Murder by Natural Causes

I am in absolute agreement with the other reviewer - you simply cannot top this plot. If there ever was a title for the cleverest script in TV movie history 'Murder By Natural Causes' would win hands down. Yes, there are very few (The Last of Sheila, Guilty Conscience) that are pretty close but this one is as close to perfection as any script of the genre will come.

It is no surprise, of course, that the same team that created Columbo is responsible for this movie.

Practically unknown, it will probably never be issued on a DVD. What a pity - a textbook script that nobody will remember only because people prefer to watch Dumb and Dumber instead.

Writers Richard Levinson and William Link wrote some great scripts in the sixties and seventies, including some for Hitchcock. A psychological thriller that first aired in 1979, "Murder By Natural Causes", is arguably Levinson and Link's best work. With twist upon twist upon twist, and subtle dialogue clues scattered throughout the plot, it's a film that fans of suspense thrillers need to see, as an example of superior script writing.

Forty-something and wealthy entertainer Arthur Sinclair (Hal Holbrook) wows audiences with his mental telepathy skills as he seemingly reads peoples minds. Allison (Katharine Ross) is his attractive thirty-something wife, a person with a roving eye and a desire for riches. What kind of story do you think this setup suggests? Can you guess how the film ends? Don't bet on it.

The film could easily be transformed into a stage play since most scenes take place indoors on sets. Production design is adequate. Intermittent background music is at times spooky, and there are a couple of scenes wherein the music is reminiscent of the shower scene in Hitchcock's "Psycho", shrieking and shrill. Good editing keeps the plot flowing nicely for the most part, though the middle Act trends a bit talky in a couple of scenes. Color cinematography is adequate. Casting and acting cannot be improved upon.

All film elements come together perfectly in that final sequence when a character walks in the front door of Aruthur's big house. The dialogue here is entrancing. Camera movement is faultless. And that final scene where the camera moves in close to a character's eyes is breathtakingly dramatic. It's one of the great final sequences in film history.

It's too bad this film never received a theatrical release. It is far better and more entertaining than most major Hollywood thrillers of the last fifty years that I have seen. The film won an Edgar Allan Poe Award for best television film of 1980. One might even assert that "Murder By Natural Causes" is the best TV movie ever made. I probably would not argue with that assessment.

I ran across this movie, which I had seen before and got hooked again! I wasn't planning to watch it but it is such a good show and Hal Holbrook is masterful! This is a show that you will enjoy again and again (even though you know the ending).

This film just tears all of your preconceived notions about all that is sacred into tiny confetti. Hal Holbrook is a mentalist with a bad heart who is rolling in dough currently. He admits - privately - that he doesn't truly read minds and that it is all a clever trick, but he says the people have a void where religion once was and his act helps fill that void, thus his recent success. He works with "tells" he sees in the subject's behavior or conversation along with information he gleans from investigators so that he appears to be psychic. Katherine Ross is the unfaithful wife of the mentalist who would like to be rid of him but keep all of the money. She is very greedy so divorce is out of the question. And greed often makes people stupid.

And so this is the background of the film in which Ross' character plans to murder her mentalist husband in such a way that she avoids all suspicion and thus jail. And from there the twists and turns never stop up to the questionable ending. To tell more would be to tell too much. I'll just say it is fantastic acting by a fabulous cast working with a terrific script in which no piece of dialogue should be ignored by the viewer. With an almost unrecognizable Barry Bostwick who seems to be going through a Loggins and Messina period lookswise as an underemployed actor. Highly recommended.

And for those who might not believe that a 1979 film could possibly be relevant today, I give you the opening scene where Holbrook's character is attaching himself to some computational apparatus and calls a number where a computer operator checks the status of his pacemaker. Immediately after she reassures the caller that the pacemaker is operational she asks for a charge number. American medicine is all about the bucks, then and now.

It happens occasionally that I stumble upon the IMDb pages of made-for-television movies, usually from the 1970s, with incredibly high ratings and almost exclusively praising user-comments. I'm intrigued by those titles and promptly seek them out to watch next. Not necessarily because I'm convinced they truly will be great, but to try and capture the experience & emotions of all my fellow reviewers. For you see, most of the hyper-positive ratings and reviews are based on fond memories. Fans who watched the films on television, often just once and at a very young age. The films haven't been shown anywhere since and never got released on DVD, but they made an everlasting impression.

Please, do believe me when I state that I DO NOT consider those ratings and reviews invaluable or overly subjective. Quite the contrary, I'm often jealous that I was born in the wrong decade and truly wish to have been able to experience the glorious era of genuinely intelligent and qualitative movies for free on cable television! And - just to be clear - many of these TV-movies are REALLY good, like my most recent discoveries "One of my Wives is Missing" and this "Murder by Natural Causes".

The sadly forgotten gem "Murder by Natural Causes" is a tour-de-force collaboration of excellent writing (courtesy of the team behind "Columbo") and even better acting. What starts as a simple story about adultery and a banal conspiracy to murder an unsuspecting husband unfolds into a convoluted thriller with surprising twists and sardonic characters. Revealing anything about the plot would be a shame, but I guarantee you'll be glued to the screen and guessing. The unearthly beautiful Katharine Ross plays a role that is quite out of her comfort zone, but I've never seen her so sexy. Hal Holbrook, who's always been underrated in my opinion, is fantastic as the charismatic showman with a niftily constructed mind-reading act.