Simply A Masterpiece

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

A very stylish thriller directed by Jack Smight from a novel by William Goldman. Rod Steiger (in many many guises) is a strangler preying on elderly women and taunting NYC cop George Segal. Though clearly no mama's boy, Segal lives with his mom (Eileen Heckart, who redefines gumption with her smothering Jewish mother routine) and is smitten with Lee Remick, an enigmatic witness and potential victim. Both Steiger & Segal are perfect. Steiger's performance is staggering as he plays, at various times, an Irish priest, a fop wig salesman, a German plumber (who actually uses the word wonderbar!) and a cop. Shockingly for Steiger he does not ham it up as he would in many future roles (Napoleon, Mussolini). Shot on location with great cinematography by Jack Priestley and exceptional art direction by George Jenkins (note Remick's "mod" apartment). The large supporting cast includes David Doyle, Murray Hamilton, Doris Roberts, Barbara Baxley, Ruth White, Val Bisoglio and Michael Dunn, who claims to be the strangler despite some very obvious limitations. The very effective music score is by Stanley Myers.

A strangler is on the loose in New York City, using disguises to get into apartments of unsuspecting women. This is similar to "The Boston Strangler," released the same year. Steiger rarely passed up a chance to ham it up and here he finds a role that is perfectly suited to his flamboyant acting style. Segal is quite good as the detective engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with the serial killer. Remick is charming as a witness that Segal becomes romantically involved with. Heckart is funny as Segal's nosy Jewish mother. Dunn has a hilarious bit as a midget who tries to convince Segal that he's the elusive killer. While it is entertaining for the most part, the wrap-up is disappointing.

No Way to Treat a Lady (1968)A showpiece for Rod Steiger. He's a great actor, and he takes on the role of an actor taking on a variety of roles, one by one, as a killer with a few issues to work out. The other two people have full fledged roles but they end up secondary: Lee Remick marginally overacting a ditzy but charming young woman and George Segal in what might be the performance of his life as a low key detective.Called a comic thriller by some, it hovers undecided...it's not a goofy comedy with thriller trappings like the 1960s Pink Panther movies, and it's not a thriller with some humor giving it humanity like much of Alfred Hitchcock's. So we flipflop from some really funny, if somewhat predictable, lines between the detective and his mother (about Jewish clichés) and some really chilling murder scenes, hammy but gruesome, too.If you can rise to the surface and enjoy all the pieces as they come together, maybe swallowing a little during the overdone last ten minutes, it's a pretty intensely enjoyable farce and psychodrama.

I've seen lots of films dealing with psychos and serial killers, some excellent and others good, average or really bad. In my opinion, "No Way to Treat a Lady" is among the good ones and deserves more attention in the genre than that given to it.A "plus" of the film is that you know right from the start, or almost, who the insane murderer is and yet it keeps interest and tension all the way to the end. Rod Steiger has much to do with it in a character rich in ingredients and different focuses in which he is excellent. The "obsession with dead dominating mom" is there too and has to do with the "signature" the killer leaves behind after each death and puts him in trouble at the end.Pretty and talented Lee Remick is the main menaced damsel and George Segal plays the detective in charge of the case (yes, they get romantically involved in spite of the man's Jewish mother, a perfect -as usual- Eileen Heckart).If you enjoy thrillers this is an unpretentious one to see. Not a classic or even a great one, but a good one in the genre.