Customer Reviews

Mary Higgins Clark: Crime of Passion [VHS]

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Mary Higgins Clark's novels have spawned several TV movies, ranging from schmaltzy to solid. "A Crime of Passion" is solidly in the middle, with a solid whodunnit set in sumptuous luxury, but an unintentionally funny ending.

Wine heiress Frederica Dumay (Cynthia Gibb) is devastated when her business partner's longtime wife drowns after a party. But she's even more upset when the partner, Thomas Shipman (Tom Butler) immediately takes up with a sultry, golddigging Frenchwoman, Arabella (Alexandra Kamp-Groeneveld), who is young enough to be his daughter.

The disagreement threatens to tear the company apart -- until Arabella is murdered. Thomas is the obvious suspect for both deaths, but Freddy knows that he can't be guilty. Yet someone killed those women, and Freddy soon finds that the killer may be very close to her -- especially when her husband's suspicious past comes to light.

"A Crime of Passion" is a pretty spectacle -- lots of sumptuous mansions, candlelit seductions, beautiful woods and much quaffing of wine. And courtesy of many red herrings, there's some genuine confusion over whether Allen is a villain or not.

As a sumptous spectacle, it's lots of fun, especially when the nasty golddigger is sashaying around the place, making threats and grabbing at the "Mick Jagger of fermentation." While she's on, it's pure trashy fun. But it loses luster once she leaves, especially since the identity of the murderer is quite obvious, as is the motive.

Cynthia Gibb turns in a decent performance as a pampered wine heiress who gets a nasty shock, and Gordon Currie has a nicely elusive turn as her might-or-might-not-be-a-golddigger hubby. The sour note is the actor playing the murderer, who acts like a villainous William Shatner on ecstacy.

"A Crime of Passion" is a visually appealing, fluffy movie, so long as you don't expect much in the way of actual mystery.

The plot in this film appears in many books and films, and this movie offers no new twist to it.

A husband and wife and the wife's daughter are celebrating an expansion of their wine producing company. A beautiful well endowed woman approaches the husband and makes sexual advances. The wife sees what is occuring and goes outside. Someone pushes her over an incline and she is killed. We are led to believe that the seductress was the culprit. This idea is reinforced when we learn that the seductress has seduced men before and that she has an accomplice. The husband/widower brings the seductress into his home and bed. There is a fight between them. She leaves and is shot. The police are convinced that the husband killed his wife and the seductress. Then, the daughter learns that her husband did not reveal that he had a prior rich wife who died in an accident. She is almost killed. She forces him to leave their house. It seems clear that he, the third suspect, is the murderer. He wanted to kill everyone so that he can take over the wine company. But then, while in prison, the husband of the murdered wife reveals something.

The movie, we are told is based on a Mary Higgins Clark short story. It is overlong. For example, the final scene of the murderer chasing the daughter goes on and on so that the murderer has a chance to tell why the murders were committed. The problem is that there are two clear opportunities for the daughter to overcome the murderer, while the murderer is lying on the ground stunned, but the daughter runs away, the chase continues, and the film is made longer. It seems that this should have remained a short story.

This is a great movie. I believe it is one of Mary Higgins Clark's best. It is packed with suspense. Cynthia Gibb plays a half owner in a multi-million dollar wine industry. It opens at a party that she and her partner are having. A mysterious woman appears at this party and is trying to make her move on Cynthia's partner. The next thing you know the partners wife is pushed off a balcony to her death by someone. The mysterious woman who showed up at the party moves quickly in with the partner. Cythia believes that the woman is after her partners money so she has her investigated by a friend of hers. Cythia keeps getting deeper and deeper into trying to solve the murder of her partners wife and as she does more people come up dead. Then her own life is in danger when someone tries to kill her. Everyone is a suspect from her new husband that she doesn't know much about to her friend that did the investigating and everyone else in the movie. It has a surprise ending. Keeps you watching from start to finish. Makes all the suspects look as equally quilty as the next. It is a must see if you like Mary Higgins Clark Movies.

This entry in the PAX TV Mary Higgins Clark series is a fairly entertaining whodunit. The pace is a little slow and Jennifer Clement's over the top performance as the loyal maid borders on parody, but it's story of the murder of a wine magnate's wife is intriguing and there are a few surprises along the way. Cynthia Gibb is effectively plucky as Freddie, the wine heiress, and Sebastian Spence is well cast as her old flame. Gordon Currie is a little too "prissy" as her husband, and the aforementioned Clements is so demented that it's like watching an old Bette Davis movie. But I enjoy a good mystery and this one managed to be entertaining.

couldn't watch this terrible acting! Only could bear 15 minutes of it! Felt like a lifetime movie...although some of those are good. This one is so set up and fake! Acting is so hopeless that I should say "acting" is so hopeless. Don't waste your time.