Traces de sang

A homicide detective in Palm Springs tracks down a serial killer whose victims are all somewhat linked to him.

Crushingly boring, inextricably muddled and casually performed attempt at film noir, in which the killed victim tells the story, a la "Sunset Boulevard". The characters are so dull and dislikable, that by the time the final tricky twist comes on display you scarcely care.

If so, you'll like "Traces of Red", a murder mystery in which Belushi plays a cop hot on the trail of a serial killer in Palm Beach, FL. Though the flick misses the sweaty Florida noir atmospherics of "Palmetto" and "Gold Coast" and dishes up a convoluted, not-to-be-taken-seriously plot, it does feature the same old likeable tough guy Belushi in his slimmer days. Good stuff for Belushi fans. Marginal, mediocre escapist stuff for everyone else. (C)

Being that this movie has a lot of fine entertainment qualities I think it should some more credit than it has been given on imdb.

It's your basic 'who done it?' thriller with sex and murder but it keeps you guessing right to the end. I like these kinds of movies and I certainly think this one meets the standard.

To me it was worth watching more than once so I'll give it an 8 on imdb.

My review was written in October 1992 after watching the movie at the Gramercy theater in Manhattan.

Unintentional laughs and goofy plot twists make "Traces of Red", a dramatic failure but an entertaining exercise in camp. In the currently hot erotic thriller genre, it should be a strong video title, but is miscast as far as the theatrical marketplace is concerned.

James Belushi brings his usual man of the people persona to a role that should have been a bit more uppercrust: a cop in Palm Beach, Florida, whose brother (William Russ) is running for Senate. Belushi is assigned to a murder case, and before long all of the principal characters (himself and brother included) are key suspects in the serial slayings of prostitutes and B girls.

With a nod to genre films like "Body Heat", "Traces of Red" initially holds one's interest in a whodunit mode. Unfortunately, scripter Jim Piddock threw out all concern for character consistency in his desire to keep the pot boiling, so the film becomes terminally silly.

Originally titled "Beyond Suspicion", pic includes so many traces of red herrings in its attempt to make every Palm Beach denizen as suspect, one fears that Ted Kennedy will eventually be dragged in as the killer. In particular, Lorraine Bracco, playing her femme fatale as a wannabe Melanie Griffith (right down to the voice), does many things for no reasons other than to make the audience wonder about her.

A skeleton in the family closet proves to be key to unravelling a mystery that includes one satisfying, though phony, twist at the very end. To throw film buffs off the track, Belushi narrates the film as a corpse, a successfully misleading homage to BIlly Wilder's "Sunset Blvd." format.

Belushi has the edge to create a film noir antihero but hardly the sex appeal to follow in Michael Dougas' or William Hurt's genre footsteps. As is sidekick and advisor, Tony Goldwyn suffer from the lack of script logic, Tech credits are okay but on the cheap side, missing the shadow play and lighting stylization a true film noir requires.

When homicide cop Jack Dobson starts getting threatening letters and has his car trashed, he and his partner assume that it is the work of a mobster who Jack is testifying against. However when the writer of the letters starts killing friends and lovers of his, Jack starts to investigate with the killer's lipstick and a defective typewriter as his only clues.

Opening with a shot of his own dead body, we are taken through this film by the narration of Jack himself, seemingly in an attempt to make it more gritty and typical of the genre. The plot spins wildly out of control - but not due to an abundance of ideas so much as just poor writing and poor delivery of the finished product. The connections between the various dots is not very important as the vast majority of the strands exist solely to act as red herrings - although how you could ever hope to guess the ridiculous twists that come at the end of this film is beyond me - the makers needed have bothered trying to trick us!

The plot never manages to thrill at any point, which could be considered a problem in a thriller. The lack of clarity in any of the threads (never mind their composite) means that you never really get involved enough to be gripping or indeed even care who the killer is or what their motivation might be. Having established that this erotic thriller has no thrills, then we are left with only the promise of the erotic! Of course, as you might imagine, this film doesn't deliver that either. Oh, it has nudity and some quick scenes of sexual material but it is just lazily stuck in there to widen the market appeal of this film - certainly if you came here looking for, ahem, whacking material, then you will be very disappointed.

The cast is OK in regards names, but don't really do anything in regards helping the film be better. Belushi is as average as ever; I suppose he does try to bring intense emotions out of his character here, but generally he is doing his usual stuff. Goldwynn is OK but his main contribution here is another recognisable face. Bracco tries hard but she is no Sharon Stone! She doesn't suit her hairstyle, never mind her character. She tries but she comes off silly - and her body double does her no favours during the nude scenes - lying there as flaccid as a deflated balloon!

Overall this film is just poor. In terms of thrills it is dull and so incoherent and badly structured as to render any excitement dead. If you're looking for erotic thrills then this film will disappoint you as well. The only moment of interest for me was the fact that the makers clearly took bets to see how absurd a twist they could get away with.