3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
All American B Movie, July 21, 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: All-American Murder [VHS] (VHS Tape)
All American Murder is a flic that I wouldn't waste time writing a review for except Christopher Walken makes this movie memorable. Walkin plays an on the edge homicide detective who is burnt out on life and is looking to catch a good guy for a change, or so he says. The story line is predictable and managed to remind me of how inocent seeming college girls rarely ever are and manage to complicate life. I believe there is one reason this movie is worth owning, Walken's character has a scene where he forces a psychopath in a convienant store to attack him (Walken), instead of harming a pregnant lady. Walken while using a megaphone in front of a crowd of worried onlookers manages to give a speech about the psychopaths inability to please his girlfriend in bed. Walkens dark comical talents we love seeing on SNL twice a year are most certainly present in this movie.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
snake fire, July 28, 2001
Buried underneath an avalanche of awfulness in this thriller directed by Happy Day's Potsie Anson Williams are good actors like Christopher Walken and Joanna Cassidy. That Walken is sleepwalking is preferable to when he goes in the other direction and he gets to tell the same anecdote twice, but poor Cassidy is lumbered with an insulting Mrs Robinson wife of a college dean role reduced to having an affair with perenial teen Charlie Schlatter. Schlatter is perhaps the most offensive element of this film, his pretty boy appeal more annoying than charming, totally unbelievable as sexually active and worse a rebel! Things aren't helped by screenwriter Barry Sandler supplying him with smarmy wisecracks, as if he was doing bad Neil Simon. Some of Sandler's gems - "My father is a judge and very objective. He objects to everything I do", "I like going to cemetaries. They remind me I'm alive", and Cassidy gets "The state I was married in was depression". This banter is paced by Williams, well, like TV without the laughtrack, until Josie Bisset as a girl Schlattter is interested in becomes the victim in a series of murders at the college. At least this thankfully ends the romance overplayed with songs on the soundtrack. Schlatter's previous arson connection (symbolised by a snake fetsh. Freud, are you paying attention?) is soon abandoned when different modes of killing are used, and we get stuck in the mentality of police investigation headed by Walken where Schlatter has to prove his innocence in 24 hours. The fact that Schlatter is free implies that his innocence is believed, something the audience doesn't doubt thanks to Williams' stalker POV during Bisset's death, and also is evidence of Walken's teams inaction since Schlatter is left to solve the crimes. If all this isn't stupid enough, Williams adds tilted camera angles, black and white flashbacks which ironically are more flattering to pre-Melrose Place Bissett, a mute groundskeeper out of Universal circa 1932, and incriminating polaroids where the photographer is unknown. As a friend of Bisset, Amy Davis has a likeable presence and certainly more acting ability than Schlatter, even if she is lumbered with the role of a low self-esteemer and given lines like "My cousin Roz has a lizard. I call it the lizard of Roz".
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