Fear Is the Key (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Jul 25, 2024
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Michael TuchnerRelease Date(s)
1972 (February 13, 2024)Studio(s)
Kastner-Ladd-Kanter (Arrow Video)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: B+
- Audio Grade: B+
- Extras Grade: B+
Review
Bestselling Scottish author Alistair MacLean may no longer be a household name these days, but his influence is still felt far and wide. That’s not just true of the publishing world, but the filmmaking world as well. While there’s an abundance of cinematic adaptations of his work, he had a clear influence on other thrillers like Juggernaut and ffolkes (aka North Sea Hijack). While he’s often associated with World War II and cold war stories like The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, and Ice Stations Zebra, the actual settings were never as important as was his intricate plotting. In one form or another, MacLean’s stories usually involved men on a mission, with the road from A to B being anything but a straight line. The narratives were never what they seemed to be on the surface, and they were filled with characters who also weren’t what they seemed to be. Deception was layered on top of deception, and double-crosses were inevitable—sometimes, the double-crossers themselves would end up the victims of yet another double-cross. The magic with MacLean is that he was perfectly willing to double-cross his readers as well, withholding necessary information and context until he deemed them appropriate. You’re never sure of your footing with Alistair MacLean.
All of that made great fodder for cinematic storytelling. Enter producer Elliott Kastner, who had success working with MacLean on Where Eagles Dare in 1968. Kastner ended up optioning three more MacLean novels after that (and perhaps unsurprisingly, he was also the producer on ffolkes). In 1972, he turned to one of the most quintessentially Alistair MacLean of Alistair MacLean novels: Fear Is the Key. There are no spies or commandos in this particular story, but it’s filled with all the layers of deception that fans had come to expect from the author. Robert Carrington’s script opens with a prologue that introduces John Talbot (Barry Newman) in an unnamed location while he’s in radio contact with an airplane, and he overhears it being unexpectedly shot down by another plane. Three years later, Talbot reappears in a coastal town, where he proceeds to raise enough hell to get arrested by the local police. While he’s appearing before the judge, he manages to escape and takes a hostage (Suzy Kendall) on a wild car chase through the countryside with the police in hot pursuit. He may escape the long arm of the law, but the rest of his journey will end up taking him deep into the criminal underworld, leading to a shady billionaire, an oil platform, a submersible, a missing DC-3 Dakota, and $85 million worth of uncut diamonds. Fear Is the Key’s memorable supporting cast includes the always reliable John Vernon, an impossibly young-looking Ben Kingsley (in his first feature film role), and an impossibly svelte-looking Dolph Sweet.
The late Barry Newman isn’t necessarily the first actor who would spring to mind for fans of the book, but he acquits himself admirably in the film. Perhaps just as importantly, he carried forward his experience working with stunt coordinator Cary Loftin on Vanishing Point two years earlier. That’s because Fear Is the Key opens with an extended car chase that isn’t always included in the pantheon of great chase scenes, but it should be. It successfully applies one of the most important lessons that was taught by films such as Bullitt and The French Connection: proper big old American muscle cars and sedans are more visually dynamic than smaller, faster sports cars. There are plenty of exceptions to that rule, of course, and Rémy Julienne was able to work wonders with cars as small as a 1981 Fiat 131 Supermirafiori 2000 TC in Le professionnel. Yet as a general rule, the mass of larger cars gives them a greater sense of visual momentum. There’s a good reason why William Friedkin and Buddy Jo Hooker turned to otherwise nondescript cars like a 1985 Chevy Impala for To Live and Die in L.A. It didn’t just make practical sense in terms of the story; it also made good visual sense.
