Mortuary Case

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

99 AND 44/100% DEAD

Directed by JOHN FRANKENHEIMER

Screenplay by ROBERT DILLON

Why quibble? Call it 100% Dead and be done with it. Indeed, the cute title, like the pop-art credits and the ironically intended voice-over narration are in effect mortuary cosmetology--attempts to give an illusion of life to a moribund turkey.

Richard Harris is a hit man brought in by Underworld Overlord Edmund O'Brien to fight his gang war for him. O'Brien's rival is Bradford Dillman; Dillman's big gun is Chuck Connors, who performs various cruelties (on Kathrine Baumann, among others) with an artificial arm. The sadism strikes the moviemakers as funny; it is not. And as further evidence of the decline of Director Frankenheimer's creative energy, the film approaches tragedy.

Unwilling to grind out a routine crime melodrama, but unable to turn it into the cynical satire he seems to have hoped he was making, he simply botched his assignment. Frankenheimer's flair for action sequences--a chase involving a school bus, a shootout in a giant, steaming laundry--can still be summoned up. But the rest of the film is heartless, tasteless and noisily desperate. It is always sad to see an overreacher turn into an underachiever, but to find the tense talent capable of The Manchurian Candidate busying himself with feckless projects like this is infuriating. When Frankenheimer's contempt for the picture is not seeping onto the screen, his weariness is. One wants to (and should) turn away from the spectacle.

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