Pendulum Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Pendulum Blu-ray Movie Review

Giving a whole new meaning to the swingin' sixties.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 19, 2018

Maybe it’s the appearance of character actor S. John Launer as Judge Kinsella in Pendulum that gives the film a kind of old school, “World Premiere” made for television movie feel. While Launer’s name may not be overly familiar even to those who consider themselves diehard show business trivia fans, he has a long history in film, but perhaps most saliently also a pretty hefty television "ography", including having played a judge on literally scores of Perry Mason episodes over the course of the many years that now legendary series ran. Pendulum bears a 1968 copyright date, but was evidently only released in 1969 (more about that in a moment), and in some ways it seems to be a rather valiant attempt by a big studio (Columbia in this case) to provide glossy entertainment that might still have enough of a “social conscience” to at least attempt to go after the then very trendy “youth” audience. The film gives lip service to a whole host of supposedly highbrow Constitutional concepts, but it’s all wrapped in a somewhat tawdry tale of marital infidelity and political shenanigans that makes large swaths of it play fairly ludicrously.

Frank Matthews (George Peppard) is a Washington, D.C. cop who has made headlines by bringing a vicious murderer and rapist named Paul Martin Sanderson (Robert F. Lyons) to justice. Matthews has made so many headlines that he is being “loaned out” to Senator Augustus Cole (Paul MacGrath) to serve on some kind of ill defined (within the film itself) Congressional committee on law and order. Unfortunately for Matthews, Sanderson’s conviction is appealed to the Supreme Court by high powered attorney Woodrow Wilson King (Richard Kiley), who alleges that Sanderson’s Constitutional rights were violated in any number of ways. In a “ruling” that is simply plopped down in the film without any real explanation, the Supreme Court orders a retrial and forbids any evidence based on what they rule was an illegally obtained confession, barring it from the next trial. Since the confession led directly to evidence that proved Sanderson’s guilt, the whole case seems threatened.

In the meantime, Matthews is obviously experiencing some marital discord with his wife Adele (Jean Seberg). She’s a late sixties career woman with a successful public relations job, but Matthews wants her to be a stay at home wife. He’s also certain she’s carrying on an affair with a former lover who has now hired her firm to handle his public relations (there’s a joke in there somewhere, I’m sure). There are a couple of rather provocative scenes (for a late sixties major studio film, anyway) that suggest almost a sadomasochistic element to their relationship.

Suffice it to say that Sanderson’s case is thrown out, which is soon followed by a horrifying murder where Matthews himself slowly but surely becomes the main suspect. In an interesting turn of events, King offers to defend the hapless policeman, offering him the same protections that King alleges were deprived of Sanderson — by Matthews, of course. All of this back and forth provides Pendulum with a certain amount of interest, even if many of the issues involved are just kind of glossed over, given just enough lip service to make the film seem “relevant” in that overly self aware late sixties sort of way.

Pendulum doesn’t ever really manage to raise many hackles, despite trafficking in some potentially tricky material (there’s a whole subplot involving Sanderson and his seemingly alcoholic mother, played by the redoubtable Madeleine Sherwood, that verges on being positively Oedipal). It’s slick entertainment for the most part, but it’s emotionally distant, despite the best efforts of a rather interesting cast. In doing some background research for this review, I came across a couple of mentions online that Seberg was experiencing pretty noticeable emotional instability during the filming and that production had to be shut down for a while, which may account for the discrepancy between the copyright date and when the film seems to have had its domestic theatrical exhibition. She’s a little artificial feeling in some scenes here, as if she’s not quite sure how to play the sexual dynamics between her character and Peppard’s character. Sadly, she’d only have two more American feature films to her credit after this one, 1969’s behemoth musical Paint Your Wagon (still awaiting a Blu-ray release as this review is being written) and what was arguably the biggest box office hit of her career, 1970’s Airport.

Pendulum Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Pendulum is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. On the whole, this is a fairly pleasing looking transfer, though it suffers from variations in color temperature throughout, with some moments looking fairly faded and skewed toward brown and even purple, and others looking much more natural, with a warmer and more vivid palette. Detail levels are generally very good to excellent throughout, and grain resolves naturally throughout the presentation. Perhaps surprisingly, Sony has released this arguably lesser known property on a BD-50 (perhaps all the more unusual given that there are no supplements, as mentioned below), and I noticed no issues with compression anomalies.

Pendulum Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Pendulum features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track that more than capably supports the film's dialogue and score. It's obvious that at least a few moments were post looped, as evidenced by some rather loose sync, and it even appears that perhaps a couple of lines spoken by Seberg during filming were changed sometime afterward, since her lip movements don't match the words. One of the film's more interesting components is the rather nice score by Walter Scharf. Scharf never really rose to the front ranks of film composers, at least in terms of general public awareness of his work, despite Academy Award nominations for ten of his efforts (three of his better known nominations were for adapting the Styne-Merrill score for the film version of Funny Girl, adapting the Newley-Bricusse song score for Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, and for writing the music for Best Song nominee and giant Michael Jackson hit, Ben). His work here is actually just a bit on the odd side, with harpsichord mixed with wordless vocals, and a truly bizarre closing song called "The Pendulum Swings Both Ways" sung by the Lettermen (the version in the film is quite different from their single version, which was evidently the B side for one of their last charting Adult Contemporary hits, their version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic "I Have Dreamed"). There's a certain Dave Grusin-ish quality to this score, and I almost wonder if this might have been the film I suspect a Grusin score was rejected for as I relayed in a rather funny anecdote about Grusin in our Hollywood in Vienna: The World of James Horner Blu-ray review. Fidelity is fine for the most part, aside from a few changes in ambience in what I am assuming were the post looped moments.

Pendulum Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements included with this release.

Pendulum Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Pendulum has some interesting elements, but it never really adds up to much. There's absolutely no question as to who has committed the murder, and so most of the film is given over to some of the more outré character beats for the likes of Lyons and Sherwood. Still, fans of the cast (which also includes a coterie of other faces which will be familiar to Baby Boomers or lovers of vintage television) may enjoy this film despite its shortcomings, and the good news for them is video is generally solid if brownish, and audio is fine.