Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 12,261
|
Movies!
Dec 18, 2019 9:01:45 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 18, 2019 9:01:45 GMT -8
I was searching my Roku for anything with Robert Preston in it. I found Rehearsal for Murder playing on Amazon Prime Video. I believe this is a TV movie from 1982. It’s got the general character of Agatha Christie written all over it although it is based on the play-within-a-play motif of Hamlet. The condensed synopsis is, “A year after his fiancée's death, a playwright schedules a rehearsal for his new play, which proves to be a trap for her killer.” If you watch this, you will encounter a couple things that don’t make much sense. But this is wonderfully acted by Preston and suspension of disbelief is maintained (at least for me) until almost the very end. The cast includes Lynn Redgrave, Patrick Macnee, Jeff Goldblum, Lawrence Pressman, and William Daniels. In an effort to elicit self-incrimination, Alex Dennison (Preston) gathers together the friends and associates of his dead fiancé. He believes she was murdered and that the suicide was faked. He has them read parts in his supposedly new play. But each part is just a recreation of their relationship (and possibly motive for killing) his dead fiancé. And the reading is mixed with a flashback form with Lynn Redgrave playing the part as it might have happened. The group quickly catches on to the fact that this is no mere no play that Dennison is testing out and that his ulterior motives are plain. He aims to trap one of them. With some cajoling, he's able to make them stay and read their parts, but just barely. And that’s about all I can say about it without giving it all away. One reviewer gets the gist of it: “I was confused not to see lieutenant Columbo in this film.” That was my thought as well. This does have the look of a Columbo episode…mixed with Shakespeare…mixed with some Agatha Christie. |
|
|
|
Movies!
Dec 18, 2019 10:05:20 GMT -8
Post by timothylane on Dec 18, 2019 10:05:20 GMT -8
I'm quite familiar with Rehearsal for Murder, which was indeed a TV movie. I can see the similarity to Columbo in that the key was getting the killer to expose his guilt, but of course Columbo was an inverted mystery (a concept attributed to Freeman in "The Singing Bone") and this definitely isn't. In a way, it has a similarity to The Wicker Man in that it turns out at the end to be a form of the Big Con. (This was also the basis of two TV series, The Rogues and Mission: Impossible, but in those cases as in The Sting, the fact that it's all some sort of con is known all along.)
Incidentally, Preston was involved in another good TV movie some years later, about a father who took revenge on his daughter's rapist after the culprit was let off on a technicality. (I was surprised to learn later that this was a genuine technicality.) Preston played the father, with Burgess Meredith as the judge.
Another good TV movie (though it has nothing to do with Preston) is Crowhaven Farm, with Hope Lange as a woman being forced to relive a Salem-style incident. There's a lot of Rosemary's Baby in it, but it's not quite the same story. In a way it makes a good Greek tragedy -- someone (Lange) being brought down by that one flaw.
Those are some nice examples of modern Left Coast urban living, but of course they would have been unheard of at the time Meredith Wilson was writing. Even Kitty Genovese was many years later.
|
|
Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 12,261
|
Movies!
Dec 18, 2019 16:45:47 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 18, 2019 16:45:47 GMT -8
The last listing at IMDB for his body of work is Outrage!, the movie you speak of. There’s a 1985 TV movie that came just before this that doesn’t sound too bad: Finnegan Began Again. It co-stars Mary Tyler Moore. And did you know at the time that the networks paid Mary Tyler Moore than any other actress? |
|
|
|
Movies!
Dec 18, 2019 17:03:51 GMT -8
Post by timothylane on Dec 18, 2019 17:03:51 GMT -8
Yes, that's it. Beau Bridges is his lawyer, Burgess Meredith is the judge presiding over the case, and Mel Ferrer (formerly Steve Maryk's defense lawyer) is the judge who let the rapist off on a technicality and gets called by Bridges as a witness. I don't think I recognized Ferrer when I saw it, so he'd obviously aged more since The Caine Mutiny than Meredith had since Batman and The Twilight Zone.
|
|
|
|
Movies!
Dec 18, 2019 19:26:20 GMT -8
Post by kungfuzu on Dec 18, 2019 19:26:20 GMT -8
Do you mean Jose' Ferrer?
Mel was better looking, but Jose' was a better actor.
|
|
|
|
Movies!
Dec 18, 2019 19:43:06 GMT -8
Post by timothylane on Dec 18, 2019 19:43:06 GMT -8
Well, I was never great at remembering who acted where. I knew that Jose Ferrer was the Turkish bey in Deraa who flogged T. E. Lawrence, but I thought it was Mel Ferrer who played Barney Greenwald. Mea culpa.
|
|
Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 12,261
|
Movies!
Dec 18, 2019 19:56:32 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 18, 2019 19:56:32 GMT -8
Jose Ferrer. What an incredible voice.
|
|
Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 12,261
|
Movies!
Jul 20, 2020 18:51:39 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 20, 2020 18:51:39 GMT -8
Deadline at DawnThat had this on the Movie! channel, part of their Film Noir Sunday night lineup. There has to be a place in this world for a sort of goofy Noir. And this is it. It starts out fairly straight. No gimmicks. An enlisted man (Navy) wakes up and barely remembers the night before when he followed some woman home, got cheated at cards (or something), and then walked away with a whole roll of bills that he stole. When he goes back to the apartment to return the money after having sobered up, he finds the broad dead on the floor. Bill Williams plays an aw-shucks country pumpkin-out-of-water as Alex Winkler, the sailor. Soon getting mixed up in his dilemma is the excellent Susan Hayward who plays June Goffe and gives this movie steady gravitas before it deflates with the introduction of Paul Lukas as the cab driver. Then the plot gets wonky. But still the aw-shucks Gus Hoffman and the “I shouldn’t be getting involved with this guy, but he’s just so helpless and cute” June Goffe keep the movie on as even a keel as it can. Eventually the brother of the dead woman (played by Joseph Calleia) enters the scene as Val Bartelli. This is when whatever reserve and gritty Noir that this movie had goes right out the window. Calleia plays more of a (unintentional?) comical or stereotypical tough guy. Still, it’s all of 83 minutes and you don’t have to wade through too much. The ending, of course, is pretty dumb. But by then, you’re not expecting much. Hayward is terrific and pulls this film out of strict b-movie range. But at the end of the day, despite its flaws, it was entertaining, which is the bottom line. 
|
|
Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 12,261
|
Movies!
Aug 31, 2020 14:51:51 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Aug 31, 2020 14:51:51 GMT -8
The over-the-air Movies! channel ran a The Untouchables marathon yesterday. Despite my best efforts to escape the recliner, I got hooked in and watched about 6 of these. The series ran from 1959-1963, so it was a little before my time. And I don’t remember having the opportunity to see re-runs. The show sort of came and went. It’s now an iconic show, almost a self-parody with the funny narration voice of Walter Winchell and Robert Stack seemingly reprising his role in Airplane! as Rex Kramer. He would have had to enter a time warp to do so because the movie came years after the cop series. But it just seems that way. Much of SNL is scrubbed from the internet but Dan Aykroyd did a very funny takeoff on the show back in the day with Desi Arnaz Jr. as the guest star. Desilu produced the original The Untouchables series. You can find a transcript of that sketch here. |
|
