The Hollywood Beach Murders (1992) User Reviews

acceptable

[KDWms · 5/10 · 5 June 2003]

Assuming the budgetary influence, my opinion is that this film is halfway decent. An initial murder of a mobster's wife is thought to be solved by a pair of policeman who are then dispatched long-distance to return an extradictee. One cop makes the plane, but the other has an aversion to flying, so, he accidentally-on-purpose misses that mode and ends up taking a train, in which a car has been rented by another crime boss. Lo and behold, in this group there's a killing with many similarities to the other death. The flatfoot busies himself with the investigation. The most obvious monetary casualty is the over-all acting quality: you don't get what you don't pay for. 'Most everything else is tolerable.

Inept, but watchable for train buffs!

[JohnHowardReid · 4/10 · 13 December 2016]

Writer/director Eric Stratton made only two films of which this is the second. It's not grade "A" stuff and the plot is a bit hard to follow, but it's watchable if you have time on your hands because your girl friend is taking forever to wash and dry her hair. My guess is that Mr. Stratton put in a day or two learning his craft on the sidelines of some shonky TV drama. In any case, it's hard to decide which is more incompetent, his writing or his direction. But the actors do their best to keep us entertained, despite their ridiculous dialogue and Mr. Stratton's inept TV style direction with its emphasis on close-ups followed by close-ups followed by close- ups inter-cut by close-ups. The amazing thing is that despite all this attention on the players, with close-up after close-up after close-up, it's still hard to follow who's who, let alone gather even a glimmering of the plot. To add to our discomfort, some of the players are look-a-likes and at least three or four of them have no function but to repeat the dialogue spoken by the other characters in case we missed it the first time! Incidentally, on the "Inspired" DVD, the movie has no article in its title, but that doesn't necessarily mean there is none. To sum up: Almost totally inept, but a must-see for train buffs!