Murder Rap

My review was written in March 1988 after watching the movie on United Home Video cassette.

"Murder Rap" is an interesting thriller film made for home video, which could have been a whole lot better with upscale casting and more concise scripting. Austin, Texas-made opus is an okay rental title.

John Hawkes (previously seen in a very small role in "D. O. A.", also shot in Austin), is the naive hero who gets caught in a web of murder that is spun rather derivatively from several pics, notably Lawerne Kasdan's "Body Heat". He loses his job at a hamburger joint for talking back to a beautiful but uppity customer (S. Kathleen Feighny). They next meet in a nightclub where she's friendly to him, gets him a job in a record store and ultimately beds down with him.

Hawkes is soon duped into committing a murder which turns out to be revenge for a euthanasia killing shown in the film's prolog. Like "Body Heat", a girlfriend of the heroine whose identity is unclear becomes the key cog in the thriller plot line. Ultimately Hawkes fakes his own death and one-ups the heroine in the manipulation department, with pic's title referring to a hit record he creates using the sound effects involved in the murder plot and frame-up.

A fresh, unglamorized performer, Hawkes is believable and engaging in the central role, while lovely model Feighny, a Tawny Kitaen type, needs a lot more coaching on acting and ditin (her line readings sound like those of the so-called superstars of an Andy Warhol film). Coquina Dunn and particularly Sara Roucloux make good impressions as, respectively, the woman who dupes Hawkes and his friend from the record store.

Filmmaker Kliff Kuehl shows promise here, but has got to speed up the narrative flow and suppress his urge to segue into music video sequences. Tech credits are okay.

"Murder Rap is a love story. It is a story filled with mystery and suspense. It is a story about deception and murder. It is Christopher and Anna's story." So goes the description on the back of the box. It also goes on to compare the lead actor John Hawkes as 'the James Dean of the 80s'. Sure, the kid wears blue jeans with and a black leather jacket, but they do not make him look 'cool'. The lead has a very geeky sort of sense, and to top it off, our hero's ride is not a Harley, it's a Vespa.

So scootering from action point to dull point, he chances on an audio hot tip which turns out to sound like a brutal murder. Rather than go to the police, he is convinced that he needs to figure out more about what happened. He plays it cool and gets played himself. This would be the deception that the back of the box mentions.

The back of the box interestingly also mentions 'provocative sex scenes'. Trust me, I think this was put on the wrong box, I didn't see anything that fits that description, more over, the lead actor is not someone most would like to see in action with anyone.

The film seems to be a promotional tool for the three musical bands listed on the cover. Sometimes the story stops to show a few minutes of one of these bands playing on stage. There are some neat geeky things for those who know what these things are, such as Vespas, one of those two octave Yamaha sampling keyboards, possibly a Synclavier II sampling keyboard (a real classic!), and making music from odd sounds.

The back of the box promises us a lot and delivers very little. It's claim of 'brilliant direction by newcomer Kliff Kuehl' is a far reach, in fact, Kliff never made it much farther than this movie.

Murder Rap is very 80s. It is a story filled with cheese and a few good bullet holes. It is a story that makes some sense in the end, but the reasoning of it always follows the route of silly. It is a bit long in some scenes, but in whole, the film is just plain ridiculous.

The worst part is I identify with the character of Christopher. I took the same path in life he did, a college drop-out turned struggling musician. I hope I don't turn out like he did.

I had never heard of this movie, but it came as part of a two-movie package, along with "Death Game". So my question is how is this lame piece of crapola ranking a 6.3 while "Death Game" (which rules) is getting a 5.2? It's not right. Anyways, this movie isn't totally awful and I tend to grade on a curve for independent, cheapo releases like this. Clearly some effort went into the film and, in fact, there is an OK story buried in the BS, but it is diluted by several scenes that just didn't need to be in the movie which pretty much ruins what little it had going for it. If it had been whittled down to fit into the traditional 90 minutes and focused on the story instead of forcing us to watch lame alternative bands or the lead character (who could pass for Ian Curtis from Joy Division's cousin) scoring with chicks way above his pay grade, it would be a decent enough movie, although the plot gets a little hard to swallow towards the end. Almost two hours is too much and I actually had to fast forward, which is something I rarely do. Two stars for this.