Rish's Reviews
I suppose this was a two-part miniseries from a few years back, but I don't remember ever hearing about it. I picked it up edited together as one movie, and judging from the running time, I don't imagine much was cut out.
When family man Marty Stillwater's blood sample is accidentally used in a governmental super-soldier experiment, a genetic double of him is created--this one, known as Alfie, is cunning, deadly, and soul-less. When the murderous double escapes the facility where it was created, it manages to enter the life of the real Marty Stillwater, and believes that life is its own.
Mr. Murder starred Stephen Baldwin, another of the Baldwin Clones, in dual roles (as Marty and Alfie, the hero and the villain). Julie Warner plays his wife. James Coburn plays a shadowy rich dude. Coburn's son, played by Thomas Hayden Church, is the villainous mastermind behind the super-soldier program. In an alarming bit of unusual casting Bill Smitrovitch and Dan Lauria play military bigwigs! And people ask Kelsey Grammar what it's like to play the same part for twenty years.
I had read the book when it first came out, but as I've mentioned of Dean Koontz's novels, they tend to be so similar that the details are immediately forgotten. Like many of his works, this isn't Horror through and through, but a combination of Suspense, Sci-Fi, Action, and Horror. There was a creepy moment, though, when Alfie tries to replace Martin, and he's certainly a frightening character. The movie really plays with the unbelievability of the situation. Marty's wife thinks he's going nuts. It's frustrating, but in an effective way. Julie Warner has always been kind of sweet, even back in the "Star Trek" days. It's pretty remarkable that we don't hate her more for not believing her husband. But nobody did--his parents don't believe him even when the double calls on the phone and they're faced with proof.
Executive produced by Koontz himself, the film was not bad. It was also NOT scary, but it was interesting. At 1:02, I got pretty excited, and there was some fun stuff toward the end. I liked the film a lot, and remember liking the novel as well. I didn't even mind Baldwin after a while. In fact, he does a good job as the good and evil twins, with a nice vocal difference between them. It featured pretty alright double effects for a TV movie, and the effect worked best when they'd do a rack focus between the two. It had weird off-screen violence (very television), yet there's vaguely added-in nudity in the video version.
We do get a couple of lapses in logic along the way. It's convenient that Marty has ten identical outfits in his closet so Alfie could slip into one and match him exactly. Perhaps the book explained this away, but unless you're a Muppet or a cartoon character, it's a tad incredible, no? And are we to believe the clone would have the same bad haircut as the real Marty? The ending doesn't really work, regardless of how effective it was in the book (which makes me think I ought to read it again sometime), and seems rushed and rather phony. Too bad, because I was enjoying it quite a lot until that point. When the movie works, it really rocks. When it doesn't, it's not so hot. I know you could say that about any flick, but hey, it's REALLY true in this case.