The 4th Man (1984)

This film functions like an intricate puzzle. its visuals and class give away to an incredibly well written plot ..don't want to give much away, but this is the definition of ART HOUSE horror! Suspenseful and Cerebral, you'll love pacing together the hints. The horror scenes are no joke and they remind me of 2 other great horror films, SUSPIRIA and DON'T LOOK NOW. Maybe its because they were shot in Europe, maybe its because they're all artistic and visually stunning, maybe because there's a lot that stays in the mind even after the film ends, or maybe because they don't quite give away the story and instead let the viewer figure it out, or maybe its because its just a a great movie just like those 2, either or its an EXCELLENT Film. Final Grade, A-

Before making it big in Hollywood with hit films RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct and Starship Troopers, and not forgetting critically slated Showgirls, Dutch film director Paul Verhoeven was still making films in his native Netherlands, and this was the last before he left for the States, and one to feature in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Basically Catholic alcoholic and bisexual novelist Gerard Reve (The Living Daylights' Jeroen Krabbé) has frequent nightmares and visions of his possible impending or future death, but he tries to carry on as normal, leaving Amsterdam to the Vlissingen Literary Society to deliver a lecture, and on his journey he spots a handsome young man he is very attracted to, but he leaving on a different train. Following the lecture he is the introduced to the treasurer of the literature club and wealthy widow Christine Halsslag (Renée Soutendijk), also a beautician and the owner of the Spider beauty shop, and they have a one night stand, unaware that she already had a boyfriend, and in a photo he finds out it is the young man he saw in the train station. Gerard urges Christine should bring her boyfriend Herman (Thom Hoffman) so he can meet and spend some time with him, of course if he was to come for a few days his secret intention is to seduce the man he longs for. She agrees to this and leaves Köln to go and get Herman, while Gerard stays alone in her house, he just drinks whiskey and looks around her place, including inside a safe containing the film reel footage of her three previous marriages, and he finds out eventually that these three men all died while married to her. When Gerard does meet Herman, he first obviously questions her marriages and tells him that they simply all died in tragic accidents, but at one point while walking through a graveyard with Herman, and briefly seducing him, the two of them discover a secret crypt full of incriminating dark contents. Gerard is at that point sure that Christine is a Black Widow, i.e. a witch, and intends to marry Herman and perform some sort of dark spell so he will die in what looks like an accident as well, he could be "the fourth man", but the boyfriend thinks he is jealous and wants to scare him off and keep her for himself. They get into a bit of a squabble and drive recklessly, and they end up together in severe car accident, Herman is impaled through the eye with a pipe, but Gerard survives and is determined to prove Christine is an evil being and could kill him next, but in the end doctors catch him and believe him to be crazy, and he ends up in comatose and the nasty woman gets away with it. Also starring Dolf De Vries as Dr. De Vries and Geert De Jong as Ria. Krabbé gives a good leading performance as the sexual predator and unknowing victim of a dark series of witch crafted murders made to look like accidents, and Soutendijk is a suitable choice for the Femme Fetale who turns out to be some kind of sorceress with dark intentions, it is a simple enough story about doomed sexual desires and almost like a fatal attraction sort of vibe, but it does have the funny moments as well, it works as a fun black comedy thriller. Very good!

I always have been a great fan of Paul Verhoeven & i believe that "Basic Instinct" is the BEST erotic-thriller ever made( no matter what the others say, it's undoubtedly a masterpiece of the genre & time will enhance the judgments, i'm sure).And....this "the Fourth Man" is the best flick of Paul's "dutch" era.As it always has been said , it's a wonderful combination of Bergman(for its philosophical theme) & Hitchcock (for the kind of suspense it creates) , too.it has a compelling screenplay with a touch of surrealism. "the third man" (sorry, it's my other favorite,...Carol Reed always stays in my mind!).."the 4th man" also opened the gates of Hollywood for the dutch director.

Paul Verhoeven has one of the strangest oeuvres of any major director: he started off making art-house films in his native Netherlands before moving to Hollywood where he began making subversive genre pieces which are often seen as mere entertainments by the mainstream crowd. 1983's The Fourth Man was the last film he made before moving to the U.S. and it seems to have been a transitional film for him.From the beginning of The Fourth Man it's clear that the film will be seen from the perspective of the famous albeit impoverished author Gerard. In a seeming homage to Carol Reed's similarly titled 1949 film The Third Man the film begins with an author making a trip to speak to a crowd of literature enthusiasts. The similarities end there, however, as Gerard runs into no major complications before arriving at the auditorium and the speech itself goes fairly smoothly. In spite of the relative ease with which he completes this function we know that the author is somewhat troubled as he has realistic fantasies about murdering his roommate before leaving his house and he also has a surreal fantasy involving a hotel he sees advertised and a detached eyeball growing out of a door's peephole. That he sometimes has trouble keeping his fantasies separate from reality is made all the more clear when an anecdote he tells is exposed as untrue and he admits that he "lie{s} the truth until {he} no longer knows whether something did or didn't happen." The Fourth Man is full of surreal fantasies and dreams which are made all the more disturbing because it's very easy to see how they relate to events which we have seen occur and because they sometimes foreshadow events which haven't occurred yet. Between the effectiveness of the unreal sequences and Verhoeven's careful editing style this ends up being the most atmospheric film this side of Don't Look Now and like that film this one is full of ambiguity. Unlike that film The Fourth Man is also perversely funny as Gerard's deeply held Catholic beliefs seep into every aspect of his life including sexuality. He naturally associates a female hair stylist he knows intimately with the Biblical Delilah though he fears she'll remove an even more important symbol of masculinity with her scissors. In an erotic fantasy sequence that would make Luis Buñuel blush he substitutes a man he's attracted to for a life size statue of Christ on the cross.The Fourth Man is a horror film which manages to bring the viewer into the mind of the protagonist while still maintaining a certain ambiguity: it certainly seems as if Gerard is in danger but it may just be more of his "lying the truth." The film is also full of both subtle and not so subtle visual symbolism which helps make it a unique and satisfying cinematic experience.