ISN'T IT SHOCKING? (1973)

ISN'T IT SHOCKING? aired on Oct. 2, 1973 as part of ABC's "Movie of the Week" series and it stars a young Alan Alda as the sheriff of the small dying town of Mount Angel. The town is dying because only old people live there. Alan is bored and just riding out his last few days before he takes a new police job over in the thriving metropolis of Horse Creek. Then a serial killer strikes!

Mount Angel is full of quirky characters and the script by Lane Slate (who also wrote a number of other memorable 70's TV movies, most notably THE CAR) quickly brings the town to life. Right from the start I liked this movie and the naturalistic tone of the conversations. Especially the playful banter between Alda and his secretary Louise Lasser. Alda is dating with a single mother who runs the local roadside motel, but Lasser knows that he's secretly (even to himself) in love with her so she just plays with him nonstop. It's a lot of fun to watch. Anyway, there's a killer on the loose, but nobody even knows it because he's using a homemade defibrillator to make it look like the elderly victims died of a heart attack. But then the bodies start piling up so fast that Alan begins to suspect that something sinister is going on.  He decides to get to the bottom of it.

Quick pace, funny script, quirky town folk, nice camerawork and a excellent cast (including Ruth Gordon, Lloyd Nolan, Will Geer and Edmond O'Brien!)...I didn't want ISN'T IT SHOCKING? to end! If some TV exec back in 1973 had a brain he would have made a TV show about the adventures Sheriff Alan Alda and his town full of weirdos, but I guess Alan was already busy with "M.A.S.H.". Oh well, if you like small town mysteries, then check it out.

MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY (1993)

I love this film.

Larry and Carol Lipton (Allen and Keaton) meet the older couple, Paul and Lilian House, who live in the next door apartment. It's an exciting evening spent discussing such subjects as stamp collecting, health issues and twin cemetery plots. The next night Larry and Carol walk out into the hallway to find the paramedics toting Lilian out on a stretcher covered by a sheet. Dead of an heart attack.

Carol is saddened by Lilian's passing even though she didn't really know her...but there's something just not right. Carol is suspicious by Paul's lack of mourning. A few day's after Lilian's death, Carol and Larry run into Paul on the street and he seems almost cheerful. This rubs Carol the wrong way and despite Larry's "forbidding" her to investigate she does it anyway and eventually gets him in on the case too.

If, like me, you're a huge fan of both Woody Allen and the witty and playful banter between Nick and Nora Charles in THE THIN MAN films then you'll be in movie heaven with MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY. There's nothing fancy going on, it's just a fun, breezy film that is a delight from beginning to end. Highly recommended.

One thing that I like to do whenever I watch MMM is to imagine that Alvy Singer and Annie from ANNIE HALL got back together, married and this is them 16 years later!  It's like ANNIE HALL 2 that way!

Camera crew visible in broken mirror.

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