Mr. Frost

This English/French collaboration is a curious combination of "B" movie aesthetics grafted on to a wonderful premise. Detective Detweiler (Alan Bates) uncovers a horrendous series of crimes. A Mr. Frost (Jeff Goldblum) has tortured and murdered some 24 people, ranging from children to the elderly, and buried them in his backyard. Shuffled around the psychological clinics of Europe, Frost remains silent until he meets Dr. Sarah Day (Kathy Baker), in whom he finally confides: he's no less than the Devil, himself. Day, understandably, finds this claim a little hard to swallow, until Frost begins to explain his position. Evil, Frost maintains, has disappeared, or become banal, and the age-old conflict of good and evil, supported on either side by strong faith, has given way to 20th century science and psychoanalysis. Frost says he has returned to remedy this situation, and proposes that Day murder him as the ultimate surrender (arguing that a psychiatrist murdering a patient would be an emotional admission that he is truly Satan). Guiding her other patients as well as her cohorts, Frost does indeed convince Sarah of his genuine evil--and Sarah must eventually make the decision whether to kill him. There is nothing particularly imaginative about the filming, and a subplot involving one of Day's patients who goes on a priest-killing spree is lifted wholecloth from Dirty Harry, but two things hold the viewer mesmerized. One is the ingeniousness of the premise, the second is Goldblum's portrayal of the mysterious Frost. It is a plum role, needless to say, and Goldblum makes the most of it. These two factors raise this bizarre film above its "B" movie trappings. Recommended, with the above reservations. (R. Pitman)