Review: Deadfall, The Man Hunt & The Long Hot Summer

The Hollywood vaults have been raided, with three unique thrillers from as many decades getting a DVD release from Optimum at the same time.

They’re all linked by the quality players associated with them, but Fritz Lang’s Man Hunt, the Michael Caine vehicle Deadfall and Paul Newman’s blistering The Long Hot Summer, are unique in all other respects.

Inspired by the Southern USA-flavoured literary stylings of William Faulkner, 1958’s The Long Hot Summer partners King Cool with his future wife Joanne Woodward for the first time. Paul plays a mysterious stranger in town, befriending a wealthy family, with jealousy, backstabbing and general emotional turmoil ensuing.

From 1958 to 1968, and Deadfall has Michael Caine playing a master cat burglar. If that sounds like questionable casting, you’d be right, but nevertheless this Bryan Forbes-directed film is a fascinating look at a time when Hollywood had feline-thieving-fever.

After the success of Thomas Crown Affair, Deadfall took a thoughtful, psychological take on the budding genre, and though Caine takes care of business as usual, the overall tale of a crack group of thieves trying to steal diamonds from the chateau of a millionaire, doesn’t really hold up as well as it’s better known predesessors.

For those that think Fritz Lang is a filmmaker that created masterpieces of the type enjoyed only by film students and film historians, Man Hunt is as engagingly wicked as anything Hitchcock or Alun Pakula ever came up with.

With Hitler in his sites whilst vacationing in Bavaria, British hunter Thorndike is swiftly captured, tortured and left for dead. He manages to escape back to London, but with German agents in hot persuit, and with a beautiful young wonman aiding his survival, this American 1941 film doesn’t let up until the climatic finish.