With a screenplay by first-timers Jeffrey Price and Peter Seaman (Price would later write Who Framed Roger Rabbit [1988] and Shrek the Third [2007]), the film centers on a court stenographer (Kidder) named Mickey Raymond (as in Mickey Spillane and Raymond Chandler) who goes on vacation to Malta to write a mystery novel. There she finds herself turning amateur detective as she gets pulled into a real-life case of murder and espionage. (The story has shades of the better-remembered Romancing the Stone, released in 1984.)
Kidder was now a star thanks to her portrayal of Lois Lane in the first two Superman films (1978 and 1980); Superman III (1983), in fact, would be released just three months after Trenchcoat. To prepare for her role here, she immersed herself in the world of classic pulp fiction and private eye films starring Humphrey Bogart and Dick Powell. "My character is turned on by these detectives and the writers who created them," Kidder said, "so I felt I could benefit from the exposure -- like the cynical way they talked, how they operated, even the tilt of their hats."
Kidder's leading man, Robert Hays, had also just found prominence with the recent Airplane! (1980) and Airplane II: The Sequel (1982). The Canadian Kidder and American Hays were joined on the set by an international team including British actor Ronald Lacey, who had been so memorable as the evil, bespectacled Nazi, Arnold Toht, in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), and who here plays a transvestite -- a first for a Disney film. Also on hand are German actress Gila von Weitershausen and British actor John Justin. This was Justin's last feature; his first had been The Thief of Baghdad (1940), in which he played King Ahmad. The crew, led by British director Michael Tuchner, featured an Italian camera department, a French sound team, and many Maltese assistants.
Trenchcoat was filmed on the island of Malta starting in January 1982 under the working title Malta Wants Me Dead, the name of the novel that Kidder's character is writing. Key scenes were shot in and around Valletta, the ancient towns of Mdina and Rabat, and at such historic sites as the Hagar Qim Temple, Verdala Castle, and St. Paul's Catacombs. Additional sequences were filmed in San Francisco as well as Paradise Cove in Malibu, because it was too cold in Malta to do beach scenes there.
Trenchcoat received a decidedly mixed reception. Roger Ebert and trade paper Variety panned the film ("almost nothing in it works," declared the latter), but The Hollywood Reporter called it "a playful, zesty detective spoof" that "borrows some of its more pleasing comic ingredients from North By Northwest (1959) and The 39 Steps (1935). Kidder has a natural and wonderfully wacko sense of slapstick." The New York Times echoed this reaction, deeming Robert Hays to be "a disarming leading man" and Margot Kidder to be "smart and snappy...in the Sam Spade mold. It wouldn't work with the wrong actress in the leading role, but Miss Kidder is emphatically right."
By Jeremy Arnold
