[Originally published in Movietone News 31, April 1974]
Man on a Swing is one of those anomalous films with a few pretensions to major standing scattered amid the telltale half-measures and slipshod surfaces of a B-picture. Exhibits A, C, and D (B having just been spoken for): Joel Grey, who was probably embarking on this film about the time he carried home a Supporting Actor Oscar for Cabaret last year; Cliff Robertson, an actor of apparent intelligence and integrity who followed up on his own Best Actor award (for Charly) by writing, producing, directing, and starring in his own modest, intriguing movie J.W. Coop, and lending himself to such commercially unlikely but very distinctive experiments as The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid; Frank Perry, onetime Brave Independent Artist who launched himself with the privately financed David and Lisa, then went on to such heav-veee projects as Last Summer, Diary of a Mad Housewife, and Play It As It Lays. Doc (which was pre-Lays) marked his first excursion into genre territory—and a sour, humorless, genre- and self-debasing excursion it was. Man on a Swing indicates a slight improvement: Perry turns in unassuming, if also undistinguished, work on this story about the investigation of a sex murder in a small town firmly entrenched in Middle America.
