"STILL OF THE NIGHT"........STRICTLY STILL-LIFE HITCH HOMAGE.....

Still Of The Night (1982)   You always have us as 'Hello" when it comes to movies that take a stab at imitating Hitchcock.......

                 This one's by far the oddest......and was actually titled "Stab" at one point......

                  'Still Of The Night' turns out as a far better title than the stark, simple 'stab'.......cause this one's literally as still and inert as a painting.

                   Unlike Brian DePalma's trademark,overheated wildly hysterical Hitchcock homages, this movie, directed by Robert Benton and scripted by Benton and David Newman, remains a dry, schematic, academic exercise.

                     It's like a visual version of a graduate student's Hitchcock thesis........it glumly, methodically works its way through a checklist of traditional Hitchcock tropes, duly copied from 'Vertigo', 'Spellbound', 'Rear Window' and 'North By Northwest'.

                   It only spends 90 brief minutes spreading this stuff across its thin, barely-there plot......without ever developing an identity or life of its own. Or a pulse,for that matter. 

                  What a missed opportunity this was......since it paired two powerful leads, Roy Scheider and Meryl Streep,,,,,,,with Scheider as a soft spoken psychiatrist entranced by Streep, a mystery woman who may or may not have murdered one of his patients.

                    You can imagine what a roaring good time Brian DePalma would enjoy with this storyline.......swirling, twirling camera moves, operatic bloody killings and a rumbling imitation Bernard Herrmann music score to go with it. 

                      Benton, however, directs the film like a slide-show lecture on Hitchcock.....it unfolds as more of a power-point presentation than a movie.   (Except in a glaring omission, Benton leaves out a Herrmann-esque score.......he has Broadway composer John Kander contribute a sweet little tune that plays at the main and end titles......and has no relation to the movie at all.....)

                      We'll admit, there's some measure of fun in spotting the Hitch moments.....a clever little bit with an incriminating wristwatch, a creepy spin on the 'Spellbound' dream sequence, Scheider's unsettling scrape with danger in Central Park, and a clever enough riff on the 'North By Northwest' art auction.......but we get the distinct feeling we had more fun spotting them than Benton did filming them.  And that's a shame. 

                     One thing the film does get so right........turning Streep into a drop-dead gorgeous, icy blonde Hitchcock temptress.  Deliberately made over to resemble Eva Marie Saint's 'North By Northwest' character, she's a stunning vision to behold......we'll stand corrected if we're wrong, but we think this may be the only Streep film in which her sole function is Sex Goddess. 

                    BQ only recommends this one for film buffs who, like us, never pass up any faux-Hitch attempt.......everyone else, proceed with extreme caution...….2 stars (**).