Union City

Wonderful low key film about a husband so obsessed with having a few sips of his milk stolen that he fails to pleasure his beautiful young wife for so long that she does it herself in a wonderfully touching scene. This was the standard artists' claim against the materialism of the 50's in which this story seems to be set. It's typical film student's protest against straight society's misplaced priorities in which the starving artist appears the hero, but is imaginative enough and with the right mix of humanity, suspense, plot twists and lingerie touching to make it pleasant to watch. And the ending is satisfying.

The Dolacoids refers to the Nazi theory of racial superiority based on the shape of the skull in which the long headed or dolacoid race is destined to rule. The former Stanford professor Thorsten Veblen, more known for his "Theory of the Leisure Class" -- the groundbreaking analysis of conspicuous consumption, wrote a brilliant satire of Nazi race theory entitled The Rise and Fall of the Dolocoid Race in which he proves that Dolocoids are destined for extinction because they are so concerned with their status and conspicuous consumption that they fail to have time to perform their filial duties, and hence produce no offspring, while the roundheads seem to make that a priority.

This movie does a great job of working this theme. And I do mean that the scene in which a beautiful young woman like Blondie, is neglected for the sake of a sip of milk is tragically moving. Boy some guys really know how to screw up.

Union City was to be the vehicle (many of her fans thought) that would launch Deborah Harry, lead singer of Blondie, into screen superstardom. It didn't happen, though Harry went on to appear in numerous movies. But in Union City, she's kept in drab, dark locks until the very end, and gives a stylized, one-note performance, as though she were in a skit. No doubt that was at the prompting of writer/director Marcus Reichert, who made a rigidly stylized movie that looks almost cartoonish – though today, `like a graphic novel' might be the better phrase.

And that isn't exactly a put-down. The achievement of Union City lies in sustaining interest despite the fact that very little, really, happens. It takes place in 1953, in a tired old apartment house across the Hudson from Manhattan (with a couple of excursions to a corner saloon). Accountant Dennis Lipscomb, a master of the paranoid personality style, is obsessed with a milk thief who drinks from the bottle delivered every morning. His feckless wife (Harry) doesn't pay much attention to his irrational rages, and he in turn pays little attention to her, at least where it counts – she's carrying on with the building superintendent (Everett McGill). When Lipscomb finally catches the thief, he accidentally kills him and stows the body in a Murphy bed in a vacant apartment.

Most of Union City is a mood piece, with Lipscomb hitting the bottle to drown his guilt and Harry sticking daffodils into her underthings to vent her sexual frustration. The moods are expressed in the movie's distinctive look, with garishly saturated hues glowing through the heavy gloom – and some of that look is echoed in later movies like the Coen Brothers' Blood Simple and The Man Who Wasn't There, in David Lynch's Blue Velvet, even in Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy. But Reichert doesn't just surrender to the atmospherics; at the end, when Harry unveils her bottle-blonde tresses, like Tippi Hedren in Marnie, he delivers a twist (courtesy of Cornell Woolrich, who wrote the original story) that daringly relies on the viewer to fill in.

For some reason, the print of this movie released in Canada runs some three minutes longer than the American version. Those three minutes contain a scene in which Harry – like Arlene Dahl in Slightly Scarlet, like Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield 8 – scrawls on a mirror with lipstick. (Maybe keeping that scene intact would have given Harry the push to stardom she craved.) Union City can be counted a success (though not a popular one), paving the way for a second-phase cycle sometimes called neo-noir.

My review was written in August 1980 after a press screening in Times Square.

Writer-director Mark Reichert's indie film, "Union City", is a handsomely shot film noir, featuring rock star Deborah Harry of the group Blondie in her dramatic screen debut. Straddling the line between melodrama and camp, the pic emerges as toostudied and lifeless to break out of its underground peg into commercial environs.

Woolrich's dark and fetishistic material is both a source of strength and the undoing of "Union City". His story is similar to Poe's "The Telltale Heart" in structure and while helmer Reichert exploits its strangeness very well, he fails to flesh out the short, one-acter sketch into a full length feature.

