Muerte bajo el agua

Harry Whittington, author of over 200 novels during a lengthy career, with "Web Of Murder" the noirish thriller upon which this film is based appearing in 1958, is widely recognized as one of the more skillful plotmasters within the field of crime fiction and this production adheres to the basic structure of the original. The work is replete with wit, although the majority is not found within the mildly disjunctive scenario or from the, at times, somewhat languid direction of canny Bill Condon, but instead is centered within the moodily clever lighting and camerawork under supervision of Ron Murphy, along with the creative and droll costumes of Grania Preston. Murphy's fellow Australian Bryan Brown capably portrays Charlie Deegan, a rather unsavoury American defense attorney in love with his secretary Laura (Teri Hatcher), and conspires with her to murder his moneyed wife whom he detests, but as we must expect from a cinematic crime of passion, dire complications ensue after there is no turning back. Whittington's novel, of the hard boiled genre, whisks along at a fevered pace whereas this picture, utilizing a voiceover track of Brown, is more leisurely yet still quite enjoyable largely due to its sharp casting from top to bottom with only the aesthetic exceptions of Anne DeSalvo and Veronica Cartwright, each next to impossible to make as undesirable as their characters are in the book. Cartwright gathers in the acting laurels here with her feral performance as Deegan's fly in the ointment, with Hatcher's prototype from the mystery novel being far more aggressive than is the actress in a role that, after all, depicts murder for profit, while top-flight supporting turns come from Pruitt Taylor Vince, Ron Karabatsos, Anna Thomson and Brent Hinkley; additionally notable are the splendid sets of Jim Adams, art design by Richard Sherman and a wry thematic score by Philip Giffin, all complementing the visual concepts of the cinematography, while one shall not overlook the extraordinary opening credits, employing a spider and a hapless fly (come into my parlour....), highlighted by excellent sound mixing for this stylish and generally overlooked film.

Not so bad like one guy wrote. Indeed, Teri Hatcher is very young and beautiful. And she even acts well. Like all those others in the cast, Bryan Brown (please, don't compare him with Michael Caine, Michael Caine should have done something else than acting...), Anne De Salvo, excellent in the role of the unbearable wife, Veronica Cartwright excellent in the role of the alleged unbearable mistress, Seymour Cassel, very good as the intelligent cop. You got to have a little intelligence yourself to understand the tone and the real intent of this film, it's obviously a parody of crime movies, and it shouldn't be taken seriously as such. And, by the way, there is no perfect crime, neither in movies nor in real life. Except if you kill some flies, mosquitoes or cockroaches.

"Dead in the Water" plays like a fine episode of "Columbo". Right from the start we know the murder's identity, and the fun is watching the guilty party's perfect murder slowly unravel. The acting by all is very good, and the deliberate pace lends itself to strong character development. Since none of the characters is likable, and their motives all self serving, the intermingled black humor is quite welcome. Special mention must be made of the musical score, and opening credits sequence, which are both top notch. You could do far worse for an evenings entertainment than "Dead in the Water. I recommend taking a look at this one. - MERK

Someone wrote a review with the conclusion that this was terrible in every way, and of course it is, but there is more to it than that. First of all, Bryan Brown is like an Australian Michael Caine, and this would have been a superb part for Michael Caine, as he would have added even more subtility like food for afterhought to it. His case is precarious indeed, as he, although a terribly clever attourney and expert on any way of crime, fails to have learred there is no perfect crime. Still he plans it and thinks he will get away with it, which makes him nothing less than a goof. But that's the intrigue.

There are some women around him, his wife for one, a terrible nightmare of a shrew, and then that secretary, who is only good for sex and carrying around a dark secret to add a bitter aftertaste and aftermath when the time comes, and then there is that terribly vulgar Victoria, whom you learn to hate as much as he does from the beginning, who just wants to eat him up and does it.

It's a noir, but actually a dark humour noir, the twist to the tale is overwhelming in its marvellous way of turning everything the other way and upside down and topsy-turvy, so that the candidates for his murder list tend to multiply for good reasons, resulting in more murders than anyone had bargained for with some serious gunfire as well. You can't have everything, which Bryan Brown evidently thought he could and therefore made a go for it - and gained much more than he ever could have dreamt of, but only for worse, for no good at all, and that's the karmic lesson of this loathsome morality of the wrong people all doing the wrong things.