Almost a decade passed by before Paul Newman reprised his role as Private Detective Lew Harper in this sequel to the original, titled appropriately and simply enough, "Harper". He didn't get beat up as much in this one although he did take his lumps throughout the story. Married to Joanne Woodward at the time, she appeared as the harried wife of a philandering businessman with a few secrets on the side of her own. One of them was Harper, but that doesn't affect the story much, other than her hiring him to shut down a blackmail attempt. Having seen "Harper" just a few days ago, I recall he was charging a hundred bucks a day for expenses in addition to his investigative fee; here he's up to a hundred fifty a day nine years later, so it appears he accounted for inflation. That sum surprised New Orleans Police Chief Broussard (Anthony Franciosa) until Harper explained he only worked four days a year, a slight exaggeration I'm sure, but Harper was a wise guy when the mood struck him, which was a lot.
With multiple characters, most of them up to no good, Harper sets about his original mission and quickly gets involved in murder and assorted intrigue before that defining scene that came to describe the movie's title. The drowning pool was actually a hydrotherapy room in which Harper, straightjacketed by a conniving oil man, tries to save himself and Mavis Kilbourne (Gail Strickland) by flooding the room in order to float up to an escape hatch in the ceiling. The whole plan would have backfired if one of Jay Hue Kilbourne's (Murray Hamilton) henchmen (Andy Robinson) hadn't sprung a wall panel adjoining that room. The resulting flood resembled the parting of the Red Sea in "The Ten Commandments", however on a much smaller scale. Still impressive though.
Not all turned out well for the story's resolution, as Iris Deveraux (Woodward) winds up murdered, just like her mother Olivia (Coral Browne) early in the story. Still, it was a successful payday for Harper, as he took his eight hundred dollar expense fee out of a ten-thousand-dollar envelope oil man Kilbourne paid to rig worker Jim Reavis (Andy Robinson), another victim silenced for what he knew. The bigger surprise though was the confession made by Schuyler Deveraux (Melanie Griffith) in the murder of her mother and grandmother. Well, maybe not - her father turned out to be Police Chief Broussard!
With multiple characters, most of them up to no good, Harper sets about his original mission and quickly gets involved in murder and assorted intrigue before that defining scene that came to describe the movie's title. The drowning pool was actually a hydrotherapy room in which Harper, straightjacketed by a conniving oil man, tries to save himself and Mavis Kilbourne (Gail Strickland) by flooding the room in order to float up to an escape hatch in the ceiling. The whole plan would have backfired if one of Jay Hue Kilbourne's (Murray Hamilton) henchmen (Andy Robinson) hadn't sprung a wall panel adjoining that room. The resulting flood resembled the parting of the Red Sea in "The Ten Commandments", however on a much smaller scale. Still impressive though.
Not all turned out well for the story's resolution, as Iris Deveraux (Woodward) winds up murdered, just like her mother Olivia (Coral Browne) early in the story. Still, it was a successful payday for Harper, as he took his eight hundred dollar expense fee out of a ten-thousand-dollar envelope oil man Kilbourne paid to rig worker Jim Reavis (Andy Robinson), another victim silenced for what he knew. The bigger surprise though was the confession made by Schuyler Deveraux (Melanie Griffith) in the murder of her mother and grandmother. Well, maybe not - her father turned out to be Police Chief Broussard!