THE CALENDAR GIRL MURDERS (1984)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Whether one tunes in to CALENDAR GIRL MURDERS with the idea of seeing a good mystery about calendar models being killed off in the order of their assigned months, or just with the notion of seeing a bunch of hot models, William Graham’s tame TV-film will probably disappoint both audiences.

I’ve labeled some psycho-killers as “uncanny” even when they’re not particularly unusual in appearance or in their method of dispatching victims, THE STEPFATHER being a notable example. The writers of CALENDAR might have chosen to build up the murderer’s obsession with killing victims in a certain order so that the psychosis had some of the same vibes as that of Terry O’Quinn’s madman, but I suspect they were content to crib from better works, like Agatha Christie’s ABC MURDERS (which, for different reasons, is also a naturalistic work).

The psycho is so underdeveloped that the pursuing officer, one Sam Hunter (Tom Skerritt), becomes the focus of the narrative by default. In fact, for a serial killer story, the script seems far less concerned with the murders of hot girls than with Hunter’s family life. As a settled cop with a wife and kid, he gets a certain amount of static from the wife about his possible dalliance with the many models in the entourage of Richard Trainor (Robert Culp), a Hugh Hefner knock-off who’s just had a big financial success with a sexy calendar. And despite his basic faithfulness, Hunter does strike a few sparks with former Trainor employee Cassie (Sharon Stone), just to prove he’s not dead yet.

The mystery is threadbare and none of the characters are compelling, though Robert Morse has an atypical role as a sleazy guy, and there’s a little fun to be had from spotting familiar faces like Alan Thicke, Robert Beltran and Claudia Christian. Sharon Stone has one of her most personable early roles. But whenever a TV-film develops one character and none of the others, that’s a problem no number of red herrings can solve. When the killer is revealed, the psychology of the monthly obsession is dropped and there’s some drivel about the (female) killer having a “love-hate relationship” with her father. Was she then killing off models simply because she saw them as competitors for her father’s love (whatever kind of love it might’ve been)? Or maybe she killed the models by month because her father had slept with them in that order? Who knows?

Graham devotes some time to showing the buxom beauties in scenes that, in theory, could have been titillating: some desultory photo shoots and a sporting-event that has the women running around on an obstacle course. A lot of eighties TV-makers would have really hyped the T&A factor. But Graham doesn’t just miss that boat, he looks like he didn’t even try to get on. The closest thing to sexy wit comes when the models start climbing a chain-fence, and the emcee says something about how the chains came from his private collection.