Death Sentence

This is a well-acted, well-written, well-directed little murder-suspense piece that is still quite watchable and entertaining.

Unfortunately, this is being promoted as a Nick Nolte movie on DVD. He is only in about four scenes for about ten minutes. The stars here are Cloris Leachman, Laurence Luckinbill, and William Schallert. Cloris Leachman is best known for her role on the "Mary Tyler Moore" television Show, but she was in 80 television shows before that and has been in about 80 television shows and movies since then. In films, she is best known for her role in Mel Brooks "Young Frankenstein" movie. Fewer people remember that she won an Oscar for her role in the "Last Picture Show."Her movie career started with a great small role of a young woman running nude on a Highway at the start of "Kiss Me Deadly" (Aldridge, 1956). Here she is terrific as the housewife who slowly comes to realize that her husband may be a killer. Laurence Luckinbill is excellent as the husband. He gives a very natural and smart performance, going against the stereotypes of the genre. William Schallert, with over 350 television appearances is legendary. He gives his usual lovable and sympathetic performance as a clever defense attorney.

The movie is mainly a courtroom drama with the gimmick that one of the jurists is actually involved with the real murderer. The suspense comes from the jurist slowly putting together the clues to figure this out. Some things ring a bit hollow here and there like the prosecutor making basic mistakes while presenting his case, but we can just chuckle over the goofs and enjoy the rest. Overall, it is a pleasant and suspenseful 74 minutes.

"It was a dark and stormy night," typed Snoopy, writing the final scene of this melodramatic murder mystery movie of the week.

Okay, it was actually quite an enjoyable picture and not without its moments of tension and suspense. And it's always fun to see television actors picking up a few extra bucks between seasons. I did wonder what audiences in 1974 thought of flighty and flaky Phyllis Lindstrom playing it straight as a still-flaky housewife with undiagnosed OCD, meticulously recording her car's mileage after each jaunt. The producers did take pains to disguise her appearance, but nothing could hide Leachman's signature halting stop-start speech pattern. I thought she did a fine job in this subtle and unglamourous role.

Also cast against type were sitcom veterans Allan Oppenheimer and William Schallert playing the poor man's Perry Mason and Hamilton Burger. Their comedic default settings were on display, however, with Oppenheimer's mischievous grins as he made outrageous speculations he knew would be stricken from the record (even if not the minds of the jury). And Schallert's apoplectic objections were just like those his Mr. Pomfritt once made over Dobie and Maynard's monkeyshines.

Special mention must be made of Laurence Luckinbill toggling between calm reserve and wild-eyed wacko and whose manic facial expressions brought to mind his over-the-top performance as Sybok in STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER. I wondered if Woody Allen of all people caught this movie on an idle night. The crazy mistress scene has striking parallels to an identical scene in CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS between Anjelica Huston and Martin Landau. One almost sympathizes with the adulterous man who ends the affair with charity and grace and faces an unhinged hell-hath-no-fury spurned woman shrieking threats of exposing him to his wife. Yeah, like banshee screaming about ruining his life is going to woo and entice him into leaving his wife and staying for more of your abuse instead of contemplating your homicide.

Vicki Lawrence taught me not to trust my soul to no backwoods southern lawyer. I would add sitcom stars playing lawyers in TV movies. Two glaring oversights by the attorneys in this case: (1) the scarf was left wrapped around the neck of the victim. Since it had been for two winters wrapped around the neck of the murderer, it likely had tell-tale hairs, cologne or aftershave traces or other incriminating evidence embedded within it. No mention was made of a forensic test being conducted, just the banal fact it was a common scarf available in a lot of local stores.

And (2), and this should have been the defense's trump card: The coroner declares the victim was killed at 10pm with a window of an hour each way. The bartender and the policeman should have been subpoenaed to testify that Nick Nolte was languishing in the bar long before 10 o'clock, long enough to drink himself into a stupor. And if Nolte had murdered his wife, would he (a) have left the body on the floor, and (b) have allowed a policeman to take him all the way inside his home?

I think this fact would have punctured even Mr. Bracken's premature and impenetrable conviction that Nolte was guilty.

A quibble that would have quashed the testimony of another sitcom veteran, Hope Summers: She testified to watching her game show from 8:30 to 9. She later adds she went to bed at 10, "right after my movie." Huh? What movie runs one hour? And besides, we hear a game show ending when we see her get up and turn off the set, announcing "show's over." There was no movie.

Another quibble: What's with Murray McLeod hemming and hawing and keeping it fair until provoked, then suddenly vividly recalling the car was a cream-colored station wagon? His cheeky testimony should have been impeached not chuckled at.

A credits quibble: Herb Voland played the harrumphing jury foreman Mr. Bracken, not Lew Brown as the credits read. Brown played the man holding out on a verdict, while the woman going all Henry Fonda was played by Meg Wylie. Of course, Cloris was holding out too but wasn't questioned. She had her reasons... very compelling ones too, as it turned out.

Cloris running out into that dark and stormy night is where the movie kind of lost me and lost a star. It also lost momentum as the conversation between Leachman and Luckinbill dragged on when we all knew what happened and what was going to happen. Cloris should have known once she was convinced her husband murdered Marilyn that he would kill her too.

A sequestered juror escaping would probably result in a mistrial, but of course startling new evidence was uncovered. I'm glad the movie ended where it did, leaving me confident that Nolte would be acquitted and freed to murder his mother-in-law Doreen Lang, who knew all along he was innocent and her daughter pregnant by a paramour. But that's just fiction. Pity poor Luckinbill, whose real-life mother-in-law was Lucille Ball o' Fire, the original henna-rinse ginger.

I bought this DVD for $.88 and has Nick Nolte larger on the cover than Cloris Leachman. The mistress' acting in this movie was so bad I was delighted she was offed quickly. During the court scenes I kept hoping to maybe see a flashback or two of Nolte and his relationship with the deceased, but nope .. then again as I said, her acting was so bad anyway, I gave up caring. What little lines they handed out for Nolte were disappointing. Cloris Leachman appeared pained in struggling to give each and every one of her lines as if to say, "Nobody could be this dimwitted."

When Lawrence Luckinbill, Leachman's husband in the movie was preparing to strangle her, I was almost hoping the movie was going to improve. What little of Nolte was in this movie, the only thing that was on my mind was if he was wearing a wig or not since the hair didn't move when his forehead moved. Pass on this one folks .. it is so bad it qualifies for its' own death sentence.

This "movie" was incredibly painful to watch. Stilted, wooden dialogue, utterly predictable plot, lousy directing and bad camera work - in short, this thing's a train wreck.

The film possesses a strange juxtaposition of talented-but-wasted well-known actors (Leachman, Nolte, Luckinbill, Schallert) and eager-but-untalented relative unknowns. That the director approved this atrocity and that TV network executives allowed it to be aired is incredible. And now it's available on DVD - but why???

The talents of Ms. Leachman and Mr. Nolte are completely wasted. At least Ms. Leachman redeemed herself later that year (1974) in Young Frankenstein.

This is a TV movie that has Nick Nolte in a minor role. He does not have many lines in this one. If I remember right, Chloris Leachman is actually the star of this film which is a predictable court room drama and is not indicative of Nolte's acting talents at all.

The box for this film has Nolte pictured on it but he is very seldom seen in this film.