J Paul Johnson
Film Masters continues its monthly endeavor to restore and re-release cinema’s forgotten and nearly-forgotten treasures this month with the 1970s thriller The Swiss Conspiracy, starring television’s David Janssen charged with solving a complex blackmail case in Zürich. The film’s story and performances do little to suggest the re-release is worth the effort, but as usual Film Masters gives the package its all, with a handsome 4K restoration, featurettes, and commentary that bring The Swiss Conspiracy back to life.
The narrative is so, so straightforward it feels a little like a slightly extended episode of the television series—The Fugitive, Richard Diamond, O’Hara, Harry O—Janssen grumbled his way through in the ’60s and ’70s. When a Swiss bank is blackmailed, its president (Ray Milland) turns to apparently-renowned former U.S. Justice Department official David Christopher (Janssen) to identify potential subjects, including the mistress (Elke Sommer) of the bank’s second-in command (Anton Diffring). Among the other suspects are a Chicago mob figure (John Saxon), sexy socialite Denise Abbott (Senta Berger), brash Texas businessman Dwight McGowan (John Ireland), and Dutchman Andre Kosta (Andre Brauss). The local police captain (Inigo Gallo), meanwhile, seems every bit as suspicious of Christopher as he does of any of Christopher’s suspects; the investigation won’t be easy.
Unambiguously the star of the film, once the crime is committed, Janssen appears in every scene as its point-of-view character. We know what he does, no more, and no less. Though Janssen certainly deserves credit for a long and storied career on screens big and small—most notably as the star of what was long the most-viewed television episode in history in the final episode of The Fugitive in 1967—here his performance is marked by resignation and fatigue. His David Christopher takes the case reluctantly, slogs around with the gait of a man several decades older than his portrayer, mumbles through his lines, and unless provoked in a shootout or fistfight brings next to no action to what is, ostensibly, posited as an action thriller.
With his greying and receding hair, furrowed brow, slow gait, and grumpy disposition, it’s almost impossible to reconcile that Janssen was only 44 at the time. If the adage that people aged fast in decades past holds true, The Swiss Conspiracy is here to provide ample evidence. We may joke today about a Tom Cruise leaping about and performing his own stunts in his sixties, but give credit where credit is due for his infusing a tired genre with a needed double-dose of adrenaline and testosterone. Anchored, in a heavy-weight-dragging-in-sand kind of way, by Janssen’s leaden performance, The Swiss Conspiracy feels a lot less like, say The French Connection (on which its title is oh-too-obviously modeled) than an episode of Mannix, Cannon, or Barnaby Jones, albeit with a better supporting cast, a more exotic location, and some extended action sequences.
Speaking of which, there is a thrilling if entirely nonsensical near-death car race through the snow-slicked hairpin turns of the Swiss Alps, a bit of foreplay between Christopher and the beautiful Denise, which, after Christopher nearly dies, cuts, almost comically, to their post-coital sheet-wrapped conversation, a naked three-minute dialogue shot in one-take. At the film’s midpoint, the chase and sex seem to energize both the narrative and the performances a bit. With his shirt unbuttoned in the second half of the film, Janssen’s hirsute chest deserves its own credit. Even in the film’s chilly climax atop the wintry Alps, there’s no buttoning it up! When the bank president decides he will pay off the blackmail demand in uncut diamonds, the ransom rendezvous brings each of the suspects together in a snowy mountaintop showdown, one that delivers an unpredictable conclusion.
The film is directed by Jack Arnold, best known for B horror/cult movie classics such as The Incredible Shrinking Man, Tarantula, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and It Came from Outer Space. By the 1970s, Arnold was better known for and more engaged in television work: he directed episodes of Mod Squad, Wonder Woman and The Love Boat. The Swiss Conspiracy was Arnold’s last feature film.
