Reviews

Degeneracy is baked in this script and filmed to reflect that. A religious con man and the rubes who throw money at him. Racist cops and townies. Outlaw bikers. The handbag swinging town bad girl who repeatedly stabs her disgusting father after he beats her and tries to rape her. Guess who wins in the end. Low-brow entertainment at its finest. It must have sold loads of tickets at the drive-ins and downtown theaters.

The divers pulling the murder victim out of the submerged car is a good twist that helps to ruin the fake suicide scheme but it's never explained how the killer could sneak it in or why Connie Hines doesn't see it in her car before sending it into the harbor. Yeah, those annoying details.

Woody's version of Pygmalion. Obsessed about the mother of his and his wife's adopted son, he personally tracks her down, instead of hiring a private investigator The stupid, twitchy intellectual discovers she is a gorgeous New York prostitute (Mira Sorvino, then 28) who dresses in tight, low-cut sweaters and hot pants even at home. He insinuates himself into her life first by pretending to be a trick and starts a quasi-relationship with her in the manner of Prof Higgins and Miss Doolittle. (They both have a lot of free time in this fantasy world.) In his mind, prostitutes are trash so he can't accept that she is the biological mother of his child with another man. He attempts to "normalize" her life and set her up with a man she can have a relationship with. The ending is ridiculous, worse than Pretty Woman, with a handsome stranger landing a helicopter in a field Sorvino is driving past.

This film is not as gringe-worthy as Allen's wish fulfillment movie "Whatever Works" with vicious HBO sociopath Larry David (Woody's evil twin). Only because Mira saved Mighty Aphrodite.

What's unique about the crime film Hard Contract is that it totally swims against the waves in so many ways including the climax which becomes this trippy-dippy-hippie all-you-need-is-love ending with no casualties, like one of those wacky, surrealistic, Brit comedies of the 1960s.

It's a hit-man film without any violence or weapons or blood and a great many pages of dialogue about the nature of violence. How many Hollywood films do this? People watch hit-man films to see murder and car chases, not to see people talk (unless they're Quentin Tarantino fans which is why QT adds those explosions of insane violence after his talk sessions).

James Coburn and Robert Culp were two of the most ultra-cool actors of that time; not rebels but showing the streak of counter-cultural and anti-hero/anti-establishment behavior that Steve McQueen had. The detached, seemingly relaxed, self-confident Coburn fit his Cunningham character,a killer and emotionless sex-machine only banging hookers, like a well-fitted suit. Lee Remick brings her own brand of cool sex- appeal--not brittle or icy but somewhere hovering near that. This might be her most physically sexual role.

As the jaded, man-eating divorcée traveling with her friend, the attractive middle-aged Lili Palmer as a forerunner of what's called a cougar today, Remick is able to just use facial expressions to make clear that Coburn has given her the first orgasm of her life. In return, her beauty and her spirit make him fall in love with her and unable to function again with prostitutes, the only women in his life before meeting her. Both of these hot yet cool women travel with two male companions, ex-Nazi and now pacifist Patrick Magee (not well-utilized here) and elderly Claude Dauphin, presumably a former gigolo now playing Palmer's non-sexual escort.

Coburn leaves a man inexplicably dead in a movie theater showing a documentary about African orphans, he pushes a suitcase out of an airplane, presumably with victim #1 or his body parts inside, and there's a long shot of victim #2 falling out a window. Coburn glowers at his victims as he watches them and it appears that he kills weaponless, with his hands.

If this film were made today by the usual suspects as either big-budget or cable-junk, Coburn would kill Meredith, Remick would turn out to be a surprise hit-woman and kill Coburn, or Hayden and Coburn would try to kill each other in a final stand-off. Sorry, no dice. There's one moment that makes you think he'll kill the entire cast by driving a stretch limo with all the characters off a cliff. The film bizarrely ends with Palmer and Meredith falling in love and riding off in a donkey cart and Remick and Coburn making passionate love on the outskirts of a gypsy camp, turning the genre completely on its head. Pacifism wins as Coburn renounces murder for dollars in favor of love and ultimate sex with a gorgeous millionairess. Happily ever after? The closing iris shot (a common editing effect in silent films), like a telescopic rifle sight, on the couples' heads is yet another ambiguous touch. Will another hit- man come for him now that he has quit?

It's never clear who Coburn is killing for. His boss Meredith seems to be working for a US spy agency, not organized crime. This is never made clear like most of the main points in the story or what the victims did to be targeted. In the late 60s and early 70s, Mafia types were often depicted as Anglo-Saxons (Point Blank for example), not the usual accented Costa Nostra types. From some of the ambiguous dialog, they seem to be connected to the CIA or some other agency.

I loved the Flint films (and liked The President's Analyst, rumored to be based on a third Derek Flint script) but when it came to many of Coburn's other films, Duffy, The Carey Treatment, Dead Heat On A Merry Go-Round, The Internecine Project, Waterhole #3, Last of the Mobile Hot Shots, Harry In Your Pocket, and other not so compelling titles, I've always had a difficult time sitting still for them. It took me years to watch Hard Contract and I had it recorded on my drive for months before I actually watched it in one sitting last week. Now that I have, I'm sorry I waited so long.

This was an unusual Mannix episode in that he gets involved between two factions of a Mafia family, one led by young rebel Lloyd Battista (from the Tony Anthony Euro westerns), the other by his repulsive uncle, old- school Hollywood mob guy Mark Lawrence who has snuck back into the States after being deported and wants his chair back. This is not the Wasp-corporate mob that was popular in late sixties TV. This is old school Italian-American Mafia. Phrases like "the family" and "the brotherhood" are used by Mannix before The Godfather popularized the terms. The heavies were cast for their ethnic looks. In a wild, rock-em, sock-em closing scene different from the usual Mannix story, a swarm of hit men on motorcycles attack the farm house where a wounded Angelo is recuperating. This also predates the use of motorcycle-riding executioners that became popular in Europe in real-life hits. In a very twist-plotted story, Mannix is saved by a beautiful hostage (Corinne Comacho). There are some very over-the-top events here. Mannix takes a case that he knows should have been reported to the police and in doing so violates his own personal code, and there's some ridiculous shooting by Lawrence that almost sinks the show at the very end.