DIRECTION: Jack Smight
Christopher Gill (Rod Steiger) is a serial killer fixated on his late mother, a celebrated stage actress. He stalks older women who remind him of Mama, slipping into a carousel of disguises—priest, policeman, plumber, hairdresser—to disarm his victims and keep the police guessing. A Broadway theatre owner and director, Gill treats murder as performance, each killing another grotesque star turn.
Among his personas, “Dorian,” the flamboyant hairdresser, is the film’s comic high point. Steiger leans into a sibilant, theatrical delivery that feels less like a gay caricature and more like a Broadway actor’s idea of one—arch, mannered, and knowingly overplayed. In the movie’s best scene, Dorian is fitting a wig on Miss Belle Poppie (a marvelous Barbara Baxley, surrounded by her beloved cats), purring, “Isn’t that fantastic and breathtaking,” as he caresses the very neck he intends to strangle. The moment is interrupted by Belle’s sister Sylvia (Doris Roberts, expert at puncturing pretension), who instantly senses that something is off. When she snaps, “You homo,” Dorian fires back with the film’s immortal line: “Well, that doesn’t mean you’re a terrible person.”
As a gay man, I should probably bristle at Steiger’s camp turn. Instead, I end up laughing helplessly every time. The scene works because Steiger isn’t mocking gay men—he’s playing a killer who performs stereotypes the way he performs everything else: as theatrical roles, exaggerated to the point of absurdity.
No Way to Treat a Lady, adapted by John Gay from William Goldman’s novel and directed by Jack Smight, balances thriller mechanics with satirical bite. George Segal brings a grounded charm as the detective on Gill’s trail; Eileen Heckart adds emotional texture; and Lee Remick, underused but still luminous, gives the film its glints of romantic possibility. It’s a strange, stylish hybrid—part police procedural, part character study, part macabre comedy—and Steiger’s gallery of disguises is what holds it all together.
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