Poison Penmanship (1972)

D. Jack Gold
Colour


Five minutes before he was James Bond, Roger Moore starred in this odd, bizarre, decidedly peculiar, yet without a doubt entertaining thriller. The set-up is thus: a man with terrible hand writing can't decipher the mysterious notes he leaves for himself in his sleep. Clearly there is a danger coming and he and his wife (Susan George) attempt to solve the mystery of the notes before stopping an awful crime.


A discerning viewer will no doubt spot a number of flaws to this plot; not least why would someone assume that indecipherable nocturnal scribbles are in anyway related to some awful event to come? I have, in my writing career, woken up more than once with words scrawled in notepads that I can’t possibly fathom. Very rarely have I contacted the police about them. (The film does make clear the ridiculousness of that particular course of action though. At the police station Detective Inspector Anton Rogers’ dialogue may be sympathetic, but his face is definitely set to sceptical.) The whole thing is ultimately explained – and I guess this is as good a spot for a SPOILER ALERT as any – because of Moore’s exposure to group therapy and hypnosis. Okay, so any group therapy session which includes Donald Pleasance, Joanna Lumley, Wilfrid Brambell, David Essex and Lulu – and is run by a pouting Lee Remick – may be a little on the unusual side, but the explanation itself is done in such a half-hearted and slack way, that even the most alert and mystery-attuned audience member will just keep scratching the top of their head in confusion.


It’s a film with all the signs of a contemporary British horror film of 1972. A remote house surrounded by creepy trees through which a wind blows, the kind of deserted road up to that house which even a Ford Anglia looks creepy driving down, the villain spinning a circle of paper to create a wagon wheel effect, that wagon wheel effect being filmed in a red light to look doubly spooky and unsettling, the female lead running frantically into the trees even though the bricks and mortar of the house are clearly safer, a lot of rain. You’ve seen it all before and you’ll see it all again here. British horror films of the age were often cut from the same cookie mould.


So far I haven’t really sold this film, but what makes it so entertaining – and some will be amazed by this – is Moore’s performance. Or, to be more specific, it’s his hair’s performance. His barnet is not as sleek or firmly coiffeured as we remember from The Saint or know later from Bond. And wild hair definitely makes Roger Moore look decidedly unhinged. In my last viewing I counted three whole emotions that Roger and his hair managed to pull off – extreme bafflement (side parting askew), rage (pushed back and spiky), and despair (drenched flat to the head by rain water). Yes, by the end his hair is back to normal and he’s smiling Roger Moore again – but before that it’s Moore’s, and his hair’s, emotional state that the audience clings to.


London looks as wet and dreary as it always does in British films in 1972, (did we export every atom of the swinging sixties along with The Rolling Stones?), but Moore adds that touch of class and Susan George – as so often – is decoratively lovely in a poorly written role. The five minute exposition scene she performs in just a see through negligee is now described in detail in the dictionary entry for ‘gratuitous’.