In today's world with so much to watch (including DVR's) my attention span is very short. This is one of those movies where not alot is really going on (i.e Drama) but the acting is so good you hang in their. The main guy can act his balls off. That's it for me everyone (other reviewers) else can give you what you're looking for in depth.

One of the best filmmakers to come out of Europe in the 1970s, Paul Verhoeven amassed a superb portfolio of work as a director in the Netherlands. De Vierde Man is Verhoeven's sixth film – his last before moving to Hollywood – and continues, in fine form, from his masterful back catalogue. The film is a Hitchockian-like thriller, as a writer becomes involved with rich femme fatale and subsequently discovers that she's already disposed of three husbands and fears he could be the fourth man of the title. Quite a mainstream thriller then. Ha, not with Verhoeven behind the camera; there's plenty of artsy symbolism, outrageous religious imagery (seriously, the Church of Holland must've gone absolutely bonkers over the scene in the cathedral!), a gay romance sub-plot, plus the usual sex and violence to frequent Verhoeven's work – you won't see that in any blockbuster this summer! The acting from Verhoeven regular Jeroen Krabbé and Renée Soutendijk (from Spetters) is also excellent. Incidentally, Verhoeven claims to have added the symbolism to appease the Dutch film critics who mauled his previous masterpiece, Spetters, for being overly sensationalist and devoid of morals.

Gerard is a writer with a somewhat overactive imagination. He is also homosexual and Catholic prone to Catholic guilt and something of a clairvoyant, or so it seems. On a trip to Flushing he is 'seduced' by Christine. When he discovers that Christine's new boyfriend is the bit of rough trade he's been fancying from afar he decides to stick around. After all, enforced heterosexuality has its compensations. Then he realizes that Christine's previous three husbands have all died violent deaths. Did Christine murder them and is he or the boyfriend, Herman, going to be 'the fourth man'? Verhoeven's overheated, over-egged melodrama is a delicious blend of Hitchcock and David Lynch, full of OTT eroticism and religious imagery and an awful lot of the colour red. A lot of the time it looks and feels like a dream and we can never be sure that what we are seeing is real or a figment of Gerard's imagination. The fun is in figuring it out. Also the fact that Christine is an infinitely more likable character that either the priggish Gerard or the bullish Herman means we are hardly like to root for either of the men over her. In fact, it's fair to say Gerard's comeuppance can't come soon enough. Super performances, too, from Jeroen Krabbe and Renee Soutendijk and easily Verhoeven's best film up to his wonderfully subversive piece of sci-fi "Starship Troopers".

This is the last Dutch language film Paul Verhoeven made before going on to make mainstream Hollywood films "Basic Instinct," "Robocop," and "Total Recall," among others. He sets the stage by opening this story with a black widow spider catching prey in her web before we meet Gerard Reve, an annoying self-centered writer with a morbid imagination. Gerard has been invited to be the guest speaker at a Literary Club meeting in sea-side town an hour or so from Amsterdam. Verhoeven lets us have glimpses of how Gerard's imagination twists reality. Asked if writers are a bit close to insanity he admits when he reads the newspaper "and it says 'boom' I read 'doom,' when it says 'flood' I read 'blood,' when it says 'red' I see 'dead.'" When he tells a story enough times he begins to believe it; "I lie the truth." He accepts an offer to be the overnight guest of the Club treasurer, a beautiful wealthy salon owner. As he gets to know her and learns her husband has died, he begins to imagine she is 'a black widow.' Is this his more of his reality twist or is she a murderess? This is a psychological drama and in recounting which of these old films have stuck in my memory, I figured out is my favorite gender. Looking at his body of work it is seems to be Paul Verhoeven's too, and he is a master in making us question our own understanding of reality. It's a nice change of pace from the usual Hollywood fare. I saw it in 1983 and it is a film that "stuck."