|
 A young woman is murdered in an
alley. The crime is heard or seen by
the residents of a nearby apartment
building, but none of them did
anything to help and they refuse to
cooperate with the police during the
investigation.
The Woman Who Cried Murder
was the title given to the 1976
rebroadcast of the 1975 TV movie
Death Scream. The film (like
High Plains Drifter) is based on
the shameful Kitty Genovese Affair
of 1963, in which a
N.Y.C. woman was
stabbed to death while fifteen
witnesses locked their windows and
doors and pretended not to
hear, stood by and did nothing.
Raul Julia stars as the detective
who investigates the murder and
stirs up the guilt feelings of those
who refused to help.
The film's
impact is blunted by the
ratings-conscious device of casting
celebrity actors in the roles of the
witnesses (Diahann Carroll,
Cloris
Leachman, Kate Jackson,
Lucie Arnaz, Nancy Walker,
Art Carney et.
al.). At times the Woman Who Cried
Murder looks more like an episode of
The Love Boat instead of a realistic
probe into an urban tragedy.
Around three years later,
Harlan Ellison and director
William Friedkin reportedly
teamed up to realize a
big-screen version of the
same story, starring Jeanne
Moreau. It was never made.
 This film was one of the typical
seventies crisis-of-the-week type
dramas. What the producers
did to "spice up" the story was to
add into the plotline the fact that
the murder victim, "Jenny," was a
lesbian; that her former girlfriend
(played by Tina Louise) has a
history of violent and threatening
behavior; and that among the
neighbors who heard Jenny's dying
screams are an immigrant couple from
an unspecified Eastern European
country who fear deportation; a
sleazy housewife played by Cloris
Leachman who is carrying on an
affair behind her husband's back;
and a married couple with Nancy
Walker playing the wife, apparently
having gotten lost on the way to the
Bounty commercial shoot. Kate
Jackson has a small part in the film
as Carol. Also look for a very young
Helen Hunt, playing hotshot
detective Raul Julia's daughter.
It was the seventies; what can I
say?
|
