CALENDAR GIRL MURDERS

Tom Skerritt

CALENDAR GIRL MURDERS (1984 telefilm). Director: William A. Graham.

Richard Trainor (Robert Culp) is the publisher of Paradise magazine. He has just issued a new calendar with shapely naked women in it, when one of those women is shoved off a tenth floor balcony. More murders of models follow. Lt. Dan Stoner (Tom Skerritt of Alien) is assigned the case, but would rather be doing anything else. He is drawn to pretty Cassie Bascomb (Sharon Stone), who wants to have an affair with him despite the fact that he is married. Suspects in the case include everyone from Trainor's assistant Cleo (Barbara Parkins) to comic Nat Couray (Robert Morse). Robert Beltran [Eating Raoul] plays another cop; Alan Thicke is a photographer; and Meredith MacRae plays herself as a TV reporter. Calendar Girl Murders features good performances from Skerritt, Stone, Morse, and some of the others, but it's pretty bad, even dull, like a slasher film that excised all the slashing and suspense. Talented Morse has had a strange, if interesting, career. In the sixties, around the time of How to Succeed in Business, he had a fairly high profile. Some years later he was appearing on sit-com episodes but wasn't even listed as a "special guest-star." But weep not for Morse, as now he is playing the real Dominick Dunne on American Crime Story and all along has had a busy career. This movie is not one of its high spots. Sharon Stone [Catwoman], of course, went on to better (?) things. Despite the success of the big-screen Alien, Skerritt has kept busy mostly on television.

Verdict: Clumsy TV movie looks thrown together with spit and chewing gum. **.