The Dain Curse Film Review

Director: E.W. Swackhamer
Year: 1978
Rating: 5.0

Dashiell Hammett only wrote five novels but they were enough to establish him as one of the greatest hard-boiled writers ever. The first two of them, Red Harvest and The Dain Curse, had The Continental Op as the protagonist. His name was never given (similar to the Deighton "Harry Palmer" novels) and he worked for a nationwide detective agency, The Continental Agency. He worked in the San Francisco office and Hammett's years working for Pinkerton made this very familiar territory for him. The Continental Op also appeared in over 30 short stories. Not much is given away about his personal life. He is given an assignment and it is up to him - using the resources of the agency - to get it done. In Red Harvest he goes to Personville - locally known as Poisonville - to investigate a murder and then is asked to clean up the city of the two criminal gangs that run it. He does it by playing them off against each other. It is lean and mean with one critic calling it "a remarkable achievement, the last word in atrocity, cynicism, and horror". The book was likely influential in the film Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars.

In his second novel, The Dain Curse, the Continental Op is asked to investigate a diamond robbery for an insurance agency. What seems to be a simple case over a handful of diamonds worth $500 gets more and more complicated and convoluted. His work was published in serial form, usually in Black Mask, and Hammett fell prey to the serial disease. The same one that Dumas and Dickens fell prey to. They have to meet deadlines and they have to meet a word count. Which often takes the authors down rabbit holes of subplots to fill space. The Dain Curse is usually considered Hammett's weakest book. For good reason. It goes on for far too long - is broken into three separate but connected stories and the prose is wordy and at times redundant. The Curse of the Serial. At one point far into the book, his friend says to the Continental Op, "Nobody's mysteries ought to be as tiresome as you are making this one". That goes equally for this three-part, 4.5 hour adaptation.

It is fine but I would have taken a hacksaw to it and by doing that to the book because it follows the book much more closely than I was expecting. I normally get annoyed when a book is played with too much, but this one needed it. Three hours would have been about right. Each of the three episodes reflects the way the book is divided. Each time that you think it brings the story to a natural ending, Hammett finds a way to keep it going. He had been writing short stories for years and wanted to move into long-form. They give the Op a name in the film - Hamilton Nash - and he is portrayed by James Coburn. Like the book, he narrates it and it is all from his point of view. Coburn would never have been my pick for the detective - too handsome and slick - I would have gone with someone like William Conrad (Cannon) which is how the Op always struck me.

So, he is called into the robbery but it all strikes him as wrong. Why break into a house, walk past many expensive objects to get to the upstairs study and know which drawer the diamonds were in. His boss (Paul Stewart) wants him to write it up and be done with it, but in hard-boiled detective stories they stick to it like gum on your shoe. Gumshoe. Father, mother, daughter and maid. And they are all crazy. A family history that is ugly and soiled like a rag lift in the mud. A few murders later, Hammett wraps it up - or so we think. Nash is called back when the daughter, Gabrielle (Nancy Addison), checks herself into a new age religious temple run by a few grifters (Jean Simmons being one, Brent Spiner another) who fleece their flock using gas and voices in their rooms. A few murders later, Hammett wraps it up - or so we think.

The third piece is when he is assigned to look over the daughter after her new husband is murdered and Nash puts her through heroin withdrawal. Is there anything more annoying than watching someone going through withdrawal? For extended periods. A few murders later and Hammett really wraps it up with a denouement of what has truly been going on. That is good. How much sense it made, I don't know. Hector Elizondo plays a sheriff and a name I haven't heard in a long while is Roland Winters who plays the father of the murdered man. Roland was the last Charlie Chan in that long running film series. This show tracked so closely to the book that it took any of the suspense out for me - for others it may be different. Director E. W. Swackhamer plods along, making it fit nicely into 90-minute episodes with no particular style. It was meant for TV and he succeeded.