Word: thrillers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...clinker are the same gang who only last year concocted A Bridge Too Far. It's just possible that they are in the wrong line of work. Bridge was a long and costly war movie that never clearly indicated who was winning its pivotal battle. Magic is a thriller that gives away its one and only surprise in the opening scenes. Maybe next year Producer Joe Levine, Director Richard Attenborough and Writer William Goldman will create a musical without songs. Or a western set in Paris. With these guys, the possibilities are endless...
MAGIC RESEMBLES A bad magician's act -- the skilled hands at work simply lack the ability to generate suspense or even to entertain. Part of the blame for this less-than-thrilling thriller lies with the ponderous pace of Richard Attenborough's direction, the same touch that made his A Bridge Too Far an hour too long. Nor is there much life in William Goldman's script, which uncomfortably straddles the genres of mystery and psycho-drama. The familiar theme of the mad ventriloquist and his not-so-dumb dummy can still invoke shudders, but the filmakers' failure to find...
...afternoon, Swiss time. Conservative Columnist William Buckley knows just what he will be doing: starting his third novel. The author of Saving the Queen and Stained Glass is going to Rougemont, Switzerland, and has set aside five weeks to churn out another thriller. Après-ski and pre-harpsichord practice, Buckley, 52, plans to produce 1,500 words a day. Why the regimen? "The 20th century notion that you should stare at the ceiling until the afflatus [inspiration] hits you is self-indulgent," harrumphs Buckley, who does admit to slight concern about having no plot...
...author of that authentic fake, the "autobiography" of Howard Hughes, prolific Writer Clifford Irving can be relied upon for verisimilitude. Here Irving teams with entertaining Novelist Herbert Burkholz (Mulligan's Seed) to write a suavely persuasive, anti-Establishment thriller with the bitter aftertaste of Campari and vodka...
...working-out of the crime has the mannered artificiality of an Agatha Christie thriller, which seems surprisingly like Nabokov's own mannered artificiality. The only blunder comes at the end. The police have surrounded the alpine chalet where Hermann is hiding. In the book, his mania produces the possibility of a brilliant escape. He yells to the crowd of onlookers, "Frenchmen! This is a rehearsal ... A famous film actor will presently come running out of this house. He is an archcriminal, but he must escape Hold those policemen, knock them down, sit on them - we pay them...