Last Embrace (1979) 12 years before he galvanized the cinema world with "Silence Of The Lambs", Jonathan Demme, was yet another young director seeking to break out of helming low budget, Roger Corman grindhouse movies.
He followed the example of Brian DePalma in using a Hitchcock homage as the surefire way to capture major attention and stand out from the directorial crowd......
"Last Embrace" has a lot going for it to start out with - it featured Roy Scheider, a newly minted major star after his lead role in "Jaws", the little seen and underappreciated Janet Margolin as his romantic interest, a wonderfully quirky supporting cast of Christopher Walken, John Glover, Charles Napier and Sam Levene and a grand symphonic score from the legendary Miklos Rosza......
And, most Hitchcockian of all, a feverish, melodramatic climax at Niagara Falls! (Hitch himself most likely passed on ever using the Falls after Henry Hathaway's 1953 "Niagara" with Marilyn Monroe and Joseph Cotton.....s )
In the lengthy filmography of Hitch imitations, Demme's homage falls somewhere in between the deliriously overheated DePalma efforts like "Sisters" and "Obsession" and the dry-as-dust academic copies like Robert Benton's 1982 "Still Of The Night" (which also featured Scheider - see our posts on "Sisters" 11/19/18, "Obsession" 7/28/17 )
Here Scheider plays Harry Hannan, a clandestine government agent newly recovered from a breakdown he suffered when his wife died in a firefight crossfire between Hannan and his assigned target. He's still damaged and living on his last nerve when some unknown assailant tries throwing him in front of commuter train. An enraged Hannan mistakenly manhandles an innocent bystander played by a young Mandy Patinkin.
Hannan's superior (Walken) little use for him, and Harry's convinced someone's out to kill him......who may or may not be his angry brother-in-law (Napier) who blames Harry for his sister's death. Adding to his woes, he finds his apartment now leased and occupied by Ellie Fabian (Margolin) a lovely graduate student who's as high strung and fearful as he is.
That's as far as we'll go with the details since the rest of film involves, as you might expect further attempts on Harry's life, the hunt for clues as to what's really going on and the growing romance between Harry and Ellie.
Director Demme, aided by Rosza's trademark expansive scoring, presses all the Hitchcock buttons in the suspenseful set pieces that all lead, as you knew they would once you look at the film's poster, to the massive cascading waters of Niagara......and it's no honeymoon for Harry......
If you're a lifelong Hitchcock fan who wouldn't miss checking out all the imitators as well (worthy or unworthy), then cook up some popcorn and and give warm hug to "Last Embrace"......a pretty good free copy is available to stream on Youtube. 3 stars (***)..
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