Front cover of my official UK cardboard-slipcase VHS video of Smooth Talk (© Joyce Chopra/American Playhouse/Goldcrest Films/International Spectrafilm/Nepenthe Productions/Palace Virgin Gold – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)
On 13 June 2023, I was very shocked and greatly saddened to discover that on the previous day one of my favourite movie stars, American actor Treat Williams, had been killed when according to the Vermont State Police an SUV turned into his path while he was riding his motorbike along a state highway near Dorset, a Bennington County town in Vermont, USA. He was 71. (Ironically, another of my favourite actors, James Dean, had suffered the same tragic fate on 30 September 1955, when a truck pulling out of a side road didn't see him driving along the main highway towards Salinas, Calofirnia, in his lightweight silver Porsche Spyder racing car and ploughed directly into it, killing Dean instantly – click here for my Shuker In MovieLand review of his life and career.)
Down through the years, I've watched a very diverse selection of Treat Williams's movies, and have greatly enjoyed all of them, including the likes of Prince of the City, Hair, Flashpoint, The Phantom, Deep Rising, the 2-part TV mini-series Journey to the Centre of the Earth – and the movie that I am reviewing here at Shuker In MovieLand today. This was the first of his films that I ever saw, more than 30 years ago now. Yet for many years afterwards, it mystifying fixed itself implacably within my memory while more recently-viewed movies swiftly faded, until not so long ago, that is, when I finally discovered the highly unexpected but deeply unsettling reason why – a reason, I hasten to add, whose disturbing nature is due in no negative way to Mr Williams. On the contrary, because this movie theme's tenacious presence within my memory provides emphatic evidence of the exceedingly fine actor that he was. All will now be explained, for the movie whose following review by me is my personal tribute to the late, truly great Treat Williams is Smooth Talk.
Directed by Joyce Chopra, and released in 1985 by International Spectrafilm, Smooth Talk originally came to my attention sometimes during the late 1980s/early 1990s via a cut-price UK videocassette release by Nepenthe Productions in which the cassette was contained within a cardboard slipcase of the kind more commonly used in the States (far less often here in the UK, which preferred to house its videos in sturdy hard plastic box-format cases), thereby making it visually distinctive. I'd never actually heard of Treat Williams back then, but reading the movie blurb on the slipcase's reverse (more about which shortly) I was sufficiently intrigued to buy it, and I watched it for the first time not long afterwards.
For almost the first hour of this movie's 90-minute running time, however, very little of note actually happens. Its plot focuses upon 15-year-old high school student Connie Wyatt (an early role for Laura Dern), teetering upon the brink of transforming from a teenage ingénue who frequents shopping malls near her northern California home with her school friends, and laughs with them as they ogle and flirt with the boys there, into a confident young woman with all the passions and other emotional charges and changes that this major new phase in her life will bring.
Then one evening, Connie is leaving a local hamburger joint when she is spoken to by a handsome smiling stranger (Treat Williams), who dresses in youthful clothes that make him look like James Dean but is clearly in his early 30s. He tells her playfully that he's watching her – and although Connie hasn't realised it, he really has been, all night long at the joint, but without previously making his presence there known to her.
Startled, Connie turns away and returns home. After an argument with her mother Katherine (Mary Kay Place), however, she declines to go off with her family to a barbecue the following afternoon staying at home instead, alone in their out of town farmhouse. And this is when, at long last, the teenage bubblegum movie turns into an edgy grown-up thriller.
For not long after Connie's family are gone, a 1960s open-top convertible with 'Arnold Friend' painted on the driver's door in the form of a signature motors up to the farmhouse. Inside are two men. One of them, the passenger, is a 'local yokel' type named Ellie Oscar (Geoff Hoyle), but the driver is none other than the stranger who spoke to Connie at the hamburger joint last night. When Connie walks out of the farmhouse towards them to find out who they are and why they are here, the stranger introduces himself to her as Arnold Friend (hence his car's distinctive décor), and soon demonstrates just how much he has been watching her, by revealing various personal details about her, even knowing that the rest of her family have gone to the barbecue and won't be back for hours.
