Trenchcoat

For a while in the 1970s and ‘80s, Malta was really determined to develop a film industry. An IMDb search for the filming location of simply “Malta” from 1975 to 1985 produces 43 results, and that’s almost certainly missing some. Some of these are better known than others—Popeye, of course—and some are cult classics—Final Justice, of course. There are two giant water tanks that can be used to film against the horizon but still have some control of your water. These days, you can even get a cash rebate for filming there. But if the scenery looks familiar, well, there’s your reason.

Mickey Raymond (Margot Kidder) is a court stenographer who wants to be a mystery writer. She decides that the best way to go about it is to go to Malta and hope something happens to her. Which it does, with a vengeance. She is rapidly caught up in events that were—for reasons we’ll get to in a minute—very hard for me to follow. But she meets up with fellow American Terry Leonard (Robert Hays), friendly old couple Lizzy (Pauline Delaney) and Sean (P.G. Stephens) O’Reilly, and frustrated detective Inspector Stagnos (David Suchet). People are dropping dead, and Mickey looks good for it.

This movie is not on Disney+. It is out of print on DVD. It had a VHS release decades ago, and I managed to find it on the Internet Archive—with Greek subtitles and the original trailers in Greek from its VHS version. The video is muddy and the audio is a bit muffled, and of course you can’t get English captioning unless you’ve got equipment I don’t, because the Greek is burned in. There’s no outcry about this, largely because pretty much no one is familiar with this movie.

That’s at least in part because this movie comes at an odd juncture for Disney. Under Walt, the studio’s emphasis had been Family Friendly. And that’s great. Honestly there’s not enough family-friendly stuff available. However, there’s a stigma against Family Friendly, and studios are always after more markets. So in the years after Walt died, the studio actually started making more mature movies—but people wouldn’t go see them, allegedly because they had the Walt Disney name attached to them.

Allegedly. Because a lot of these movies just weren’t very good. Some of them were. We’ll be getting to a couple later this month that I’m pretty sure were good. And of course I like TRON. But this is . . . not great. And it’s better than The Black Hole. And I’m pretty sure that it’s better than Condorman, but Lord I don’t remember. Still, the failure of these movies is what led to the creation of Touchstone Pictures; apparently they’d considered releasing this movie under that sort of name.

Now, I am well known for believing that even stuff like this should be on Disney+. For one thing, it’s the first time David Suchet played a detective on the big screen, admittedly a not terribly good one who needs Random Tourist to solve the crimes. For another, come on, Disney, open the damn vault. But this movie is one that has basically been forgotten. Despite the fact that it’s actually quite the milestone in Disney history.

Wait, what? Yes. It took me a while to do this, but for those of you who’ve read this far, I can tell you that it’s actually appropriate for Pride as well as for Year of the Month. This may well have Disney’s first-ever openly queer character. At one point, we are introduced to Princess Aida, whom we are told was in a relationship with one of the victims. (I don’t remember which. As I said, it was hard to hear what was going on.) A male victim. And Princess Aida is introduced dressed in men’s clothing and clearly turns out to be a drag queen.

I feel you tensing from here, and you’re not wrong to do so. A queer character from 1983? That’s probably not great, is it? And when I tell you that she’s played by Ronald Lacey, whom you may recall for having gotten the headpiece of the Staff of Ra burned into his hand in Raiders of the Lost Ark a few years earlier, you’re probably even more concerned. But she’s treated with decent respect actually. Mickey’s a little taken aback when Princess Aida turns her face with the makeup on to Mickey, but that’s the full extent. And the movie doesn’t shame her relationship, either.

Despite being sixth-billed, she doesn’t take up much of the story. She’s less important than at least three characters billed below her. Her role in the movie, however, is a lot more pleasant than that of Massimo Sarchielli, who plays “boss Arab.” The sequence with the “Arabs” is creepy and unpleasant, not least because there’s no good reason for them to be Arabs and of course they are played by an Italian guy and a British-Armenian guy. (Who, if I’m reading this right, would later go on to tell Indy that his soul was prepared for death.) So the movie’s not all good.

It’s a vaguely decent movie, from what I can tell. It handily passes the Castaway Cowboy test. It’s important in Disney history. Okay, so it’s unsettling when people drug Margot Kidder and think she’s delusional and stuff, and that would’ve aged poorly even if she weren’t, you know, Margot Kidder. But anyway, yes, there are a whole lot of reasons it should be on Disney+, and I’d be saying that even if it weren’t such a pain to track it down for the column.