To begin with why is this film so unavailable, and also why is it so underestimated ? Paddy Chayefsky. Who wrote the script was widely considered a fine writer and it should be out there for him. And yet I only have an old video of the film taken from television. In the UK it has not to my knowledge been shown for a very, very long time. It is just as good as ' Marty ' written by the same writer, and that in my opinion is a lesser film and that has been on DVD and maybe still is. Don Murray ( a great actor ) is married, but clearly not happy and he accepts a night out with his fellow workers to celebrate the forthcoming marriage of one in the group. The night is a dismal experience, haunted by death fears from one of them and the groom is not at all clear he desires the woman he is to marry. There are hints that he maybe homosexual, and the writer could have made it clearer, and Carolyn Jones as a disturbed young woman at a party they are not invited to cannot sleep alone, and begs any man who comes along to tell her he loves her. Foolishly and this is a flaw she is called ' The Existentialist. ' Hell maybe other people but this has nothing to do with the concept created mainly by Sartre, and it jars, pretentiously so. All the same I love this film for showing fallible people trying to face up to life's ordeals and their own sexual confusions. The scene where the group of fellow workers watch pornographic films is saddening as well. We are left to wonder what enjoyment they are getting but one of them touches the groom and says he looks like the man they are watching. Probably the censor cut this in the UK. Who knows as records of cuts are now either in the vaults or destroyed ? Patricia Smith is excellent as Don Murray's wife and she knows all too well that her husband is not happy that she is pregnant. Abortion too is mentioned, then like the possible homosexuality brushed to one side. The ending of the film, and no spoilers, was again at fault at being too upbeat for what had gone before. Despite these faults ( again in my opinion ) it is a sad, beautifully filmed exercise in adult unfulfillment and sadness. I cannot resist giving it a 10 and I have watched it many times. A film that asks timeless questions and it has not dated at all. Don Murray should have had an Oscar for his performance.
Review of The Bachelor Party
