Directed by Gordon Willis
Starring Talia Shire, Joseph Cortese and Elizabeth Ashley
Alright, kids, time for a quick detour. Unlike a lot of my boring reviews, I'll try to make it short. There are a lot of directors and screenwriters that I admire a great deal, but over the past few years I've become a HUGE fan of Joe Eszterhas. Well, everything pre-Showgirls, anyway. That flick is unsalvageable. The "erotic thriller" genre owes a huge debt to this guy, and I genuinely can't believe that there aren't more of these that pop up these days. There was that one with Will Smith and Margot Robbie that billed itself as such, but it also looked terminally boring. Why this is, nobody knows. Well, maybe a quick Google search does. But sex sells, and nobody did it better than Joe E. So three cheers to this guy. Obsessed fan confirmed.
With that verbal orgasm out of the way, allow me to introduce you to the amazing film that is Windows. Released in 1980, this was a piece of Joe E Murderotica that had everything but the world's coolest Hawaiian shirt-wearing bearded guy penning the screenplay. It might be more of a thriller than an out-and-out horror film, but the flick was designed to scare audiences. And it's my blog, so it's going in here, dammit. The film was directed by Gordon Willis, the guy behind the camerawork of some of the greatest films of all time (anyone with the Godfather films on their resume can safely lay claim to this). It had Talia Shire, fresh off the mammoth success of the first two Rocky flicks and pretty much at the peak of her popularity and hotness. So where did it go wrong? Well...it's cheesy. Like, really, really cheesy, with writing choices that would make M. Night Shyamalan blush. Sound enticing? Read up.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's Lick Ness Monster ogles the women of cinema history time. This movie stars Talia Shire...and oh man. She's such an amazing actress, and in 1980, I dare say that few women on the planet were more attractive. Not so much from a physical standpoint, but she had this amazing girl-next-door vibe. And I'll cut myself off there. In this movie, she has a role that's tailor-made for her talents. Emily Hollander is recently divorced, all-kinds-of-vulnerable, and living alone in the big frightening city of New York. She also has a stuttering problem to make her relatability quotient radiate all that much more. As such, I was almost immediately in love with her and instantly drawn in when the movie wastes no time hitting us with a right-handed wallop in the form of the creep who breaks into her apartment. Folks, you've never seen an assault movie like the one this one has, as this big dude holds a knife to her throat. But he doesn't want rape - he just wants her to moan. I swear on the church, this actually happens. There's Adrian Balboa, making orgasm noises onscreen for all to enjoy.
If you want to know what the hell the plot of this movie is, we're getting there, believe me. Of course, this incident devastates Emily. And then comes the arrival of Andrea Glassen, her helpful new neighbor who provides her with a shoulder to cry on.
I think any casual observer who has never heard of this movie knows where this is going. But the EXECUTION of this material is...well, it's something else. Andrea, played by Elizabeth Ashley like a cross between a 7-years-too-early "Fatal Attraction" villain and the stereotypical romantic comedy BFF character, is utterly obsessed with Emily. Who wouldn't be? This is Talia Shire we're talking about. It turns out that she was the one who paid the burly cab driver to break into her apartment and force her to make throes-of-passion noises, attaining a tape recorder of the incident that she repeatedly plays back for her personal enjoyment. I'll give Ashley credit for diving into this role wholeheartedly. The scenes where she listens to the tapes are comedic gold, mostly due to her insane level of overacting. When held up next to the scenes involving her character and Shire getting to know each other and becoming friends, it results in this flick being a pretty jarring experience.
It's also where things start circling the drains.
See, this is about where the police detective in charge of the case enters the fray. He's played by Joseph Cortese, he's very early '80s Italian dude, and he's the new love interest for Emily. As you can imagine, certified wackjob Andrea isn't too happy about this. Time for the script to start amping up the eyeroll-worthy stuff, including this one scene where Emily finds herself getting a cab ride from the same dude who broke into her apartment from before. This scene is followed by the cops giving her what has to be the worst advice I've ever seen law enforcement give in any movie...ever. And THIS is followed by an ending sequence that must be seen to be believed, and not in the good way.
Windows is a flick that almost nobody has seen, let alone heard of. It was a flop then, and unless you were able to buy a copy from a video store's going-out-of-business sale like I was 10 years ago, it's pretty hard to find these days in places other than YouTube. A huge money loser, this was the first and only movie that Gordon Willis ever directed, and (I believe) the last time that Shire ever got top billing for something other than the Rocky series. And the PC police circa 1980 didn't like it, but you don't come to the Lick Ness Monster blog for information about stuff like that.
It really is a shame, because unlike the vast majority of critics, I think this story actually had some promise. The two female leads are great, with Shire in particular able to get the audience on her side better than 99% of the lifeless pieces of cardboard you see in multiplexes these days. And Ashley is just an insane cartoon character as Andrea, for better or worse, but I always dig it when somebody just dives right in to a crazy villain role and just goes totally over-the-top. The bit with the staged rape and the audiotape is a creative setup. As such, it really sucks that Act II veered so completely into the laughable. So with all of that said - how about a remake, Hollywood? Give a movie that WASN'T amazing to begin with another shot! Sooner or later, this WILL happen, and it's going to be glorious.
** out of ****. The first act hooks you right in and then we get a hard right turn into hilariously bad territory. There's definitely worse ways to spend a night. Check it out if you can find it online or for cheap somewhere.
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