Cinema: Old Spooker

Games seems to have been put together by a new producer-director team with old ideas. "O.K.," they might have said, "for a Name we have Simone Signoret—46 years old, French accent—let's make her the heavy in a thriller-chiller. She used to work with Clouzot, didn't she? Remember his Diabolique, about a guy spooking his wife with a faked murder? Great! Remember that other wife-spooker, Gaslight—all in a terrific Victorian house? Great! Only let's make it a terrific modern house—mod, pop, camp, the sophisticated rich, and the decadent games they play. Games People Play. Games . . . say, that's not a bad title!"

This may not have been precisely the way Producer George Edwards and Director Curtis Harrington produced the twelve-page story outline they gave Scriptwriter Gene Kearney, but it is about the way things worked out. Old Pro Signoret walks handsomely through her part. Youngsters James Caan and Katharine Ross walk woodenly through theirs. Estelle Winwood makes an all-too-brief appearance as a nutty ailurophile. About the only fun in Games is the eye-beguiling set—supposedly a Manhattan brownstone at 11 East 64th Street, equipped with penny-arcade machines, fun-house mirrors, pre-Columbian sculpture, a pearl-inlaid bed, and what must be the most blood-drenched elevator between Fifth and Madison.