User Reviews

****SPOILERS*** Well to do yuppie, before that word became part of the English language, couple Paul & Jennifer Montgomery,James Caan & Katharine Ross, enjoy playing games on their friends and neighbors in their upper East Side Manhattan townhouse that has given the pair a reputation as neighborhood jesters. It's when Lisa Schindler, Simone Signoret, shows up at the townhouse unexpectedly selling cosmetics that the games that both Paul and Jenny have been playing go to a much higher level.

Lisa somehow gets Paul & Jenny to let her stay at their place until she, in being evicted from her apartment for being behind on her rent, finds a place to stay. Having dabbled in the occult in the past Lisa soon shows the pair what games of faith and chance really are. It's non other then the neighborhood deliver boy Norman Fields, Don Strod, who gets involved in Paul and Jenny's game of misdirection, That's when Norman is set up by the two as the "other man" in Jenny's life and ends up getting his brains blown out by an outraged Paul who caught the two in the act!

Thinking that his gun was loaded with blanks Paul in just trying to show the terrified Norman, after he got two harmless shots off at him, that it's all a joke lets go with the third shot that turned out to be the real deal! A .38 slug that bores into his brain through his right eye killing him instantly! Now with a murder or at the least homicide staring them in the face both Paul& Jenny are desperate to hide Norman's body and keep the police from finding it. While all this is happening Lisa who's totally in the dark to what happened to Norman starts to get suspicious of the couple in the very strange actions they do in preventing her from going in the house in her by chance finding evidence of Norman's death!

***SPOILERS*** It's later when everything seemed to be cleared up in what happened to Norman that he somehow comes back to life terrorizing Jenny while she's awake and Paul in his sleep. It's Jenny who really starts to get spooked in Norman's return from the dead that leads her to suffer from a number of paranoid episodes. They get more and more severe as Norman finally comes out of the shadows and is about to strangle Jenny. By then the poor and confused young woman loses it and in the process ends up losing her mind as well!

A lot like Simone Signoret's 1955 horror flick "Diabolique" the movie "Games" has the audience guessing if what their seeing is real or imagined just like both Paul & Jenny in the movie. The shocking ending is nowhere as good as that in "Diabolique" but still packs quite a punch in how we in the audience were manipulated into not seeing it coming a lot earlier in the film.

Paul Montgomery and his wife Jennifer (James Caan and Katharine Ross) are wealthy New Yorkers who amuse themselves by holding parties in their townhouse and playing sadistic games on their friends.

Then they meet Lisa Schindler, an older cosmetics saleswoman played by Simone Signoret. She faints as soon as she enters their home and spends the night. The woman may be psychic and definitely fits into the gameplaying nature of the couple, as she sets up some simulated situations for them to argue about, like a grocery deliveryman (Don Stroud) potentially having an affair with Jennifer, just to see how they'll react.

When the deliveryman comes back the next day, Paul threatens him with a gun after he sees the man make a pass at his wife. But it's all a joke on his part, as the gun fires blanks, until the second shot murders him and they have to hide his body. But when do the pranks stop? When they encase the man in plaster? Or when his ghost keeps walking through the house?

While the part of Lisa was originally intended for Marlene Dietrich, Simone Signoret makes sense, as the film she may be most famous for, Diabolique, has a similar tone. It's interesting that in 1967, as everyone was moving to the New Hollywood, Harrington had an eye to the glory days of the past.

Tedious thriller, in many ways a remake of Signoret's earlier DIABOLIQUE, with an ending Ray Charles could see coming a mile off. I'm surprised this movie has so many admirers. It shouldn't. It's derivative, far-fetched (the villain's scheme is ludicrous), and doesn't stand up to a moment's scrutiny.

Rule of thumb: If your scheme depends on fooling someone into thinking someone who's only *pretending* to be dead for several minutes is *really* dead, it's a bad scheme.

A lot can go wrong there. I take that back. *Everything* can go wrong there.

Rule of thumb: If your scheme depends on someone who thinks they're only going to be shot with blanks being shot with *real* bullets, and then not talking before they die (or even surviving the ordeal), it's a bad scheme.

This movie is about a very, very, very bad scheme.

Good actors, though. Hence my 4/10 rating.

