Der Gnadenlose (1968)
29KDer Gnadenlose: Directed by John Guillermin. With George Peppard, Raymond Burr, Gayle Hunnicutt, Brock Peters. A down-on-his-luck New York private eye takes a bodyguard job for the death-threatened mistress of a shady millionaire and gets involved in conspiracy and murder.
“My memories of the gritty but not totally successful private eye drama u0026quot;P.J.u0026quot; are rather hazy and incomplete. As several other writers have mentioned, the movie was heavily edited for television after the movieu0026#39;s original release. Even as an impressionable kid, I wondered why P.J. (George Peppard) was badly beaten up without knowing who did it and what happened to the guy on the subway platform that threatened P.J.u0026#39;s life? The two sequences, as well as several others edited scenes, made u0026quot;P.J.u0026quot; on TV a rather bland and disjointed mess. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOn a hunch, I was able to finally see an unedited, pan-and-scan version of u0026quot;P.J.u0026quot; a few days ago. Regrettably, the movie was not as good as I remembered. This is despite good performances by Peppard and Raymond Burr, who probably relished the offer of playing a bad guy after many years as Perry Mason, as well as Gayle Hunnicutt as the femme fatale. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe musical score by Neil Hefti and the New York locations certainly set the mood. (Some of Heftiu0026#39;s interludes sounded a lot like his score from the movie u0026quot;The Odd Coupleu0026quot;. u0026quot;P.J.u0026quot; was released a few months before u0026quot;The Odd Coupleu0026quot;.)u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI donu0026#39;t consider u0026quot;P.J.u0026quot; a classic because of some misguided creative decisions by the writers and director and production choices in which scenes that were obviously filmed on the Universal back lot took me out of the story on occasion.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eHowever, I believe that movie studios are doing themselves a disservice to the public by not releasing this and other movies to the web or on DVD. There are horrible movies in the past few years that are on the web or released on DVD but a 1968 film that was not necessarily a classic and did not win any awards is shown illegally on a popular web page. To Universal, release the film on a widescreen format and let the public decide if the movie is worthy.”
