Thu 5 Aug 2021
A Made-fo-TV Mystery Movie Review: A QUIET LITTLE NEIGHBORHOOD, A PERFECT LITTLE MURDER (1990).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[5] Comments
A QUIET LITTLE NEIGHBORHOOD, A PERFECT LITTLE MURDER. NBC, Made-for-TV, 1990. Teri Garr, Robert Urich, Susan Ruttan, Florence Stanley, Tom Poston, Jeffrey Tambor, Gail Edwards. Director: Anson Williams.
I agree, it’s a corny title, and if you don’t, it’s still a mouthful, and did you see who the director is? Anson Williams will never live down his role as Potsie on Happy Days. To tell you the truth, though – and you were waiting for me to say this, weren’t you? – I enjoyed this movie.
There have been quite a few mystery novels published in the last couple of years that have taken place in the suburbs, with bored housewives and/ or widows or widowers (or combinations thereof) doing the jobs solving mysteries they can’t convince the conventional authorities to do that they should be doing.
And once a trend begins, can TV be far behind? When a newly married couple – committed activists both – move from the big city, inevitably but inexorably, they find themselves settling in and – while they both deny it – becoming (!) yuppies. Not to mention being parents of a three month old daughter. What brings a rekindled degree of excitement to the life of the wife is a conversation she overhears on the baby’s kiddie-com – a clown with a large red lightbulb for a nose. The clown is also a radio transmitted, sending baby cries to the parents’ room, or wherever the second clown is located.
And the conversation concerns a murder about to be committed. Marsha, the wife (Teri Garr) somehow overhears it, but she cannot convince her husband Ross (Robert Urich) or the police detective (Alex Rocco) that she is not simply going bananas. Urich, who used to play Spenser, is also very good at pretending to be thickheaded, which is just exactly what his part requires.
Otherwise, this has about the right amount of mystery and suspense, mixed with more than enough comedy, and a little bit of detection as well. I think the bit about Marsha selling housewares door-to-door to aid in her sleuthing activities has been swiped from somewhere else, however, and I don’t really see Tom Poston (one of the two main suspects) as a killer, not that I’m saying he was, in case this movie is ever rerun again, as it surely will be. (He’s described here by one of the other characters, as a “Mr. Potato Head,†and that’s as apt a description of the man and the parts he played as I’ve ever heard.)
August 5th, 2021 at 9:45 pm
H’mm! That’s some cast of beloved faces/names. As well as “Pottsy Weber” as director.
Robert Urich, always dependable. Under-used by his industry.
Story synopsis: privately, I’m loathe to see a ‘baby monitor’ –or any other transitory gadget –used as a plot device. A script should never rely on anything bound to be an anachronism someday.
My favorite mystery-of-this-type (featuring suburban housewives)? Susan Sarandon and Raoul Julia in, “Compromising Positions” or even better, Shirley MacLaine in “Desperate Characters” (more of a drama, but certainly menacing).
Favorite name mentioned above: Teri Garr. If you’ve seen her in “The Black Stallion” you know why I’m a fan. She can do no wrong after that role, as far as I’m concerned. Whew!
August 6th, 2021 at 12:20 pm
Re Robert Urich, as far as TV series are concerned, he wasn’t famous per se, but neither was he underused. Here’s a list of the various series he had a substantial recurring role in:
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
S.W.A.T.
Soap
Tabitha
Vega$
Gavilan
Spenser: For Hire
American Dreamer
Crossroads
The Lazarus Man
Love Boat: The Next Wave
Plus loads of single episodes of other series and Made-for-TV movies such as this one.
August 6th, 2021 at 6:58 am
Desperate Characters was NOT a “suburban” mystery. It was set (as in the original, a novel by Paula Fox) in Brooklyn. Brooklyn Heights to be specific, very close to Manhattan and not the suburbs.
If you liked Compromising Positions, however, a very similar feel (in many ways) is to be had in Fabian Nicieza’s excellent SUBURBAN DICKS, set in the rich suburbs (West Windsor and Plainsboro) near Princeton, New Jersey. I’m enjoying it a lot.
August 6th, 2021 at 9:35 am
Good catch.
Yes, they were New Yorkers. It’s a very atmospheric flick about anxiety-ridden, big-city dwellers. But, there was also a sequence in the film where she and Kenneth Mars spend time at their vacation home … probably in upstate New York? Anyway, some small town somewhere, which sticks in my mind too. The insularity of the neighbors there –burr! But isn’t Mars is wonderful in a serious role for a change.
Thanks for the additional rec!
August 6th, 2021 at 3:26 pm
I seem to recall Urich was also in something called ‘High Risk’ or ‘High Stakes’; something to do with a Mexican jewel heist? As well as ‘Ice Pirates’, and I’ve certainly seen him in a fun thriller called ‘Endangered Species’ (about the midwest’s infamous “black helicopters” syndrome). He stars too, in the Rocky Blier story, ‘Fighting Back’.
For all that I think he could have been a bigger star than he wound up. Just needed some last little zing to push him across the line; for example like what happened to Tom Skerritt. I would have liked to have seen Urich get a cracklin’ role like Skerritt got in ‘Alien’.