For Fear Is the Key, Loftin centered everything around a red 1972 Gran Torino SportsRoof driven by Talbot, with the police following hot on his heels in 1969 Pontiac Catalinas. Of course, there were actually multiple Gran Torinos to provide the necessary coverage, but while the continuity isn’t quite perfect, there’s still a decent sense of progression throughout the entire 13-minute sequence. (At least Talbot doesn’t pass the same green Volkswagen Beetle multiple times like what happened in Bullitt, although the various cars in Fear Is the Key shed and regain their hubcaps with equal abandon.) Newman was able to handle some of the driving himself, but most of it was done by a capable crew that included legendary driver Joie Chitwood. At one point, one of the drivers does an impressive J-turn that would have made James Garner proud, flooring one of the Catalinas in reverse down a two-lane bridge and successfully managing to rotate it while narrowly missing the railing on one side. Yet stunts like that were all in a day’s work for Loftin and his crew, and Fear Is the Key deserves a more prominent position in the annals of classic car chases.
In Roger Greenspun’s 1973 New York Times review of Fear Is the Key, he called it a “cheaper, more threadbare” James Bond movie and complained about the fact that the chase involved “economy cars.” Never mind the fact that muscle cars like the Gran Torino weren’t exactly economy cars; Greenspun’s review demonstrates a clear lack of vision when it comes to understanding what makes a great car chase work. Regardless of what myopic critics might have felt in 1973, there’s nothing even remotely threadbare about Fear Is the Key, and its technical merits are excellent across the board. Loftin’s work is superb, as is the cinematography by Alex Thompson, the editing by Ray Lovejoy, the energetic score by Roy Budd, and the solid underwater miniature work by the great Derek Meddings (even if he succumbed to the standard cinematic trope of lighting everything far too brightly for the depths involved). Fear Is the Key may lack the exotic locales and equally exotic cars of a James Bond film, but those kinds of elements would have been completely superfluous in this instance.
Holding all of that talent together was journeyman feature director Michael Tuchner, and while Tuchner spent most of his career working in television, he was more than capable of shepherding a complicated production like Fear Is the Key to the big screen. Having the right collaborators never hurts, of course, but tying their work together into a coherent whole requires a director with a vision of his own. Tuchner was more than happy to let Fear Is the Key go in with a bang by having the big car chase take place up front, but he was shrewd enough to let it go out with a whimper for the finale, at least in terms of action. The ending features three men doing little more than talking while they’re confined inside a claustrophobic space, dispensing with all of the action in favor of resolving things with a simple (but no less tense) conversation. Yet by that point, the rest of the film has carefully established what kind of person each of them is and what they’re capable of doing, so the stakes still feel high.
It’s at this moment that title Fear Is the Key finally makes sense, both in the book and the film. Fear Is the Key to unlocking this particular mystery, and it’s also the key to solving Talbot’s problems. Like the best of Maclean’s heroes, he’s willing to go to any lengths to accomplish what he set out to do. Underneath all of the complex layers of deception, the motivations driving MacLean’s heroes were often primal ones, and Fear Is the Key is no exception. So, it’s perfectly appropriate that everything concludes with a conversation that’s essentially a game of chicken, waiting to see who flinches first. Of course, in a battle of nerves, the one with the strongest motivation usually comes out on top, but Tuchner stages things in such a way as to leave some doubt about the price that Talbot may end up paying in order to accomplish his own mission. It’s an Alistair MacLean story, after all, so it makes sense that Tuchner added his own layer of deception to go on top of the layers of deception. He understood that it was best to make sure that viewers were equally unsure of their footing, making Fear Is the Key an unfairly neglected addition to the canon of cinematic adaptations of the author’s work.
Cinematographer Alex Thompson shot Fear Is the Key on 35mm film using Panavision cameras with anamorphic lenses, framed at 2.35:1 for its theatrical release. This version from Arrow Video uses a high-definition master provided by Paramount, with no other details available regarding the source elements that were used or any work that was done to them. It looks like an older master, with some minor damage like light scratches still visible. The opening titles and any other optical work really look like optical dupe elements, especially in any shots featuring traveling mattes in the windows of the submarine. The night shots also look a little rough, with flat contrast and boosted levels that adds some noise to the prominent grain. With all of that out of the way, it’s still a generally decent transfer, with colors that look quite good if sometimes a bit uneven—the 2B Bright Red paint on the Gran Torino looks a little orange in a few shots, but to be fair, it always has (and it’s a color that doesn’t necessarily photograph consistently anyway). It’s not a perfect transfer of Fear Is the Key, but it’s a more than adequate one.
