To Catch A King (1984 Telefilm)

 

Picture: C-     Sound: C     Extras: D     Telefilm: C+

 

 

The Nazis are plotting to capture the Duke Of Windsor, but they’ll have to stop Teri Garr in To Catch A King, a strange 1984 TV movie in which Robert Wagner is the lead, but is hardly in the film enough.  Singer Hannah Winter (Garr) gets her hands on a top secret SS memo, and though one Nazi first tells her she reminds him of Billie Holiday (which shocks her because they want all Black people dead with all Jews), she is soon being hunted down.

 

Like Melanie Griffith in more expensive and bizarre theatrical features like A Stranger Among Us and Shining Through a few years later, Garr is actually the lead.  I guess the idea is a woman cannot be the lead in a World War II story unless she is Ingrid Bergman or something like that.  This project wants to conjure Hitchcock, Casablanca in Wagner being a Rick-like figure and the dressed up actors and production want to conjure Classic Hollywood, but this never clicks.  Instead, it is a wacky, odd failure Wagner made during the final years of Hart To Hart, which might explain why he is not in it enough.  Barry Foster also stars.

 

The 1.33 X 1 image is terrible, fuzzy, color poor, lacking in depth and is easily an old analog video transfer.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono has fared barely better, though you can tell the sound is down a few generations itself.  There are no extras, but we can tell you veteran director Clive Donner helmed this production, so they were hoping for the best.  It just does not work out.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo