I've only read one of Leonard's crime novels and it didn't impress me much with its style. The guy writes as if he's producing a technical manual with people instead of parts. But the plot was interesting and dense, as it is in this movie.

Roy Scheider never turns in a bad performance, and here his face is beginning to look comely and battered with time. He's also from Orange, New Jersey, which is a good place to start from. Scheider is Harry, a morally flawed businessman with a mechanical bent. Ann-Margaret is breathtakingly good looking, and her performance is exceptional. The same could be said of Vanity, but her part is rather small. The villains are all superb. John Glover is a delight to watch on screen -- and to listen to -- with that slimy smile and midlands Maryland accent that descends into working-class vulgar when the situation calls for it. He's the kind of villain who would enjoy pulling hooks out of fish. He and Scheider played well off one another in "The Last Embrace." Clarence Williams is a sort of doggedly cunning and brutal muscleman, done quietly but effectively.

There's something oddly amusing about Williams' villainy. After Scheider and Ann-Margaret have clobbered him following a botched murder attempt (a little hard to believe),he sits in a chair having his picture taken while Scheider implants in his mind a few seeds of doubt about the probity of his partners in crime. An expression of dumb comprehension creeps slowly over his face and his eyes squint over his bleeding nose.

Robert Trebor (terrific name, by the way, a palindrome) gives a nearly perfect imitation of a guy who is a sweating, shaking, desperately twitching nervous wreck, but still with his eye pinned on profit and, mostly, survival. What a trio of villains.

The plot is, as I say, dense, but not difficult to follow. The story is in a style that Northrop Frye called low mimetic: Scheider is no hero, and in fact no better than the rest of us. That's what makes his outwitting of the trio so interesting. Frankenheimer's direction is fine, no flashy shots or dazzling fireworks. The story pulls a viewer along on its own terms. Not a masterpiece, but a cleverly done genre piece, it's worth seeing. Can't imagine why people flock to schlock while a movie like this goes by mostly unnoticed.

A truly disturbing Neo film Noir that came in the mid-eighties between "Body Heat" and "Basic Instinct". It is the type of film that you can't take your eyes off of, but when you think about it during and afterwords, you are grossed out by the way it intrigues you. Welcome to the world of'80's glam trash.

Roy Scheider is a millionaire businessman with a beautiful wife, played by the luscious Ann-Margret, but he is cheating on her with a much younger woman. He has to entangle with blackmailers of the slimiest kind who will not stop when he outwits them, taking all of them on a journey of intrigue around the Los Angeles basin where nobody seems to end up being the winner.

You certainly won't forget John Glover in this movie, having already played many slimy roles on screen. He's the ringleader of a group of blackmailers and Lead writer on a journey is that turns out deadly for many people. Young Kelly Preston is seeing in videotaped evidence of Schneider's affair with her, and one truly disturbing scene may have you turning your eyes away. Another character that ends up suffering at the hands of the nefarious Glover is stripper Vanity somehow managed to get an obscure award nomination for this film but certainly not an Oscar or even a Golden Globe.

There are some great moments in the film that are intriguing but as I said they are layered with an uncomfortable feeling of psychotic voyeurism that is often too disturbing to really make it watchable. It is worse than watching a car accident or a train wreck and seeing bodies carried off. I had no issue with the film's slimy way of presenting its story but the way it is resolved had me laughing at the ridiculousness of the whole set up, and while I can see it as being a crowd-pleaser on screen it is dramatically impossible for what happened in the finale to actually occur. Dramatic license can't be bought at the DMV.

52 Pick Up finds Roy Scheider a successful industrialist with a gift that keeps on giving copyright finds himself the victim of a blackmailing trio of John Glover, Clarence Williams, III, and Robert Trebor. They are involved in a porn palace and one of the young models has been seeing Scheider on the side. This all is complicated by the fact that Scheider's wife Ann-Margret is looking toward a political career.

Scheider fancies himself a tough guy and blows them off. But these guys blow back mean and nasty even murdering the mistress Vanity and harassing Ann-Margret. They video Vanity's death for Scheider and show they have a neat frame for Scheider to fit in.

Vanity by the way gives a frightening performance during said video of a person knowing she's about to die at the hands of lowlifes. And this trio is about as low as you can go. Glover is truly psychotic, Williams is a stone cold killer and Trebor is a feckless idiot.

Scheider plays them off against each other, a little vengeance, a little justice mix in nicely. Even in the end with the last one standing you figure out just how he will deal and you look forward with anticipation as to what will come.

Ann-Margret's character is clearly based on recent Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro and the foibles of her husband John Zaccaro which publicity about did her no good. Then again I don't think Ferraro had to deal with the trio of baddies that this film offers.

52 Pick Up is a nice suspenseful action flick. I'm sure you'll figure out what happens to the last baddie and look forward.