No Way to Treat a Lady (1968)

 

No Way to Treat a Lady (1968)

 

In the first scene a Catholic Priest with a rich Brogue, Fr. McDowell (Rod Steiger), strolls through Manhattan with a spring in his step and being friendly to all. His destination is the apartment of widowed Mrs. Mulloy (Martine Bartlett), as he’s just been assigned to the Parish and is introducing himself to all the parishioners. His dismayed to hear of Mulloy lapsed in her Faith, but remains buoyant as he tries to bring her back into the fold. He more-than-a-bit flirtatious as they share a port; he starts to tickle her; he positions himself behind the seated woman …

 

And Strangles her to Death.

 

You see, the was no Fr. McDowell and Mrs. Mulloy was the first victim of a Serial Killer who would dominate, in this fiction, NYC headlines much the same way the Real-World “Son of Sam” would just decade-later.

 

 

This is a surprising film it makes a more-believable-than-average stab at exploring the Impenetrable Evil; yes; the Freudian stuff and critic of “Mom-ish” (meaning excessive attachment to or domination by one's mother, coined in 1942 by SF Writer and legendary Social Diatribist Philip Wylie) are already familiar since “Pyscho” (1960), but the exposition of petty Vices that feed into Monstrous Evils is on display has rare richness, as is the way it’s starkly contrasted with how non-Monsters deal with similar conflicts.

 

It’s not a Realist work, it keeps the Contrivance of the Killer being a Master Criminal (which Real-World Serial Killers are generally the opposite of) so it can keep the fun of Cat-and-Mouse aspect of both his Hunting Humans and the Police Hunting him, but it has a Realist feel with its loving demonstrations of the Mundanities encircling the Remarkable, and exceptionally fine Set-Design (Art Director George Jenkins) and Location Shooting in NYC (Cinematographer Jack Priestly). The film leans on the idea that the Attention-Hungry Killer would reach-out to his Detective Adversary, something in the Real-World had to deal with since Jack the Ripper (1888) but didn’t become a cliché in cinema until after Real-World David Berkowitz, AKA the Son of Sam (1977). The Suspense is mixed with both Sweet-Natured and Dark Comedy yet never reducing itself to Camp, something that I think had never pulled of before. There are no Sexually Exploitive scenes despite the Crimes themselves being clearly Sexually Motivated; the Victims are not naked young women in showers, but late-Middle Aged-to-Elderly women in their living rooms, and this proves to be closely tied to the root of the Killer’s Compulsions and his pride in talking his way into the Victim’s front doors. Like most Serial Killer movies, it stresses the Stalking over the Killing, but shows no Influence of Director Mario Bava like virtually all others do.

 

It was highly praised in its day with special attention paid to the Comedic elements, Villain Rod Stieger’s tour-de-force Performance and that of Geoge Segal, who won a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor. Segal would note, "It's Steiger's film. He runs around doing all sorts of different roles and I just stop by and watch him... It's a big, comfortable Hollywood production and I have banker's hours."

 

Steiger was Screen-Chewing in the best possible way, he and Director Smight came up with signals to make sure Steiger would go far, but not too far, “My only directing problem with Rod was trying to induce him to minimize his acting moments. It wasn’t that he ‘ate’ the scenery at times, but that he ‘chewed’ it. I approached him so often in this regard that at one point he shouted: ‘All right, already!’ We came to what we both thought was a good accommodation. After rehearsing a scene, he would look at me, and if I felt he had ‘chewed’ enough scenery, I would discreetly squeeze my thumb and forefinger t0gether. He would nod, and then play the scene with infinite taste. “

 

These elements were so good that few Critics addressed how the film self-destructed in its last quarter-hour (I’ll get to that).

