11. AT THE MAUL: There will be some slashin’ at the center of fashion, whether it’s prices, throats or big winter coats.
Directed by Frank Perry—who was in the middle of a bizarrely eclectic run that gave us everything from the existential backyard pool-hopping bummer The Swimmer and Diary of a Mad Housewife to the post-modern acid-western Rancho Deluxe and Mommie Dearest—this is a movie that sits squarely on the line between high-concept psychic paranoia and beige, fluorescent-lit police procedural realism.
The film is loosely based on the 1971 non-fiction book The Girl on the Volkswagen Floor by journalist William Arthur Clark. The book detailed the unsolved murder of 23-year-old Ohio schoolteacher Barbara Ann Butler, whose strangled body was discovered crumpled up in her own car after a routine trip to a discount department store.
Enter Bill Bosheers (going by Franklin Wills in the film, played by Joel Grey), a factory worker and self-proclaimed clairvoyant who stepped into the Kettering, Ohio police station claiming he had visions of the murder. The real Bosheers knew freakishly granular, unreleased details—like that the victim wore a prescription contact lens in only one eye—which turned the local cops from skeptical eye-rollers into hyperventilating, paranoid wrecks wondering whether their friendly neighborhood psychic was actually the guy holding the garrote.
Fresh off winning an Academy Award for playing the creepy, grinning emcee in Cabaret, Joel Grey took his freshly minted Oscar clout and decided the logical next step was playing a small-town factory worker who sits on a playground swing set, groans like a clogged disposal and throws himself violently against plaster walls while channeling murder victims. Grey is doing a lot here. Without the aid of special effects or makeup, he manages to force blood into his face until he turns a deep, alarming shade of crimson before passing out on the floor and drooling on camera. It’s a performance that makes you wonder what kind of alternate universe we’d be living in if Grey had spent the ’70s starring as unhinged horror villains instead of returning to Broadway.
Opposite him is Cliff Robertson as Police Detective Lee Tucker. Robertson plays the role with such a somnambulistic, ultra-low-energy vibe that you half-expect someone to hold a mirror under his nose during close-ups to check for breath. Tucker spends the entire film as a raging, functional alcoholic, though the script stubbornly refuses to ever bring it up, all while trying to figure out if Franklin Wills is a channel for the dead or just a complete psychopath playing a slow-motion mind game.
In the opening act of the movie, young victim Maggie Dawson (Dianne Hull) goes shopping on a sunny day and never returns, leading to her body being discovered inside her car. The exterior and parking lot sequences were filmed at the Connecticut Post Center, an open-air mall at the time. Today, it has Target and Macy’s anchors, plus escape rooms, a 14-screen Cinemark and a kung fu massage business.
Instead of explosive car chases, Perry shoots long, agonizingly mundane stretches of real-life police work in Milford, Connecticut. You get to watch cops sit in dreary rooms, chase dead-end leads, get creeped out by mysterious phone calls and wait around for a guy in a cardigan to have another trance.
Man on a Swing isn’t a tight, neatly wrapped whodunit. If you come in expecting a cozy Agatha Christie ending where everyone gathers in the parlor to hear the killer unmasked, you’ll be furious by the time the end credits roll. It leaves you hanging out in the cold, staring at an open case file that refuses to close.
