NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY 1968
No Way to Treat a Lady (1968), directed by Jack Smight and adapted by John Gay from William Goldman’s (Magic 1978, and Marathon Man 1976) novel, is a darkly comic thriller that pirouettes between suspense, satire, and psychological drama. Set in a bustling, neurotic New York, the film follows the twisted exploits of Christopher Gill (Rod Steiger), a flamboyant Broadway theater director whose obsession with his late, domineering mother manifests in a string of strangulations targeting lonely, middle-aged women. Each murder is a grotesque performance: Gill dons elaborate disguises—a kindly Irish priest, a German plumber, a flamboyant hairdresser, even a police officer—slipping into his victims’ lives with theatrical ease before snuffing them out and leaving his signature, a garish red lipstick kiss painted on their foreheads. With Gill’s fixation on his mother, there’s a twisted, almost ceremonial nature of his killings.
The women who fall prey to Christopher Gill’s murderous masquerade in No Way to Treat a Lady are more than mere plot devices; they are brought to life by a remarkable ensemble of character actresses, each with a legacy of indelible performances. Martine Bartlett, who plays Alma Mulloy—the film’s first, and perhaps most haunting, victim was a consummate actress of stage and screen. Known for her chilling turn as Hattie Dorsett, the monstrous mother in the Emmy-winning miniseries Sybil, and her roles in Splendor in the Grass and I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Bartlett imbued Alma with a fragile dignity, making her demise both tragic and unforgettable.
Joining her is Barbara Baxley as Belle Poppie, a performer celebrated for her Broadway prowess and her Oscar-nominated role in Nashville. Baxley’s Belle is a blend of vulnerability and wit, a woman whose warmth is no match for Gill’s deadly charm.
One of Christopher Gill’s ruses is to pose as a flamboyant hairdresser delivering a “prize” wig to his intended victim. Gill uses various disguises to gain access to his victims’ homes, and for Belle Poppie, he arrives as “Dorian Smith,” an flaming hairdresser, carrying hat boxes filled with wigs. He claims she has won a wig in a contest after signing a coupon at the drugstore, and insists on fitting it for her personally.
Irene Dailey, another victim, was a Tony Award-winning actress with a formidable presence, remembered for her work in The Subject Was Roses and a long-running role on Another World. Doris Roberts—who would later become a household name as the sharp-tongued matriarch on Everybody Loves Raymond—plays Sylvia Poppie, infusing her brief screen time with the kind of earthy humor and pathos that became her trademark.
Ruth White, as Mrs. Himmel, was a character actress of rare depth, acclaimed for roles in To Kill a Mockingbird and Midnight Cowboy. Each of these women, in their own way, brings a lifetime of experience to their fleeting roles, elevating the film’s gallery of victims into a parade of New York archetypes: the lonely widow, the chatty neighbor, the faded beauty, the tough survivor.
Collectively, they are the “unsinkable dames” of the city—women who have weathered heartbreak, disappointment, and the daily grind, only to be undone by a killer who preys on their hope for connection. In Gill’s twisted theater, they become tragic heroines, their lives snuffed out with a flourish and a lipstick kiss.
No Way to Treat a Lady also co-stars Murray Hamilton, who seemed to be everywhere in American cinema from the late 1950s through the 1970s, turning up in standout roles from 1959’s Anatomy of a Murder to 1975’s Jaws. Whether as the bartender Al Paquette in Anatomy of a Murder, the wealthy gambler Findley in The Hustler (1961), the cuckolded Mr. Robinson in The Graduate (1967), or the famously obstinate Mayor Vaughn in Jaws, Hamilton became one of Hollywood’s most recognizable and versatile character actors of the era.
The opening scene sets the tone: Gill, disguised as Father McDowall, charms his way into the home of Alma Mulloy (Martine Bartlett), a lonely Irish widow. Their conversation is laced with gentle humor and pathos—she offers him port, he compliments her vocabulary—before the mood shifts. In a chilling, almost playful moment, he tickles her into laughter, then abruptly strangles her, whispering, “So, now, Mama, you rest in peace.” The ritual is completed with the lipstick mark, a fetishistic flourish that fuses matricidal rage with theatrical ritual.
