AN OCCASIONAL HELL
US, 1993, 93 minutes, Colour.
Tom Berenger, Valeria Golina, Kari Wher, Robert Davi, Stephen Lang.
Directed by Salome Breziner.
An Occasional Hell is a detection story set in South Carolina. In the opening credits there are drawings of the American Civil War and guns - a clue to the later unravelling of the mystery.
Tom Berenger plays a former policeman who has turned writer and literary professor. He also suffers from gun wounds and their consequences. He is approached by the widow of a murdered professor, who is chief suspect in the murder and seeming abduction of his girlfriend, for Berenger to solve the case.
There are quite a number of complications, especially with the professor's love for rifles and the Civil War, a group of thieves at a museum, backwoods people and their violence. Of course, the policeman falls in love with the widow.
However, it is a cut above the average murder mystery with this kind of plot. The cast is quite strong and the unravelling of the plot quite interesting.
1. The Deep South, the Civil War, museums, guns, collectors, violence and murder?
2. The Carolina settings, homes, mansions, the town, the countryside, the universities? Musical score?
3. The title and its reference to Ernest De Walt? His experience as a policeman, being shot, investigations, dangers?
4. The credits sequence and the Civil War? The prologue and the sexual encounter between the professor and the waitress? The murder, the headlines, the suspicions on his widow?
5. De Walt as professor, with his students, criticised by Elizabeth for the term exercise on her husband's killing? His discussions with Elizabeth, reluctance to take the case? Her children? His investigations, the university, Larry Abbott and the police? Leading to the museum robbery? To the hillbillies? His growing attachment to Elizabeth, his self-consciousness about his illness and wounds? His constant need for injections? The pursuit of the young men, in the prison, Larry bringing him out?
6. The device of having the waitress appear, in his dreams, erotic, leading him in the detection, taunting him, friends with him? The final challenge by her that he was a detective? His realising where she was buried? Solving the case? On the swing and her deciding it was time to go?
7. Elizabeth, her relationship with her husband, his two-timing her? Her love for her children? Suspected, interrogated? Her concern and her going to De Walt? Making love with him? His leaving, her despairing? Her vindication?
8. Larry and his work in the city, detection, friendship with De Walt? His wife and her pregnancy? Impatient with De Walt, finally agreeing with him and solving the case?
9. Conventional material, murder, affair, robberies? The intricacies of the plot and the resolution?
