Harlequin (film)

Harlequin, also known as Dark Forces in United States, is a 1980 Australian thriller film directed by Simon Wincer and starring Robert Powell, Carmen Duncan, David Hemmings and Broderick Crawford. The film is a modernday version of Rasputins story the major characters have the same first names as Rasputin and the Romanov royal family and their family name, Rast, is simply the word Tsar backwards.

Simon Wincer and Everett De Roche had previously collaborated on Snapshot but were not happy with the film since it was made so hurriedly. They decided to make another film, came up with six ideas and eventually chose The Ministers Musician, a modernday version of the Rasputin story. They did a treatment and Antony I. Ginnane became involved as producer.Everett de Roche originally did a 400page first draft in which the central character, Gregory Wolfe, was a priest. When the producers sent the script to the US, they were worried that this would make the film hard to market in Catholic countries so it was changed. The script was given to some American writers to work on but Wincer was not happy with the changes. As de Roche was not available, Wincer went over the script with Russell Hagg although he later said he would have preferred it if de Roche had done the job. ........

Source: Wikipedia