The Drowning Pool (1975) on Netflix
Lew Harper, a private investigator, flies to Louisiana for Iris Devereaux, an old flame who says a former family chauffeur is blackmailing her. An oil magnate wants the family's oil-rich land.
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- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb6.5/107,062 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes53%
Trailer
Plot summary
Lew Harper works as a private investigator in Los Angeles. Iris Devereaux, a woman he had a brief affair with six years earlier, asks him to come to Louisiana. She says the family's former chauffeur, Pat Reavis, is blackmailing her over her infidelity, and she fears that her husband James will find out. James keeps his own private life hidden and is untroubled, but his mother Olivia runs the household and makes Iris's position difficult. Iris's teenage daughter Schuyler propositions Harper, and Police Chief Broussard and Lieutenant Franks take an interest in him. Oil magnate J. Hugh Kilbourne believes Harper could help him gain control of Olivia's oil-rich land, which she will not sell.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Drowning Pool (1975)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Paul Newman had agreed to Jack Garfein directing, but Stuart Rosenberg approached Newman himself for the job, saying he was going through personal problems and was "desperate", and got it, their fourth and final film together.
- Screenwriter Walter Hill quit the film to "more or less jump ship" and make his directorial debut Hard Times, and director Robert Mulligan left the project with him; Paul Newman was not attached when Hill came aboard.
- Joanne Woodward, Newman's wife, agreed to co-star and suggested relocating the story from California to Louisiana, feeling that would set it apart from its predecessor.
- Producers David Foster and Lawrence Turman were barred by their deal from using the character name "Lew Archer" because Paramount was making a TV series from the novels starring Brian Keith, moot, since Harper had already renamed the character.
- The film's "drowning pool" sequence was shot at Warner Brothers' Burbank studios on a sound-stage specially designed for water-heavy sets.
- Composer Michael Small built the score around an instrumental rendition of the 1971 popular song "Killing Me Softly with His Song".
