In short: Night Game (1989)

Warning: I’m going to spoil the film’s unique selling point!

A serial killer murders women in Houston with something that may be a meat hook; or at least something comparable. Being a romantic, he does so preferably on a beach and in an amusement park that’s close-by, because all films should have a murder taking place in a cabinet of mirrors.

Veteran, tired police detective Mike Seaver (Roy Scheider) is on the case. That is, when he isn’t mired in some godawful jurisdictional trouble/political pressure sub-plot, or making out with his much, much younger fiancée Roxy (Karen Young). How young is Roxy? She’s so young, her mom is Mike’s high school sweetheart. Which is indeed a plot point rather than a joke in dubious taste.

In a good turn of luck, Mike’s also a big baseball fan, and thanks to his extra special Houston Astros fandom, as well as a bit of luck, he eventually figures out that the killer is only committing his deeds on nights when a specific Astros pitcher wins a game. Unfortunately, the guy has a pretty good year.

Whenever Peter Masterson’s Night Game gets around to actually be about its somewhat giallo-esque thriller plot, and takes time out from its long and deeply uninvolving digressions into painfully clichéd jurisdictional trouble business (exactly the kind of cop movie subplot nobody but the people writing them ever wanted to experience, I believe) and all those perhaps just a tiny bit awkward interactions between Mike and Roxy and Roxy’s Mom, and stops telling painfully stupid jokes, it suddenly begins to be downright entertaining. While Masterson is a somewhat bland director here, at least the murder sequences are competently staged, showing influences of giallo and slasher alike, and so are pretty good fun. Set-up and backstory of the killer turn out to be adorably bonkers, as well. Delving deep into spoiler territory, he turns out to be a former professional baseball pitcher with a big future who is using his hook hand to kill after the accident that destroyed his career has ever so slightly unhinged him.

Scheider is good even in a role as undertaxing as this one is, of course, and the rest of the cast do their respective clichés well, too. The film’s script is clearly written with the most patient viewer in mind, however, and between the “comical” farting around, the subplots nobody asked for, and a general tendency for things to drag, and then drag some more, there are perhaps thirty percent of the runtime reserved for the film’s supposed meat.

So Night Game may very well be one of those cases where reading enticing titbits about stupid yet awesome murder motives and hilariously awkward romantic pairings is preferable to actually watching the damn thing.