Dying Room Only

Not many movies give great thrills/suspense like Dying Room Only or Steven Spielberg's Duel. A couple makes a stop in the Arizona desert at the Arroyo Motel, a shabby diner-like place with two hostile locals: a cook (Ross Martin) and a customer (Ned Beatty). When Cloris Leachman comes back from the toilet her husband (Dabney Coleman) has disappeared. Now she's on her own and does her best acting ever. A lady at the motel (Louise Latham) and the local sheriff (Dana Elcar) aren't much help either and no contact with home can be made. So Cloris must search the place herself... Eerie atmosphere and great suspense should teach modern movie makers how to save on budgets and do some real entertaining. The big mystery: why doesn't a great thriller like this one get reruns or gets out on DVD? Only crappy overpriced VHS tapes in the net can be found... ABC please please please spread this movie.

All must view this priceless gem.It creates a delicious sense of dread. Cloris Leachman's performance is unequalled.

Well-received but unsatisfying movie-of-the-week written by Richard Matheson, expanding his short story about a married couple driving through the desert who stop at a roadside diner for a bite to eat. The husband goes into the men's room and never comes out, leaving his wife in the hands of the suspicious-acting staff at the diner and the unsympathetic local law. Matheson could have taken this plot any which way, but instead settles on the most obvious scenario. I was hoping for something along the lines of "The Twilight Zone", perhaps placing the husband in an alternate reality. Instead, it's Formula 101--the old abduction plot--and the obviousness holds no suspense for us. In the lead, Cloris Leachman does very well, although she doesn't have much to work with. A promising premise, but I was "Dying" for a better denouement.

Dying Room Only is another one of those great 70's made-for-TV movies. This one is about a couple (Jean and Bob) travelling on a desert road who stop at a roadside diner/motel. The two people they meet in the diner are your typical angry, rude, city hating hicks. When Jean returns from the restroom, her husband is missing. The two men do not help her out at all with her search, in fact make things even more difficult for her. She calls the sheriff, but he ends up being no help. Did the two men do something to Bob, or did he simply take off leaving his wife deserted in the desert?

This is such a great little gem. Cloris Leachman is great as the heroine, you feel how helpless she feels when trying to get one of the men to help her find Bob. She is a very rootable character. There are some pretty tense moments throughout as well near the middle to end of it, pretty good for a TV movie. I was pleased to find out this was released on DVD, if you can find it for an affordable price; pick it up.

8/10

I just saw "Dying Room Only" for the first time in over 30 years, and this is a typically great 70's TV-movie thriller. A couple (Cloris Leachman looking pretty good, and hubby Dabney Coleman) stop at a lonely desert cafe (in the daytime, not the nighttime as the summary here states) and the husband disappears as the wife is in the ladies room. The only two possible witnesses (the cafe cook and customer Ned Beatty, in a great sleazy role) are saying nothing. What happened? Where did the husband go? The movie then takes off to have Cloris Leachman trying to figure it out, since she is getting almost no help at all from anyone. Is even the local cop in on it, whatever "it" may be? Everyone is suspect. Nighttime comes, and danger looms....

I do agree with the reviewer that stated this film could have been better in the second half. The first half is amazing - very suspenseful and thrilling. The second half kind of veers into "typical" fare but is still decent.

A bunch of familiar 70's faces round out the small cast. Especially since the film is fairly short at about 1:13 (most TV-movies back then were 90 minutes with the commercials) this is definitely a fun watch.