 

The Villain, Christopher Gill (Stieger), comes from a Theatre Family and prides himself on his Performances, which the Killings are to him. The Victims are stand-ins for his dead mother and the Skills she taught him he now uses against her Surrogates. He researchers his Victims as carefully as the Characters he invents execute his Kills. He’s a Master at Disguising his voice and appearance (he appears as an Irish Priest, a Jewish Policeman, a German Plumber, a Flamboyantly Gay Hairdresser, a weeping woman, and a Restaurateur with a Southern Drawl, and throws in a few more voices as well). While he’s on the phone with Detective Morris Brummel (Segal) he’s Taunting, Preening, prone to Tantrums, and bizarrely seeking Approval. Though he doesn’t live alone, his only sense of Human Connection come from the Fantasies that he indulges in during the Cruelties he commits.

 

Meanwhile, Morris is a compassionate, over-worked Cop, displaying great intelligence in an understated way and is seriously under-appreciated. His Boss, Lieutenant Dawson (David Doyle), belittles him and takes him of the case, and even Christopher tells him, “Remember, I’m smarter than you.” Non-offensive Ethnic Stereotypes abound in this film (they are, in fact, Killer Christopher’s stock-and-trade) and much is made of Morris’ Jewishness. Seen as a Schlub but he’s really a Mensch. He’s unmarried, living with his Hen-Pecking mom (Eileen Heckart) and though his difficult relationship with his mother is used to great Comic effect, but also darker contrasts with the more twisted (and never shown) relationship between Christopher had with his dead mother.

 

Segal was, at the time, both a Big Star and an unappreciated talent, all his most notable work up-to-then were in pretty grim Dramas (“King Rat,” “Ship of Fools” (both 1965) and “Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf” (1969)) but his greatest gifts were Comedic and until this film they were untapped within cinema.

 

Morris finds a new Love in Kate Plamer (Lee Remick) a Witness to the first Murder who proves useless to the Investigation but his drawn to Morris because he seems more down-to-Earth than the “Beautiful People” of her circle of Swingers; she so sick of them that Morris never meets any of them, but she gets to meet Morris’ mom. She a Shiksa, so a hard-sell to and Jewish mom but importantly, though it’s never stated, she’s clearly an Actress (another parallel with the Killer is created). She lives comfortably, is free during the day, dresses far above her apparent Economic Means, and prepares to meet Morris’ mother the way an Actress prepares for a Role. One of her best lines is, in response to a compliment about her looks, “Getting dolled up is easy; looking natural takes time.” Kate’s wins over Morris’ mom by figuring out how to mimic her; this is one of the film’s funniest scenes but also underlines that in our lives, most things are façade, and Innocent Kate is as guilty of that same Sin that empowers Monstrous Christopher.

 

This is based on the novel to the same name by Novelist/Scriptwriter William Golding (1964, and I haven’t read it). He was inspired by Real-World Albert DeSalvo AKA the “Boston Strangler,” or at least some theories about him that eventually were proven wrong. (One of Actor Tony Curtis’ finest roles was as DeSalvo in the film “The Boston Strangler” (also) and there was an early effort to cast he, not Segal, as Character Morris, but Director Jack Smight overruled that). Golding chose not to do this screen play because he believed a Novelist shouldn’t adapt his own works. It’s a common enough belief, Donald Westlake embraced it after his was disappointed with his adaptation of his novel “Cops and Robbers” to the screen (novel 1972, film 1973, and I personally thought the movie was good), but it was also a rule Golding would break later in his Career.

 

The Screenwriter would eventually become Jon Gay and reportedly the film strays far from the novel, but that seems to be less of Gay’s or Director Jack Smight’s doing, but Actor Stieger’s. He was approached to play Morris, but demanded Christopher instead (his statement was, “I would kill to play this part!”), and with that came an expansion of the Character which meant the deletion of others. 

 

What Gay really provided was a respect for all the Performers, even though probably no one but Stieger was cast at the time. Virtually everyone we see, even is the smaller parts, get a chance to shine. Each of the Victims have fully developed personalities even though they inevitably only get one scene. Their richness enriches Stieger’s work as Character Gill toys with them, this echo’s Anton Chekov’s insistence that there are no minor characters and is something notable in other of Golding’s novels which I have read.

