executed by Tony, resulting in 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, even if they go nowhere fast. Curiously, Higgins’ screenplay does its level best to keep the couple apart. Tony spends the bulk of his time with a disbelieving partner, Inspector ‘Fergie’ Ferguson (Brian Dennehy) while Gloria and a sympathetic, Kung-Fu-fighting Mr. Hennessey pieces together the clues 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 ‘MacGuffin’ never crystalize into a cohesive thriller – with or without the laughs, causing whatever incidental amusements are on tap to suddenly evaporate long before this movie has run off course into its pointless ‘happily ever after’.

There are some hilarious vignettes and a few nail-biting bits of tension along the way. But none go 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 panache, serving only as painful reminders 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 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 the release of 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 went back to Hawn for his inspiration. As for the part of Tony – Higgins had first envisioned Harrison Ford (who had actually been his carpenter); 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 oafish deviant, subsequently to become rife for enriched parody as the amiable playboy in Blake Edward’s 10 (1979).

Foul Play opens with the late night assassination of Catholic archbishop Thorncrest in his rectory.  We cut to a fashionable, sunlit house party overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge where recent divorcée/wallflower librarian, Gloria Mundy is hit on by Tony Carleson. Too bad, Gloria isn’t ready for love the second time around. And Tony’s pretty silly and awkward in his seduction. So, she shoots him down. But she does elect to pick up Scotty on the side of the highway after his car overheats, presumably to have taken the movie’s title track, Barry Manilow’s Ready To Take A Chance Again, to heart. Slipping microfilm into a pack of cigarettes smuggled into 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 to death after he bleeds into her popcorn, warning her to ‘beware of the dwarf’.  Given the high-profile location of the murder, nobody notices when Scotty’s body instantly vanishes 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 in the stacks by Whitey Jackson. 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 meager digs, Gloria hides behind the curtains, using binoculars to scan the streets below for Whitey and Turk. Meanwhile, Stanley proceeds to transform his innocuous pad into an S&M den of iniquity, stripping to the Bee Gee’s Staying Alive. Disgusted, Gloria admonishes Stanley 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 behind a potted plant as she stabs him in self-defense with her knitting needles.

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 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 unearth the target for the assassination is Pope Pius XIII (Cyril Magnin). Rupert kidnaps Fergie to lure Gloria into a trap. Instead, the resourceful Gloria ducks into a nearby massage parlor, momentarily 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, crushing Ruperty to death. Now, 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 cast of the show as Stanley sheepishly looks on from the conductor’s pit.

Foul Play is a very simplistic entertainment, in spots, drawn out to the point of abject tedium. Screwball certainly had its place in the 1930’s. And, as performed by skilled artisans, it excelled as a popular subgenre of the forties. In the mid-70’s, it actually experienced something of a minor renaissance, thanks to movies like 1972’s Up the Sandbox and What’s Up Doc? Regrettably, Foul Play never rises to their level of sustainable 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 in real life. Foul Play just goes for all-out insanity. Its principal players are not beloved misfits - just weird. Stanley Tibbett is a harmless and slightly emasculated sex freak, incapable of taking advantage of women. His reappearance later in the massage parlor is merely out of the structural necessity of the plot; a means to allow Gloria to momentarily escape her attackers. But his reappearance as the conductor of San Francisco’s opera company is a joyless tack-on. The aged, and barely mobile Mr. Hennessy, who stumbles about his apartment as a benevolent sage to the parentless Gloria, and, is set up as a book-worm scholar, is suddenly transformed into an agile martial arts expert, capable of brute force, despite his years. 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, cracker-shot defender during the climax. It all seems so disingenuous to the characters as introduced to us earlier in the story. The only character who does not suddenly evolve into something they are not is Hawn’s Gloria. Awkward and ditzy at the outset, Gloria never quite gains anything more than a toe-hold understanding as she finds herself in one unpredictable situation overlaid onto the next. Foul Play may have had its virtues back in the day. But today, it just does not rise above as anything more enlightening than ‘dumb fun’. The characters are having more fun than the audience…not good. Not good, at all!

Foul Play was given a rather lackluster Blu-ray release via Paramount in 2022, with wan colors, age-related debris intermittently intruding, boosted contrast, and, occasional edge enhancement to diffuse our appreciation. The new to 4K and Blu re-issue from Kino easily bests that effort by being sourced from a new scan off an original 35mm camera negative. Noticeable improvements to overall color saturation and fidelity appear from the outset, with flesh tones now subtly nuanced and natural, rather than toggling between pasty pink and ruddy orange. Overall, the palette here favors the sunny hues of Southern California. Contrast too has been brought in line. The blown-out characteristic that plagued Paramount’s effort now reveals minute detail in background information. Grain advances, as it should, and looks very indigenous to its source, though, rather disappointingly, intermittent age-related wear and tear persists and is even more noticeable in 4K. The 2.0 DTS audio here appears to be identical to the Paramount effort, which isn’t a bad thing. Charles Fox’s underscore, as well as the repurposed Mikado cues sound magnificent. Dialogue is front and center. SFX are well integrated. We get a featurette ported over from the old Blu, Remembering Colin Higgins. It’s only available on the Blu. The 4K and Blu both contain a newly recorded audio commentary by entertainment journalists, Bryan Reesman and Max Evry. It’s okay, but meandering in spots. Bottom line: Foul Play is a goofy mess. The 4K is better than its subject matter, which will likely be enough for those already owning the previous effort to double dip and buy this one again.  Judge and buy accordingly.

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

2.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

4

EXTRAS

2