So I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is Lions Gate is putting out one of the cornerstones of the Canadian tax-shelter wave of the late seventies on DVD: Daryl Duke's The Silent Partner. Elliott Gould as an opportunistic bank teller taking advantage of a botched heist at work! Christopher Plummer as the sleazy (and incredibly violent) con man he fucks with! Santa Claus shooting people in the Eaton Centre! With an early screenplay by Curtis Hanson (now rumoured to be planning a remake), The Silent Partner worked well enough as a thriller back then, but works even better now as a time capsule of late seventies Toronto - lots of location photography.All right, that's the good news. Here's the bad news. This is the cover art they went with.
7 comments:
One of my favorite Canadian films. Isn't the mall in question the Eaton Center? The chase up the up escalator is a classic. The VHS release is collecting dust down the street at Super Choice Video. Its cover art is equally as bad but in a completely different kind of way. Okay, on second thought, it isn't quite as bad.
This cover art totally misrepresents the film, and they spelled Suzannah York's name wrong too!
Haven't seen this since a VHS copy I rented circa 1982 but I've listed it as one of my favorite movies ever since!Great performances, clever script and nice neo-Hitchcockian feel.
What, you mean it's not a Ocean's 11 (or 12, or 13) meets Reservior Dogs-styled thriller with over-the-top violence and cocky one-liners? It is better than the last video release cover art, though
I picked up a Interglobe VHS copy at the Salvation Army about two years ago, but the DVD is bound to be a huge improvement. A copy is on its way.
And yes, it's the Eaton Centre. Great score by Oscar Peterson, too.
Yikes thats a crapy poster , loved the movie as a kid though , santa image and beating whores stolen money - truly canadian
Also interesting that it's Lionsgate putting it out, the Vancouver based film company/distributor founded by Robert Altman when he filmed The McCabe and Mrs. Miller in those mountains. Altman who was of course responsible for much of Elliot Gould's popularity in the 70s.
My favorite box work art for this was oddly enough the INTERGLOBAL re-relase of it, a couple years after PAN CANADIAN originally put it out. Botched boxes for the release of a film? You don't say!
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