Not so long ago, FB friend Dave Baldwin who shares my love for the more esoteric of fantastical, surreal movies, recommended to me an Australian movie that I'd never heard of before. Released in 1980, it is known through much of the world by the title Harlequin, but in the USA it was retitled as Dark Forces. After watching a trailer for it, I decided that this was a movie I definitely wanted not only to watch but also to own, so I duly purchased its official DVD and watched it last night. Nor was I disappointed – far from it!
Directed by Simon Wincer, Harlequin centres upon Gregory Wolfe, an enigmatic figure who may be a mystic with supernatural faith-healing powers, or, alternatively, a very proficient trickster who uses adept stage-illusion skills and hypnotism to achieve his perceived successes. The movie begins with the apparent death by drowning of Deputy Governor Eli Steele – intriguingly, the country in which this movie is taking place is never made deliberately apparent (more about which later), although the inference is that it is the USA. The scene then switches to a huge mansion where a very ill young boy, Alex Rast (played by Mark Spain), is the centre of attention at his birthday party, but is only interested in a clown who performs some sleight-of-hand conjuring tricks for him to keep him entertained. We learn that his father, Nick Rast (David Hemmings), is an aspiring politician, who married Alex's mother, Sandra (Carmen Duncan), not for love but purely to advance his career as she is both wealthy in her own right and connected to all the right people in society. However, they are united by the plight of their son, who is suffering from seemingly terminal leukaemia.
That same evening, after Alex has been examined by the family doctor who tells the grieving parents that there is nothing more that he can do and that they should now be prepared to let Alex slip away without subjecting him to any more invasive treatments, a black-and-white bird alights on Alex's windowsill, then disappears. Moments later, the windows open and in steps a tall dark-haired man with unnervingly piercing eyes (played in a suitably mesmerizing, charismatic manner by Robert Powell), who has uncannily managed to elude all of the mansion's security systems and reach Alex's bedroom even though it is high above ground level. After introducing himself as Gregory Wolfe and before the Rasts can say much in reply, this strange figure picks up Alex, commands him to get well in a loud, stern voice, then places him back in his bed and tells the astonished persons that he is now well.
And sure enough, Alex improves daily, until he is soon perfectly fit and healthy. Moreover, with Sandra's full approval and, indeed, her active encouragement, Gregory becomes a permanent house-guest, looking after Alex, who is totally devoted to him (it later transpires that unbeknownst to Alex's parents, Gregory was also the clown at his birthday party). And it is not long before Sandra finds herself drawn to him too, but in a much more passionate, adult manner. Although never actually confirmed, the movie makes it apparent that she has entered into an affair with Gregory, as surmised by Nick too, though as he is openly liaising with his secretary Zoe there isn't a great deal that he can say about that! Various scenes are shown in which Gregory ostensibly displays various paranormal abilities, but equally he may simply be exhibiting proficient legerdemain.
Meanwhile, Nick is being pressured by corrupt, power-wielding political backer Doc Wheelan (Broderick Crawford, chosen for the role after Orson Welles asked for too high a fee), because Wheelan wants him to assume the Deputy Governor position vacated by the recently-drowned Steele, albeit serving as little more than Wheelan's puppet. However, Wheelan has also learnt about Gregory and suspects that he may be a spy, an infiltrator from some rival political camp, sent to disrupt his scheme. So Wheelan concocts a bogus file containing a fake history of Gregory and fraudulent compromising photos of him, as well as hoax claims that he hasn't cured Alex, that he has instead surreptitiously fed him various drugs that temporarily improve his health, in order to ingratiate himself into the Rast family and thence spy upon them.
Following a social gathering at the Rast mansion where Gregory seemingly heals an elderly woman but is also accused of raping a maid, he is arrested and thrown into jail, only to inexplicably escape, and succeed once again in penetrating the inner sanctum of the Rast mansion, despite its active retinue of guards and Nick himself being on full alert after being alerted of Gregory's escape. Gregory duly confronts him and states that the dead Steele whom Wheeler is coercing him to replace didn't drown but was specifically assassinated.
