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The Year in Pictures

A distraught disc jockey (Gregory Hines) seeks out a mystery caller (Debrah Farentino) who may be the killer of his girlfriend (Laura Harrington).

Gregory Hines and Laura Harrington in Dead Air (1994)

I become You, you become Me, We become ONE!

**SPOILERS** Psychological thriller involving a radio DJ who not only attracted an unseen killer to turn onto his show but enticed him, or her, to go on a murder spree killing any woman that he&#39;s involved with. We get some clue to what the movie &quot;Dead Air&quot; is about at it&#39;s opening credits when we see DJ Mark Jannek trying to revive his girlfriend Kathie as he&#39;s shot from behind by an unseen killer. It turns out that it&#39;s a nightmare that Mark has been having for some time. Nothing much happens at first as we see Mark going through the routine as a top radio DJ holding out for big bucks, since his ratings are the highest in town, and taking phone calls and requests for songs that he plays on his show. Until he goes to a bar to get a few drinks and runs into Judy. Marks chit-chat leads to Judy spending the evening with him. The next day on his radio show this caller tells him, off the air, that she knows all about his affair that he had with Judy that evening and is holding her as a hostage and then shoots her dead over the phone. Not knowing what to think Mark spends the next few days trying to find this Judy to see if the caller was really telling him the truth; she murdered Judy because of him spending the evening with her. Checking out all of the Judy&#39;s with the last initial G in the phone book, Mark found her lighter with her initials on it in his apartment, and does find this Judy Garrison dead at her home. Judy Garrison turns out to be the Judy that he picked up at the bar a few days ago. Were then put through the ringer by Mark in his trying at first to find Judy&#39;s killer and later trying to prove that he not only didn&#39;t murdered her but was innocent of Kathie Westley, his girlfriend, murder back in L.A. Later Kathie&#39;s sister posing as collage student Laura Anderson/Lara Westly, doing a study of radio DJ&#39;s, gets into the act. Laura is to find out, a bit too late, that she&#39;s being purposely set up in some weird and insane plan by her sisters murderer. Stale and uninteresting the plot for &quot;Dead Air&quot; has been done many times before and a lot better. Without trying to be too complected in order to trick it&#39;s audience with a trick and surprise ending. Were dragged through the film with Mark on the receiving end of both the police and the killer as a man in the middle caught up with things that are beyond his control. We see the surprise in the movie coming when Mark seems to be a bit too uptight about his past involvement with Kathie. As well as him not being able to explain his whereabouts in the deaths of both Judy and his fellow radio employee Susan. Making him the only person in the movie who can&#39;t come up with an alibi in regards to their murders. It&#39;s not until the final minutes that we get the truth of what really happened to both Judy &amp; Susan, as well as Kathie, and who was the killer. By then the film got so much off the main highway that when the surprise finally hit the audience it didn&#39;t have any effect on it at all. Gregory Hines is totally unconvincing as DJ Mark Jannek in his trying to prove his innocence in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. The storyline of him being able to hold down a job as a DJ with Mark being the prime suspect in a murder in L.A was ludicrous. At the station that Marks working at just being called in by the police in a murder case was enough to have him canned from his job. Still Mark was still on he job up until the end of the movie with him being implicated, and about to be indited,in three murders!

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Dead Air

I don&#39;t know why &#39;Dead Air&#39; gets railed on heavily. For a made-for-TV movie it isn&#39;t bad. It&#39;s not overly predictable, it scores some style points (that predominately featured BB King track) and Gregory Hines is good in the leading role that holds the whole picture together. Watching it again years after I originally saw it, I found it still held up. I just find something so catchy about the whole radio personality rapped up in a thriller vibe. Ripe with atmosphere. A lone DJ, anonymous voices, murder, mystery. Yep I&#39;m sold. Only a complete idiot could botch an angle like this ... and they have before. It&#39;s not a terribly original plot device, but &#39;Dead Air&#39; works. That the DJ is Gregory Hines and he&#39;s given a serviceable back story makes the difference. His screen presence works, the flick never tries to be anything it isn&#39;t and even the ending makes sense if you add it all up. There&#39;s a good laugh or two and the build up to the end is handled decently. Both Debrah Farentino as the apparent love interest / suspect and character actor Beau Starr as the flick&#39;s man with a badge have their moments too. You can do a lot worse than &#39;Dead Air&#39;.

I love the made-for-tv atmospheric, and the roll-film colours are amazing. You can feel the heat of the sunshine only watching the initial credits.
The song motif is also one of the most nice features of this film.

User reviews

Dead Air

I become You, you become Me, We become ONE!

The Thrill Is Gone

The thrill is gone...

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