Despite the fact John Saxon is found dead (by none other than Angela Lansbury) no more than 15 minutes into this episode of Murder She Wrote, the actor still somehow managed to make a further two appearances in the family friendly Whodunnit TV show – this one being a copy which I had traced down on a dodgy Russian streaming site.
Apparently, the Russians LOVE Murder She Wrote. Or maybe they’re massive John Saxon fans. Who knows? I can’t speak a word of Russian, the language to which this episode was noisily, annoyingly overdubbed.
Anyway, our main man Saxon plays a Roger Corman-like exploitation film producer, Jerry Lydecker. And he’s a bit of a bastard to boot. As with every goddamn episode of Murder She Wrote, we’re introduced to a bunch of characters preceeding the murder who possess legitimate motives to want to do the victim in. But which one is it?
Could it be the hot starlet, Melissa Sue Anderson that Lydecker has been, er, grooming? The ex-alcoholic director Allan Gebhart (James MacArthur)? Or maybe it’s Angela Lansbury herself? She’s travelled to Hollywood to complain about Lydecker’s hatchet job on her story, The Corpse Danced at Midnight…
Well, obviously it isn’t Lansbury. Butter wouldn’t melt in her fucking mouth, would it? But as always, she’s keen enough to poke her beak into the police investigation and work out who did the deed.
Angela Lansbury is on the telephone...
John “Gomez Addams” Astin plays the pre-requisite red herring, carted away for the murder midway through and it’s left to Jessica “busybody” Fletcher to deduce that the killer is still at large – the details of which are told, as always, in a flashback sequence at the very end where we see poor John take a well aimed urn swipe straight to the skull…
Though not Saxon’s finest hour, it’s great to see him play this kind of knowing role. And Murder She Wrote was always a guilty pleasure for me. Dispensable TV fluff designed to plug the gap between Sunday Lunch and Sunday Tea, it’s an added treat when man like Saxon pops his head up – even if it is promptly caved in by a mystery killer…
