Wed 6 Apr 2022
A PI Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: P.J. (1968).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews1 Comment
P.J. Universal, 1968. George Peppard, Raymond Burr, Gayle Hunnicutt, Brock Peters, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Jason Evers, Coleen Gray,Susan Saint James, Severn Darden, George Furth, Herb Edelman, John Qualen, Bert Freed, and Arte Johnson. Written by Philip Reisman and Edward Montagne. Directed by John Guillermin.
Universal raised tastelessness to a high art in a B-movie I dearly love called P.J., with George Peppard surprisingly believable as a not-too-bright PI up against Raymond Burr as a nasty gazillionaire who hires him to protect his mistress (Gayle Hunnicutt) who’s been getting anonymous threats — or has she? The threats are understandable since Burr’s family (including Colleen Gray, Susan St James and George Furth, doing a Paul Lynde impression. Remember Paul Lynde?) don’t like the way Burr flaunts his girlfriend around.
In fact, there isn’t much to like about him in this film; it’s one of his nastiest parts in a film career full of brutes, wife-killers and gorilla suits, leading Peppard to quip, “That’s what I like about you; you’re all arm-pit,” which is about the level of wit here.
In fact, tackiness is the major charm of a film that loves to wallow in its own disrepute. PJ starts off in a seedy motel room and moves on to a run-down gym where worn-out pugs fight for a job. When it moves to the haunts of the very rich, we get garishly decorated apartments, sterile offices, and a nightclub where bikini-clad dancers swish their butts around in a giant martini. Real class.
Later on, a studio jungle in a back-lot Caribbean island elevates the cheapness to something like epic scale, followed by a return to New York for some more engagingly crude violence, including a guy getting dragged to his death in a subway tunnel and a fight in a gay bar where our hero gets mauled.
But like I say, these things are the backbone of a movie that returns the Private Eye to Chandler’s Mean Streets, updated to the 1960s and slashed with Technicolor, but meaner than ever, with an added layer of corporate greed that seems relevant today but may be merely timeless. Peppard stalks through it all like a once-promising leading man resigned to doing B-pictures, with added zing provided by John Guillermin’s punchy direction (he did Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure) and a script that tries for wit but settles for sarcasm.
A few other points before I leave this charmer: I reviewed this movie about thirty years ago for DAPA-EM and at that time I reviewed it in the past tense because it didn’t exist anymore; when PJ was released to television (which was mainly where you saw old movies back then) they cut out all the sex and violence, toned down the unsavory elements and turned a crude movie into an insipid one. For decades, this was the only print available, but thanks to the internet and cheap DVD technology, the film has risen again, with all the ugly charm of a monster in an old movie.
Secondly, I should caution prospective viewers that this film takes a very retro view of gays. The movies openly recognized homosexuals in the late 1960s, but they were almost invariably portrayed unsympathetically and even demeaningly. Like everything else in the movie, PJ turns this up a notch, with Severn Darden in a performance he should be heartily ashamed of as a lisping, mincing, quivering sissy. Add to this an extended fight in a gay bar that looks like one of the lesser circles of Hell, and you can see how gays — or those who believe they should be treated like human beings — could get quite offended here.
Finally, a word about Raymond Burr’s performance. In my youth I watched films like this in search of a role model. Well, Raymond Burr in this movie looks so eerily like a vice-president from earlier in this century that I wonder if someone else saw the film back in ’68 and fixated on him.
The character enjoys nastiness for its own sake, relishing the humiliation and even torture he can inflict on others. He even goes to one of those clubs where birds with clipped wings are released on cue for “hunters” to blast away at. The similarities are positively unsettling, and I begin to wonder if the film was simply unavailable for so many years, or actually repressed by a previous administration.
April 6th, 2022 at 9:31 pm
Dan,
Pretty much how I felt about it.
It almost felt as if Burr was telling the world he wanted PERRY MASON behind him. He’s a monster in this one almost a throwback to some of his film noir monsters in films like HIS KIND OF WOMAN and RAW DEAL. Note too that white hair throwback to REAR WINDOW.
It’s pure pulp, updated, but still pulp. Maybe it’s more PRIVATE DETECTIVE than BLACK MASK or DIME DETECTIVE, but that pulp feel permeates it. I said earlier it and A LOVELY WAY TO DIE feel a lot like the kind of generic private eye you got in books by Frank Kane, Henry Kane, Carter Brown, and Michael Brett.
There are several of these in the general era struggling to reimagine the private detective. This, A LOVELY WAY TO DIE, TONY ROME, LADY IN CEMENT, SHAMUS, to some extent SHAFT, even the Armand Assante I, THE JURY much later has the same cheap tawdry feel as if Chandler’s tarnished knight needed a bath too.
The cheapness and tawdriness here and in A LOVELY WAY TO DIE is almost a statement. Neither film has any real claim to being film noir, but they do feel like throwbacks to some of the B films of the early Thirties like PRIVATE DETECTIVE 62, MUSS ‘EM UP BARNES, and especially Tay Garnett’s TRADE WINDS with their tough slick and none too nice eyes who wouldn’t be bad company for Ralph Meeker’s Mike Hammer.
It’s almost as if the slick television eyes of the late Fifties and early Sixties had lost their glamorous addresses on the Strip or in Hawaii and been forced to move into a strip mall and work divorce cases.
Considering the era maybe we need a new designation for these, Hippie Noir in that they are struggling to find a place for the classic eye of the earlier era in a world that no longer fit them, they are almost a genre of their own.
I love this film, tawdry, shop worn, and jaded as it is.
There is no getting around the gay bashing angle, not unusual in the genre in books or films but pretty open here. I suppose the best that could be said about it that it beats the none too subtle hint hint wink wink of the past. It at least acknowledges gay people exist.