While he never failed to receive an abundance of acclaim and adoration during his lifetime, Alfred Hitchcock was undeniably more appreciated after his passing, particularly in terms of the sheer number of younger filmmakers that cited him as an influence, and would direct films that were explicitly inspired by his work. This is perfect logical and understandable, since no one made films quite like the Master of Suspense, so it’s only natural for imitators and those were considered him their reason to enter into the industry would replicate his style, to a mostly reasonable degree. Robert Benton was one of these filmmakers, as made very clear by Still of the Night, which he co-wrote with David Newman as a pastiche of Hitchcock’s work. The film, which tells the story of a psychiatrist who is thrust into the midst of a terrifying conspiracy after one of his long-term patients is found murdered, which occurs concurrently with the arrival of his femme fatale mistress who carries some very dark secrets, is not an effective one at all. Benton, who is normally a very interesting filmmaker (having just come off the resounding success of Kramer vs. Kramer only a few years earlier) was experimenting far too much with paying tribute to the director, but seemed to veer dangerously off-course as the ideas began to disappear, and all that he was left with was a heavy-handed bundle of ideas that don’t really saying anything of value, nor does it contribute much to Hitchcock’s legacy, while still being bold enough to cite it as one influenced by his work. As a whole, Still of the Night is not a particularly great film, which is one of the more generous assessments that I can give it, and as we look further into the story and how it frequently squandered many good opportunities, it only becomes more frustrating.

There is such a narrow boundary between paying homage, and outright parroting someone else’s style, and Still of the Night is one of the most notorious examples of a filmmaker copying the original text without adding too much of his own. Unlike someone along the lines of Gus Van Sant, whose remake of Psycho was at least artistically-motivated insofar as it was a shot-by-shot recreation that aimed to evoke conversation around the nature of originality, this film is far less effective, mainly in how it is just a jumble of many of the esteemed director’s most notable qualities, outright lifting entire plot points and images from several of Hitchcock’s films. The clear visual cues and aural references are certainly present, but at the expense of the very marrow of what made Hitchcock’s work so enticing, which was the combination of narrative, tone and visual landscape. Still of the Night contains all of these elements, but they are never cohesive, and it takes nearly the entire film to fully comprehend. By the time we understand the various twists and turns (which are so weak, it is almost insulting to associate them with some of the greatest psychological thrillers ever made), we’ve grown bored and entirely apathetic to the events, and are just patiently waiting to see the mystery solved, not because we are interested, but rather that we just want the ordeal to be over, since it is obvious where this film was heading, and all the audience had to do was just sit and go through the motions, which is more than this film probably deserves when we look at it from the perspective of both a Hitchcockian tribute, and as a neo-noir thriller all on its own, neither of which is entirely successful when we look at the film as a whole.

If this discussion seems to lean very heavily on comparing Still of the Night to Hitchcock’s work, that is entirely intentional, because unlike other films that purport to be creating dialogue between itself and previous works, this one is entirely defined by supposedly paying tribute to the director’s legacy, so much that if we strip away the elements inspired by Hitchcock, there isn’t much to talk about. The story is incredibly weak, and has very little grounding within a recognizable version of reality, instead being a heavy-handed excuse to create tension, but with only the most inconsequential payoff. Part of this is that we don’t have a story we particularly care for, nor do we encounter characters we necessarily enjoy being around. Nearly everyone in Still of the Night is unlikeable, and even the protagonist is painted as someone who we necessarily have any inclination to be rooting for. The problem here is that there is not a single interesting character in the primary cast – they’re all the kind of individuals we’d find in the periphery of a better film, both in the function they serve in the story, and how their behaviour shapes the progression of the narrative. To say that these are poorly-written archetypes is a radical overestimation of this film’s ability to actually give any thought to its characters, which is the complete opposite of what was happening throughout this film. There is very little value in how Benton and Newman write these characters – they’re one-dimensional, poorly developed and almost as if they are pieced together from the least interesting fragments of the most unimportant character from the films this is so desperately trying to be. It’s unfortunate, since Still of the Night is not the first psychological thriller to have a weak story – the difference is that most would be more inclined to rectifying narrative problems with compelling characters, which is the complete antithesis of what we saw happening with this film, a truly misguided attempt at genre-based storytelling.

Most would be led to believe that, regardless of how weak the characters are, the actors would at least be able to salvage it. This is true, but only to a certain extent, since it’s a case of casting great actors in roles that are almost entirely beneath them. Still of the Night came in the same year that Meryl Streep had arguably her best performance in the form of Sophie’s Choice – and beginning to end, her work here presents as the direct mirror image of what she did playing the Holocaust survivor thinking back on her nightmarish experiences during the Second World War, existing in entire opposition to what she was doing in that prestige drama. Here, she is hiding behind a platinum blonde bob (done up in the same way as another one of Hitchcock’s collaborators, the wonderful Eva Marie Saint) and a meek vocal timbre that betrays almost everything we expected from the actress, who has not ever really needed to prove herself, but yet still feels like she is turning in an underbaked performance throughout the film. Roy Scheider is the other lead, playing the supposedly brilliant psychiatrist who becomes embroiled in this murder plot, and has to not only prove that he is not responsible for the death of his former patient, but also go in search of the actual killer, who he determines is hot on his tail, aiming to make him her next victim, since he clearly already knows too much (the fact that the detectives were able to surmise that the killer was a woman without actually explaining how they came to that conclusion is one of the many liberties taken throughout the film). Neither Streep nor Scheider are particularly good, and while we could at least expect them to elevate the material, they mostly remain as subdued and uninteresting as the characters they are playing, never really doing anything particularly valuable outside of just working through the convoluted screenplay in the hopes that the editing frames them in a more compelling way. This was certainly not the case, and Still of the Night has appropriately been thrust into the lower tier of mostly-forgotten titles for both actors.

Despite having two major stars in the central roles, and being a homage to possibly the greatest filmmaker of all time, Still of the Night is relatively obscure – having seen it, there is very little doubt that this is intentional. Few films manage to have as much promise and potential to be brilliant, but yet mishandle nearly everyone one of its assets, to the point where they become liabilities, and only weaken the already paltry film further. Unfortunately, Still of the Night has very little benefit, even in terms of being a bad film that is somehow unintentionally funny, with many trashy 1980s thrillers having camp value due to how they lack self-awareness. Instead, this is a film that takes itself far too seriously, and seems to be entirely against the very principle of having fun, which ultimately destroys any hopes of the story at least possessing some degree of goodwill in terms of at least being entertaining. Overwrought and dismally dour, Benton’s work here is not very good, which is surprising considering it is coming from a director who is mostly very good when it comes to genre work. Mercifully, there aren’t really any discernible attempts to reanalyse Still of the Night as some misunderstood masterpiece, with supporters cutting their losses and acknowledging that this is not a good film at all, and instead recalibrating their attention to the many other productions that were made with the involvement of the people that made this film (and where they could actually produce something that is valuable, rather than this overly boring and meandering attempt at both a psychological thriller and deeply sentimental romance, neither of which is done particularly well), leading us to not hesitate in placing this dreadful film back in the locked desk drawer, which is exactly where it belongs – out of sight, out of mind.