Set in Union City, N. J., arbitrarily in March, 1953, pic concerns a paranoid businessman (Dennis Lipscomb) obsessed with catching the mysterious culprit who steals a drink out of his milk bottle that is delivered every morning. His setting a trap for the miscreant is very amusing, while his plain, vapid wife Lillian (Deborah Harry) puts up with his increasingly bizarre behavior.

Ultimately, he captures a young war vet vagrant (Sam McMurray) in the act and releases his pent-up anger and frustration by beating the man's head bloodily on the floor as the vagrant taunts him for impotency re: wife Lillian. The Hitchcockian body removal footage provides fine black humor as Lipscomb hides the corpse in a Murphy bed in the vacant apartment next door.

Meanwhile, Lillian is two-timing him with building super Larry (Everett McGill) and in the last reel bleaches her dark brown hair blonde, to finally assume some of her rock star image. When new neighbors move in next door, Lipscomb is driven to suicide due to his fear of discovery, leading to an ironic conclusion.

Film is carried by stage actor Lipscomb, always credible in his physical interpretation of the "driven little man" lead role. Harry, after appealingly playing herself in "Roadie" is virtually unrecognizable here in brown wig and plain, unflattering makeup. Painfully underdirected and robbed of her icon image as "Blondie", Harry plays most of the film awkwardly. Her best moments come in two silent, autoerotic scenes, well-backed by an "after-hours" jazz score by Blondie teammate Chris Stein and an unidentified sax soloist.

Irina Maleeva, a Fellini actress, steals Harry's thunder in a support role as a wacked-out neighbor.

While Reichert's script is lacking, his direction is mainly on-target, making the most of a low budget by limiting the action to the apartment house, the street outside, a nearby bar and Lipscomb's tiny office.

The real talent to emerge from "Union City" is cinematographer Ed Lachman. After an apprenticeship, usually as assistant cameraman, with Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders and Sven Nykvist, plus films noirs "Scalpel" and "The Last Embrace", Lachman has a major achievement. His handsome compositions, pastel lighting and precise camera movements display a talent ready for the big solo assignments.

Anyone who could give this film a bad view, ought to be shot. UC came out in '82, and it was a perfect time, for film noir, especially of this calibre to come out. And as film noir, UC, stands out alone. There's something so fresh and original here, (there's nothing else like it) with it's larger than life characters, boosted by great performance, Lipscomb, an actor you must see more of, if you haven't seen him. Like his magnetic performance in A Soldier's Story, and that '88 b grade horror, Retribution, again he just delivers a dynamic and brilliant performance, of a tenant, who instead of paying attention to his beautiful wife (Harry) who he treats like s..t, he becomes preoccupied, and determined to catch the culprit, (a pretty obvious guess) who's been, stealing his milk, only it backfires, sending him going, one cent, short of the dollar. Harry is a revelation, just proving, there are some multi talented people out there, while Everett McGill as the neighbor love interest, adds strong support. You might remember, he was the bad ass who took on Seagal near the end of Under Siege 2. The music score is great as are all the performances, the late male comer in the last fifteen is a hoot. There are some Twin Peakish moments, but I prefer this style. There is a twist too at the end, but god, how fake did blood look back in the 80's. It's like they used Pepto Bismol, and put acid in it. 90 minute "can't miss" entertainment, and again, sadly, badly criticized.

It's obviously easy enough to call "Union City" a neo-noir. Of course, this suspense thriller - directed by multimedia artist Marcus Reichert - is allowed to show things that the original film noirs weren't. This story of a man whose obsession with someone drinking out of his milk bottle leads to an unavoidable situation takes a route that one would expect in a Hitchcock movie. Low-budget but with good acting and production value, it grips you until the end (I did not see that ending coming). Dennis Lipscomb, Debbie Harry, Everett McGill and the rest all put on fine performances. It's too bad Harry didn't get more roles like this.

Worth seeing.