If the truth be known -- and the truth, as ever, is pretty murky in this Raymond Chandler rip off -- Raymond St. Ives, the writer who is hired out of nowhere as a private eye, is merely a nom de plume. The character's real name, well, almost real, is Charles Bronson. He's the taciturn, muscular guy who can be thrown into an empty elevator shaft by three hoods, save himself after falling down a few floors by grabbing a cable and sliding to a halt, haul himself up to a doorway into an empty warehouse, and deck the three armed goons who still pursue him. The thugs include Robert Englund, later to surpass himself as Freddie Kruger, the mad killer of the "Friday the Thirteenth" slasher movies, and Jeff Goldblum, ditto, as neurotic scientists.<br /><br />Bronson is hired by the immensely wealthy John Houseman to recover some stolen journals. Houseman's mistress, Jacqueline Bisset, is thrown into the mix so she can pop into bed at one point with the protagonist.<br /><br />Why -- you ask? -- did Houseman hire Bronson, a not-too-successful novelist and ex crime reporter -- to act as a go-between who delivers the forty million dollars in exchange for the purloined letters? I don't know.<br /><br />But the plot, such as it is, follows Raymond Chandler rather closely otherwise. It's as complicated as a Rubik's cube. I admit I was lost now and then. A couple of cops are corrupt. People double cross each other all the time. Bronson keeps stumbling across dead bodies, a habit that doesn't endear him to the police.<br /><br />Bronson also knows a lot of louche people and bounces from one to the other in his search for the solution to the various mysteries. Bronson asks one of his friends: "Do you know a guy named Parisi?" The friend replies: "You'll have to see Boykins about that." Bronson goes to Boykins, who tells him: "I didn't do the job but I know Finley wasn't in on it, but Pedo can tell you more than I can." I have the names mixed up but I don't care any more than the writers cared.<br /><br />I think one of the biggest turn offs is the production design. Bronson is described as living in "a cheap hotel." I found the apartment rather charming, a hell of an improvement over this abandoned railway car that I live in.<br /><br />And wardrobe and make up have done their best to turn every character into a simulacrum of a rich Hollywood actor. The rich Hollywood screenwriters who assembled this kaleidoscope of mysterioso doings have no idea of what it's like to be less than rich. The grease monkey under the car has four precisely applied and somewhat becoming oil marks applies to his face and forehead. Everyone dresses in suits and ties except the goons who wear tatters and wool caps so you'll know they're goons. Bronson, the down-on-his-luck writer, drives a Jaguar. Everyone else drives a boxy-looking American car at least forty feet long.<br /><br />A gimcrack job, and a disappointment considering who was in front of the camera and behind it, many of them seasoned professionals like J. Lee Thompson, Lalo Schifrin, Lucien Ballard. Why does it look so much like a cheap television movie set in Los Angeles?