Richard Matheson on Screen: A History of the Filmed Works by Matthew R. Bradley

Author:Matthew R. Bradley
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2010-10-12T21:10:00+00:00

Amusingly, one of the few film adaptations of Matheson's work outside the fantasy genre was co-scripted by Shimon Wincelberg, a prolific television writer in that very genre, with Jo Eisinger and Dorothea Bennett; some sources attribute the script to Wincelberg and French screenwriter and author Albert Simonin, but the latter's name does not appear in the credits of the English-language version. Under his own byline or his frequent pseudonym of S. Bar David, Wincelberg worked on such SF series as Star Trek, The Immortal, Logan's Run, The Man from Atlantis, Planet of theApes, The Starlost, and Irwin Allen's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, also helping to develop Allen's Lost in Space and The Time Tunnel for television, and shared an Emmy Award for an episode of Law & Order. A veteran of such noir classics as Gilda (1946) and Night and the City (1950), American screenwriter Eisinger was an appropriate collaborator to adapt the novel, and had worked with Young previously on The Poppy Is Also a Flower (1966), a United Nations anti-drug TV-movie from a story by James Bond's creator, Ian Fleming.

In his book on Bronson, Michael R. Pitts notes that, like the actor's previous starring vehicle Cittd Violenta (Violent City, aka The Family, 1970), De la Part des Copains was popular in Europe and around the world but did not see a U.S. release (as Cold Sweat) until 1974 (presumably to cash in on Bronson's success that same year with Michael Winner's Death Wish). Stunt coordinator Remy Julienne, who provided the superb car sequences with his team and later worked on every Bond film from For Your Eyes Only (1981) to GoldenEye (1995), was a fellow veteran of Cittd Violenta, as were cast members Jill Ireland and Michel Constantin. Credited as "Whitey" in some sources, the latter's character is called "Vermont" in the U.S. version. According to the IMDb, his voice in U.S. prints was provided by David Hess, who had starred in Wes Craven's notorious The Last House on the Left (1972), and was then engaged in a multilingual dubbing career.

Like the Hitchcock Hour version, the film begins fairly faithfully as Joe Martin (Bronson), an American expatriate and Korean War veteran now running a fast fishing boat and sharing a somewhat strained relationship with wife Fabienne (Ullmann), receives a threatening phone call and a nocturnal visit from his "army buddy," Vermont, and then is forced to dispose of him. (The killing is effectively shot through a swinging door that gradually loses momentum and shuts, so that the audience and Fabienne only hear Vermont's neck being broken.) Joe reveals that seven years ago, as Sgt. Joe Moran, he abandoned his four companions when they killed a policeman during an escape from a German stockade; the others were sentenced to 20 years apiece. Now, aspiring Mafioso Fausto Gelardi (Pistilli), ex-Foreign Legionnaire Katanga (Jean Topart), and Capt. Ross (Mason, affecting a jawdroppingly broad Southern accent), Joe's former commanding officer turned black marketeer, are on the run after breaking out of prison along with Vermont.

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