Trenchcoat

Wanna be writer Mickey Raymond (Margot Kidder) heads to Malta to work on her first mystery novel. Along the way she meets smarmy cheap jewelry salesman Terry (Robert Hays). While on a tour, she picks up some postcards that have a top secret map hidden in them and becomes the target of various spies. Double and triple crosses ensue with plenty of hijinks. Notice I didn't say "hilarious hijinks" there. Despite the best efforts of the two leads, this is pretty rough stuff. Obviously I pulled it out because of Kidder's passing and she shows her charm in this. The problem is it can't carry the bad script by Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman. I legit think they went to see the Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn classic Foul Play (1978) and walked out saying, "We can do that!" This is so similar that they have the same composer, Charles Fox, and he appears to be ripping off his own Foul Play score. Director Michael Tuchner had done some great thrillers before this (Villain and Fear is the Key), but it all falls flat here. Well, at least I got to fulfill my life's dream of seeing Ronald Lacey (the melting bad guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark) in drag.

I saw this film many years ago and loved it immensely...much better than the current "Stranger than Fiction" which follows a similar theme. My question now is, "When is it coming out on DVD???" This is one film I would purchase in a flash and I'm a bit disappointed that it has not yet been released on DVD and even the VHS release has been out of print, so to speak, for many years. Time to write Disney again! The coupling of Margot Kidder and Robert Hays is brilliant and the intrigue is captivating. The tension builds when Kidder's "novel" ends up in police evidence files and is taken literally but all along the banter between hers and Hays' roles is delightful. A definite keeper!

I can't understand why this movie has such a low User Rating. I enjoyed it thoroughly the first time I saw it and have seen it again several times with no loss of pleasure. Perhaps some viewers failed to realize that this is not a serious thriller but a tongue-in-cheek romantic comedy in disguise. Taken on these terms it's a lot of fun.

Mickey Raynond (Margot Kidder) is a court stenographer who aspires to be a writer of detective fiction who travels to Malta to research her book "Malta Wants Me Dead". During Mickey's tour of Malta, she inadvertently picks up an article belonging to a shady man (Leopoldo Trieste) which starts a series of misadventures that befall her beginning with a stolen handbag before they crescendo in Maltese Inspector Stagnos (David Suchet) coming to believe Mickey may be involved in an international drug deal and her stories of pickpockets and assassins are just the workings of an author's imagination. With the help of a smooth talking jewelry salesman, Terry Leonard (Robert Hays), Mickey Raymond sets out to clear her name as she finds herself living the adventure she'd set to write about.

Trenchcoat was the project of noted TV producer Jerry Leider who'd transitioned from his long tenure in TV to feature films with the 1980 remake of The Jazz Singer. Initially setup at EMI, the project was describe as a comedic thriller under the initial title Malta Wants Me Dead. After Leider ended his association with EMI, the project went into turnaround with Leider taking the film to the Walt Disney Company who at the time were interested in working with independent producers. The project was greenlit by Disney and the $8 million international co-production began with an intended 1983 release. Margot Kidder research the lead role by reading multiple detective novels and watching various film-noirs in preparation for the part and the film was also the first credited work of screenwriters Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman who would later write another more well known noir themed comedy in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. Upon release, the movie was a box office and critical failure making only $4 million against its reported $8 million budget and critical reception wasn't much better with Siskel and Ebert disliking the movie and even putting it on their "worst of" list in their Stinkers of 83 episode of their TV show. Since it's initial release, Trenchcoat has been largely forgotten with the only legacy tied to it being Disney's formation of their Touchstone label so they could tackle more adult skewing material free of the Disney brand. Trenchcoat has a nugget of a good idea, but it's the execution that keeps things from firing on all cylinders.

I will say that Margot Kidder is certainly giving her all as Mickey Raymond and she uses that same acerbic delivery she brought to her Lois Lane character from the Superman movies to good effect here playing an innocent character wrongfully accused while trying to unravel the web she finds herself trapped in. While I like Kidder just fine in the leading role, the movie narratively and comedically lets Kidder's performance down as everyone she meets overplays their role to an obnoxious degree or is let down by the fact they are cogs in an "idiot plot" where even the usually reliable David Suchet is forced to spout some really stupid justification for not believing Mickey's story in a scene that feels like it's trying to be funny but the way the scene is delivered and edited with very standard workman like direction by Michael Tuchner makes the pacing too slow for any of the humor to have punch and the editing is surprisingly sloppy with key plot points such as Mickey Raymond picking up the object that gets her involved in the plot or her handbag being stolen either happening off camera or in a non-descript way that made me feel like I was missing key details and had to rewind to make sure I didn't miss anything.

Trenchcoat kind of plays like a rough (very rough) first draft of films like Romancing the Stone or American Dreamer that took very similar plots to Trenchcoat but played them with tighter direction and more surehanded craft to give those films some sense of urgency, style, or comic punch. You can see the bones of a potentially decent comic thriller, but the "meat" on those bones is flavorless and a chore to chew through. Kidder does what she can in the lead role, but everything else from the writing to the direction to even the bland dreary cinematography of Malta not giving Kidder anything solid to play her performance off against. Maybe if you're morbidly curious about what Disney did with adult skewing films prior to Touchstone it might be worth a one time look, but even then stuff like Dragonslayer, Watcher in the Woods, or Something Wicked This Way Comes have much more style, energy, and passion to them.

The only reason I decided to check this one out was because it’s set in Malta; the result, however, was an exceedingly feeble comedy-thriller from, of all people, the Disney stable and, needless to say, a long way behind Hitchcock.

Incidentally, this was the film which forced the studio to open a parallel label – Touchstone – so that they could make more adult-oriented fare: its few moments of violence and the appearance of a man in drag, presumably, were the offending elements in this regard! The title is the typical outfit worn by the detective hero of 1940s film noirs: here, it’s incongruously donned by the irritating would-be thriller novelist Margot Kidder(!) – while the boyish-looking Robert Hays is the typical undercover agent (whose mission is to catch a ring of plutonium-traffickers). I can’t say the script-writers/film-makers were particularly inspired by the Maltese locations – so much so that it could have been set practically anywhere else to much the same dismal effect (it’s simply not thrilling and certainly not funny)!

Most of the other characters are seen either aiding or harassing the two leads – sometimes they seem to be doing one when their intention is actually the opposite; these include clumsy assassin Leopoldo Trieste, laid-back police chief David Suchet (TV’s future Hercule Poirot!), a couple of sweet old lodgers at Kidder’s hotel, a German mystery woman, and a Sicilian stud. A notable appearance is put in by John Justin (yes, the hero of the classic Michael Powell/Alexander Korda THE THIEF OF BAGDAD [1940] in what amounted to his last feature-film role!) as the long-suffering aristocratic owner of the hotel, whose place is turned upside-down by the end of the film. By the way, I only spotted two Maltese actors of stature in bit roles – one played a guide at a museum, and the other a fishmonger who helped Kidder evade her pursuers in one scene.

For what it’s worth, the identity of the villains is ingenious (if not exactly original); in the end, though, in spite of a number of chases, the film is never as engaging (or enjoyable) as it should have been…and only manages to give a bad name to the genre it’s playing at, not to mention the people and country involved!