Peeper

I don't think Peeper is a very good film, but I agree that it shouldn't have completely fallen off the map the way it did. It was given a belated if limited DVD release last year.

Timing was not on this film's side. Chinatown paid tribute to film noir in classic fashion only a year before it was released; Play It Again, Sam had spoofed it successfully only a year before that. Those two films, not to mention the films of the film noir era, leave Peeper looking very slight indeed.

Still, Caine has fun as an almost bumbling detective, and Natalie brings smarts and unparalleled sex appeal to her role as a shady lady. The supporting cast is pretty nigh flawless as well, and production values couldn't be better. The script, unfortunately, doesn't add add up to much.

Director Hyams, in a special feature interview, recalls telling Natalie to turn around at the end of a long tracking shot at the end of a long day. She asked what would motivate her to do that and he answered that the camera couldn't follow her if she didn't. She paused and said, "okay, I can feel that". It's too bad that at no point in her last decade did Natalie get to make a movie where character motivation was prioritized, but it's unsurprising to hear that she was a good sport about it.

This is one of those movies that is just immensely good fun. First of all, it has an excellent cast. Caine is wonderful as the world-weary London private eye adrift in Los Angeles. Michael Constantine, as the ex-con desperate to find his daughter, has never been better. Natalie is very good as the satin-clad femme fatale. And then there's the outstanding supporting cast. In a sense, this film is a tribute to character actors. Even the unappreciated Robert Ito shows up as the sinister Japanese butler.

But even given the cast, what really shines is the W. D. Richter's script. Especially our hero's brilliant analysis of the location of a house based on the angle of the sun and the shadows it casts, followed by his discovery that: "I wasn't even close. It was in Beverly Hills."

On the other hand, your favorite bit may be the Humphrey Bogart impersonator reciting the credits at the beginning of the film to the accompaniment of a lone trumpet (at least, that's how I remember it; actually, since the other reviewer and I seem to be the only people in the world who have actually seen this film, who's to argue?) It's a sad fact that Peeper has been dumped. It doesn't even appear on most filmographies of Michael Caine. It's not available on video in any form, and I have never seen it appear on television (maybe we can persuade The Mystery Channel to show it, if the tape hasn't disintegrated by now). So if there's a patron saint of forgotten films wandering around this site, why don't you see if you can nudge 20th Century Fox into releasing it. It deserves better.

A semi-spoofish deconstruction of 1940s film noir tropes, "Peeper" has plenty of witty dialogues - and monologues - delivered by Michael Caine in his inimitable style ("President Truman said there is now a boom in U. S. economy, but although I leave my window open every night I still can't hear it"), but it is underlit to an excessive degree, and filled with too many overacted "thugs" who are impossible to tell apart (we never really learn why they are after Caine's character, either). This one might have worked better as a radio program. **1/2 out of 4.

Michael Caine is a PI in Los Angeles just after the War. Michael Constantine comes to him and asks him to find his daughter. He had put her in an orphanage in 1918. When he had come back three years later, she had been adopted by a man in a photo. Now he wants Caine to track him down in a plot which mimis and spoofs every nourish movie Humphrey Bogart was in. Along the way he encounters Natalie Wood, who may be the object of his job.

To make the point, the credits are spoken at the beginning by impressionist Guy Marks. It's based on a story by Keith Laumer, a science fiction writer whose works tended to be.... pretty much all the same in his series, and adapted by W.D. Richter, who would write and direct the Doc Savage pastiche THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI the following decade. Director Peter Hyams keeps the dialogue moving as fast as he can, but the mannered snappy prose is most of what makes this a spoof...and sounding like the audience has heard it all before.

I found this movie to be incredibly boring. The characters and dialogue were over the top in a bad way.

I did enjoy the character of Anglich. I watched, though, purely for Michael Caine, and as usual, found his acting and character to be entertaining and endearing.

He was way too good for this one.