A pretty bad imitation of the older film "Diabolique."

An odd ball couple, James Caan and Katharine Ross, enjoy playing all sorts of tricks with their devised electrical equipment. Suddenly, Mrs. Schindler (Simone Signoret) shows up. While she isn't exactly Mrs. Robinson, she adds much to the mystery.

When a gun which is supposed to be filled with blanks goes off, a grocery delivery boy is killed and the couple try their best to hide the murder.

What follows is basically a diabolical scheme by Caan to get his wife's money. Mrs. Schindler is a cohort of the Caan character.

The picture tries to be scary, but it fails due to a lack of interest. Of course, Schindler turns the tables on Caan at the end, but you can't wait until all this is over.

When Curtis Harrington passed away recently, it was difficult to convey to people just who he was, and why he was an important figure (he was an acquaintance of mine). Though his features were relatively few, he and his long-time producing partner George Edwards, produced a fine body of work. Unfortunately, Harrington was not only treated shabbily when he tried to get features financed (his last feature was 1985's MATA HARI), that negligence has continued on in home video with several of his films either out of print or on poor quality releases. GAMES is only available as an oop VHS tape.

GAMES probably represents the best-budgeted, most successful feature film in Harrington's career. It is full of colorful detail, flamboyant theatricality, art and artifice. Harrington had a great love for classic cinema and art/antiques and GAMES afforded him the opportunity to indulge them in this visually rich production.

GAMES has often been described as a Hitchcockian thriller (a filmmaker who Harrington doubtless had studied), but it pays an even greater homage to Clouzot's DIABLOLIQUE, even going so far as to cast its heroine, Simone Signoret. Signoret turns in a masterful performance utterly in keeping with the sly gamemanship on display. It is hard to describe the twists and turns in this tricky plot, but I wouldn't want to do so anyway so as not to ruin it for those who haven't seen it. Trust Harrington, Edwards and Gene Kearney's script, even if you can guess where its going, the ride is a witty one.

I'm afraid the deliberate pacing might be confuse those brought up in today's hyper action film environment with it being slow. The pace IS intentional and it adds to the intrigue. The payoffs are delicious and worth waiting for.

Just because Harrington had a love for the past (even the past as of the mid-60's) doesn't mean GAMES is just a nostalgia ride, he had the good sense to cast then up-and-comers James Caan and Katharine Ross, as well as mix in Lichtenstein like pop-art along with the antiquities in the set dressing. Harrington also included cameos from a couple of his actresses from his previous films: Florence Marley (QUEEN OF BLOOD) and Luana Anders (NIGHT TIDE).

The American Cinematheque held a screening of GAMES in tribute to Curtis Harrington and the print was in very good physical condition. The colors were strong and it was in widescreen. Though a bit soft and with some grain, it would make for a suitable DVD anamorphic transfer. Hint, hint Universal Studios!

Simone Signoret (looking not unlike Eddie 'Suzy' Izzard), a young James Caan, and a pre-The Graduate Katherine Ross star in this late '60s murder thriller from director Curtis Harrington; unfortunately, however impressive the cast, the film doesn't deliver much in the way of genuine intrigue or surprises thanks to Harrington's pedestrian storytelling, his script nowhere near as clever as intended. The film unfolds exactly as expected, the twists easier to predict than the outcome of Wile E. Coyote painting a tunnel on the side of a mountain.

Caan and Ross play hip, married New York couple Paul and Jennifer Montgomery, who have inherited a fancy home from Jennifer's mother, as well as a small fortune that Paul likes to invest in his art collection. The couple also enjoy throwing bizarre parties and playing games, which includes mischievous pranks. Signoret is beauty product saleswoman Lisa Schindler, who wangles her way into the Montgomery household and becomes involved in the games, one of which has fatal consequences.

Like a poor man's Les Diaboliques (which also starred Signoret), the film involves a dead person who isn't really dead and a scheme by Paul and Lisa to claim all of Jennifer's money for themselves. It's one of those ridiculously elaborate plans that could easily go disastrously wrong, but which is somehow carried out as intended despite the occasional hiccup to add tension to proceedings. Harrington delivers one final twist at the end of the film that is just as predictable as all of the others.

4.5/10, rounded up to 5 for IMDb.