New Movies: No Way to Treat a Lady

Eying the widow and the wine, the priest broguishly intones: "It's red like the blood he shed for you and me." Playfully he proceeds to tickle her ribs until she shrieks with laughter. Then, purpling like an eggplant, he chokes her to death and paints a lipstick kiss on her forehead.

The father image is only an illusion. The Roman collar is as big a put-on as his accent and his wig. Under them is an effete, seething schizoid (Rod Steiger) who can kill when he assumes an identity other than his own. But who is he? New York's police assign a green, gawky Jewish detective (George Segal) to find the answer. After eyeballing the first victim, Segal promptly advances a pop-psych theory to the press: the murderer, he argues, is a mother hater who takes Mom for a slay ride every time he garrotes a middle-aged lady.

The theory is not too far from the mark, but it elicits furious denials from Steiger, who keeps taunting his pursuer by phone, hanging up before the calls can be traced. Meanwhile, victim after victim is fingered by the Manhattan strangler, who blithely pops into new personae as easily as most men change ties. His disguises range from the Irish priest to a German plumber to a homosexual hairdresser. He even plays a prostitute in drag and throws in an imitation of W. C. Fields on the brink of madness. But the killer's ego is even more monumental than his talents. Eventually he overreaches by trying to do away with Segal's girl friend (Lee Remick), then gets trapped in a theater, where the chase comes to its inevitably bloody conclusion.

Although murder and mental illness are hardly laughing matters. Director Jack Smight squeezes legitimate comedy from the corrosive camaraderie of Steiger and Segal in their hare-and-hound relationship. Not that the film is totally successful. Eileen Heckart, as Segal's mom, aims at Kosher salami but comes out Irish ham. And the end, heavy with Christian expiation, is as self-conscious as a Sunday-school morality play.

But Segal gives his best performance since King Rat, and Steiger offers the audience a cornucopia of characters and caricatures. Some are overplayed while others are slighted, but consistency is beside the point: no other major American actor ^ould have brought off this kind of multifaccted tour de force, which once was the exclusive property of Alec Guinness.

"I'm only 42," he explains. "Brando is 43, Paul Newman is 43, but I look like everybody's father." True enough. Although Rod Steiger's weight rises and falls with tidal regularity—and the demands of the role—he normally carries about 220 lbs. of fat and gristle on his 5-ft. 10-in. frame. His hairline is almost a memory, and his jowls reflect years of studied attention to the pleasure of the table. Rod Steiger's worth has increased with his girth: his current fee is $500,000 a film, and most producers feel that the price is right for one of the most convincing character actors in Hollywood history.