 

As engaging as this all was, Smight showed little interest in cultivating Suspense, he focused on the Comedy. The first murder was shocking because it was so unexpected, and a bit more Savagery was needed to bring pull off the scene’s tonal shift. Real Menace is only achieved later, because when the Victims open their doors, we know what they’re going to get.

 

What Smight did bring to the table was a stand-back-and-let-them-loose attitude towards the performances that Director John Cassavetes would’ve been proud of, and a Naturalistic approach to the environment and the grind of Police Work both of which distinguished most that era’s best Crime Thrillers.

 

Smight described Steiger’s funniest scene, when Christopher is disguised as:

 

“A gay hairdresser intent on killing another woman. He had faked his entrance into the woman’s apartment by telling her that she had on a new wig. In the middle of the scene, the woman’s partner comes home and spoils his time alone with her. A huge argument erupts with the partner shooing Steiger from the apartment.”

 

The exchange in the script read:

 

Woman: “Get out you Homo!”

Chrisopher: “And the same to you I’m sure!”

 

Smight again, “That night Rod and I had dinner at Joe Allen’s restaurant on 46th Street. Our waiter was a terrific gay guy. He had overheard us talking about the problem of coming up with a good line for his exit. He supplied it to us in spades.

 

“The next morning when we were shooting the scene and we got to the exit, Rod and I looked at each other with joy. We hadn’t told anyone what his parting shot was going to be. I went to the sound man and said: ‘Stay with Rod at the door on his exit.’

 

“He did, and when Rod got his cue from the furious partner: “Get out you Homo!” He turned to her, smiled in very female way, and said: “It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person!”

 

“The crew cracked up so loudly that the take was spoiled and we had to do it two more times.

 

“It turned out to be the biggest laugh in the picture. Rod and 1 will forever be in debt to that Waiter.”

 

But Oy Vey, that ending was ill-conceived. Detective Morris is face-to-face with Killer Christopher and has obvious grounds for Arrest, but doesn’t cuff him. This adds more than 10-min to running time in which Morris makes himself vulnerable with a couple of extraordinary SPTs (“Stupid People Tricks” and Serial Killer films tend to be loaded with them), the film denigrates into pomposity, and the chopping editing makes the sequence of events ridiculous, even impossible. The awkwardness seems to have been contrived so that Character Chistopher could die on the center of a big stage during a Soliloquy, and no one could figure out a better way to get him there. Producer Sol Siegel was reportedly unhappy with the ending, but was overruled by Steiger and Smight. Hw often does that happen?

 

But at the time, and even with more contemporary reviews, one finds few complaints:

 

Critic Wanda Hale, Steiger was "tour-de-force performance" and liked the blending of humor and the macabre.

 

Ernest Betts compared it to the works of Alfred Hitchcock, praised, and summarized, "The film has a macabre humor which just takes the edge off the horror and is sometimes hilarious," a statement which generally would be a criticism but here was praise.

 

Will Jones stated the film, “is built from the outset as a gallop for Steiger, what with seven separate roles for him to play ... It’s a grisly notion, but it creates for Steiger an acting opportunity to join the ranks of such brilliantly funny put-on experts as Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers, and Vittorio Gassman.”

 

Vincent Canby, praised Stieger’s “bold effrontery” and also wrote "Beneath all the outrageous make-up, hairpieces, disguises and belly laughs in No Way to Treat a Lady, there is a curious and ironic comment about the land of stifling mother love.” (Later in the same review he, almost alone among critics, complained about the resolution.)

 

In 1987 it was adapted into a Musical Comedy for the love-stage. First time out it bombed, but when it was improbably Revived in 1996, it was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award.

 

Trailer:

 

No Way to Treat a Lady (1968) ♦RARE♦ Theatrical Trailer - YouTube