Parallel to Gill’s spree is the story of Detective Morris Brummel (George Segal), a harried, underappreciated cop living with his own overbearing Jewish mother (Eileen Heckart). Brummel’s home life is a comic counterpoint to the film’s violence: his mother nags him relentlessly about his career, his appearance, and his failure to live up to his successful brother. “What do I get from you… but heartbreak,” she sighs, encapsulating the film’s theme of maternal suffocation. Their dynamic is both exasperating and oddly endearing, providing a wry, Jewish twist on the Oedipal anxieties that drive both hero and villain.
The cat-and-mouse game between Brummel and Gill is laced with black humor and psychological gamesmanship. Gill, intoxicated by his own cleverness and craving recognition, begins taunting Brummel with phone calls, adopting new personas with each conversation. Steiger even offers a boisterous full-throated imitation of W.C. Fields—a film role he played later.
“Yeah, well, this is Hans Schultz, at least I was Hans Schultz all day today, but a week ago last, I was Father Kevin McDowall,” he boasts, relishing his own theatricality.
Brummel, meanwhile, is both repelled and fascinated by his adversary, and their exchanges develop a strange intimacy, bordering on the homoerotic—a dance of mutual recognition between two men shaped, and warped, by their mothers.
As the investigation unfolds, Brummel finds an unlikely ally and romantic interest in Kate Palmer (Lee Remick), a sharp-witted tour guide who glimpsed Gill after one of his murders. Their budding relationship is a screwball romance set against the backdrop of murder and neurosis, with Remick’s sexually assertive Kate upending traditional gender roles and winning over Brummel’s mother with her own brand of chutzpah. The film’s humor is sly and subversive, poking fun at ethnic stereotypes, the rituals of dating, and the absurdities of police work.
Visually, No Way to Treat a Lady is as nimble and inventive as its killer. Cinematographer Jack Priestley uses the city as a stage, framing Gill’s murders as grotesque set pieces and contrasting the drabness of Brummel’s home life with the lurid theatricality of Gill’s world. The production design is rich with theatrical motifs—Gill’s apartment is adorned with a looming portrait of his mother, her painted lips echoing the marks he leaves on his victims, a constant reminder of the film’s central psychosis and fetish.
The soundtrack by Stanley Myers adds a layer of irony, with fluttering soprano voices lending an almost ecclesiastical air to scenes of violence, heightening the film’s sense of macabre play.
Rod Steiger’s performance is a tour de force of controlled mania, shifting accents and personas with glee, his eyes always glinting with a mix of self-loathing and bravado. Each victim is dispatched in a scenario that blends dark comedy and genuine menace: a German-accented plumber shares strudel and nostalgia before turning lethal; a flamboyant hairdresser flatters and then strangles; a police officer gains entry under the guise of safety, only to deliver death. Steiger’s Gill is both monstrous and pitiable, trapped in a cycle of reenacting his mother’s domination and seeking release through murder. Finally, Gill lures Kate near the end of No Way to Treat a Lady by disguising himself as a caterer and gaining access to her apartment under this false pretense, allowing him to get close enough to attempt his ultimate murder before being interrupted and forced to flee.
The film’s climax is a bravura set piece of psychological confrontation. Brummel, having lured Gill into a trap by faking a sixth murder victim, confronts him in his theater.
Morris, with the help of the police and the press, fabricates a story about a sixth victim—a woman supposedly murdered in the same manner as Gill’s previous victims, complete with the signature lipstick mark. The body is actually a suicide from the East River, but the police stage it as another “Strangler” murder and leak the story to the newspapers. Gill, reading about this sixth victim, is thrown off and confused, since he knows he didn’t commit this murder.
To investigate, Gill calls Morris, trying to suggest the murder was the work of a copycat, and in the process, Morris is able to elicit more information about Gill’s identity. The ruse successfully agitates Gill and draws him out, ultimately leading to his attempt on Kate Palmer and the final confrontation at the theater.
Surrounded by the trappings of performance and the ever-present portrait of his mother, Gill’s façade crumbles. In a final, desperate attack, he is fatally shot by Brummel, and as he dies, he imagines his victims in the audience, begging for forgiveness, a final, tragic performance in a life defined by the need for approval.
No Way to Treat a Lady is more than a murder mystery; it’s a mordant meditation on identity, performance, and the wounds inflicted by love, especially a mother’s love. Its blend of suspense, cheeky black humor, and psychological insight makes it a singular entry in the late-1960s wave of American thrillers, as much a satire of the era’s anxieties as a showcase for Steiger’s virtuosity. The film’s enduring appeal lies in its ability to make us laugh, squirm, and reflect on the masks we wear—and the ones we inherit.