Connie (Laura Dern) and Arnold Friend (Treat Williams) resting against his eponymously-signed car (© Joyce Chopra/American Playhouse/Goldcrest Films/International Spectrafilm – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)
Then, for virtually the whole remainder of the movie, and while his buddy Ellie Oscar stays in the car and listens to his radio pressed steadfastly against his ear, Friend proceeds to turn on the charm with Connie via a dazzling, megawatt-powered display of ingratiating grins and incessant glib lines, coaxing, cajoling, and coercing, wheedling, pleading, and wheeling around a confused and somewhat bewildered but unequivocally attracted Connie to come out for a drive with him into the surrounding countryside. His verbal powers of manipulation, suggestion, and allure soon threaten to break down the unworldly teenager's instinctive defences, and disarm her intuition's warnings – but rather than attempting to adequately convey the insidious guile of Friend's beseechings myself, why not read what is undoubtedly the best description of his dark, mesmerising word-magic and mind-games that I have encountered?
All too often, blurbs or plot summaries included on the reverse of movie video and DVD cases are master classes in hyperbole rather than valid descriptions of the films in question, but in stark contrast, whoever wrote the blurb on the reverse of my Smooth Talk video's slipcase produced an excellent, thoroughly accurate portrayal of Friend's silky yet truly sinister and soon to become decidedly unfriendly smooth talk. So here it is:
NO PHYSICAL FORCE... WORDS WERE HIS WEAPON.
He was a slick, silver-tongued seducer. He had all the right words, all the right moves. He knew just how far to go, when to hold back, when to push over the edge. He knew how to menace without violence — and love without pity. And Connie was easy meat to him; poor, pretty Connie with her head full of trashy daydreams, a blue-eyed blonde who just couldn't wait to grow up. He needed no threats, no physical force: words were his weapons and he could hypnotise and seduce with deadly accuracy. He wanted Connie under his thumb — and into his bed. She was prey ripe for the taking — and he knew it.
Yes he did, no doubt about that whatsoever.
Presently, therefore, it is beginning to look ever more likely that psychological predator Friend will indeed have his wicked way with her, and very shortly too. But then, like all the hammiest actors, he pushes his cod, insincere performance just a little too far, igniting a flame of fear that suddenly flickers inside Connie's mind and momentarily breaks his hypnotic spell over her – in turn spurring her to get back inside her home and bolt the door.
So how could Friend have failed in his seemingly-irresistible, saccharine-sweet seduction? By actually revealing to Connie – and the viewers – his true nature, while seemingly remaining entirely oblivious himself to having done so, that's how. Let me explain.
Treat Williams as the flirtatious Mr Friend (© Joyce Chopra/American Playhouse/Goldcrest Films/International Spectrafilm – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)
From what you've read here so far, the image of Friend seems to be that of a suave, worldly, intelligent, confident, highly manipulative egotist, demonstrating a definite way with words and the strength of suggestion – but what he appears entirely unaware of, thereby underlining just how dangerous and deranged he truly is, is that he is also displaying a scarcely in-check, under-control level of explosive violence liable to break forth at the slightest provocation. Exposing this Mr Hyde side to Friend's evidently schizoid personality is the sole but crucially significant purpose of a hitherto barely-mentioned character in this movie – Friend's buddy, Ellie Oscar.
For he soon becomes bored witless by Friend's wooing and whining around Connie, and says so on more than one occasion – only for Friend to erupt in hysterical shrieking fury each time, his eyes bulging with unrestrained ferocity as he screams repeatedly at his buddy to keep quiet and stop ruining everything. Each time this happens, Friend's mask of fake benevolence and playfulness falls further, the outward quasi-Jekyll further overshadowed by the unhinged savagery of Hyde lurking within.
Nevertheless, Friend is nothing if not persistent, and even finds a way inside Connie's home where he continues his increasingly creepy, psychological courtship of her – until finally Hyde gains triumphant ascendancy. Friend is friendly no longer, informing her that if she doesn't come out for a drive with him, he'll burn the farmhouse down!
