I Miss You, Hugs and Kisses

Elke Sommer (the premier German actress (sic)), plays Magdalene Kruschen, a gold digging model, whose marriage to rich Charles, loses its verve. Each of them conspires to hire killers to knock off one another. The film is structured using court room scenes, mixing this with flashbacks to the events that are discussed on the stand. Based upon the true-life murder of Christine Demeter, one of the most famous crimes in Canadian modern history, this film, with its made-for- television aesthetic, is cheep, and fundamentally flawed.

We follow as the married couple (the names were changed for legal reasons), as they conspire against each other, Charles embarking on an affair with the young Pauline Corte (Cindy Girling - Miss Canada 1977). Magdalene, simply f***s anyone with money, power, and connections with killers-for-hire. It's an incredibly dull affair, pacing through severely wretched people, and their petty affairs. And of course, what these "wonderful" characters want, is the large insurance payoff in the event of deaths.

Whilst taking much of the real-life crime, it obviously needs to change it slightly. But it is left a little ambiguous as to Charles' actual guilt. He is (as in life) convicted of hiring a murderer, we are left guessing as to whether he actually did it. Still, awful film, with very little merit - although Howard Shore composed the score (his first feature film), and we of course know his subsequent scores include David Cronenberg's output, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

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I discovered 2 years ago he is my great uncle and this movie was made about their story. He is currently serving 5 life sentences in Bath Ontario and is still alive although very bad health from what I have read. Very interesting family story that stem outside of him but certainly this is an out of the ordinary tale that unfortunately affected many. I have not found the connection of his daughter who I suppose is my cousin (from Ishtvan Demeter ((Steven) if she's reading) . Immigrants of Hungary was common to Toronto in the late 70's given the civil war. My gramma opened a small restaurant when she got here and called it little Budapest! Although Peter is a sociopath, I love understanding that history, especially for the mental health aspect.

Elke Sommer plays money-hungry model Magdalene who is married to wealthy Charles.However their marriage is on-the-rocks.Both of them hire killers to eliminate one another."I Miss You,Hugs and Kisses" by Murray Markowitz is based on a true story of Canadian murder of Christine Demeter.The film is cheaply made and deadly dull.The relationships between main characters are uninteresting and the film is ugly and dreary.Why it was classified as video nasty is beyond me.There are some nasty scenes of violence and different scenarios in which Magdalene is murdered.The nastiest bit is when serial killer stabs to death his victim and performs an act of necrophilia on her body.Not to mention Murray Markowitz's film boasts Howard Shore's first feature score and offers a bit of graphic sex.5 bloody bashings out of 10.Only for video nasty completists.

Pretty much an ordinary thriller. The only remarkable thing about it is that it was once banned in the UK, i.e. it was one of the infamous nasties. However, it is difficult to see how it would deserve such a distinction -- its goriness is very mild by horror movie standards.

This film deserves more than 3.8 stars, the story is very realistic (inspired from a real fact) and interesting, the quality of acting is very high, good direction. With the exception of Elke Sommer, known from "Deadly Than the Male", "Shot in the Dark", "Among Vultures", "Ten Little Indians", all the other actors are not big names, but everyone is very convincing.