Le Refroidisseur de dames

No Way to Treat a Lady (1968)

A showpiece for Rod Steiger. He's a great actor, and he takes on the role of an actor taking on a variety of roles, one by one, as a killer with a few issues to work out. The other two people have full fledged roles but they end up secondary: Lee Remick marginally overacting a ditzy but charming young woman and George Segal in what might be the performance of his life as a low key detective.

Called a comic thriller by some, it hovers undecided...it's not a goofy comedy with thriller trappings like the 1960s Pink Panther movies, and it's not a thriller with some humor giving it humanity like much of Alfred Hitchcock's. So we flipflop from some really funny, if somewhat predictable, lines between the detective and his mother (about Jewish clichés) and some really chilling murder scenes, hammy but gruesome, too.

If you can rise to the surface and enjoy all the pieces as they come together, maybe swallowing a little during the overdone last ten minutes, it's a pretty intensely enjoyable farce and psychodrama.

This has got Rod Stieger playing a psycho mom obsessed killer in the big city and George Segal plays the young cop who is taken off the case and then put back on by request of the killer. He thinks Segal understands him. In one good part the killer rings an apartment dressed as a cop and you only hear his voice because he has his back to the camera but the voice is George Segal's not Rod Stieger's. When the camera comes around to him it's Rod Stieger. It would have been more interesting if the killer could actually mimic Segal's voice and have him do it while he's talking to Segal. But it was only thrown in to add to the suspense. The movie is pretty good, well written, well acted, but dated. Which to me is not a bad thing I would give it a 7.5 only because the ending was too quick and neatly packaged.

Coming hot off the heels of his Oscar winning role in 1967's "In the Heat of the Night" Steiger gives an acting tour-de-force in this tale of a demented serial killer tormenting a police officer. Steiger pulls out all the plugs as he slips into the persona of a Catholic priest, German plumber, simpering hair stylist...and all with great flare and comic over tones. Segal and Remick provide the love interest in a rather kooky way, and it all makes for great fun, in a serial killer movie!..Gotta see it!

I turned this gem of a film on one afternoon having no idea what it was about. The opening scenes with Rod Steiger as an Irish priest calling on unsuspecting, soon-to-be victim Marline Bartlett was truly startling in its viciousness. Why have I never heard of this movie before and why has it been shelved all these years? This movie is definitely a cut above the rest in the genre of thrillers featuring serial killers. Rod Steiger is brilliant in a tour-de-force as he assumes various identities-- i.e., an Irish Priest, plumber and effeminate hair stylist--as a psycho on the loose who targets middle aged women and whose calling card is to draw a pair of lips in red lipstick on each victim's forehead. Steiger is pitted against underdog detective George Segal, who plays an overworked cop who gets no recognition for his work. Lee Remick plays the love interest who adds spice to the movie and supporting actress Eileen Heckart plays detective Segal's overbearing mother who bureates him for being a cop (and Jewish) every opportunity she gets. Heckart as the overbearing stereotypical Jewish mama is annoying, to say the least. Remick's character is a free spirit who gives museum tours and she is HIP! In fact, her dialogue suffers in part from an effort to be *too hip* and contemporary: in one scene she tells Segal, "I swinged, and I swang until I swung", in explaining a previous relationship. The most interesting victim plays a drag queen in a bar who is scorned by the other bar patrons and met with homophobic comments, but this was, after all 1968. All the acting is good, though the best scenes are those involving Steiger and his unsuspecting victims. One slight flaw is that the idea that the police department could control what the media prints and use it to manipulate the killer is a little too contrived, and the movie's ending is mediocre, doesn't satisfy and wraps it up too quickly. The scene involving Remick and Steiger is also contrived, and it's a little inconsistent with Remick's character that she would let a total stranger into her apartment, especially since she's dating a cop.

In spite of the mediocre ending, this is an excellent movie.

Rod Steiger plays a psycho who likes to strangle women to death. George Segal plays a Jewish cop after him. Lovely, young Lee Remick plays Segal's love interest. Unfortunately Steiger is interested in her too.

Very odd movie. The dialogue is crisp, sharp and handled expertly by the cast. It just sounds different--I mean this in a good way. Steiger chews the scenery again & again & again & AGAIN as the killer. Segal is just fine, but he (understandably) pales next to Steiger. Remick is astonishingly beautiful and having a whale of a time in her role. Also Eileen Heckart is a scream as Segal's very Jewish mother. The sequence between her and Remick is a definite highlight.

All in all, a strange, but enjoyable, mix of suspense, humor and romance. Not for everybody but worth a look.

Only debit--more than a few homophobic comments are thrown about as jokes. But then this was made in 1968.