Midnight Lace sure sounds like it would be one of those soft-core Skinemax movies from 80’s or 90’s. The first sign is isn’t is that it was released in 1960. Oh, and by a large American studio. And, oh yes, it stars Doris Day. So, rather the opposite of anything libidinous.
The picture is set in an almost entirely set-bound London. It opens with Day exiting the American embassy and walking straight into one of the city’s notorious pea souper fogs. A cartoonish voice calls out to her by name, which is creepy. That it sounds vaguely like the voice puppeteers normally employ for that unfathomably popular Punch puppet through the ages, and so I should take what it says as a serious threat. And those include things like “So close, I could reach out and put my hands on your coat”. It will also threaten her life.
She, in her own words, “ran all the way home”, and I like to think she did this while imagining she was one of the five little piggies, going “WEE WEE WEE!” the entire time. Husband Rex Harrison laughs off her fear, saying such fogs always bring out the practical jokers. You know, the ones who know you by name and threaten your life. Still, she will accept this explanation the next day when she spies from a cab a statue pranksters have painted pink. Her cabbie is outraged by this desecration but, given he bears an uncanny resemblance to Nick Frost, I suspect he is the one who actually did it.
She had been at the embassy to get her passport replaced, as hers had gone missing and she’ll need that for the trip to Venice she and husband Harrison have planned. Alas, it is called off at least once because of work commitments which prevent him from leaving.
In the meantime, the threats keep coming by telephone and there is no shortage of suspects. There is Roddy McDowall as her housekeeper’s greedy and menacing son. There is John Gavin, who is overseeing construction of a building immediately adjacent to the apartment building where Day and Harrison live. He just happens to already know her name when he rescues her from being crushed by a falling I-beam.
He also rescues her from the building’s elevator in a suspenseful scene when it stops abruptly. It is that kind of elevator in very old buildings, where it was put in the middle of a stairwell, the steps winding around it. It is from her vantage point she sees a man walking up the stairs and then jumping from them to the top of the car, only for it to be revealed it is Gavin. Really, I don’t know why she keeps bothering with the elevator. The first we see it was after she ran all the way home (“WEE WEE WEE!!!”) in that fog, and she waits for it instead of just taking the stairs which are right there. Besides, she kept in shape and it looks like climbing the few flights would be easy for her.
The police aren’t very sympathetic to her claims she is being harassed. Detective John Williams has her listen through headphones to a tape of various previous obscene phone callers, hoping she can make an identification. While she’s doing that, he has taken her husband aside to warn him there likely isn’t such a threat and that she is making this up for attention. How I wish she would have shouted at that moment, “These headphones aren’t noise cancelling!”. Also, Williams had warned her the contents of that tape were rather scandalous, and she does look a bit, um, warmer, afterwards. I wonder if she found any of the material inspiring.
There are also all manner of people around her in the world of the film. Some offer support and others seem to concur with the detective’s assessment. Most vacillate between those options. One of these is Myrna Loy, in a fairly pointless role as her aunt. Another is Natasha Parry, who lives across the hall and whose husband is a sailor away for so long that Day has yet to meet him.
For a thriller, this is a surprisingly dull picture. The biggest problem is I was able to guess way too early in the runtime who has been making these threats. Since nothing past that point dissuaded me from this being the most likely suspect, I simply watched as more evidence mounted that they were, indeed, the most probable culprit. For some films of this type, I may feel a satisfaction of a story well told even it was predictable. Here, I didn’t even feel that. Not even a climax with Day navigating the frame of that construction next door stirred me, and I suspect it needed the addition of a giant ape rolling barrels down girders towards her.
And Day is one of the biggest hurdles for me to enjoy this film. I find it telling this picture so desperately wants to channel a certain essence du Hitchcock, but Day in his The Man Who Knew Too Much was one of the least convincing performances in any of his major works. And she is far, far less believable here.
The Kino Lorber blu-ray on which I watched this has a commentary track I won’t be listening to, as well as the presentation of the feature in two different aspect ratios. That is noble of the presenter; however, I think the idea of somebody watching this more than once is wishful thinking.
Dir: David Miller
Starring Doris Day, Rex Harrison, John Gavin, Myrna Loy, Roddy McDowall
Watched on Kino Lorber blu-ray