Thu 25 May 2017
Archived TV Movie Review: FUGITIVE NIGHTS: DANGER IN THE DESERT (1993).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[3] Comments
FUGITIVE NIGHTS: DANGER IN THE DESERT. Made for-TV movie. NBC-TV, 19 November 1993. Sam Elliott, Teri Garr, Thomas Haden Church, Raymond J. Barry, Barbara Babcock, Geno Silva. Screenplay by Joseph Wambaugh based on his novel Fugitive Nights. Director: Gary Nelson.
Teri Garr is good-looking enough, and about the right age to portray any one of the many female PI’s that have cropped up in recent years, and Sam Elliott has become scruffy enough to become her assistant while he’s waiting for his disability retirement to come through.
If this is a pilot for a TV series, though, I think they’d better start hunting up some stories, since in this whole two-hour introductory affair, there’s only about 15 minutes worth of plot. Lots of byplay between the characters can fill up big chunks of time, that’s for sure, but it left me hungry for some meatier fair in nothing flat.
Locale: Palm Springs. Villain: a bald Mexican fugitive, loose in the desert. Opinion: forget it.
May 25th, 2017 at 5:10 pm
I wonder if it could be as bad as I thought it was back in 1993. I haven’t read the book it was based on, but I’ve always found Wambaugh to be a very solid writer.
I see that it soon will be available on YouTube. If I’m reading it correctly, it’s scheduled for viewing on June 7th:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7bHxXW9gDU
May 25th, 2017 at 10:57 pm
The book didn’t have a great deal more depth, just more charm.
May 9th, 2022 at 12:45 am
“FUGITIVE NIGHTS: DANGER IN THE DESERT” seems like it was a pilot seeking a studio pickup. Good casting and a decent backstory, but for some reason the film didn’t use that story and settled for an “opposites attract” or sort of. Teri Garr always makes the most of the material, but I have to agree that the film is flat. It’s on Amazon Prime now, so easily viewed if only to see Ms. Garr and what Palm Springs looked like in the early 1990’s!