RAISING CAIN (1982)

After twenty years of dissatisfaction, Brian De Palma finally saw the film he thought he’d made in a ‘fan cut’ of CAIN put together by De Palma acolyte Peet Gelderblom.  Basing his continuity on De Palma’s original script, Gelderblom retained all the footage, just rearranged to help this confusing thriller finally hit its marks.  Frankly, still a debatable point, but De Palma happy enough to swap his original cut for Gelderblom’s as new ‘official’ Director’s Cut.  Lots of problems & confusion remain (purposeful & inadvertent), but you now at least can see what De Palma was going after, riffing on Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO/’60 (no shower scene, but split personality; cross-dressing; slow sinking car, embellished with passenger; disinterest in plausibility; etc.) and trauma-inducing Dad psychologically experimenting on his own kid, from Michael Powell’s PEEPING TOM/’60.*  John Lithgow, under the silliest hair of his career, is the mixed up husband of ditzy Lolita Davidovitch.  (An actresses who’s really only good under one director . . . and De Palma not the guy.)  She starts the screwball rolling by giving Lithgow a gift meant for ex-lover Steven Bauer (whom she still carries a flame for) and vice versa.  This merely a dodge for the main action (PSYCHO again), but the misdirection falls flat since Lithgow’s constant hallucinations mean everything plays as a non-threatening dream, while Bauer (I know, I know, he’s in the John Gavin role) distracts because he’s so good, so attractive we keep wondering why he didn’t have a major career.  (Maybe, like Gavin, he became Ambassador to Mexico!)  De Palma sets up a few of his signature all-in-one camera extravagances; amusing as ever, but adding little to our involvement . . . or his.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Powell’s career never really recovered from the controversy & DOA box-office results on TOM.  (It took decades to find champions.)  Ironically, you can equally make a case that Hitchcock’s career never really recovered from the controversy and blockbuster commercial success of PSYCHO.  Discuss.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Frances Sternhagen is very good as the child psychologist taking on Lithgow, but who does De Palma think he’s fooling giving her a black (rather than grey) wig to set up Lithgow’s inevitable escape later in the pic?