Curtis Harrington

(On Cable TV, July 2021) I had a momentarily double take in looking at Games’ TV log entry — talking about a 1967ish film featuring “A young couple who are into kinky mind games,” screams Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to me, but as a viewing attests, there’s a gulf of difference between the two movies: Games is a pure genre thriller, occasionally silly and ultimately quite glum. It does feature a couple into mind games (first shown as party tricks) but slowly sinks into a tangled web of deception and murder. Simone Signoret is the film’s most remarkable asset as a mysterious older woman who turns the tables on the couple, even if said couple is played by none other than Katharine Ross and a surprisingly young James Caan. For noted iconoclast director Curtis Harrington, Games is about as close to mainstream stuff as he did — there’s a pleasant lunacy to the overlapping plots that come to dominate the film, but it’s executed in relatively straightforward fashion for a twisty thriller. The colourful cinematography is very much of tis time, and now gives an interesting period patina to the result. You can slot Games squarely in the “solid movie” category — not a masterpiece nor particularly memorable, but well-made and entertaining enough to make up an evening’s entertainment.