THE PENTHOUSE (1967)

We watch what appears to be the usual morning ritual of young British couple Barbara and Bruce in their penthouse apartment: Barbara, who has a job at a dress shop, gets up first to make coffee while Bruce, a real estate agent, lingers in bed. But we soon discover the truth: the two are having an affair, with Bruce making empty promises that he will ask his wife for a divorce, and the fancy apartment they're in belongs to a client of Bruce's who is out of town. The building itself is still under construction and the elevator to the penthouse isn't operational. Soon, Barbara answers a knock at the door to find two men who say they have come to read the meter. She lets them in but their behavior is strange as they dawdle and make the occasional cryptic comment. Sure enough, after a few minutes, it's clear that the two men, named Tom and Dick (who refer to a third named Harry who will be arriving soon), are staging a home invasion. Bruce gets tied up and made fun of (one of the men taunts him by saying, "Sleeping in his underwear--eww, not very civilized, not very hygienic") and Barbara is plied with liquor until she is willing to have sex with Tom, and later Dick. However, despite the hovering threat of physical violence--and the question of how consensual the sex with Barbara really is--most of the pain dealt out is psychological as Tom and Dick seem to enjoy playing mind games and brandishing their potentially threatening presences more than their weapons (at one point, one does pull out a switchblade). Eventually, they leave on their own accord and a horny Barbara starts to flirt with the still-tied-up Bruce--until another knock on the door announces the arrival of Harry, a professionally dressed woman who says she is the parole officer of Tom and Dick, and she wants permission to bring the two men in to apologize--or is this just another mind game?

I'm not really a fan of home invasion movies, though this one is perhaps a notch above the average. The situation, the dialogue, and the performances all make this feel like a Harold Pinter play; if that sounds appealing, I can recommend this to you; otherwise, this probably won't be your cup of tea. No character is particularly appealing, so when the two thugs start going through their predictable home invasion tactics, I found it difficult to work up much identification with the adulterous couple. Suzy Kendall (Barbara) is lovely; she began her career as a model and later was married for a time to Dudley Moore. Her character is the center of the story more or less by default since we know little about any of them, and she's the most vulnerable. Most reviews of this movie mention the two rape scenes, but they (especially the first one) don't play out as rape so much as drunken seduction scenes, though it's clear that, even if physical brutality isn't used, the threat of such is never far from the surface. Terence Morgan as Bruce is a beta male who seems to have lucked into his affair with Barbara. The thugs (Tony Beckley and Norman Rodway, pictured) are physically intimidating, but also seem to function more as symbols in this psychological drama rather than as three-dimensional characters. Most interesting of all, if just for the sheer ambiguity of her character, is Martine Beswick as Harry, though she only has about ten minutes of screen time. As in a Pinter play, don't expect any clearing up of ambiguities or loose ends, though I did find the ending satisfying enough. [YouTube]