Review of Nightkill

Nightkill (1980)
A great thriller, excellent ending...
21 July 2003
Warning: Spoilers
SPOILER!!!!! I have just finished watching this film and I was very impressed. I collect Jaclyn Smith's films and most recently acquired this one on DVD.

The story took all sorts of interesting twists. Was Wendell dead? Was Katherine (Jaclyn) being set up?

I was hooked, and it was remarkable how everything came together. As soon as I saw Donner (Robert Mitchum) putting on gloves near the end, it clicked. We had not seen Wendell's face when apparently he was chasing Katherine but that added a air of mystery at the time, not seeing the 'dead' man's face.

Robert Mitchum played a very good phoney detective.

This is a rare occasion that nothing major is overlooked in the plot that the victim could have done differently. Katherine did nothing too irrational and didn't seem simply stupid at all.

Jaclyn was a pleasure to see, especially knowing she made this film while "Charlie's Angels" was still in production. However, the downside, the moment when she had to display extreme emotion, (I'm sad to say) were sometimes cringe-worthy, the worst was when she was runnning round the house shouting for who she thought was Wendell to come out. But this was required for the role I guess, a very distressed woman. However, when she discovers Steve's body in the place of Wendell's, the film makers choice to make it slow motion with music and no sound of gasping, shrieking or crying was extremely sucessful in my opinion, it worked a lot better, the expressions on Jaclyn's face spoke for themselves easily!

And the previous review about having to watch this is a second time is true, I look forward to that in a few months time, noticing the pieces being scattered to come back together later. This isn't Jaclyn at her best, but an excellent thriller with the bonus of featuring Jaclyn.
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