Murder by Night (1989)

Warning: there will be spoilers!

The charmingly named “Claw Hammer Killer” is haunting the nightly streets of New York, murdering women, as these guys inevitably do. His latest exploits are a bit below the standards of your typical ultra-competent movie serial killer, though, when one of his victims runs into a car, causing a crash and an explosion. Caught in said explosion is one Alan Strong (Robert Urich), probably out jogging at that moment, or something.

Neither we nor he do know what Alan was actually doing, for he suffers from a hefty bout of amnesia that leaves his past near and far a total vacuum to him. Apparently, he soon learns, he’s the reclusive owner of a successful restaurant he never enters, as well as the owner of a load of crappy modern art in his living room. He’s also a cipher to the world as much as he is to himself. Well, unless you’re the cop investigating the Claw Hammer Murders, that is. For said cop, one detective Carl Madsen (Michael Ironside) doesn’t buy Alan’s amnesia at all, and believes him to be a rich guy trying to avoid the trouble that comes with witnessing a murder.

Karen Hicks (Kay Lenz), the police psychologist tasked with helping Alan, does not at all agree with that opinion, but then, she clearly has no professional ethics and can’t resist the old Urich charm, so she’s soon having an affair with her patient. Why, she’s so into him, she’s even going to stand by him once Alan as well as Madsen start to suspect Alan might not be a witness, but the killer himself.

Paul Lynch’s Murder by Night, a TV movie made for the USA Network whose TV movie output was specialized on making genre movies below the explicitness of HBO but rather above the usual network TV movie fare when it came to sex, violence, and bad ideas, is rather a nice example of the form. Well, one might complain that it doesn’t go quite as far with its basic concept as it could do, turning the whole affair into more of a gaslighting affair than the portrait of a man who doesn’t know himself getting into trouble. On the other hand, however, the killer and his plan are sufficiently nasty and ridiculous to base an effective little thriller on.

The film is of course – being a TV movie - a bit conservative in its construction, so anyone who knows this kind of film will cop relatively early to what is actually going on simply by knowing the basic structure of this kind of plot. Lynch sells it pretty well, though, timing reveals and reversals nicely, and making good use of Urich’s general nice guy image exactly to cause just enough doubt in the audience. Plus, there’s another TV nice guy actor playing the actual killer, so you gotta congratulate the movie for some cleverness here, too.

The cast is generally doing a fine job inside the constraints of what this is, Urich being likeable and confused, Jim Metzler being likeable and evil, Michael Ironside doing his patented driven asshole cop bit as convincing as he always does, and Lenz doing the best with what she is given.


So, all in all, Murder by Night is a nice little example of a well-made TV thriller, winning over hearts and minds, okay, my heart and mind, via the virtues of craftsmanship.