Startlingly if fittingly attired in a classic Commedia Dell'Arte Harlequin costume (Harlequin traditionally being an unpredictable, mercurial masked figure of mystery and magic), Gregory then tells Nick to make the right and just choice for his next move – at which point events take a decidedly chilling turn. Suddenly, bolts of lightning shoot from Gregory's eyes at a terrified Nick, a wall of flame seemingly encircles and threatens to engulf him for a moment before abruptly disappearing, and Gregory vertically levitates several feet off the ground in front of him.
Thanks to Wheelan, however, who has driven to the Rast mansion as soon as he hears of Gregory's jailbreak, Gregory does not have it all his own way. Let's just say that after his confrontation with Wheelan and the hired muscle, Gregory's Harlequin costume is in no condition to be handed back any time soon to whatever fancy-dress shop it may have originated from!
The movie's final scene shows Sandra and a still totally healthy Alex sitting on some grass by a river. The boy is facing away from the camera, until the very last shot, when he turns to face it, and viewers suddenly realize that the world may not have seen the last of Gregory after all…
Perceptive readers will no doubt have guessed not only from the names of the characters but also from the basic plotline that Harlequin is in fact a modern-day retelling of the history of Russia's so-called 'mad monk' Grigori Rasputin, whose claimed faith-healing powers were sought by Tsar Nicholas II's wife Tsarina Alexandra to save their son the young Tsarevich Alexei, suffering from haemophilia, but who bewitched and seduced her as well as becoming firmly entrenched within their family, until his political enemies set out to destroy him. Gregory Wolfe is of course the movie's Rasputin counterpart, with the Tsar represented by Nick Rast (Nick being short for Nicholas and Rast being Tsar spelt backwards), his wife Sandra representing Tsarina Alexandra, and their leukaemia-stricken son Alex representing the young haemophiliac Alexei. And just as with Rasputin, whether or not Gregory does possess mystical powers remains ambiguous throughout.
Incidentally, a particular surprise for me came from the climactic scene between Gregory and Nick as briefly summarized by me above. Once, many years ago, I remember my parents watching something on TV that I hadn't been paying any attention to, until I happened to look up and saw to my great shock a brief scene of a man suddenly surrounded by a wall of flames that just as suddenly vanished again. It left a very profound visual impression in my mind that I've never forgotten, but because I hadn't known anything about the TV programme or film that it had appeared in, I had no expectation of ever tracing the latter – until I saw the above-noted scene from Harlequin last night, and realized that this is exactly what I had seen all those years ago. Another TV mystery duly if unexpectedly solved!
Also, I've read that in order to make it as globally (and hence commercially) successful as possible, when producing this movie every attempt was made to hide the fact that it was shot in Australia, and even in its storyline to render its geographical location undetermined. If so, I can only assume that they didn't hire a zoological consultant, because the black-and-white bird mentioned earlier here, and which appears repeatedly throughout the movie, is none other than an Australian magpie Gymnorhina tibicen. Moreover, despite its common name, this species is not related to the familiar magpies of Europe and North America belonging to the crow family, but is instead a member of an entirely different, exclusively Australasian family of birds, the artamids.
Ornithological oversights aside, however, Harlequin is an absolutely spellbinding movie that captivated me totally throughout, thanks to Powell's tour-de-force performance as the bedazzling Gregory. Apparently David Bowie had originally been approached to play the part, but although I can well believe that he too would have filled this role superbly, I'm glad that it eventually went to Powell because I cannot see how even Bowie could have bettered it. Powell's icy demeanour yet electrifying presence, his ethereal, enigmatically expressionless facial and spoken delivery, and those green laser-beam eyes combine so effectively to create a character as truly harlequinesque as its original inspiration.
Part fantasy, part mystery, part horror, part psychological thriller, and wholly fascinating, Harlequin is an evocative, entertaining, and thoroughly engrossing movie quite unlike anything that I have seen before, and greatly deserves to be far better known and appreciated than it currently is. High time, in fact, for it to attain cult movie status, methinks, and if you'd like to see what I mean, click here to view a captivating Harlequin trailer on YouTube (although its visual colour appears oddly drained), and here to watch the entire movie for free on there, at least at the time of my posting this review.
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