Lee Eisenberg Frank Perry's "Man on a Swing" is one of the most haunting movies that you'll ever see. Cliff Robertson plays a police detective investigating a murder who enlists the help of a man (Joel Grey) who claims to be clairvoyant. During his trances this man describes things that he couldn't have learned from the media...but is it real clairvoyance?There are a couple of focuses. There's the investigation, but also the presumed psychic's trances that make you wonder if he's about to do something sinister. And then there are the strange things that start happening to the detective and his wife. Is it the presumed psychic or is something else going on? The most haunting thing is that this movie is based on a true story that was still unsolved at the time of the movie's release (I don't know whether they solved it afterwards). Joel Grey puts on what must be the most impressive role of his career. Far from the jolly emcee in "Cabaret", his character here makes you feel as if you're walking on eggshells. It's one of those movies that keeps you guessing every step of the way. I recommend it.The rest of the cast includes Peter Masterson (the husband in the original "Stepford Wives"), Lane Smith (the DA in "My Cousin Vinny"), Josef Sommer (Harrison Ford's superior in "Witness") and Penelope Milford (Jane Fonda's friend in "Coming Home").

dougdoepke Oddball mystery that I suspect is not for everyone. Joel Grey plays a psychic, Franklyn Wills, who wants to help the cops solve a gruesome parking lot murder. On their first meeting he establishes some credibility by knowing a number of details not mentioned in the media, thus provoking the curiosity of head cop Lee Tucker (Robertson). How, we wonder, does Wills know these details. Is he a real psychic or maybe even the killer himself just playing games with the cops. Thus begins a stormy collaboration between the head cop and the psychic, as Lee not only investigates the murder but has to figure out what's going on with Wills who keeps coming up with more interesting facts.This is one of the more unsettling films I've seen, mainly because Wills' behavior is completely unpredictable when he goes into his sudden psychic trances. He may leap on a desk, roll on the floor, or go into jerky spasms no matter where he is. Grey is an elfin-like presence anyway, so these sudden seizures are truly disturbing, even scary. When not in a clairvoyant state, he's not what you'd suspect from a killer, all smiles and disarming demeanor, even when Lee throws him against a wall in utter frustration. All in all, Grey delivers a cunning performance, one of the most unusual I've seen. His Franklyn Wills remains truly an enigma.In contrast, Robertson wisely low-keys his role, with a deadpan expression, soft voice, and unblinking stare as he observes the strange little man who seems in communication with something—but what. And when Lee and his wife start getting strange phone calls and knocks on the door, everyone figure it's got to be Wills, but why. What could he hope to gain. His behavior seems beyond strange.In a sense, the movie dwells almost obsessively with the relationship between these two. There are no real subplots or principal characters apart from them. Thus, it's two hours of trying to figure out whether Wills is a true psychic or not. The fact that the film is based on a true story makes the mystery even more intriguing. I suspect many folks are put off by the morbid undertones of the unvarying plot, and that plus an unconventional ending may have something to do with the film's obscurity. Nonetheless, for some folks, like me, it's a fascinating sleeper, with its own style of intrigue, and continues to cast a haunting spell.

sol1218 ***SPOILER ALERT*** Starts off as your average run-of-the-mill psychic helping the police solve a crime flick to later becoming something totally different. Something so strange and baffling that the local police chief Capt. Tucker, Cliff Robertson, starts to wonder if he's not the one who needs some kind of psychiatric therapy. Not the person he later suspects in Maggie Dawson's, Dianne Hull, murder self-confessed super psychic Franklin Wills, Joel Gray.After teacher Maggie Dawson was found murdered in her Volkswagen in a Laural shopping mall parking lot it became apparent that the killer covered his tracks very carefully. Leaving no fingerprints and having no one, in broad daylight, see him the case begins to run cold until out of nowhere Franklin Wills suddenly comes on the scene.Knowing things about Maggie Dawson's murder that only her killer and the police know Wills is taken seriously by Chief Tucker even though he really didn't, or up until then, gave as much as a rat's a** about the occult or clairvoyance that Wills' obviously has. Given all the leeway he needs by Chief Tucker Wills slowly uncovers more and more of the missing pieces of Maggie Dawson's murder. Wills is so good in his ability to track down the clues about what happened to Maggie that fateful afternoon at the Laural Mall that Chief Tucker starts to suspects that maybe, just maybe, he's, Franklin Wills, the person who murdered her!The first half of the movie "Man on a Swing" is pure gold in it's buildup to what Franklin Wills is all about and what exactly he knows about Maggie Dawson's, and later in the film Virginia Segretta, murder. You get the impression, just like Chief Tucker, that Wills is the real deal not some phony trying to make both a name and money for himself masquerading around as a crime solving psychic. It's the last half of the movie that really gets a bit overindulgent in trying to cover all the bases, instead of tracking down Wills' very accurate clues, in finding out if in fact Franklin Wills is really the real McCoy that he claims he is.Wills himself is anything but normal in his actions like going into spasmodic fits while putting himself under self-hypnosis, to find out who Maggie's killer is, but hell he's been right all along so why complain? We have Chief Tucker go so far as to almost kill Wills when he's wife Janet, Dorothy Tristan, felt that he was somehow threatening both her as well as his life.Admittely Wills is somewhat off the wall and even a bit dangerous in his demanding that Janet accept his handkerchief to the point where she became terrified of him. It was as if Wills felt insulted or hurt by Janet in not accepting his gift! Still Wills' never goes so far as even laying a hand or even finger, with the exception of Chief Tucker in showing him how Maggie was strangled to death, on anyone but himself in the movie.*****SPOILER ALERT****The film ends on a sour note with the audience as well as Chief Tucker not really finding out if Wills is real or not in his ability to mentally solve crimes. We can only guess, like Chief Tucker,that Wills is really on to something in his crime solving methods but what that is anybodies guess. All we get from Wills, who's predictions in the movie were dead on, is a sinister grin in that he knows something that we don't know as the movie suddenly comes to an end!

Fleeter Cliff Robertson plays the local sheriff who investigates the murder of Maggie Dawson, an attractive young woman. He is offered assistance by Joel Grey, a local psychic. As the plot develops, it becomes clear that either Grey, playing Franklin Wells, has psychic powers, or is involved in the murder. This is undeniably a "B" movie, but the acting, except for the always awful Elizabeth Wilson, is good-great. The writing is very good, with a scene when Robertson receives a Christmas card that shows how a good screenwriter can take an ordinary event and make it near terrifying. The way the sign of the motel scrawls across Robertson's police car window is very clever. Highly recommended.