****SPOILERS*** Well to do yuppie, before that word became part of the English language, couple Paul & Jennifer Montgomery,James Caan & Katharine Ross, enjoy playing games on their friends and neighbors in their upper East Side Manhattan townhouse that has given the pair a reputation as neighborhood jesters. It's when Lisa Schindler, Simone Signoret, shows up at the townhouse unexpectedly selling cosmetics that the games that both Paul and Jenny have been playing go to a much higher level.Lisa somehow gets Paul & Jenny to let her stay at their place until she, in being evicted from her apartment for being behind on her rent, finds a place to stay. Having dabbled in the occult in the past Lisa soon shows the pair what games of faith and chance really are. It's non other then the neighborhood deliver boy Norman Fields, Don Strod, who gets involved in Paul and Jenny's game of misdirection, That's when Norman is set up by the two as the "other man" in Jenny's life and ends up getting his brains blown out by an outraged Paul who caught the two in the act!Thinking that his gun was loaded with blanks Paul in just trying to show the terrified Norman, after he got two harmless shots off at him, that it's all a joke lets go with the third shot that turned out to be the real deal! A .38 slug that bores into his brain through his right eye killing him instantly! Now with a murder or at the least homicide staring them in the face both Paul& Jenny are desperate to hide Norman's body and keep the police from finding it. While all this is happening Lisa who's totally in the dark to what happened to Norman starts to get suspicious of the couple in the very strange actions they do in preventing her from going in the house in her by chance finding evidence of Norman's death!***SPOILERS*** It's later when everything seemed to be cleared up in what happened to Norman that he somehow comes back to life terrorizing Jenny while she's awake and Paul in his sleep. It's Jenny who really starts to get spooked in Norman's return from the dead that leads her to suffer from a number of paranoid episodes. They get more and more severe as Norman finally comes out of the shadows and is about to strangle Jenny. By then the poor and confused young woman loses it and in the process ends up losing her mind as well!A lot like Simone Signoret's 1955 horror flick "Diabolique" the movie "Games" has the audience guessing if what their seeing is real or imagined just like both Paul & Jenny in the movie. The shocking ending is nowhere as good as that in "Diabolique" but still packs quite a punch in how we in the audience were manipulated into not seeing it coming a lot earlier in the film.

When Curtis Harrington passed away recently, it was difficult to convey to people just who he was, and why he was an important figure (he was an acquaintance of mine). Though his features were relatively few, he and his long-time producing partner George Edwards, produced a fine body of work. Unfortunately, Harrington was not only treated shabbily when he tried to get features financed (his last feature was 1985's MATA HARI), that negligence has continued on in home video with several of his films either out of print or on poor quality releases. GAMES is only available as an oop VHS tape. GAMES probably represents the best-budgeted, most successful feature film in Harrington's career. It is full of colorful detail, flamboyant theatricality, art and artifice. Harrington had a great love for classic cinema and art/antiques and GAMES afforded him the opportunity to indulge them in this visually rich production.GAMES has often been described as a Hitchcockian thriller (a filmmaker who Harrington doubtless had studied), but it pays an even greater homage to Clouzot's DIABLOLIQUE, even going so far as to cast its heroine, Simone Signoret. Signoret turns in a masterful performance utterly in keeping with the sly gamemanship on display. It is hard to describe the twists and turns in this tricky plot, but I wouldn't want to do so anyway so as not to ruin it for those who haven't seen it. Trust Harrington, Edwards and Gene Kearney's script, even if you can guess where its going, the ride is a witty one. I'm afraid the deliberate pacing might be confuse those brought up in today's hyper action film environment with it being slow. The pace IS intentional and it adds to the intrigue. The payoffs are delicious and worth waiting for.Just because Harrington had a love for the past (even the past as of the mid-60's) doesn't mean GAMES is just a nostalgia ride, he had the good sense to cast then up-and-comers James Caan and Katharine Ross, as well as mix in Lichtenstein like pop-art along with the antiquities in the set dressing. Harrington also included cameos from a couple of his actresses from his previous films: Florence Marley (QUEEN OF BLOOD) and Luana Anders (NIGHT TIDE).The American Cinematheque held a screening of GAMES in tribute to Curtis Harrington and the print was in very good physical condition. The colors were strong and it was in widescreen. Though a bit soft and with some grain, it would make for a suitable DVD anamorphic transfer. Hint, hint Universal Studios!

"Games" has barely aged in over forty years. What looked avant-garde in the 1960s endures as quintessentially modern. The art-filled New York City brownstone house could be featured on today's HGTV. The cast is first-rate. Simone Signoret does a variation of her "Diabolique" character - a cold, calculating opportunist beneath the serene, matronly exterior. Katherine Ross couldn't be lovelier - whenever the story's logic becomes a bit shaky, you're too distracted by her exquisite beauty to notice. James Caan does a great job as a slick charmer living off his wife's money. It's all a fun-filled puzzle with lots of suspense. Attention Universal Studios: Put this film on DVD!Update: Finally got my hands on the DVD from the Universal Vault series. I enjoy this film now as much as I did back in 1967. For me it holds up well to repeated viewings. Even knowing every twist and turn of the plot, I find the urbane treachery and artful setting endlessly absorbing. "Games" probably won't be a preferred choice of younger audiences, but remains my favorite guilty pleasure.

This film is quite good, but it should be clear that it is very much derived from Les Diaboliques (1955). In fact, the makers tacitly admit as much exactly by casting Simone Signoret in this film. (Apparently, given her physical state in 1967, she could not play Nicole/Jennifer.) The alternative here to the swimming pool is very, very powerful, and one cannot help but think that Boileau (in Celle qui n'était plus) or Clouzot (in Les Diaboliques) would have thought long and hard about using it had it occurred to them.