And so, with the game well and truly over, Connie gets into his car and drives off with him, leaving Ellie Oscar at the farmhouse to await their return. Time goes by, but later that same afternoon they do return. Friend is grinning from ear to ear like the veritable cat from Cheshire, a smile on his face like the tiger from Riga, his bonhomie fully restored. Connie, conversely, looks lost, distracted, her clothes noticeably rumpled, dishevelled.
There seems little doubt that they have had sex while away, but what does remain in doubt for the rest of the movie is whether it was consensual, or whether we should add rape alongside under-age sex to Friend's catalogue of crimes? Connie shouts at Friend that she never wants to see him again as he and Ellie Oscar get back in the car, he shouts back that nothing happened, and drives away. So in view of that decidedly ambiguous interchange, who can say for certain what did, or didn't, take place during her time alone with him?
Perhaps the most tantalising aspect of all with regard to this issue is a brief scene inside Connie's bedroom that reveals the presence on her wall of a large James Dean poster, with Dean wearing very similar attire to that worn by Friend during their fateful afternoon – a pale shirt and tight dusty denim jeans. This has led some viewers and reviewers to speculate whether Connie's encounter with Friend that afternoon ever actually happened, or whether that entire scene was merely a febrile figment of her hormonally-driven adolescent imagination!
He's behind you – or is he?? (© Joyce Chopra/American Playhouse/Goldcrest Films/International Spectrafilm – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)
The movie ends with a short scene in which Connie and her mother make up following her family's return from the barbecue, after which she dances with her sister June (Elizabeth Berridge) to James Taylor's recording of the song 'Handy Man' (James Taylor also happens to be this film's music director, but I still prefer Del Shannon's version personally, though that's neither here nor there!). However, she tells none of them about what happened while they were away – but might that be because nothing actually did? Make what you will of this movie's ultimately inconclusive conclusion.
Needless to say, Smooth Talk was not the first film I'd ever seen that featured a smiling, ostensibly affable monster in human form, nor would it be the last. So why did this particular one get under my skin to such an extent that I couldn't shake free of it? Time and again, flashes of scenes featuring Friend plying his tawdry trade of phoney amiability and affection toward Connie would abruptly surface, often at the most unexpected times, and seemingly devoid of any discernable trigger. Friend was a bad 'un, no question about that, but all my instincts kept telling me that there was something more here, much more, a sizeable missing piece of the complex jigsaw puzzle that this strange movie constituted.
Back in the data-deficient times of the 1980s (at least in comparison to today's instantly-accessible information super-highway of facts, and more facts, and still more facts, all just a fingertip away), researching anything took time, including frequent visits to libraries, archives, etc, if the details required were more than could be readily found in a decent encyclopedia (remember those?) devoted to the basic subject in hand. Smooth Talk was not a major movie by any standards, and rarely received more than the most perfunctory entry in film books. Consequently, like so many others that periodically jostled for attention in my mind but were not of any direct importance to me or my life in general, the mystery behind why I found this movie so intrinsically disturbing, yet infernally difficult to forget, remained unexplained.
Years went by, and I watched Smooth Talk a second time, and again the character of Friend troubled me – there was something so not right about him, but was that simply the way that Williams had chosen and/or had been instructed by the film's director to portray him? Yet if so, why? If it was to elicit a sense of unease in viewers, this aim had certainly succeeded with me, that's for sure! I did think about investigating whether the plot was an original story written for the film, or whether it was based upon some pre-existing novel, or a play perhaps, but as so often happens, other more pressing events arose to push such thoughts to the sidelines and subsequently the dusty attics of my mind and memory.
Just over a year ago, however, while reorganising my somewhat expanded collection of movie DVDs and videos (the outcome of finding ways and means to while away long periods of enforced indoor confinement during the covid lockdowns), I noticed my Smooth Talk video, and watched it a third time. Same result, same eerie feeling that Friend was a fiend in more ways than I was aware of. But this time there was also a major difference – I now had the internet to search for answers. So I did – and it didn't take long to find them either, but boy, I certainly wasn't expecting what I found!
