A Whisper Kills

This Joe Penny - Loni Anderson vehicle is majorly lowballed on here! 4.8? Come ahnnnnnn. I gave it a 6 which I think is more fair.

It's sort of a proto-Scream whodunnit. Scary telephone calls in a creepy whisper/gravelly voice. Sound familiar? In any event, I had never heard of this film before and gave it a watch at work. It's great! Wasn't expecting much but I really enjoyed it. It's a fun 80s flick, no more no less. Should it have won an Oscar? No, but it's a good time nonetheless.

Joe Penny was in Jake and the Fatman. I can't remember what Loni Anderson was in off the top of my head. But I can tell you this -- during the opening credits, I thought "Dang, the music/score sounds oddly familiar." Bang, I was right: Charles Bernstein scored the film. What was he famous for? The score for A Nightmare on Elm Street, one of the best horror scores ever. Also, James Sutorius is in this flick, he was in Columbo and Murder, She Wrote episodes.

See it! 6/10.

Loni Anderson plays reporter Liz Bartlett in WHISPERKILL (aka: A WHISPER KILLS). Liz is stalked by phone by a whispering maniac who has just murdered her boss. Liz joins forces with a fellow reporter (Joe Penny) to solve the mystery. Not surprisingly, romance blooms.

Meanwhile, the whispering phone calls continue, and more murders follow.

WHISPERKILL is an above average made-for-TV thriller with some decent twists in its plot. Those who only know Ms. Anderson from her days on WKRP IN CINCINATTI will be happy to see her stretch her dramatic muscles...

Well the other person who left a comment said it was very easy to figure out who had done it from the very start ( even with his limited IQ, he said about himself)...Well I guess I am not very good with summing up plots or figuring things out, because honestly I had no idea who the killer was until the end, and I was really in suspense. This was obviously a made for TV movie, but I thought it was enjoyable and I feel bad that another user would automatically assume that everyone will know from the "get-go": "whodunnit?".... NG

I watched this knowing who the killer was throughout the whole film. I suppose the director was counting on distracting us with Joe Penny and Loni Anderson's sexual chemistry.

Something went really wrong in the lab. I've seen canines in better heat than this. It's hurtful and insulting to assume that we as viewers wouldn't have more intellegence to figure out who did what and when. All the clues are presented to us in an orderly fashion and even my limited IQ was able to pentrate this nefarious plot which was really no more than a low brow version of a Poirot story. I won't disclose the killer..I don't have to. Watch the film for a minute and you'll know. I also know that the person it is, is in no way the person it possibly could be. The dialogue is bad, the acting mediocre, lighting is barf and the script is hurl. I watched it purely for scum intertainment. It barely suceeded as that. It's not that I detest this film, I just hate the fact that it stole an hour and a half of my life without a chill or polt intrigue to show for it. I like bad movies and I don't need SFT3000 or whatever it's called to watch it. But I require an allegiance either way, and Whisper has nothing. Whisperkill is the Switzerland of bad movies. It won't be bad and definately not good.

And after all Joe Penny is Jake, and you gotta love the guy.

WHISPERKILL is a very early entry in the run of psycho thrillers that emerged in cinemas following the likes of FATAL ATTRACTION and (in particular) BASIC INSTINCT. Such films usually followed a cop (or pair of cops) as they investigated various psycho murders and find themselves getting too close to the suspect. This time around, blonde TV starlet Loni Anderson plays a reporter who's shocked when one of her rivals is bumped off by a vicious killer. Investigative reporter Joe Penny turns up to check things out and soon finds himself falling for her, although he becomes disturbed when he checks out his new love's background...

The thriller aspects of WHISPERKILL are handled well on a TV movie level, so it's a shame that this film instead chooses to be a cheap and cheesy love story for the most part, complete with cheesy songs on the soundtrack. Anderson and Penny do possess chemistry as the leads, but the leaden plotting makes this hard to sit through in places, although it picks up for the killer unveiling at the climax. It's hardly the stuff of greatness, though.