11 Harrowhouse (1974)
Normally, we would've given this lifeless, dead-on-arrival heist thriller Zero stars. It was taken from one of those slightly best-selling time wasters whose paperback edition you'd buy at the airport newsstand to make a two hour flight less boring.
Completely botched in every way as a movie, it did feature newly-minted movie star Charles Grodin coming off his stellar success in 1972's "The Heartbreak Kid".
An absolute master of monotone, deadpan comedic timing, Grodin could already see how this potentially crowd pleasing, supposedly clever diamond theft caper had flown off the rails.
Barely directed, with no sense of style, flair or energy by editor turned director Aram Avakian, the movie just laid there like a corpse, filled with inert silent sequences devoid of even minimal dialogue.
In a last ditch, Hail Mary attempt to resuscitate the film, Grodin wrote a dryly witty voice-over narration for his character, serving as a non-stop tongue-in-cheek commentary on everything happening......through the entirety of the running time.
You could say, to be kind, that he was ahead of his time, because his narration not only fills in all those deadening silent sequences, it also resembles an actor's 'just kidding around' DVD commentary track.
On the unkind side, we could look at it as Grodin mocking and deconstructing his own movie....very similar to the chatty robots who take apart cheesy sci-fi and horror films on 'Mystery Science Theater 3000'.
Not that he did himself and the movie any favors......no one could figure out if was a thriller or a comedy and the film tanked badly. Grodin's rep as a shiny new movie star dimmed down and he struggled to find work in the next few years.
The movie itself? A huge meh. Miscast as a suave diamond dealer Grodin teams up with hubba-hubba, adrenalin-fueled girl toy (Candice Bergen) to rob a stuffy British diamond clearing house by literally vacuuming up the gems with a hose. But first they sneak through the place's wiring and alarm systems using a cockroach, in case you're wondering why the bug's featured so prominently on the poster.
A lengthy, exhausting climactic chase involving cars, trucks and horses drags on and on, peppered with Grodin's offscreen snarking.
Well, at least he did what he could with his own gift for understated jokery to make the film bearable to sit though......and for that, we're willing to bump '11 Harrowhouse' up to 1 star (*).
Still doesn't mean it's worth a watch, though. Which it isn't, even for Grodin and Bergen fans......
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