Dreary. Granada International and A&E have released Night of the Fox, a 1990 made-for-cable WWII spy actioner based on the best-selling novel by Jack Higgins. Featuring an all-star has-been cast including George Peppard, Michael York, John Mills, David Birney, Deborah Raffin, and John Standing, this desultory, lifeless 188 minute slog takes a first-rate Boys Own story and buries it under frequently ridiculous dialogue and philosophizing, flat, head-and-shoulders direction, and several unintentionally humorous performances. What a disappointment.

A few weeks before the Normandy invasion, Colonel Hugh Kelso (David Birney) is almost killed when the naval convoy he is traveling on is sunk. Washed ashore on the beach at Jersey, in the Channel Islands (the only area of the British Empire that was occupied by the German military for the duration of the war), he is rescued by Helene de Ville (Andrea Ferreol) and General Sean Gallagher, formerly of the Irish Army (Niall O'Brien), Kelso is squirreled away in a secret hiding place at Helene's, who then contacts British Intelligence of Kelso's whereabouts. Col. Kelso's survival, though, causes quite a problem for American and British intelligence, for Kelso has detailed knowledge of the D-Day invasion plans, and no one can risk his falling into the hands of German intelligence.

SOE Brigadier General Dougal Munro (John Mills) decides there's only one man brazen enough to bluff his way into Nazi-occupied Jersey and retrieve Col. Kelso, and that's Colonel Harry Martineau (George Peppard). An ice-cold, ruthless killer who enjoys his work, Harry is also something of an enigma, being an educated Oxford scholar and (bad) poet. Harry's mission is simple: retrieve Kelso if possible, but in all probability, kill him for safety's sake. Facilitating his entry in Jersey, and guaranteeing contact with Helene and Sean, is Sara Drayton (Deborah Raffin), an amateur brought into the operation who is related to Helene, and who has known Sean all her life.

With Harry assuming the role of high-ranking German officer Colonel Max Vogel (complete with a forged letter from Heinrich Himmler, commanding any German solider to follow Vogel's orders to the letter), and Sara pretending to be his lover, Anne Marie La Tour, the two set out first for France (as cover), and then to Jersey. Separated on two different boats, Sara meets Count Guido Orsini (Andrea Occhipinti), an Italian officer who has been assigned to the German Navy. He discovers her secret, but does nothing because he's attracted to her (as she is to him, as well as already being Harry's lover). Unfortunately for both Harry and Sara, their mission becomes almost impossible when they learn that Field Marshall Erwin Rommel (Michael York) will be visiting Jersey to inspect invasion security measures.

SPOILERS ALERT!

I vaguely remember when Night of the Fox was advertised on TV in 1990, but if I watched any of it, it didn't come back to me after catching this DVD. But that's not surprising, considering the general poor quality of the entire production. Produced by Britain's famous ITC production company (who had an earlier hit - and a far superior film - in theatres with another Higgins adaptation, 1976's The Eagle Has Landed), Night of the Fox has all the earmarks of a multi-national tax shelter, with name stars in the twilight of their careers, various European location work (particularly dirt-cheap Yugoslavia here), skimpy sets, skimpier production design (not too many German soldiers there in occupied Jersey), a padded script to facilitate a two-part, two-night "television event," and most distressingly, an overall air of tiredness, particularly from erratic director Charles Jarrott.

As a big fan of this type of genre work, I was looking forward to Night of the Fox's potential. But almost immediately, the compromised nature of the project sent out bad vibes as to where it was going, and little improved over its interminable length. Higgins' plot, while not exactly original (it borrows from his own works, particularly The Eagle Has Landed, as well as being reminiscent of other similar genre work by Alistair MacLean), is entirely serviceable and should have provided a relatively fool-proof framework for an exciting, jigsaw-puzzle WWII spy adventure. The added twist of having Rommel find an exact double (played as well by Michael York) who turns out to be a Jewish refugee hiding out in the German Army, was quite novel for this type of story, and might have provided some depth to the heroics had the screenwriter, Bennett Cohen, been interested in going beyond the simplest declarative bromides.

