After we decided to erect this long overdue tribute to Brad Davis, one of our favorite actors, we discovered that we could recall only a couple of his film credits, 1978's Midnight Express and 1982's Querelle, and none of his TV work. Midnight Express, of course, was a big hit that was seen by just about everyone in the solar system. On the other hand, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's bizarre and kinky adaptation of Jean Genet's Querelle, received scathing reviews and was seen by very few people during it's brief theatrical run. Naturally, we have to recommend it even though we've seen only a badly dubbed English-language version on videotape. Fortunately, Querelle is the kind of film you can watch with the sound turned off -- and you can consider yourself lucky that you don't know what all those odd people are saying. But visually it really is a beautiful film. You can't get much more visual than Brad Davis, Franco Nero, and Jeanne Moreau when they're really horny.

The notion of murder often brings to mind the notion of sea and sailors. Sea and sailors do not, at first, appear as a definite image -- it is rather that "murder" starts up a feeling of waves. Opening sentences of Jean Genet's Querelle (1953), originally published in French as Querelle de Brest.

Brad Davis (right) portrays a dangerously seductive sailor in R. W. Fassbinder's final film, "QUERELLE," shown here with German actor Dieter Schidor (left), who also produced the film, which is being released by Triumph Films, a Columbia/Gaumont Company. [Caption: 1983]