MAN ON A SWING 1974
Man on a Swing (1974), directed by Frank Perry, opens with a jolt of American banality turned sinister: a young woman’s corpse, eyes wide open, is discovered slumped in the passenger seat of a Volkswagen in a shopping center parking lot. Police Chief Lee Tucker (Cliff Robertson), a man of stoic resolve and quiet empathy, is called to the scene. The case is bleak—there are no leads, no apparent motive, only the lingering sense of something profoundly wrong beneath the surface of small-town life.
The investigation, at first, is a procedural march through grief: interviews with the victim’s family, flashbacks narrated in voiceover, and the ritualistic sharing of crime scene slides over beers with a local reporter.
Tucker’s home life, with his pregnant wife Janet (Dorothy Tristan), is rendered with a vulnerability that will soon be exploited by forces he cannot comprehend. The film’s palette is washed in the muted grays and browns of 1970s realism, Adam Holender’s (The Panic in Needle Park 1971, The Seduction of Joe Tynan 1979, Sea of Love 1989) cinematography capturing both the claustrophobia of the town and the emotional isolation of its inhabitants.
Joel Grey’s iconic style is defined by his chameleon-like theatricality, elegance, and a sly, enigmatic presence, qualities that he distilled to perfection in his legendary role as the Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret. In both the 1966 Broadway production and Bob Fosse’s 1972 film adaptation, Grey’s Emcee was equal parts sinister and seductive, a gleeful provocateur whose rouged cheeks and tuxedoed form became a symbol of decadent spectacle masking societal collapse.
Beyond Cabaret, Grey’s most celebrated roles include George M. Cohan in George M! (1968), Amos Hart in the Broadway revival of Chicago (1996), the Wizard of Oz in the original cast of Wicked (2003), and Moonface Martin in Anything Goes (2011).
His career is a testament to versatility and artistry. For Cabaret, he earned both a Tony and an Oscar, making him one of the rare performers to win both for the same role.
Into this landscape of sorrow and suspicion steps Franklin Wills (Joel Grey), a local factory worker who claims to possess psychic abilities. His first contact is a phone call—unsolicited, unnervingly precise. He knows details about the murder that have never been released: the presence of a tampon beside the body. There is also a pair of the victim’s prescription glasses found in the car, another detail not released to the press.
Wills references the glasses in his initial phone call to Tucker, further establishing his supposed psychic connection to the crime scene. The specificity of the glasses (in the real-life case, it was for just one eye) is another clue that blurs the line between psychic knowledge and direct involvement.
When Wills is summoned to the station, he arrives in a crisp suit and white shoes, his demeanor a curious blend of boyish innocence and theatrical poise. Grey’s performance is a study in ambiguity—he moves like a dancer, his voice flitting from gentle to menacing, his eyes flickering with secrets. He is truly an odd figure.
The heart of the film is the cat-and-mouse dynamic between Tucker and Wills. Tucker, the embodiment of rational authority, is both fascinated and repelled by Wills, whose psychic “visions” seem to yield results the police cannot match. Is Wills truly gifted, or is he a fraud—or worse, the killer himself? The film toys with these possibilities, never quite tipping its hand. In one bravura sequence, Tucker takes Wills to retrace the victim’s final steps. Wills, dressed in immaculate white, slips into a trance, at times embodying the victim, at times the murderer, even attempting to strangle Tucker in a moment of eerie possession. The scene is shot with a telephoto lens, creating a sense of voyeuristic distance, as if we are watching a ritual unfold from the shadows.
Frank Perry’s direction is sly and unsettling, pulling the rug out from under us just as the investigation seems to settle into familiar rhythms.
Perry was a humanist filmmaker whose style was defined by a deep interest in the psychological complexity and vulnerability of his characters. Rather than focusing on technical bravura or elaborate visual flourishes, Perry prioritized the inner lives of his protagonists, often exploring themes he once described as being about humanism, with that which celebrates what is to be human: vulnerability, fallibility, fragility, His films are marked by a kind of technical brevity—camera movement, set design, and lighting are always in service of character and story, not spectacle. What I find most strikingly intimate and compelling in Perry’s work is his ability to render emotional vulnerability with such authenticity that it feels both universal and deeply personal.
