Marked for Murder

My review was written in April 1990 after watching the movie on Vidmark video cassette.

Rick Sloane's minimalist theater is a briefly diverting direct-to-video feature that could have used a bigger below-the-line budget.

Sloane has rounded up a decent cast, headed by the ubiquitous Wings Hauser as bad guy running at tv station. He assigns young Renee Estevez and Ken Abraham to retrieve a stolen videotape that recorded violence at a secret meeting. Jim Mitchum heads up federal agents who are also out to get the tape to implicate some drug smugglers.

Sloane doesn't develop his story line in an interesting enough fashion to keep one engrossed. Estevez does a good job, however, in winning sympathy in probably her biggest screen role to date, with her dad Martin Sheen popping up in a pointless cameo. Tamara Clatterbuck handles the film's pulchritude content with honors as a topless waitress.

The box cover of this amateurish atrocity proclaims "Wings Hauser is undeniably one of the great movie villains of all time" - Leonard Maltin. Of course I checked Maltin's movie guide expecting to see a review of "Marked For Murder". There was none. This is without question one of the most ridiculous movies out there, and what "Wings Hauser" was thinking must not have moved beyond a paycheck. His top billing is a sham, since he appears only sporadically throughout the film. Renee Estevez and James Mitchum come across like they are in a high school play, and the script seems made up as things went along. Martin Sheen's cameo consists of nothing more than sitting on a park bench. You have been warned. Avoid this as you would a rabid dog. - MERK

It's great to see Wings again as a bad guy, only this is undoubtedly one of the worst movies he's ever made, written and directed by a guy, who should be anything, but proud about this bottom b grade effort. God knows why Martin Sheen was doing a cameo in this. And then I read later, his daughter Renee Estevez, and then it made sense, and she does a really good take note, worthy performance, and there are some other good players in it too. Hauser pops in an out of this, as a bad guy t.v network boss, where a tape incriminating him is at large. He sends two of his young proteges (experienced Estevez and an eager young, but awkward Abraham) to retrieve it. Where they then become prime suspects in the murder of another station employee. The scenes, one after the other, are banal, so typically b grade fare, where if you' re gonna go 'by the numbers' way, make it exciting. One crappy car chase, kind of lifts it a little, and then it falls back again. Highlights, the bad guys, are not really the bad guys. Other moments, a silent Sheen. Watching a hijack, Wings making it with a busty breasted beauty, poolside, oh and, another beautiful breasted barmaid, who likes slipping good looking customers, her number. The most memorable scene to come out of this flat running film. The film even has crappy violence.'Poor utilized story, and amauteurish effort, this will definitely disappoint Hauser fans. Should really only cater for the undemanding.

In several places Marked For Murder is almost painful to watch. The script writing is trite, boring, cliché-ridden, and predictable. Even rookie soap opera actors can manage to create an occasional memorable moment when handed such cruddy material, but not anyone in this cast. By the midpoint of this movie I'd decided it must not be the fault of the actors. The probability of so many horrible actors all managing to get cast in the same shoot seems so low that I can only conclude they were all told to play their roles the way they did. The shoddy sets and poor editing indicate this movie had inept crews at every level, so the actors may well have been given bad direction.

Nothing else is handled any better. A car chase ends in one of the worst movie crashes ever filmed when a car misses a bridge and flies out into the air over the gulch the bridge spans. For a moment after the car goes airborne the scene cuts to a head-on closeup of the terrified driver taking his hands off the wheel to cover his head. Might as well take his hands off the wheel, right? They can't do anything when the car's in the air anyway, right? Except while he's being terrified at flying through the air, you can clearly see the road behind the car through the rear window and can tell this reaction shot is filmed on the ground. Not only that, you can actually see another car on the road behind the car that's supposed to be in midair! Then there's another quick cut to where the car is going to impact. It should be appearing from the right, coming down while still traveling right to left at high speed. Instead, the car plops down from almost straight above the river, and for a few frames you can even see the crane cables that have just released to allow the car to drop.

The ONLY redeeming feature in Marked For Murder is a couple of topless scenes, but even those weren't enough to bring this movie's rating up as far as a 2. Marked For Murder is one of those rare examples of when a rating scale going to 10 is needed, so the 1 this movie earns properly distinguishes it from merely bad movies that might merit a 2 or 3.