Video Reviews and News : Movies : ****Excellent ***Good **Ordinary *Poor : <i> Recent videocassette releases, reviewed by Times critics.</i>
*** “Still of the Night”
MGM-UA. $29.95.
This thriller--about a susceptible psychiatrist (Roy Scheider) following an ice-blonde femme fatale and suspected murderess (Meryl Streep) through a maze of blind alleys and menace--is one of the more successful of the many Hitchcockian pastiches. Maybe it’s because the personality of writer-director Robert Benton is so far from Hitchcock’s, more open and generous; the twists seem to get a new edge. Benton can’t really turn the vise, like De Palma, but he establishes a consistent tone of understated urban paranoia. And one fine scene of shivery deja vu --when a nocturnal dream turns icily real--offers a genuine frisson.
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