I don't know why they made these movies so comedic, but I watched The Drowning Pool, the sequel to Harper. I'd seen it before over the years. I read the novel by Ross Macdonald and thought it was brilliant. I read the other books in the series after that.
In the movie, private eye Lew Harper flies to Louisiana to help an old girlfriend, Joanne Woodward, who is afraid an ex-chauffeur (Andy Robinson) will tell her wealthy mother-in-law that she's been unfaithful to her closeted gay husband. She has a bratty, slutty teen daughter (Melanie Griffith).
The mother-in-law has a deranged oilman (Murray Hamilton) after her. He wants to take over the land she's set aside as a nature preserve.
The old woman is murdered. The story becomes complicated. The chauffeur is a swinger, the oilman had hired him to gather blackmail material, there are two murders, the police chief has an inordinate interest in the family.
The climactic ending was something Ross Macdonald thought marred the novel but it was good in the movie. The private eye and the oilman's wife are locked overnight in a hydrotherapy room in a shuttered mental hospital. They're going to be murdered if they can't escape, so they plug the drains and turn on the water full blast. As the water level rises, they can eventually reach the skylight.
The movie was made in the wake of Chinatown and they moved the story to Louisiana to avoid comparisons to that movie. Paul Newman's acting was more subdued than in Harper.
It seemed strange that Lew Harper would use a fake southern accent to fool southerners. At least he didn't use a Cajun accent on a Cajun bartender.
Available on Filmstruck.
For a second feature, I'd suggest Night Moves, a private eye movie made the same year also with a young Melanie Griffith. LA private detective Gene Hackman goes to the Florida Keys to find a runaway girl.
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