Nightkill

''Nightkill'' is a 1980 psychological thriller film directed by Ted Post, and starring Jaclyn Smith, Mike Connors, James Franciscus, Robert Mitchum, Fritz Weaver, and Sybil Danning. It follows the wife of a corrupt Phoenix, Arizona industrialist, who finds herself attempting to cover up his murder after her lover poisons him to death.

The film was produced by the German production company Cine Artists GmbH, in association with American distributor Avco Embassy Pictures. It was filmed on location in Arizona in the spring of 1980, with additional shooting taking place in Berlin. The film marked Jaclyn Smith's first major film role following her lead on the popular television series '' Charlie's Angels''. Mitchum's role is touted in ''Nightkill''s promotion and credits, though his role in the film is minor with minimal screentime.

Avco Embassy intended to release ''Nightkill'' theatrically in the United States in the fall of 1980, but its theatrical release never materialized. Instead, it aired on television as an NBC Movie of the Week in December 1980 before it was released on video, marketed as a slasher film. Smith, who met the film's cinematographer, Anthony B. Richmond, while shooting the project, married him the following year. Some critics have cited the film as an example of the neo-noir genre.

Plot

Kathy Atwell, an unfulfilled Phoenix, Arizona housewife, has been carrying on an affair with Steve Fulton, the assistant of her industrialist husband, Wendell. Unbeknownst to Kathy, her liaisons with Steve at her luxurious hillside home are being audio recorded. Knowing that a million dollars in cash has been stashed by Wendell in an airport locker, Steve plots behind Kathy's back to poison Wendell, then impersonate him on a scheduled flight to Washington, D.C. to make it appear that he is still alive. Kathy unwittingly witnesses the poisoning, which kills Wendell.

When Steve reveals his plot, a panicked Kathy contemplates calling the police, but is convinced by him to keep Wendell's death a secret. Steve stores Wendell's corpse in a freezer before giving Kathy the key to the locker and departing for the airport to take the scheduled flight. That night, a shaken Kathy attends a charity event where she is honored for her philanthropic efforts helping troubled adolescents. Herbert Childs, Kathy's attorney and friend, drunkenly visits her after the event, but departs when she rebuffs his romantic advances.

The following morning, Kathy is visited by Lt. Donner, who reveals that Wendell's secretary, Christine, reported him missing after he failed to phone her as planned. Kathy inspects the freezer and finds Steve's dead body inside, and Wendell's inexplicably missing. Monika, Herbert's wife, who presented Kathy with her award the previous night, later arrives, but angrily leaves after noticing evidence that Herbert visited the house, leading her to believe that he and Kathy are having an affair.

Kathy drives to an abandoned mining camp on the outskirts of the city and dumps Steve's body down a mine shaft. Donner returns that night and continues to question Kathy about Wendell's disappearance, causing her to become evasive. That evening, Kathy books a flight to Denver. In the airport, she overhears a page on the intercom for Wendell, and glimpses a man resembling him at a bar, causing her to flee. In the parking lot, she is pursued by the man, driving Wendell's Rolls-Royce. The driver chases Kathy to an isolated cement plant, where Kathy crashes and the assailant pulls her from her car, unconscious, before hiding her vehicle behind pallets of concrete cinderblocks.

Kathy awakens the following morning on her living room floor. She calls Herbert, who agrees to visit her the next day. Later that night, Kathy senses that she is not alone in the house. After finding her pet dog's severed head in a cabinet and her pet monkeys dead, she stumbles upon Wendell's corpse, posed in his desk chair. Fleeing outside, she is met by Donner, who reveals that Wendell had hired private investigator Kelly Rodriguez to place recording devices in the house in an attempt to document evidence of her and Steve's affair. Donner says that he has listened to the recordings, which serve as evidence of Kathy's culpability, and that she could be charged as an accessory to murder for her failure to report Wendell's death to authorities.

When Donner asks if Kathy has an attorney, she refers him to Herbert. Donner requests that she provide him the key to the locker, which will need to be handed over to the police. At Donner's suggestion, Kathy goes to shower before the two depart to the police station, while he feigns a call to the district attorney. Donner is in fact Kelly Rodriguez, and has used the information that he has obtained to terrorize Kathy and steal Wendell's fortune for himself.

