Cinema Canada (Sep-Oct 1978)

FILM REVIEWS it by servicing the string of pasty, insatiable customers coughed-up by most North American cities. It’s a “sewer says an undercover man. And it’s a vortex of violence to shock anyone, including those who’ve tripped gaily over the tattered carpets of a Yonge Street massage parlor. Originally the film was conceived as a 60 minute CBC-TV special, but after thirteen days shooting a feature had been born. (The secret of such fertility should be shared, what with government cutbacks creating a prophylactic atmosphere for future CBC film productions.) What will bring the film to the local cinema is not the occasional flash of bare flesh, but several fine performances and the many levels on which the film works. Don Francks unquestionably dominates the film. The former CBC song and dance man, a one time drop-out himself (he once appeared in leathers on the Pierre Berton Show, figuratively spinning the shocked host’s bow tie at 3,000 rpm), is most convincing as Peter Brennan, a West Coast pharmacology professor who has become a heroin addict in that lifestyle experi‘mentation endemic to Pacific shores. His wife has deserted him, his daughter has run away. Francks, with his gaunt face, balding pate and waist length pony-tail, is so well cast as the archetypal 60’s dope scene drop-out that he visually steals almost every scene. In a quick cutting, opening sequence a hand held camera, shaking with TV news authenticity, discovers Brennan O.D.’ing in the toilet of a greasy spoon. One of the cuts includes a gruesome close-up of him salivating, a first indication this film is not for the squeamish or those socially isolated souls who think that our greatest problem is the future of the monarchy. The strident music, accompaniment for Brennan’s moments of isolation throughout the film, suddenly becomes muzak, and in the first of many changes in rhythm characteristic of the film’s structure, the fast cutting is replaced by a moving camera which reveals an antiseptic hospital room. There, Brennan is cold-turkeying it, sandwiched between white sheets. Len Cariou, cool and sophisticated as a crusading newsman in One Man, but a little 70/Cinema Canada Len Cariou (left), a narcotics officer tries to enlist heroine addict Peter Brennan, played by Don Franks, to help break a narcotic ring worldly to play RCMP officer, Larry, exploits Brennan’s helplessness, not unlike the way the pimps exploit their girls. Larry shows lurid slides of a girl forced into masochistic acts to support her habit, hinting she may be Brennan’s runaway daughter. It is then the bones of the plot are revealed: the mounties, demonstrating questionable ethics at once similar to Kojak but all too believable in light of the McDonald Commission inquiry, will help Brennan find his daughter — if he helps them break a ~ dope ring and identify the king-pin. In an inspired bit of filmmaking Larry exits, leaving the projector on automatic ostensibly to give Brennan time for a decision. The slides, previously shown mostly at comfortable home viewing distance, now become a quick cutting montage, bloody details bludgeoning the viewer as they do Brennan. No soft-sell consciousness raising is this. When a family snapshot snaps by, Brennan’s decision is a foregone conclusion. After possibly the briefest crossCanada bus trip for a Canadian film — no shots of the Rockies or the prairies — Francks disembarks before Toronto’s eternally “new” city hall, takes one last look at his daughter’s photograph and symbolically rips it up. Soon after his arrival but not before a greeting committee of police brutalizes then briefly jails him, Brennan is slowly sucked into the sewer. It’s apparently easy if the hang-outs are known, if the right questions are asked, and as is so often the case, if a contact