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.

Rod Steiger is excellent as Christopher Gill, a hammy theater manager and psychotic master of disguise. Gill stalks and kills various women all due to his love/hate relationship with his dead mother, who was a respected stage actress. He uses his talents of disguise as a plumber; a priest; and policeman to gain the confidence of his victims. He starts a cat-and-mouse game with a NYPD detective Morris Brummel(George Segal),who himself is quite the "mama's boy" still living with his mother. At every chance she tries to shame him for being a Jewish cop. Gill begins calling in tips of his crimes to Brummel, who is slowly putting together the clues to the serial killings; and on the back burner trying to figure out his feelings for his new girlfriend(Lee Remick). The Segal/Remick relationship seems no more than a silly teen-aged romance. Steiger is perfect for the role. Segal's character needs a backbone. Remick works effortlessly and is so easy to look at. In supporting roles are:Murray Hamilton and Eileen Heckart. Very interesting to say the least.

ROD STEIGER has an actor's field day assuming many different disguises when he decides to play a cat-and-mouse game with detective GEORGE SEGAL who is hot on his trail to capture a serial killer. That about sums up the plot contrivances of NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY, which has Steiger donning various make-up disguises so that he can gain entry into unsuspecting female's apartments and promptly strangle them.

The dark humor is always on the surface of this comic showcase for actor Steiger, who dons each disguise with relish and gives a performance you're not likely to forget.

EILEEN HECKART is his overbearing (ultra so) Jewish mother who has unwittingly driven her son to the brink of madness. She's so good at "overbearing" that she almost drives the audience mad too, but LEE REMICK is rather wasted in a colorless role as a dame who's been around the block a few times and likes to spout smart talk. It's not a well developed role and Remick can do little with it but look good in plenty of make-up and mascara.

For pure titillation and subject matter, this is way ahead of its time, a comic thriller that is largely forgotten and deserves some attention, if only for Rod Steiger's tour de force role, all played in tongue-in-cheek manner.

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!