The Drowning Pool is a 1975 mystery-thriller film directed by Stuart Rosenberg.
It is a sequel to 1966 film Harper, with Paul Newman returning as wisecracking private detective Lew Harper. This time an old girlfriend, Iris Devereaux (Joanne Woodward, Paul Newman's wife), has brought Harper to New Orleans because she has a job for him. It seems that her ex-chauffeur, Pat Reavis, wrote a blackmail letter threatening to tell Iris's husband James about her various affairs (Harper is one of those affairs). She wants Harper to deal with him.
Harper has barely checked into his hotel when a scantily-clad teenager, Schuyler (an 18-year-old Melanie Griffith) makes her way into his hotel room and tries to seduce him. Schuyler is eventually revealed to be Iris and James's daughter. Harper goes to the Devereaux mansion and the matriarch, Olivia Devereaux, mistakes him as an errand boy for her enemy, oil magnate J. Hugh Kilborne. No sooner does Harper leave the Devereaux mansion than he's kidnapped by Kilborne's goons and brought to Kilborne, who wants to buy Olivia Devereaux's land and drill for oil there, but is frustrated by her refusal to sell.
Then Olivia gets murdered...
Tropes:
- Adaptational Name Change: The second Harper movie based on one of Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer novels. Both times, the producers bought the rights to an Archer novel but did not buy the general rights to the character.
- Beastly Bloodsports: If there were any doubt that Kilborne the oil magnate is evil, it's resolved when Kilborne's men are shown training pit bulls for dogfighting.
- Call-Back: When Iris fires Harper, he complains that he's spent $800 in expenses. At the end of the movie Harper gives Gretchen $9200—the $10K that Reavis got, minus $800.
- Dame with a Case: Harper's old lover Iris has him flown out to Louisiana to help her find and neutralize her blackmailing chauffeur.
- Deadpan Snarker: Harper's default setting. When Mavis observes that he's a long way from Los Angeles, he says "I'm working my way down to Miami."
- Dirty Cop: Lt. Franks, who is a paid thug and hitman for Kilborne and who killed Reavis.
- Drowning Pit: Harper tries to find a way for him and Mavis, who are trapped in a locked room (actually a large hydrotherapy room) to escape, by clogging the drain at the bottom, then setting off the sprinklers so they can reach the windows at the top of the room, only to discover as they rise to the ceiling, that the windows are sealed shut, and he can't get the rag out of the drain. The villains come to investigate the captives who have been locked up all night, open the door, and are swept away by thousands of gallons of water.
- Feet-First Introduction: Kilborne's sexy wife Mavis is introduced when Harper, his hands tied, is thrown bodily into the back seat of a limo and is greeted with the sight of her long legs and high-heeled shoes sticking out.
- Fille Fatale: Schuyler keeps trying to seduce Harper, who looks to be 40 years or so older than she is. And the finale reveals that she killed her grandmother and drove her mother to suicide.
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: Pretty obviously run by Chief Broussard of the local police and his underling Lt. Franks. Lt. Franks drags Harper in and threatens to arrest him for child molestation (in fact, Harper threw Schuyler out of his room) and is generally angry and hostile, while Chief Broussard is all friendly and polite and says stuff like "Lt. Franks gets over-enthusiastic now and again."
- Grande Dame: Olivia Devereaux, a haughty old rich lady who sneers at Kilborne's desire to drill for the oil under her land, because she doesn't need the money and would rather turn her land into a bird sanctuary.
- Lady Drunk: Iris, who seems pretty bitter and depressed about life and is holding a drink in almost every scene after she's first introduced. She's drunk in her bed when Harper calls her towards the end of the film, and when he comes by the next morning she's dead from a combination of alcohol and sleeping pills.
- Leg Focus: Mavis is introduced in a shot showing her long, smooth legs, when Harper is thrown into the back seat of her limo.
- Opening the Flood Gates: Harper and Mavis are about to die in the Drowning Pit that Harper accidentally made himself, when they are saved by the bad guys, Kilborne and his mook. The mook opens the door to the hydrotherapy room and he and Kilborne are swept away by the water rushing out.
- Self-Abuse: Mavis makes a joke. When she starts feeling Harper up, he says that it isn't fair because his hands are tied behind his back. She says "That's just to protect you from self-abuse."
