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Just perfect...

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

A suspense thriller not untypical of a number of adult crime films made in the early 1980s e.g. Cruising, Dressed to Kill, Death Wish II, Tightrope. Tension is taut between Moore and Steiger, the latter, famous by then for his 'scenery chewing' and here proves no exception. Moore convinces as the compassionate Chicago psychoanalyst under suspicion of murder and targeted for assassination. It's a mystery with twists and turns but the third act is a bolt on which creates plot holes. Gould brings his usual jauntiness and there's a nice turn from dear old Art Carney.

The naked face is a remarkable film experience. It's not a good film but I recommend it anyway. It's worth seeing the way you see Dracula for Bela Lugosi a performance so filled with conviction that questions of good and bad become meaningless. Saying that Bela Lugosi is campy and over the top is making the assumption that he was trying for something else and landed where he did by accident. No one else in the film other than Dwight Frye as Renfield can even keep up with him. Frye's performance seems far more calculated but he seems to understand that this film is meant to be spooky and fun and that no one is going to stop him from doing exactly what he chooses. He's like the guy in the summer stock theater whose a little bit better than everyone else and inspires the other actors with admiration and envy. Bela Lugosi and Dwight Frye know that you've paid money to see them and they are determined to give you what you paid for. Lugosi/Dracula's victims could be moving or charming, the heroes could be dashing and silly, van helsing might be sage and warm and kind but they're not. The brides are creepy and the servants are ridiculous but the rest the living dead of actors. The crazy energy of Lugosi and Dwight Frye seem to sap the rest of the cast of theirs. The Naked Face is like that. It could have been directed by Tod Browning of Dracula fame. It's outdoors but stagey. The incidents in the film are outrageous and unconvincing but no more so than the everyday details. And every actor in the film walks through it like they're on Quaaludes except one. It isn't Roger Moore whose famous for not bringing much energy to wheat he does on screen. He fits into this film as if it were his home. The 007 films are so busy so full of incident and energy this film is like a fish bowl or a gerbil cage everyone is asleep or wandering aimlessly. It isn't Elliot Gould who also fits into the dullness of this film so well he's like a stripe on a dull pattern of wall paper. Why was he put into a film like MASH or it's hard to think of another film of his with much going for it when this is where he has always belonged. Art Carney, Anne Archer, David Hedison all like fish circling around a fish bowl or blobs in a lava lamp we watch them in a stupor. There is one performance that stands out one Lugosi, one Dwight Frye in a crowd David Manners and Everett Van Sloans. It's no surprise who it is, it's Rod Steiger. I want to be clear his performance is not good. He yells and whispers through the whole film like proto Nicholas Cage. He screams at the other actors, bullies them and worries over the turns in the plot as if they mattered to him personally. At times it seems like he's trying to wake the other actors up, trying to rouse them after they fallen asleep or lost interest. There is a crazy wonderful integrity to his performance that goes beyond questions of good or bad. He knows we're out there watching and he wants to give us something. His performance is a critique of dull bad acting. He seems to be seeing if you're going to be bad, if there is no way to be good than go big, don't go down without a fight, struggle against the awfulness. Laurence Olivier and some other highly skilled actors used to get through films like this by underplaying intentionally and quietly kidding and burlesquing the whole enterprise. Steigers performance critiques their approach and calls them cowards. He keeps laying on the energy cowing the other actors until it is not their characters that appeared embarrassed and intimidated but the actors themselves. Rod Steiger shows a crazed integrity. It's possibly the same integrity that allowed him to give so many fine even great performances. Cut loose from quality, artistry even competence, what else could he do?.

I was getting ready to start some work, but saw this movie coming on cable. Saw the cast and thought that I really needed to watch this. Some of my favorite actors! I love Rod Steiger. But not in this film as his over-the-top persona was way too much to take. The final scene with Art Carney was a joke. It had the feel of a very cheap movie that bends reality to give a "shock scene".It's a bad movie. Bad writing, totally uninspired cinematography. But, it was bad enough to keep me watching it, AND, keeping me from going to work.Great cast put to great waste.

Moore knew he was living on borrowed time so far as Bond was concerned. Way too old, too slow moving and paunchy to be carrying a Walther PPK for much longer. His Bond contract allowed him to make two other films during this period - post OCTOPUSSY and pre A VIEW TO A KILL (that was to be his last JB outing)Wisely perhaps, he chose this role as mild-mannered but wholly professional Chicago psychiatrist Dr Judd Stevens, whose life hits a major rut after one of his patients is stabbed to death - wearing HIS coat. Having no idea what is going on for pretty much the entire movie Moore conveys Judd's plight rather well I thought. As unlike anything Moore has ever done, he must deal with finding himself simply in the wrong place for seemingly no reason.Several things to like about this flick - IF you care to look. Art Carney's turn as burnt-out but still cluey PI Morgens is a real gem of a performance. When Moore admits he doesn't believe in guns, Carney counters, "Yeah, well I don't believe in Santa Claus, but each Christmas he still comes round." The brief scenes in his ramshackle office are really worth looking at closely.Cop Steiger is a tad over the top as is his wont - give him any opportunity to rave - he's in actor's heaven. Ron Paradi as mob boss Cortini puts across one of the nastiest and inherently evil men you would ever wish to not meet and Anne Archer is well....Anne Archer.Totally unexpected last 20 seconds really lifts the film I thought.