Holcroft Covenant [DVD] [1985] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

The Holcroft Covenant is one of those films that's so breathtakingly bad it's almost endearing. Before the Bourne franchise was reinvented for the 21st century, Robert Ludlum's screen track record was less than glittering. The Osterman Weekend was a good enough adaptation but couldn't live up to the expectations having Sam Peckinpah as director engendered, while a mooted Burt Reynolds-Jack Clayton version of The Bourne Identity fell through to eventually re-emerge as a decent Richard Chamberlain miniseries. But nothing could have prepared either author or audience for the train wreck that was The Holcroft Covenant.

To say it was a troubled picture is an understatement. To save money London stood in for New York while original star James Caan walked out a day before shooting was due to start, with director John Frankenheimer peddling water while the producers worked their way through spotlight to find a replacement, obviously stopping at the Cs once they reached Michael Caine, an actor not exactly known for saying no even though he's far from a perfect fit for the role of a Noo Yawk construction boss who finds himself heir to a Nazi fortune no matter how many times the script has him repeat "I am a foreign-born American citizen!" Naturally the bequest - all five billion dollars of it - comes with strings: it's intended by Caine's duplicitous Nazi general father and his cronies to make reparations for the victims of the Nazis through their children: Mario Adorf's classical conductor who rather gives himself away by impersonating Mussolini when at the podium, Anthony Andrews' financial journalist and sister Victoria Tennant, the latter unintentionally hilarious whether disguised as a hooker ("Do you think I like being dressed like this?") or seducing Caine by praising his manliness. Naturally it's not long before the dead bodies start piling up, comical spies and hitmen appear on the sidelines and everyone turns out to not be what they appear. Well, except for Caine. As he breathlessly exclaims, "High - HIGH! on my list of things that I am not going to do with it is start a new Nazi party. I'm pretty sure on that one. Nor am I going to finance a redesigned Edsel, or a Broadway musical or shave my head and give it to the Moonies."

There's the possibility for a perfectly decent Saturday night thriller in there somewhere, but this misses the target not just by a mile but also by several continents. Taken seriously - as Frankenheimer's audio commentary on the Region 1 MGM/UA DVD does - it's simply a terrible movie, playing spy movie stereotypes for all their absurdity with more tilted angles than you'll even find in The IPCRESS File. There hasn't been a good movie with an old German in a wheelchair since Dr Strangelove, which should have been a pointer to where this one was headed, but by the time a transvestite German male prostitute tells Caine "I only do this for a living. What I really want to do is direct films" before punching him in the stomach, it's clear that anything goes. The screenplay is a jawdropping mixture of clumsy exposition - pride of place going to the wildly overacting neo-Nazi villain (who works for The Guardian newspaper!) explaining the plot at length to one victim while complimenting her cooking - and terrible dialogue: after lines like "Please do not attempt anything too vividly cinematic," "Assumption is the mother of ****up," "Five - five? - billion? Now five million, that I can imagine. But... five... billion?" and the immortal exchange "I'll kill him, of course, or you can if you like" "I LIKE!!!!" it's hard to know whether the writers have their tongue firmly in cheek when Bernard Hepton apologetically says "If I said anything humorous, it's purely unintentional."

Throw in a score like a New Romantic Bauhaus Bier Keller freakout and the result is like watching a drunken conspiracy theorist trying to explain the New World Order - at once painfully embarrassing yet impossible to turn your head away from. It may be a sad reunion for Frankenheimer and his Manchurian Candidate screenwriter George Axelrod (indeed it even copies the final shot of Candidate and its use of TV monitors for its laughably overwrought Jacobean tragedy-style bloodbath-cum-press-conference finale), but in it's feverishly deluded way it offers more entertainment value than many a more successful spy thriller and merits four stars not for quality but for unintentional entertainment value.

Although there are several public domain releases available with atrocious quality (the UK release by Pegasus may have the worst picture quality of any UK DVD ever released), only the MGM/UA Region 1 NTSC disc is worth picking up, boasting a fine transfer, an audio commentary by Frankenheimer (who seems under the impression it's a great film) and trailer.

I've read The Holcroft Covenant twice along the years. The film in the DVD does not do any justice to the book, but that could even be passable if the script was up to scratch. However, the film script is absolutely no more than a pale reminder of the book. Michael Caine, an actor I've admired for many years, seems out of place. But the very worst about this DVD is the quality of both video and sound, which are, at best, flabbergastingly hawful. I've seen better quality - what am I saying? MUCH better quality is more accurate - pirate films recorded in a film theater with a 8mm camcorder. The sound and picture quality are just terrible. My advice is that you do not, repeat, do not, purchase this DVD.

Please, please, please! Stay way from this DVD.

It is lousy at best...

I thought I would be lucky in buying this crappy DVD, but instead I have been taken for a ride...

This appears to be a tape transfer. The image is grainy and shabby all over. Colors are dull and washed out. The aspect ratio is a somewhat would be 1.66:1 or at best 1.70:1 instead of the 1.85:1 correct ratio.
Some images jump up and down like a defective VHS copy.
Sound? Loud and with an unbearable whirring noise...

The joke? Special Features: (and I quote) Interactive Menus - 6 scene selections.

Who are these morons at Pegasus Entertainment?
Cocaine sniffing bozos?

If one reads the back sleeve you may discover that this masterpiece in incompetence and lousy transferring reside in Germany.

Well, does one wonder? They do not even respect their own classics, and believe me, I know something about it, because I have tried to buy some, and what I did receive was unworthy to be called technologically advanced...

Really, stay away form this one.
At 6 pounds it is a waste of your hard-earned money.

I have re-ordered this at 13 dollars with Amazon.com in the United States. It practically costs the same, but being released by MGM, one is guaranteed to have a far better copy transferred on DVD.

I was really hoping in a PAL pristine copy, because of the far better image resolution it usually has on a widescreen television.
But this has absolutely no resolution to speak of.

I own a Pan & Scan VHS tape recorded from a broadcast of the movie on Showtime (in the United States) some years ago and believe me, it looks sparkling and sharp in comparison to this copy.

If I had the means and were the holder of the legal rights to the movie, I would sue the bastards who have dared to slam this taped movie on DVD.

That would teach them a lesson they would not soon forget.

Alas I don't.

Granted, the movie may not be the quintessential Michael Caine vehicle and maybe it may be a bit ludicrous in contents, but to distribute it this way, is simply an insult to decency and professional ethics.

I almost suspect that this might be one of those semi-legal pirate copies that usually are available through China or South America.

If I were in Law Enforcement, I would like to investigate this thoroughly, because seemingly, there are some companies out there who are again trying to launder their dirty drugs and prostitution moneys, by using fake trade names, in order to sell such trash.

Don't waste your money and look for titles on brand names. They might be slightly more expensive, but they cannot play such games without compromising their own labels and therefore they don't even try.

You would be better served and you would force minor companies (especially some like this one) to go out of business before time.

They really would deserve to go out of business, since all they do is steal your money...

Avoid them at all cost and leave them dry.

Maybe this will soon translate into prices of the major studios being dropped accordingly, once these pirates will be defeated.

Fight for it. It's in your own interest.