Audio is offered in English 2.0 mono LPCM, with optional English SDH subtitles. There’s not much in the way of dynamics and the bass is somewhat limited, but it’s clean and free of noise or obvious distortion. Some of the dialogue sounds a little muffled, but that may be partly due to bad ADR—Suzy Kendall sounds like her dialogue was frequently looped. Roy Budd’s memorably jazzy score sounds fine, however.
Arrow Video’s Limited Edition Blu-ray release of Fear Is the Key comes with a reversible insert featuring new artwork by Nathanael Marsh on one side and the theatrical poster artwork on the other, as well as a fold-out poster offering both artworks. There’s also a slipcover with the new artwork and a 20-page booklet featuring an essay by Sean Hogan. The following extras are included:
- Audio Commentary by Howard S. Berger
- A Different Kind of Spy Game (HD – 23:33)
- Fear in the Key of Budd (HD – 16:34)
- Producing the Action (HD – 29:55)
- Bayou to Bray (HD – 39:30)
- Theatrical Trailer (Upscaled SD – 2:16)
The first three extras are new to this edition. Filmmaker, historian, and professional Dummy Death expert Howard S. Berger is on hand to provide the commentary for Fear Is the Key, and since he’s an Alistair MacLean fan, he’s in sync from the moment that the opening credits roll. (It doesn’t hurt that he’s also a big fan of producer Elliott Kastner.) He discusses the themes of performance, deception substitution, and illusion that are so prevalent in MacLean’s stories and in the cinematic adaptations of the author’s work. Berger notes the ways that the illusory pieces are carefully established during the opening act (including a few that may not be obvious on a first viewing), and explains how they’re gradually dispersed in the second act in order to allow the story to resolve in the final act. He also offers plenty of praise for the cast and crew, including Michael Tuchner, Alex Thompson, Cary Loftin, Roy Budd, Elliott Kastner, and more. If you’re feeling dazed and confused by the multilayered world of Alistair MacLean and Fear Is the Key, this is an excellent place to start.
A Different Kind of Spy Game is a visual essay by critic and author Scout Tafoya, who describes Fear Is the Key as no ordinary MacLean movie, and a far cry from Where Eagles Dare. (Which is fair enough, but fans of the author will know that it’s anything but an atypical Alistair Maclean story.) Tafoya provides a brief overview of MacLean’s career and the adaptations of his work, and places Fear Is the Key into context with the genre and counterculture cinema of the era. Fear in the Key of Budd is an appreciation of composer Roy Budd by fellow composer and film historian Neil Brand. Brand offers an overview of the film and breaks down Budd’s contribution to its effectiveness. He doesn’t feel that it’s a particularly good vehicle for Barry Newman, but he thinks that Budd’s score helps to create the proper mood by making everything feel cool.
The rest of the extras were originally produced for Via Vision’s 2022 Blu-ray release of Fear Is the Key. Producing the Action is an extended interview with associate producer Gavrik Losey, who talks about his work for Elliott Kastner and the challenges of making Fear Is the Key. He has plenty of juicy stories about the production, including shooting the action scenes and securing the use of a real oil rig (as well as the way that Technicolor helped to salvage the matching footage that was shot in London). Bayou to Bray is a broader look at the making of the film, including interviews with assistant production accountant Paul Tucker, focus puller John Golding, sound mixer Anthony Jackson, actor Peter Marinker, prop man Terry Wells, and third assistant director Peter Cotton. They’re all interviewed separately so their stories are a bit scattershot, but it’s still a nice companion piece for fans of the film.
The only thing that’s missing from the Via Vision release is their commentary track featuring Kim Newman and Sean Hogan, as well as their own unique packaging. If you own that disc, you’ll probably want to hang onto it for the commentary track, but Arrow’s set still has overall edge. I don’t own the Via Vision release, but it appears to utilize the same master, so whether or not the additional extras make Arrow’s version worth the double-dip is up to you. On the other hand, if you don’t already have Fear Is the Key in your collection—and you should, by the way—this is the one to own.
- Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, and Letterboxd).