There’s bad, there’s inept, and there’s inexplicable. All present and accounted for in this dunderheaded refashioning of Patricia Highsmith’s STRANGERS ON A TRAIN/’51. Not that Highsmith’s debut novel, famously filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951 is necessarily untouchable. She wasn’t much sold on it. (Though it certainly ‘sold’ her!) But someone @ Warner Bros. in the dark days of Major Hollywood Studio free-fall must have figured that since they owned the rights, why not a remake? Okay, but why bother if your theatrical release is barely above a TV Movie-of-the-Week? Or was this prepped as a MotW, then bumped up to theatrical for having too much sex & violence?* The story is largely intact: Two strangers playfully plan to swap apparently motiveless murders, but only the crazy one is serious enough to go thru with it. Plus two big swaps to the storyline: Pro Golf standing in for Pro Tennis; and a gender swap that has lithe Carol Lynley in for fey Robert Walker, deleting any sub-textual gay angle from Paul Burke who has the Farley Granger role. TV series director Robert Sparr shows little aptitude for how these things work. How many POV shots can one man screw up? And a low wattage cast culled from the guest star wish list of NBC’s FAME IS THE NAME OF THE GAME takes care of the rest. Two modest successes: a famous moment from STRANGERS with Robert Walker’s ‘Bruno’ popping a little boy’s balloon with his lit cigarette (a huge surprise laugh) opens this film when Lynley walks out of the ocean and shoots a little girl’s beach ball with a spear-gun. Plus a decent turn from murder victim Philip Carey who coasts on his resemblance to Charlton Heston to good effect.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *When a scene meant to play between 11 p.m. and midnight is bright as the noonday sun, chances are good it was designed to be visible on the crap resolution of tv monitors at the time rather than in theatrical showings.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Obviously, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN.
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