William Goldman was quite the prolific screenwriter. Most famously known for The Princess Bride, he actually worked across a wide range of genres, authoring such screenplays as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Marathon Man and Misery. So I was intrigued when I noticed he wrote a novel that was adapted into 1968’s No Way to Treat a Lady.
That Goldman passed on adapted his novel into a screenplay should have been the first red flag. That he wrote the novel under a pseudonym should have been the second.
This picture is often described as a black comedy. IMDB even puts in the genres of Comedy, Crime and then Drama. Having now seen the film, I largely didn’t perceive any intended comedy, except for a painfully unfunny bit with a dwarf.
Perhaps Rod Steiger plays a serial strangler of upper-middle-aged women. Given how outrageously broad his performance is, perhaps it was meant to be humorous. Admittedly, there are some unintended laughs to be found in the endless mugging and shouting he does here. The man looks to have put on an unhealthy amount of weight, so I assume all the scenery he chews has a high caloric content.
Steiger creates a completely different persona for each murder. For the first one, he appears as an Irish priest. We don’t know the nature of his character at this point, but something appears off when he ogles a miniskirt-clad young woman who passes him on the sidewalk. A priest doing such a thing today likely wouldn’t cause most to think something is amiss, but priests were considered to be purer back then. One could say those were more innocent times, but it was simply the crimes being committed by such persons were covered up.
Anywho, additional murders have Steiger impersonating a German maintenance man, a flamboyant wig retailer, a trans prostitute and a French waiter. He goes most over-the-top as the gay wig man, pulling faces that make him look uncannily like Jonathan Winters while talking in a voice reminiscent of Paul Lynde.
So, we have a murderer who has a penchant for creating whole new personas. He also has access to a collection of costumes, wigs, facial appliances and makeup, and knows how to use these properly. Might he be in some way connected to the theatrical world? Hmm…
This being a 1960’s picture, the obvious motivation for his crimes is a fixation on a dead mother. Heck, I guess that continues to this day to be a staple of this kind of thriller. We never learn exactly what was unusual about the relationship between mother and son, but there are hints she was dominating and there may have even been improper aspects to it.
The latter is suggested by a calling card Steiger leaves at each crime scene: a cartoonish set of women’s lips drawn in lipstick on the forehead of each corpse. I suppose it is difficult to draw anything realistically using a tube of lipstick as your medium, but these lips are especially goofy looking.
Somehow, the chief detective on the case (George Segal) breaks the case by observing a similarity between the lips that are the killer’s trademark and the lips of the killer’s mother on the artwork in a theater owned by the killer. Those are some astonishing observational skills.
Segal’s detective is a long-suffering character. Most of that suffering is courtesy of Eileen Heckart as his mother. Heckart plays the stereotypical Jewish mother way to broadly, giving Steiger a run for his money for chewing the scenery. Alas, Steiger will not seek out Heckart as one of his victims.
He will, however, set his sights on Lee Remick, because she is here as Segal’s squeeze. She is dependable as always but doesn’t have much to do besides act cute and find herself captured by the villain. If like this character’s personality. She has a pretty decent sense of humor and a relaxed demeanor.
Probably the most unfortunate performance is from Michael Dunn, through no fault of his own. This dwarf actor has a brief scene where he goes to police headquarters to claim he is the strangler. It is as funny as it sounds it would be—namely, not at all.
Time for my sole random observation: Steiger’s character apparently inherited a ton of money, so he has house staff. One of them sees him working on a diorama yet fails to notify the authorities, which is the first thing you should do if you ever see a childless adult working on a diorama.
No Way to Treat a Lady is supposed to be a black comedy, but it forgot the comedy. It also isn’t much of a thriller, though that is the category I would box it in. For a while, the film seems to forget it is either of those genres, and becomes a straight-up romance. I found myself very tired of getting jerked around by No Way to Treat a Lady and feel it is no way to treat an audience.
Dir: Jack Smight
Starring: Rod Steiger, Lee Remick, George Segal
Watched on Scream Factory blu-ray