It turns out that Smooth Talk, with a screenplay by Tom Cole, is based upon a much darker short story by American writer Joyce Carol Oates, which had been published in 1966 and was entitled "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" (the quotation marks/inverted commas, incidentally, are part of its title, as it's actually a biblical quote, from the Old Testament book of Judges). One of its plot's most significant difference from that of the movie is that Oates's story ends when Connie comes out of the house, having reluctantly agreed to go for a drive with Friend, plus his buddy alongside them. But even though the reader never finds out what happens next, the strong inherent implication is that the two men are going to take her to some far-flung location to sexually assault and possibly even murder her (and also, in an unexpected supernatural twist linked in part to an enigmatic 6-digit numerical code painted on his car, that in reality Friend is none other than the devil!).
Treat Williams as Arnold Friend – or Fiend? (© Joyce Chopra/American Playhouse/Goldcrest Films/International Spectrafilm – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)
This short story had in turn been inspired by the real-life activities of a certain Charles Howard Schmid – the perpetrator of the infamous Tucson murders during the early 1960s. Schmid was a serial killer living in Tucson, Arizona, who killed at least three teenage girls and possibly one teenage boy too while still only in his 20s. He was nicknamed The Pied Piper because of how charismatic he was, which, combined with his good looks, readily enabled him to persuade others, especially young women, to do whatever he asked them to.
After being arrested during the mid-1960s and put on trial for the three girls' murders, Schmid was found guilty and initially sentenced to death, though this was subsequently commuted to 50 years imprisonment. He and another murderer briefly escaped from prison together in November 1972 and they held some hostages captive, but were soon recaptured and re-incarcerated. On 20 March 1975, Schmid was fatally stabbed by two other prisoners, dying from his injuries 10 days later.
No wonder I'd felt so uneasy about the character Friend in Smooth Talk! Yet I'd felt that way without having any knowledge of his deadly real-life inspiration. All of this, therefore, is a stirring testament to the profound acting skills and talent of Treat Williams, who had succeeded in imbuing Friend with an underlying evil so subtle that it was not even visible to viewers, but lurked and lingered all about this malign character like a preternatural aura, detectable only by our own innermost, most secret sixth sense – the primal sense of survival that refuses to be silenced when it detects something potentially dangerous or threatening to our existence. Animal instinct, we call it when referring to non-human species – but don't forget that, zoologically-speaking, Homo sapiens is an animal too.
Also well deserving of mention here is that in 1986 Smooth Talk won the Grand Jury Award at fellow actor Robert Redford's prestigious, longstanding Sundance Film Festival. This yields further proof of the extremely high standard of acting contained in it, and not only by Treat Williams either, but also by Laura Dern, aged only 18 at the time, as Friend's over-sexed yet under-experienced, tragically gauche victim, which she plays to perfection. In short, despite being only a relatively minor movie, Smooth Talk induced performances of such potency from both of its lead stars that it served as a significant stepping stone for the acting careers of both Williams and Dern, and rightly so.
Official poster for Smooth Talk publicising its Grand Jury Award win at the 1986 Sundance Film Festival (© Joyce Chopra/American Playhouse/Goldcrest Films/International Spectrafilm – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)
But now, 38 years later yet still far too soon, farewell and godspeed to Treat Williams – a very fine, exceedingly skilful movie actor, whose untimely death has robbed the world of who knows how many more notable on-screen performances, not to mention a much-loved family member and a friend to so many. RIP Sir.
If you would like to watch a couple of official Smooth Talk trailers on YouTube, be sure to click here and here, or click here if you'd like to view the complete 22-minute seduction scene from Smooth Talk between Arnold Friend and Connie that takes place at the farmhouse while her family is away at the barbecue.
Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
Publicity poster for Smooth Talk (© Joyce Chopra/American Playhouse/Goldcrest Films/International Spectrafilm – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)
