Horst Buchholz plays Mark Kalvin, an ambitious young man sent to manage a bank in a remote town in New England. Once in Pittsville he seduces local matriarch Kit (Ann Wedgeworth) and convinces her to help him rob his own place of employment. Unfortunately, they haven't reckoned on persnicketty bank clerk Alice (Patricia Joyce), whose pedantic eye for detail gums up the works until Kalvin 'takes care' of her in the vault one evening. Kalvin's motivations are less than clear and Buchholz tries to compensate by over-emoting, probably in an effort to portray the character as a psychopath. Quite how this Polish-West German film got made is a mystery; director Krzystof Zanussi is still working today but never returned to the United States and producer Manfred Durniok spent the balance of his career working in the Bundesrepublik. Bizarrely, songwriter Chip 'Angel of the Morning/Wild Thing' Taylor plays bank guard Ken Travers, after which he appeared in Zanussi's next film Biwans Kwartalny and Jonathan Demme's Melvin and Howard before retiring from film acting!
Review of The Catamount Killing
