One of the Gemini Productions TV movies made by producer Robert Bruning. They were mostly genre pieces - on paper this is one such entry, the tale of an investigator looking into series of mysterious deaths in a small town - but this one plays it for laughs. Hugh Keays Byrne gives a broad performance as the investigator, with his pencil moustache and bumbling ways. He has what I think is meant to be a screwball comedy relationship with this random girl (Ingrid Mason, good value) who lives in the town and seems to spend most of her time following him around in a car.
The townsfolk include Oz TV regulars like Brian Wenzel and Max Meldrum. I did laugh at Ken Goodlet's cop who was happy for Keays Byrne to investigate so long as he didn't do any work.
But the film didn't work for me. It's harder to pull of these spoof versions of these tales - when they work they're great fun, but the mystery on this wasn't that good and the comedy wasn't that great either. I'm not sure the writer and director were really on the A team - and Grundys didn't aim for quality as a general rule. Maybe Tony Morphett could have pulled it off. After a while this was just annoying - it was smart arse and not that smart.
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