Calendar Girl Murders (1984)

Millionaire Richard Trainor (Robert Culp) is celebrating the fact that his new calendar featuring twelve nude woman is a huge success. However the party is ruined when Miss January is pushed off a building and later on that night Miss February is knifed to death.If you want to see Alan Thicke as a glamor photographer, Tom Skerritt as a cop (not surprisingly) and a young Sharon Stone, this is the film for you. Skerritt (who plays the oddly-named Detective Stoner) must find out who is killing the calendar girls... and you might keep guessing until the end! The film is made or television, so it is pretty tame. No nudity (despite the plot's description) and fairly mild violence. They found ways to stab and murder women without it being too messy, and this is no more racy than the average episode of "Murder She Wrote".

I just got this movie on Netflix; I found it by looking for Tom Skerritt movies. I feel that he's an actor who should have made it bigger than he did. He did a credible job in the role. Barbara Bosson was fine as his wife, and I liked the pre-Voyager Robert Beltran as his partner (but do detectives dress like that while on duty?). I had recently seen Knight Moves, and Daniel Baldwin was extremely annoying as Skerritt's partner; Beltran's character was much better written. I've been a fan of Barbara Parkins' since Mephisto Waltz, so it was nice to see her again; she's still as gorgeous as ever. Sharon Stone is drop-dead gorgeous here. I can't recommend this movie unless you're a fan of the actors, but, if you have it, it is watchable.

I picked this movie up off a sale bin at my local store. It basically is a movie about calender girls that pose in the nude, getting killed and the search for that killer. As usual you have a cop caught up in a whirl-wind of confussion and mystery (not to mention his own family and a wife that isn't completely sure she likes her husband hanging out with these thin, very seductive girls.) My copy of the movie isn't of the greatest production quality and the picture is poor. I gave the movie a 5 out of a possible 10 because it is a little slow in places. I have seen worse, so on a good rainy day, it's one of those movies you can pop in and watch while doing something else.

I watched this because I had a hunch it might be pretty good. Sometimes TV movies have a certain zinginess to them, a sort of "what the hell" quality that's generated, I've always suspected, by the unusually low budgets, That is, if your investment is small enough, you don't have to worry so much about producing a blockbuster. Add to it that this cast was interesting. Tom Skerrit may or may not have much acting range, but he's reliable in the way that Cary Grant and Michael Caine have been reliable. They don't always give first-rate performances but they never torpedo a production they appear in, and Skerrit has that same quality. Then there is Sharon Stone, youthful and full of fresh open-faced beauty, and not so evidently full of herself as she later became. And Robert Morse! I was curious to see his gap-toothed person in a dramatic role. The story, involving the sequential knocking off of "Playmates of the Month" or whatever they call them here. The film unfortunately did not live up to its promise. I suppose I'd forgotten that there must be a script. It's awful. There's no suspense to speak of. The dialogue is dull. Conflict, either intra- or interpersonal, is minimal. We don't know about the murdered models, so we don't care about them. (Except the momentary thought -- "What a waste.") At least the movie is not laden with cliches -- one or two car chases, a vehicular fireball -- but not much of that, perhaps because the writers didn't bother to put much effort into cranking up the action. Watch it if you want. I doubt that you'll get much out of it.