SHE CRIED MURDER
US, 1973,74 minutes, Colour.
Telly Savalas, Lynda Day George, Mike Farrell.
Directed by Herschel Daugherty.
She Cried Murder is quite an entertaining thriller. It is a variation on the boy who cried wolf theme. It has Telly Savalas in a villainous role and has Lynda Day George being terrorised. The material is quite conventional. It also is highly contrived. However, as with so many telemovies and parts of series, the film has a fascination while it is on the screen, entertains its audience and helps them to identify with melodramatic situations which make demands.
1. The significance of the title? The heroine and people not believing her? The variation on the boy who cried wolf?
2. An entertaining telemovie? The telemovie style, suspense, characters, brevity? Suspense and the home audience?
3. Colour photography, the city, the subway? The chases, the buildings? The musical score? Special effects?
4. The plausibility of the plot: the heroine and her being on the train, her seeing the murder, the encounter with the policeman, her discussing it with her friend at the carnival, her fear for her son? The encounter with the policeman, the melodrama at the old Winter Garden Theatre? The police and their disbelief? The pursuit, the heroine and her eluding her pursuer, the final confrontation? The policeman and his corruption, the murder, his madness and his pursuit of the heroine?
5. The heroine as victim - the ordinary woman, travelling on the train, the effect of what she saw and its playing on her memories, the discussion with her friend, having to cope with the villain appearing with the police? Her not being believed? The police and their attitude towards her? Her enjoyment of the outing with her son? The policeman and his kidnapping the son, the confrontation in the old theatre and her rescuing the boy? Her thinking she killed the policeman? The police and their gradual believing, their being just behind her? Her terror in the flat, in the car chase, in the subway? The final pursuit in the subway and the shoot-out? Her relief at the end? Conventional material - well done for audience involvement and interest?
6. Telly Savalas as a villainous and corrupt policeman? The initial killing, his presence with the police, the kidnapping of the boy, the long speech pleading with the heroine in the theatre, his being presumed dead? Telephone calls, using his police authority to find out information e.g. from the taxi-driver, the entry into the apartment, the chase, the subway, his death? The police and the discovery of the information in the dead woman's home, the visit to the policeman's wife, to the head of the department? Disbelief? His death?
7. The son and his outing with his mother, the kidnapping? The friend and her helping with the police, with the apartment? The nuns looking after the son?
8. The picture of the police - efficiency at their work, crank phone calls, women upset? The investigation of the dead woman and her set-up for blackmailing victims? The decision to pursue the corrupt policeman? The shoot-out?
9. The special effects, tension, audience identification with the characters? How would the average person handle similar situations if they arose?
