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Looking for a 80s Cop action movie
robbiej
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I saw a part of a movie on TV the other day... except, since I'm in Japan, the name of the movie was changed and I couldn't read the name of it. So I have no idea what it's called or the actor's names...
but it was a, i'm guessing, early 80's or late 70's movie about this cop who gets arrested for pissing in public. so when he gets released the next day, he becomes friends with another cop in the small town he was visiting.
anyhow, the cop who got arrested, he's also a killer and he's responsible for the disappearances and deaths of a number of people in the small desert town.
this sound familiar to anyone???
any help would be appreciated..
I could read the first part of the name of the movie in japanese, but it was changed from the original name i'm guessing. anyway, the katakana literally said "Chainareku" and then there were one or two more words in kanji but i couldnt read them.
but it was a, i'm guessing, early 80's or late 70's movie about this cop who gets arrested for pissing in public. so when he gets released the next day, he becomes friends with another cop in the small town he was visiting.
anyhow, the cop who got arrested, he's also a killer and he's responsible for the disappearances and deaths of a number of people in the small desert town.
this sound familiar to anyone???
any help would be appreciated..
I could read the first part of the name of the movie in japanese, but it was changed from the original name i'm guessing. anyway, the katakana literally said "Chainareku" and then there were one or two more words in kanji but i couldnt read them.
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wasn't that with Keanu Reeves and Morgan Freeman?
I cant think of anything and im usually pretty good with movies. Can you identify and actor in it??
I assumed it was early 80's/late 70's because of the character's fashions, and the background people (extras) clothing and fashion as well. Also, the cars, technology, production value, and film grain all scream that time period. It's definitely a 20+ yr old movie.
That's the other thing... actors. I couldn't identify a single actor. The main cop/killer guy looks quite a lot like William Shatner... maybe it was him since I'm not too familiar with shatner's work. But I dont think it was...
Hmm i'll try to describe the whole portion of the movie that I watched. Thanks for the assistance btw, everyone. Here goes:
When i tuned in, Shatner-lookalike was stumbling out of a bar in the small desert town, he was very drunk, and he decided to piss on the wall of the bar. This cop pulls up and catches him and brings him down to the drunk tank for the night in the local cop shop.
In the morning, a different cop (we'll call him Gray because he had grayish hair) is working at the police station and decides to let out Shatner. The two of them get to chatting, hang out and have dinner, and all that, and become friends, I guess. Since Shatner was only in this town on vacation, he says he has to get going, so he leaves on his motorcycle (he's a motorcycle cop) and Gray goes to meet his girlfriend/fling. They have a fun night and have sex and sleep together, and when Gray goes back home the next morning, Shatner is still staying in the trailer in his backyard (earlier, Gray told Shatner that he could stay there if he was too tired to do the drive).
Anyhow, I believe the next scene was the next day, Shatner is leaving "for reals" this time, but on his way out of town, he's on this lonely section of desert highway. He finds a guy on the side of the road trying to fix his car. He bludgeons the guy, locks him in his own car's trunk, and sets the car in motion out into the desert (the thinking is that it will fall of a cliff or crash or something).
Anyway, back in town later on, Gray being the good-cop, hears of this somehow and is sent to investigate. And since he's made friends with Shatner, and shatner is a fellow cop, he brings him along for the ride. They find a suspicious hut in the middle of the desert and draw their weapons, but some snipers in hiding begin shooting at them..... and thats as far as i got. It went to commercial break and i had to leave.
I hope this helps, though it probably won't. Hehe, again, thanks in advance for any help!
USER REVIEWS:
As average as it is for a TV movie, the one thing that I got from THE CHINA LAKE MURDERS was the underlying aspect that the director or producers were more interested in showing off cops in their uniforms and the whole fetishistic aspect of their uniforms and the policeman's mantra stemming from this than anything else. The story is VERY slight, and it really doesn't make much sense when you start thinking about it (why doesn't the bad cop kill the people he stops on the road before putting them in the trunks of their vehicles? Bad cop's killing pattern doesn't add up, etc) and there's very little suspense or point to all of it. So, that leaves only one original aspect of this well photographed flick: showing off cops in uniforms; An off-duty bad cop who likes to kill people while wearing his uniform; Good cop befriending psycho cop; Dueling cops, etc. One only has to look at the video's slipcover box to notice the film's obsession with uniforms.
The whole relationship between Tom Skerritt and the bad cop (who looks like William Shatner's brother. LOL!) is tinged with homo-eroticism: Skerritt befriends the bad cop pretty fast, invites him to his home; bad cop is obsessed with Skerritt and he's impotent in bed with women. The relationship between the two men is hard to explain but I suspect that there's more than meets the eye and, subsequently, this relationship brings the whole cop fetish aspect even more to the fore. Whether it was done intentionally or not, I don't know (I suspect it was) but without it, THE CHINA LAKE MURDERS would be a totally forgettable TV flick.
AND
A big-city cop takes annual vacations near a small town in the desert and, donning his uniform, stops and kills motorists at random, leaving their bodies in the car trunks for the local cops to discover. The local chief runs into the vacationing murderer, identifies him only as a police officer, and more or less recruits him into helping out with the multiple homicides.
The homicidal vacationing cop is Michael Burns. The local cop who finally twigs is Tom Skerrit. The performances of the two principals have something to do with the film's appeal, I think. Burns is husky-voiced and by turns mean and knowing, but always reckless. Burns' cop is hard hearted, and we understand that this is because of his rotten job of dealing with day-to-day garbage. (We already know about all that from Dirty Harry.) But the script drains him of any humanity without making him engagingly evil. He doesn't just murder people whom he finds offensive. He kills ordinary working-class people. He's a stereotypical racist and enjoys taking down blacks and Hispanics. His "friendship" with the locals seems feigned. He beds a blowzy blond waitress but there is no affection between them. (Lying next to her sleeping body, Burns goes through these weird Dracula-like motions with his hands that adds something decidedly odd to the scene.) He never seems to warm to his fellow officer, Skerrit, and overall comes across as a blank rather than a human. Burns is a good actor but needs something to work with.
Skerrit is quite good too. He left the force in San Bernardino to come to this small town and is now working his way through a post-marital depressive state. His acquires a neat-looking girl friend, his secretary Cindy, who is attractive without being in the least cute and who has a naked back that radiates a combination of sinewy strength and femininity. Skerrit's character is friendly enough without being gabby, rather passive, except that his expressions spell out his emotions so effectively.
One of the more compelling features of the film is the location shooting. It's supposed to be somewhere near China Lake, in Hopi Country, in Nevada -- but it's not. The Hopi live nowhere near Nevada. And the desert, of which we see a good deal, is the Mojave in California, full of stucco-coated jumbo rocks and Joshua trees. The scenery excites the imagination. What could be more exciting than zipping along on desert roads on a motorcycle? The sunshine, the wind, the ever-changing horizon, the scent of creosote -- and not another soul in sight except the occasional potential victim if you happen to be a crazed cop. The little towns and road stops we see resemble those around Needles and Blythe of fifty years ago, or so we imagine, without the Styrofoam litter, when people stopped for lunch in cafés instead of driving through Tommy's Big Boy GigaBurgers for take out.
They probably mistook China for Chain in the title.
A Better Tomorrow.
Hard Boiled.
Anything else John Woo did before he went and made shitty Hollywood flash in the pans
If you'd like to see more of Tom Skerritt in popular culture, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCF3ywukQYA