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Peeper
Despite the presence of Michael Caine and Natalie Wood in the leading roles, 1975's Peeper, a send up of 1940's film noir, turned out to be one hour and twenty seven minutes of my life I'll never get back.
The setting is 1947 LA where we meet a British private investigator ( or “peeper" as their known across the pond) named Leslie Tucker who has been hired by a mysterious strange to finds his long lost daughter, an investigation that leads Tucker to an eccentric Beverly Hills family that includes sisters, one of which is suspected to be the girl Tucker is looking for.
The film gets off to a terrific start with the opening credits. We are treated to trench-coated figure emerging from the shadows, who lights a cigarette, and then the figure, doing an uncanny Humphrey Bogart voice, speaks the opening credits, just like the closing credits of The Magnificent Ambersons. My dreams quickly turned to dross as the opening credits turned out to be the best thing in the movie.
There were issues, with this central character, Leslie Tucker. Screenwriter WD Richter, working from a novel by Keith Waumer, seems to want to give this character a fish out of water quality that had a lot to do with the character being British, which didn't really seem important to the character or the story, or was this done because Michael Caine was playing the role. It was made worse by giving Caine one of those classic film noir narrations to guide us through the movie that Caine either didn't understand or was just uncomfortable with. Honestly, his entire performance was one-note and he just seemed embarrassed to be involved in this debacle.
Natalie Wood doesn't fare much better, looking equally embarrassed to be involved. Sadly, Wood did a lot of films of this quality as her career began to wind down, reminding us of how Hollywood spit out this lovely actress near the end, who made her film debut a few weeks before her 5th birthday. It goes without saying that Wood did look breathtaking, which should be of no surprise. Six years after the release of this film, Wood suffered her mysterious, watery death in Catalina.
Some interesting actors do pop here though, like the amazing Thayer David, Timothy Carey, Michael Constantine, Robert Ito, Margo Winkler. The intentions here were on the money, but frankly I found myself fighting turning this one off before it was over.
Despite the presence of Michael Caine and Natalie Wood in the leading roles, 1975's Peeper, a send up of 1940's film noir, turned out to be one hour and twenty seven minutes of my life I'll never get back.
The setting is 1947 LA where we meet a British private investigator ( or “peeper" as their known across the pond) named Leslie Tucker who has been hired by a mysterious strange to finds his long lost daughter, an investigation that leads Tucker to an eccentric Beverly Hills family that includes sisters, one of which is suspected to be the girl Tucker is looking for.
The film gets off to a terrific start with the opening credits. We are treated to trench-coated figure emerging from the shadows, who lights a cigarette, and then the figure, doing an uncanny Humphrey Bogart voice, speaks the opening credits, just like the closing credits of The Magnificent Ambersons. My dreams quickly turned to dross as the opening credits turned out to be the best thing in the movie.
There were issues, with this central character, Leslie Tucker. Screenwriter WD Richter, working from a novel by Keith Waumer, seems to want to give this character a fish out of water quality that had a lot to do with the character being British, which didn't really seem important to the character or the story, or was this done because Michael Caine was playing the role. It was made worse by giving Caine one of those classic film noir narrations to guide us through the movie that Caine either didn't understand or was just uncomfortable with. Honestly, his entire performance was one-note and he just seemed embarrassed to be involved in this debacle.
Natalie Wood doesn't fare much better, looking equally embarrassed to be involved. Sadly, Wood did a lot of films of this quality as her career began to wind down, reminding us of how Hollywood spit out this lovely actress near the end, who made her film debut a few weeks before her 5th birthday. It goes without saying that Wood did look breathtaking, which should be of no surprise. Six years after the release of this film, Wood suffered her mysterious, watery death in Catalina.
Some interesting actors do pop here though, like the amazing Thayer David, Timothy Carey, Michael Constantine, Robert Ito, Margo Winkler. The intentions here were on the money, but frankly I found myself fighting turning this one off before it was over.