Television Detectives

All posts tagged Television Detectives

Horror, She Wrote: Alice Krige

Published November 17, 2017 by biggayhorrorfan

Alice K 1

Horror, She Wrote explores the episodes of the ever-popular detective series Murder, She Wrote, featuring Angela Lansbury’s unstoppable Jessica Fletcher, that were highlighted by performances from genre film actors.

Show business is full of complications…professional jealousies, Napoleon complexes, cold blooded killers. The sweet Nina Cochran (Alice Krige) definitely discovers this to be true on Murder in the Afternoon, a second season episode of Murder, She Wrote.

The niece of the series’ stalwart Jessica Fletcher, a mystery writer who continuously finds herself solving real crimes, Cochran is accused of offing Joyce Holleran (Jessica Walter, Play Misty For Me), the evil head writer of the soap on which she appears. Of course, Cochran isn’t the only suspect for doing away with this callous doom bringer. Holleran has threatened the jobs of many of the show’s beloved cast, including the indulgent, adulterous Bibi Hartman (Tricia O’Neil, Piranha II: The Spawning).

Capped by a double red herring, this episode, nicely, allows Krige to display a full range of emotions. Fear and anger, naturally, figure prominently here. But true movie buffs may delight most to Krige’s sweet scenes with Lansbury and golden age character actress Lurene Tuttle (Psycho, Niagara, Don’t Bother to Knock), who plays Krige’s devoted grandmother with a daft charm.

Krige, who gave sophisticated and passionate performances in such horror offerings as Ghost Story, Sleepwalkers, Silent Hill and Stay Alive, also works well amongst the vindictive environs of Walter and O’Neill. She, wisely, plays off their characters’ inherent selfishness with a firm and determined resolve of her very own. …and while that surely doesn’t provide much love in the afternoon, as those daytime ads in the flashy ‘80s always proclaimed, it most certainly allows for plenty of delicious, lightweight fun!

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Horror, She Wrote: Lisa Wilcox

Published August 4, 2017 by biggayhorrorfan

Lisa solo

Horror, She Wrote explores the episodes of the ever-popular detective series Murder, She Wrote, featuring Angela Lansbury’s unstoppable Jessica Fletcher, that were highlighted by performances from genre film actors.

Beware the snakes and spiders that slither within the psyches of young maids. Granted, that’s a line that Shakespeare never composed, but he might have if he was around to write about the fair Lori Graham, as initially enacted with sweet as pie energy by A Nightmare on Elm Street veteran Lisa Wilcox, on the Murder on the Thirtieth Floor episode of Murder, She Wrote.

On this 10^th season outing of the estimable series, Wilcox plays the recently discovered niece of a successful book publisher, Edward Graham (Robert Desiderio). Graham is in the process of editing the latest mystery of Jessica Fletcher (the legendary Angela Lansbury), the focus of the series, and he is also slowly losing his sanity to frequent nightmares revolving around the beckoning voice of his recently deceased wife. Familiar territory for certain cast members, huh? Lisa and Angela 2

Naturally, Graham winds up dead and Jessica immediately begins her comfortable brand of prying. The gentle Lori seems far off the seasoned sleuth’s radar until the final moments when it is revealed that she may not only provide the clues to all that has happened, but be much more sinister than originally expected.

Nicely, Wilcox gets a number of scenes here with Lansbury. She also gets to apply a little vinegar and spite to the confident tones she supplied as Alice took charge of her life and brought down the insidious Freddy Krueger in both A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: Dream Child.

Even the Bard might be impressed!

Lisa and Angela

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Horror, She Wrote: Cherie Currie

Published November 20, 2014 by biggayhorrorfan

Horror, She Wrote explores the episodes of the ever-popular detective series Murder, She Wrote, featuring Angela Lansbury’s unstoppable Jessica Fletcher, that were highlighted by performances from genre film actors.

It may be fun to go to the dogs every once in awhile, but there is nothing, dramatically speaking, like a good cat fight! Eclectic entertainment goddess Cherie Currie certainly dives into some fur snarling fisticuffs in the first season episode of Murder, She Wrote entitled (appropriately enough) It’s a Dog’s Life and definitely comes out shining!

Best known for fronting the influential rock band The Runaways, Currie, also, had a varied acting career with roles in such horror and science fiction epics like Parasite, Wavelength and Twilight Zone: The Movie. Here, her co-stars include such genre stalwarts as Dallas’ Jared Martin (Aenigma, New Gladiators), Forrest Tucker (The Crawling Eye, The Abominable Snowman), Dan O’Herlihy (Halloween III, The Cabinet of Caligari), Dean Jones (Two on a Guillotine) and James Hampton (Teen Wolf, Hangar 18).

Playing Echo, the sarcastic daughter of a spiritually obsessed heiress (Soap’s Cathryn Damon who, also, practiced maternal witchiness in the television flick Midnight Offerings), Currie is obviously having a ball as Echo engages in verbal combat with her drunken aunt (played by soap stalwart Lenore Kasdorf). Currie, also, excellently invests the flippancy that Echo has for authority figures with a subtle comic timing and truthfully petulant sass. On the flip side, Currie and Damon do establish a natural affection between their characters, making viewers long to know more about them.

All involved (including the elegant Lynn Redgrave), though, seem to warm nicely to the absurdly fun plotline (which finds a beloved beagle on trial for murder), making this a rather delightful entry in this seminal, femme powered detective series.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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