Double Negative [Deadly Companion] ** (1980, Michael Sarrazin, Susan Clark, Anthony Perkins) – Classic Movie Review 10,179

Director George Bloomfield’s 1980 Canadian mystery film Double Negative [Deadly Companion] has its points of interest (mainly the story and cast) but ends up as a rather tepid and overexposed adaptation of Ross Macdonald’s thriller novel The Three Roads.

It stars Michael Sarrazin as a disturbed photo-journalist called Michael Taylor, who is tormented by his memory loss about the night his wife was found brutally killed and sets out to discover the solution to the unsolved case of his wife’s killer.

Anthony Perkins plays the number one murder suspect Lawrence Miles, as he was the wife’s lover, and Susan Clark plays the ambiguous femme fatale, Paula West, Taylor’s girlfriend.

There are three nice, hard-working stars and some very capable support actors, and the film is satisfyingly twisty as a plot, and pleasingly tasty and quirky. But the confused and confusing screenplay (mainly by Thomas Hedley Jr), some anonymous acting and a lack of dynamism harm it.

It is a shame, because there is a good movie trying to get out here, and every now and again we get flashes of it.

Director Bloomfield directed Second City Television [SCTV] from 1977 to 1979, and brought the cast in to the film: John Candy, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara (in her feature film debut), Dave Thomas (also film debut) and Joe Flaherty have small support roles.

Also in the cast are Howard Duff, Kate Reid, Al Waxman, Elizabeth Shepherd, Kenneth Welsh, Ken James, Lee Broker, Douglas Campbell, Maury Chaykin, John Friesen, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara and Dave Thomas.

Ross Macdonald (born Kenneth Millar) is best known for his series of hardboiled novels featuring private detective Lew Archer.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,179

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Jacques Michel André Sarrazin born May 22, 1940, died April 17, 2011, aged 70.