Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Pendulum

Watched this forgotten thriller from the late sixties a couple weeks ago and my memories are already fading a bit, which seems to be implying there's not much in the film, but it's still quite interesting.

Pendulum is a Hitchcockian suspense film about a police lieutenant, who's captured a seriously ill-minded rapist, but done it in a wrong way and a young Liberal attorney gets the man free. The lieutenant is mad jealous about his wife, who seems to be having an affair. Suddenly the wife and her lover are killed. Who's the killer, the rapist or the lieutenant, who's just using the rapist's threat as an alibi?

Pretty well-made, with some good actors, but also with some not-so-good ones, plus the beautiful and stylishly dressed Jean Seberg (she's not very lively in the film, which I'm sad to admit), this merits a second look. The outcome of the drama isn't as obvious as it might seem at first, and I wouldn't label this as fascist as Roger Ebert has done. Still the film seems to be defending strong law enforcement.

More Overlooked Films at Todd Mason's blog. Above I posted the old VHS cover, which is exactly how I watched this.