The China Lake Murders

The desert plays a central role in this fascinating portrayal of a serial killer's mad pursuit of self-fulfillment. Michael Parks's character—a big-city police officer who spends his vacation in the desert killing people—is as simple and arid as the desert he makes his yearly hunting ground, a place where his victims fall into his deadly trap as quickly and easily as a rodent in a rattlesnake's jaws. Parks's character lacks passion and depth in a way that suggests, paradoxically, a cavernous psychosis. His eyes are pitiless and impenetrable, and his slow, quiet way of talking gradually shifts from easy friendliness to menacing madness. Tom Skerritt offers an equally adept performance as a sheriff who at first simply wants to help out a fellow officer. The more his suspicions of this odd newcomer grow, the deeper into self-destructive madness does the killer descend. The sheriff's understated normalcy provides an effective measure of the killer's increasing detachment from reality. The fact that the killer has no clear motive to kill the people he chooses on empty stretches of desert highway makes the story all the more compelling and memorable. The murders are pointless to everyone except the killer, and he ain't talking.

This fairly low budget film makes good use of the scenery, look out for the clever photographic synchronisity; gloves being put on with wheel nuts being tightened, suggesting tools as an extension of the hand etc.

Token females in film hardly need many lines, but director Alan Metzger really works this 1990 near-surreal thriller with skill and dexterity.

Lovely bright scenes, you can almost feel the dust. Tom Skerrit and Michael Parks make a good 'opposites' blend.

Although not too many surprises, that would just spoil it, as most of the film carries itself, and you just know whats coming - but its dished up with relish.

Highly entertaining.

I have forever been a fan of made-for-TV movies and their genre. And this was no exception. I revisited it the other day and was quite impressed by the atmosphere and believability of the cast. Set in Arizona along a lonely expanse of road we have a rogue cop who at some point has gone quietly insane and kills people randomly. Tom Skerritt effortlessly occupies any role he plays and this is no exception. As the sheriff of a small town in the Southwest he wears the role as one would wear a second skin, yet he is more intuitive than most folks realize. But beyond a shadow of a doubt the long dusty stretches of road with nothing in sight for miles, the heat, cacti, and hillsides and shrubs are the biggest actor of all. There is something undaunted and oppressive about this type of scenery which takes us back to Westerns about cowboys and frontiersmen, Las Vegas victim's burial grounds, badlands, bad people, and lost people. And this movie is no different. Michael Parks in the early years had played such interesting roles as well. The movie becomes a race to the truth and the final conclusion and it held my attention until the end. Not bad for a movie of the week and it must be looked at in that context.

A rogue cop named Donnelly (Michael Parks) starts killing people in the small town of the title, and it's up to Sheriff Sam Brodie (Tom Skerritt) to catch him. Things get far more complicated than a typical homicide investigation, and Brodie finds himself in the middle of the biggest, most dangerous case of his career.

THE CHINA LAKE MURDERS is an outstanding made-for-TV crime thriller. Skerritt is as dependable as ever. He can play these sorts of roles so naturally that he simply IS the sheriff. Parks portrays one of the best psychopathic characters in any TV movie. Knowing that he's the madman from the beginning does nothing to lessen the suspense. It's the interplay between Brodie and Donnelly that carries the story.

Gripping entertainment right up to the closing minutes...

As average as it is for a TV movie, the one thing that I got from THE CHINA LAKE MURDERS was the underlying aspect that the director or producers were more interested in showing off cops in their uniforms and the whole fetishistic aspect of their uniforms and the policeman's mantra stemming from this than anything else. The story is VERY slight, and it really doesn't make much sense when you start thinking about it (why doesn't the bad cop kill the people he stops on the road before putting them in the trunks of their vehicles? Bad cop's killing pattern doesn't add up, etc) and there's very little suspense or point to all of it. So, that leaves only one original aspect of this well photographed flick: showing cops in uniforms; An off-duty bad cop who likes to kill people while wearing his uniform; Good cop befriending psycho cop at the drop of a hot; Dueling cops, etc. One only has to look at the video's slipcover box to notice the film's obsession with uniforms.

The whole relationship between Tom Skerritt and the bad cop is tinged with an underlying subtext : Skerritt befriends the bad cop pretty fast. He even invites him to his home (hmm...ok) ; bad cop is obsessed with Skerritt and he's impotent in bed with women. The relationship between the two men is hard to explain but I suspect that there's more than meets the eye and, subsequently, this relationship brings the whole cop fetish aspect even more to the fore. Whether it was done intentionally or not, I don't know (I suspect it was) but without it, THE CHINA LAKE MURDERS would be a totally forgettable TV flick.