A COLD NIGHT'S DEATH

Robert Culp and Eli Wallach

A COLD NIGHT'S DEATH (1973 telefilm). Director: Jerrold Freedman.

A man named Vogel is conducting high altitude tests on primates for the space program at the Tower Mountain research station. When he begins sending messages that appear to be gibberish, Frank Enari (Eli Wallach) and Robert Jones (Robert Culp) -- accompanied by another test chimp -- are sent to investigate. They find Vogel frozen to death with a look of horror on his face, but they can't understand how he wound up in this condition when he could have easily gotten out of the frigid room. Other strange things begin to happen, creating an atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia among the two arguing men. Jones seems to have figured out what may be going on, but Enari can't accept it, and it's a question of just who is experimenting on whom. A Cold Night's Death is a very memorable telefilm with two excellent performances by Wallach [The Hoax] and Culp [Calendar Girl Murders] and a decided feeling of claustrophobia and creepiness. Christopher Knopf, who co-wrote the screenplay for 20 Million Miles to Earth, has fashioned a unique story that is both suspenseful and harrowing, and it also has a very clever and darkly amusing wind-up. Freedman, whose directorial assignments were mostly for television, does a good job building tension. Michael C. Gwynne has a small part as a helicopter pilot at the beginning and is effective.

Verdict: Monkey see, monkey do. ***1/2.

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. **.