However, scripting (particularly the terrible dialogue), acting and direction all sink Night of the Fox's clever plot, creating together a surprising level ineptitude in what must have been a fairly ambitious endeavor (for 1990 cable and syndicated TV, that is). To start with, Cohen's script has more howlers than the dog pound at 3:00am. Nobody in Night of the Fox seemingly speaks like a human being. Everything is put forth as explanatory exposition; when Mills and Raffin travel to Harry's English estate to recruit him, Mills' litany of Harry's personality traits sounds like a cheap dime-store adventure novel ("On the one level he's a scholar, a philosopher, a poet. Full of sweet reason. But on the dark side, a cold, ruthless killer...and there's a curious lack of emotion in him." So much for subtle character development built up over time). Even worse, the romantic interludes between Peppard and Raffin are fraught with some of the funniest (unintentionally) lines I've heard in some time (Peppard, in a bar with Raffin, explains his pummeling of a bully: "I feel. I act. I'm a very existential person," to which Raffin replies, "'Existential?' What the hell is that?"). Scenes like these play on over and over again in Night of the Fox, with different characters declaring their obvious intent to each other. One would assume they're here to pad out the long running time to make a two-part, two-night "event," but I fear someone actually believed these frankly ridiculous exchanges constituted serious dramatics.

Not helping matters is director Charles Jarrott. A truly schizophrenic director, Jarrott in his career could be capable of feature films as accomplished as 1969's Anne of a Thousand Days or 1971's Mary Queen of Scots, followed by notorious junk like the 1973 Lost Horizon remake, 1977's The Other Side of Midnight, and marginal made-for-TV films like Jackie Collins' Lady Boss. Here, Jarrott seems incapable of moving that camera one inch; everything is shot in an incredibly boring, stilted head-and-shoulders sameness that screams "This is TV; time is money, get the shot and let's move on to the next set-up, everyone, please!" The tempo is all wrong for individual scenes, as well. For a supposed rip-snorter action/espionage romp, Night of the Fox's pace is funereal. Dialogue scenes are slow and draggy, with the actors timed out awkwardly in their delivery (not aided, as well, by the stodgy blocking). Nothing moves in Night of the Fox, and that's deadly for an adventure film.

As for the acting, ultimately, the director has to take responsibility for the general level of performances in his or her film, but I can't see Jarrott being able to make much out of Peppard's and Raffin's turns here. Mills, one of England's greatest screen actors, is fine here in his small part, but he's about the only one who comes out of this debacle unscathed. Michael York is giggly bad as both Rommel and "Corporal Berger," believing, I guess, that bugging one's eyes out is the equivalent of conveying Prussian authority. Raffin, one of those anonymous actresses whose name and face seems familiar but whom you can never actually place in a title, is remarkably inexplicable here; what, exactly, is she trying to accomplish with this role? Literally laughing and smiling her way through a role that's not supposed to be humorous in any way, shape or form, she comes off like some high school student in her first senior play (watch her kiss Peppard for the first time; it may be one of the most awkward screen kisses I've ever seen). Her every scene clearly shows she has no idea who her character is, nor how to play her.

As for Peppard, this was one of his very last roles before his death four years later, and clearly by this point, he had stopped trying altogether. I've always been a big, big fan of Peppard during his heyday in the 60s; he presented a curiously angry, snide, even violent anti-hero persona that offered audiences no reassuring charisma or charm that let them like him despite his actions (unlike say, Paul Newman, whom women adored in Hud, despite being a rat bastard in the film). Peppard seemed not to care if audiences actually liked or rooted for him, and it was always refreshing to see that level of disdain for his own likeability quotient (The Blue Max is probably the best example of this). But by this point in 1990, he's obviously tired and bored and unfocused, playing Harry not as some kind of enigmatic mystery, but as a cipher, totally devoid of any kind of compelling interest. Delivering his lines in an inexplicably slow, drawn out manner, Peppard alternately looks deeply sad or bored out of his skull. Considering the level of ineptitude surrounding Night of the Fox - including his own performance - both are an entirely appropriate responses.

The DVD:

The Video:
The full screen, 1.33 video transfer for Night of the Fox is pretty weak. Obviously taken from a second or third generation video dupe, the soft, fuzzy, bleeding picture has lots of jaggies and print damage, along with faded color. This doesn't look very nice on a big monitor.

The Audio:
The Dolby Digital English 2.0 stereo mix is also quite bad. Presumably the original source material is to blame, because the warbly, echoing sound reminds me of the days of battered 16mm films shown during school. Frequently, dialogue is buried under the muddy sound, with no help from subtitles or close-captions, which aren't available here.

The Extras:
There are some simple text bios for Jack Higgins, the main cast members, and an index of Higgins novels. Very skimpy extras, totally in keeping with the overall skimpy nature of the film itself.

Final Thoughts:
A big disappointment for this WWII action/espionage fan. Nothing works here in Night of the Fox, a ridiculously overlong and undernourished affair. The scripting, particularly the dialogue, is frequently laughable; the direction is flat, uninspired, and off in its pacing, and the performances are sub-par, at best. I suppose serious WWII action fans will want to check it out with a rental, just to complete their "I've seen that," list, but all others can safely skip Night of the Fox.