Dark Tower (Freddie Francis as Ken Barnett, 1987)

It's always an odd feeling to know that the director of the movie you just clicked play on requested that his name be removed from the finished product. You suspect something went wrong behind the scenes but how that manifests in the viewing experience is a fun little game of low-stakes Russian roulette I like to call Will This Be Bad, And, If So, How Bad Will This Be? Dark Tower is hardly a disaster, but it's a little too lifeless and inert. It's a movie where everyone involved seems to be on heavy doses of anti-anxiety medication, but not as interesting as that sounds. It has a couple of decent scenes and some effective moments, but it's just a little too slow and dull for my taste, and I usually love slowly paced, atmospheric movies.

The elements were all there for Dark Tower to be something special: a great cast, an offbeat story and location, and a director who usually gives his material flavor and energy. Unfortunately, things started to go wrong on the production before the director and the two leads were even involved. Ken Wiederhorn, the cowriter of the screenplay, was initially hired to direct. He had previously directed the Nazi zombie movie Shock Waves, King Frat (plot description: "frat boys compete in a farting contest"), slasher movie Eyes of a Stranger (starring Jennifer Jason Leigh), and Meatballs Part II (the one with a space alien and Richard Mulligan instead of Bill Murray). A decidedly mixed bag, for sure. For his leads, Wiederhorn hired British television veteran and costar of Top Secret Lucy Gutteridge and The Who's Roger Daltrey ("yeaaaaahhhhhhhhh!"). Wiederhorn threw himself into preproduction work, but the producers took so long getting the financing that the movie was indefinitely delayed. As a consolation, those same producers gave Wiederhorn Return of the Living Dead Part II instead.

When the money finally came through to shoot Dark Tower, Wiederhorn, Gutteridge, and Daltrey were no longer available. The legendary cinematographer Freddie Francis, who had a parallel career as a director of pulpy and darkly comic horror movies, replaced Wiederhorn. As a cinematographer, Francis worked for many great filmmakers, including Joseph Losey, Jack Clayton, Charles Crichton, Jack Cardiff, Karel Reisz, David Lynch, Robert Mulligan, and Martin Scorsese, and his directing credits include Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, 1972's Tales from the Crypt, Craze (a personal favorite), and the notorious Trog (with Joan Crawford). Francis filled the roles vacated by Gutteridge and Daltrey with two of my cult favorites, Jenny Agutter and Michael Moriarty (whose name is misspelled in the opening credits as "Moriarity," as a sort of warning of what's to come).

These all seem like upgrades to me (though I like Daltrey, too), but, sadly, Francis was dealing with a reduced budget, especially in the special effects department, and couldn't bring the fullness of his ideas to life. No one seems to have their heart in their performances, except for Theodor Bikel, who has a lot of pep in his step, and Francis' direction is surprisingly perfunctory and anonymous.

Disappointed in the look of the film and angered by the lack of effects money, Francis had his name removed prior to release, and the fictional Ken Barnett received the directorial credit. Francis was so pissed about the whole experience that he quit directing, focusing on cinematography full-time. His only directing credit for the rest of his life was an episode of HBO's Tales from the Crypt in 1996. Dark Tower got a theatrical run in Europe, but it went straight to video in the U.S. two years after its initial release overseas.

The promisingly strange narrative is about British architect Carolyn Page (Agutter), who works for the Barcelona branch of a U.S. corporation. She has designed the megalo-conglomerate's new Barcelona high-rise office complex, which is partially open, though some of the interior floors are still under construction, including, oddly, the floors above and below Carolyn's office. That can't be legit, right? I don't know 1980s Spanish building codes, but that seems off. Carolyn's late husband shared her profession, and she replaced him as architect of the office complex after his mysterious death at sea, though the body was never recovered.

For some reason, the U.S. corporation has a staff of ex-NYPD private investigators in Barcelona to investigate any potentially criminal shenanigans occurring on its property. The head of this investigating team is Dennis Randall (Moriarty), an oddball ex-cop with psychic powers. He enters Carolyn's orbit after the building's window washer falls to his death while washing Carolyn's office windows. It looks to Carolyn like some mysterious force hurled the man to his death. The investigators are condescending and skeptical, even psychic Dennis, until he starts having weird premonitions and more people die. Other cast members include parapsychologist Max Gold (Bikel), beret-wearing drunken clairvoyant Sergie (Kevin McCarthy, hell yeah), and Carolyn's secretary Tilly (Carol Lynley).

This all sounds like the makings of one hell of a b-movie, but the narrative mostly limps along aside from a few exciting or weird moments, Agutter and Moriarty bring less pizzazz than usual (but still can't help being fascinating screen presences), and the skimpy production budget means the effects are mostly inconsistent and underwhelming. There are a few too many wandering in under-construction corridor scenes, and the same damn elevator footage is used and reused umpteen times.

I wanted to like this more, and I'm a champion of messy movies with bad reputations, but it never quite landed for me. My wife liked it more than I did, though, so you may be in her rarefied company if you appreciate it. It does have a certain narcotized dreamlike atmosphere, which I usually go for, but it was just a little too boring for me.