Janssen, meanwhile, had not made a film in five years. He would die, it is sad to say, at the very young age of 48, just four years after The Swiss Conspiracy. Known well as a heavy drinker and up-to-four-pack-a-day chain-smoker, Janssen suffered a massive, sudden heart attack at his beachfront home in Malibu. He was eulogized by Suzanne Pleshette and his pallbearers included a who’s-who of television, film, and rock royalty, among them Milton Berle, Johnny Carson, Gregory Peck, Richard Harris, and Rod Stewart. Janssen did not live long, but he lived fully.
A West German-U.S. co-production, The Swiss Conspiracy wasn’t released in the States until 1977, the year after its completion and European release, and it barely registered with moviegoers. Following a decade in which the big hits were focused on rogue cops, black action heroes, crime families, and space operas, The Swiss Conspiracy felt just a bit out of touch with its time, unable to channel the neo-noir panache and commanding performances that made Chinatown and The French Connection feel connected to cinema’s past but nonetheless fresh and invigorating.
If the plot is unremarkable and the lead performance leaden, there is no complaint to be made about the lovely restoration. The film’s real star is its beautiful location and it knows it, opening with postcard photos of its remarkable scenery. And it looks pretty great here, scanned in 4K from original 35mm archival elements with colorist and restoration expert Marc Wielage in charge. The film is presented with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 on region-free discs with English SDH and DTS-HD/Dolby AC3s audio.
Special Features
As per usual, Film Masters makes the most of its presentation with special features that lend context, insight, and in this case, a bit of comedy to the featured film.
Audio Commentary on The Swiss Conspiracy is provided by author and podcaster Daniel Budnik and film historian Rob Kelly. Improvising and joking their way through, Budnik and Kelly make for engaging hosts, though neither takes the film too seriously. Both are quick to point out some obvious gaffes in production and gaps in logic in the film. It’s an enjoyable, if not all that instructive, perspective on the film, one that skewers some of its weaker points and revels in the film’s strengths, an enjoyable 90 minutes spent in the company of two buffs who clearly love film, if not necessarily this particular film.
Jack Arnold: A Three-Dimensional Filmmaker is a 28-minute visual essay created by Ryan Verrill and Will Dodson of Someone’s Favorite Productions focusing more broadly on Arnold’s career, with interviews from professors Michael Schuman of the University of South Florida and Kristopher Woofter of Dawson College. Illustrated with clips, promotional stills, storyboards, and publicity materials from across the entirety of Arnold’s long and prolific career, this featurette provides a more auteur-ist perspective on a filmmaker best known for B-movies and television episodes and is highly worth the watch.
Given the snark and pith of the commentary track from Budnik and Kelly, I’d have loved a second, more academic approach from scholars like Schuman and Woofter. That aside, this featurette is an impressive overview of Arnold’s varied and fascinating career from two excellent teachers.
Jack Arnold: The Lost Years, a 13-minute featurette from Ballyhoo Motion Pictures, focuses on the late career years of the director as he transitioned from his B-movie creature features to his later work in television and film, including The Swiss Conspiracy.
Trailers: both the original 35mm theatrical trailer, as well as the recut, newly restored trailer (below) are included.
Unlike Film Masters’ five prior releases to date, which have paired together some fascinating double features, there is with The Swiss Conspiracy no second disc with a second feature film.
The jewel case package also includes a 16-page color booklet with liner notes from Lee Pfeiffer, editor-in-chief of Cinema Retro magazine, with an overview of the film if not an impassioned defense of it. “I enjoyed it very much for what it is,” Pfeiffer writes of his first time viewing The Swiss Conspiracy, “an unpretentious and fast-paced crime thriller.”
That faint praise might be the best that can be said of The Swiss Conspiracy, even in spite of Film Masters’ excellent restoration and supplemental packaging. It is a film with its slight, small pleasures if no particular je ne sais quoi to lend it the gravitas or charm of the decade’s best thrillers.
The Swiss Conspiracy is available for pre-order and will release on Feb. 20, 2024 in a special collector’s edition on Blu-ray ($24.95 MSRP) and DVD ($19.95) from Film Masters.
