Murder by Natural Causes

I have to this one gets very suspenseful and has a couple of unexpected turns but the ending came a no big surprise but played a little differently than I guessed.

Hal Holbrook was the real star of the show (and such an underrated actor), but are also awesome performances by both Katharine Ross and Barry Bostwick. The three of them took center stage for a while but Richard Anderson showed up to give another super performance. Everyone in this film is very convincing.

If you are married to a mentalist who has a good detective on his side then I don't recommend cheating on them, you might be left with three alternatives.

8/10

Probably the best of the Levinson/Link made for TV movies. They take the audience by the hand, and lead them completely in the wrong direction. I would defy anyone seeing this for the first time, to pick the ending. This is great "edge of the seat" stuff, but don't miss a word of the dialogue, especially the last 20 minutes, as there are more twists than a corkscrew.

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.

A "professional" mind reader post-heart attack: He has recovered enough, but . . .

This man is worth Millions. His dutiful wife would love to divorce him for her boyfriend. But she had signed a pesky pre-nuptual agreement, only giving her a portion of his Millions. Unfortunately, for him, she wants it ALL.

With the scene set, she devises a plot so that her young actor boyfriend can use his acting skills to ramp-up the stress on hubby, so he has another heart attack, this time not bothering to call for medical help (just the coroner, later).

As others have made perfectly clear this movie ends in a torrent of plot twists. This can (and will) cause you dizziness.

A lot of the movie shows (quite interestingly), the behind-the-scenes life of a mentalist, preparing for each performance. Then it shows his performances (seamlessly incorporating his prep work).

I have looked for this movie to re-run for about 20 years (so far). I cannot believe that this hasn't been released onto video. It is a killer.

Here it is, 24 years later and I still remember it from only one viewing. It had the most amazing storyline and writing with some pretty impressive twists and turns in the last half hour. I would LOVE to see it again. Hal Holbrook is truly one of the amazing and underappreciated actors of our time.