His career began with the acclaimed David and Lisa (1962), a sensitive portrait of two mentally ill teenagers that earned him an Academy Award nomination. He continued to explore complex, often troubled characters in films like The Swimmer (1968), a surreal adaptation of John Cheever’s story starring Burt Lancaster, and Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970), a darkly comic look at suburban malaise that earned Carrie Snodgress an Oscar nomination. Other notable works include Play It as It Lays (1972), the disturbing Last Summer (1969), and the infamous cult classic Mommie Dearest (1981). Perry’s work is typically defined by its understated intimacy and a deliberate rejection of spectacle, making the operatic, camp-laden excess of Mommie Dearest a striking and uncharacteristic departure that has become iconic precisely for its embrace of high drama and cultural camp, with its unflinching yet questionable portrait of Joan Crawford.
Perry’s films often blend European influences, such as the pacing and metaphorical style of Italian neorealism, with incisive commentary on American social and psychological realities. Whether working in drama, satire, or psychological thriller, his movies remain compelling for their empathy and their willingness to probe the darker corners of the human experience.
Man on a Swing’s tone shifts from procedural to psycho-sexual thriller to near horror, aided by Lalo Schifrin’s score, which weaves in discordant strings and ghostly motifs that heighten the sense of the uncanny. Sound design is used to jarring effect: a scream replaced by a shrill violin, a rainstorm that drowns out dialogue, silent phone calls that rattle the nerves.
Amid the fog of psychic visions and police frustration, suspicion briefly turns to Richie Tom Keating, a young man with a history of violence, previously arrested for attempting to rape a woman at knifepoint. Richie is the kind of suspect who embodies the raw, chaotic energy of youthful psychopathy: impulsive, remorseless, and eerily detached. In his brief interrogation with Chief Tucker, Richie’s demeanor is unsettlingly blank, his answers evasive, as if he’s both present and absent from the gravity of the crime. He admits to knowing Franklin Wills, but only in passing – “we hardly ever talked”—yet the film plants the chilling suggestion that Richie might have been manipulated, even hypnotized, by Wills to act as his surrogate in violence.
This ambiguous connection between the two men, one a self-proclaimed psychic, the other a volatile delinquent, becomes a psychological hall of mirrors. Is Richie merely a convenient scapegoat, or is he the unwitting vessel for Wills’ darker compulsions? The film hints at the possibility of complicity, of a charismatic manipulator pulling the strings of a susceptible mind. In this dynamic, Wills is the puppet master, enigmatic and inscrutable, while Richie is the raw material: a young man whose capacity for harm is matched only by his lack of self-awareness.
Though only glimpsed on screen, their relationship underscores Man on a Swing’s central anxiety, the porous boundary between psychic influence and personal responsibility, between the supernatural and the all-too-human capacity for evil. We’re suspended in uncertainty, haunted by the possibility that true horror lies not in the occult, but in the ordinary faces we fail to truly see.
As the investigation deepens, the boundaries between hunter and hunted blur. Wills insinuates himself into Tucker’s domestic life, unnerving Janet with unsolicited predictions about her pregnancy and the sex of her unborn child.
Man on a Swing flirts with themes of repression and intrusion, the psychic as both a threat to the nuclear family and a projection of Tucker’s own anxieties. The town itself becomes a stage for psychological gamesmanship, with Wills’ ambiguous sexuality and working-class aspirations adding further layers to his enigma.
The climax is a slow spiral into ambiguity. Tucker, desperate for answers, orchestrates a test of Wills’ abilities before a panel of psychiatrists, hoping to force a confession. Instead, Wills deflects, pitching himself as a media sensation and offering new visions that hint at further violence. The film’s denouement is chillingly unresolved: a new murder, eerily predicted by Wills, leaves Tucker and the audience wondering if evil has simply slipped the net, or if it was ever truly within reach.
Man on a Swing is less a whodunit than a meditation on uncertainty, the porous boundary between intuition and madness, and the dangers of seeking meaning in the inexplicable. Cliff Robertson’s grounded performance anchors the film’s reality, while Joel Grey’s Franklin Wills remains a spectral presence—part oracle, part trickster, part sociopath. The film’s sly black humor glimmers in its refusal to provide easy answers, leaving viewers suspended between faith and doubt, reason and the supernatural.
In the end, Perry’s film is a hypnotic puzzle box, a neo-noir séance where every revelation only deepens the mystery. It is a story of grief, obsession, and the seductive power of the unknown—a swing, like the one Wills drifts back and forth on playfully, that never quite stops moving.