While Kathy bathes in her shower, Rodriguez barricades her in by tying rope around the doorhandles and tampers with the water heater, causing the water to scald Kathy. After Kathy loses consciousness, Rodriguez removes her from the shower and departs for the airport. Upon retrieving the money from the locker, Rodriguez is questioned by a police officer, and claims to be Steve. The disbelieving officer relents when Rodriguez offers him hush money. While Rodriguez absconds with Wendell's fortune, a severely burned Kathy, clinging to life, manages to phone police for help.

Cast

Production

Development

The film was directed by Ted Post, who had previously mainly worked as a television director for the series '' Peyton Place'' before directing the western film '' Hang 'Em High'' (1968) and the drama '' The Harrad Experiment'' (1973).

Casting

Jaclyn Smith and Robert Mitchum's casting in the film was announced in February 1980. The film marked Smith's first major feature role outside her leading role on the television series '' Charlie's Angels''. James Franciscus and Mike Conners were subsequently cast the following month. Angus Scrimm was cast in a minor part, having previously starred in Avco Embassy's box-office hit '' Phantasm'' (1979), though his scenes were ultimately deleted from the final cut.

Filming

''Nightkill'' was originally planned to be shot in Texas, but principal photography instead took place in Phoenix, Arizona, beginning in April 1980. Its production budget was estimated at $4 million. The film was funded by the German company Cine Artists GMBH, and featured a mainly British crew. Anthony B. Richmond, the cinematographer, had previously shot several films for Nicolas Roeg, including '' Don't Look Now'' (1973), '' The Man Who Fell to Earth'' (1976), and '' Bad Timing'' (1980). The film went into production during a major strike by the Screen Actors Guild, and was one of the few films that were permitted to be shot during the time, alongside '' The Burning'' (1981), '' Fade to Black'' (1980), and '' The Howling'' (1981).

A private residence on Camelback Mountain was used as a central filming location for the Atwell residence, which was leased to the production for two months at a cost of $20,000. Additional photography occurred at the Phoenix Zoo, the Salt River Project facility, Sky Harbor International Airport, and rural desert locations in the Tempe area. Some interiors were filmed in Berlin, Germany.

Mitchum was scheduled to shoot his part in the film over a period of ten days. Commenting on his participation in the film, Mitchum said: "I figured we'd spend three weeks in Arizona. It wouldn't tie me up for too long. They'd pay me by the hour."

While making the film, Smith began a relationship with cinematographer Richmond, whom she married the following year. Post recalled that the romance between the two had begun shortly into filming, and that Richmond was often inebriated throughout the shoot, causing him to occasionally fumble shots and camera angles. Smith was originally asked to appear nude in the film during its shower sequence finale, but she refused.

Release

''Nightkill'' was produced by Cine Artists GmbH in association with distributor Avco Embassy Pictures, who intended it for a U.S. theatrical release in the fall of 1980. On December 9, 1980, it was reported that Avco Embassy had instead sold the film's rights for television broadcast on NBC. The film aired ten days later on NBC as the Movie of the Week on December 18, 1980. In Turkey, the film was released theatrically as ''Gece Katilleri'' in 1981.

Critical response

Assessing the film in a retrospective review for its Blu-ray release, Michael Barrett of ''PopMatters'' noted stylistic elements of film noir in ''Nightkill'', summarizing: "This deceptively marketed film is no masterpiece, yet some may appreciate its arid atmosphere of downbeat nightmare." Ian Jane of ''DVD Talk'' wrote: "''Nightkill'' is by no means a great movie but it has its interesting elements, most of which stem around the cast. If the story is a bit predictable, it is at least reasonably well paced and occasionally tense enough to keep us watching."

The film website ''Film Frenzy'' awarded it two out of five stars, deeming it a "lackluster thriller that begins promisingly before repeatedly hitting the “snooze” button."

Home media

A pre-certification videocasette of the film was released in the United Kingdom by Vipco in 1981. The film was marketed as a slasher film, featuring artwork showing star Jaclyn Smith screaming in a shower.

Kino Lorber released the film on DVD and Blu-ray in 2017, featuring a new interview with Smith, as well as an audio commentary with film historians Howard S. Berger and Nathaniel Thompson.

References

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{{Ted Post

1980 films
1980 horror films
American neo-noir films
American psychological horror films
American psychological thriller films
Embassy Pictures films
German psychological horror films
German neo-noir films
German psychological thriller films
Films directed by Ted Post
Films set in airports
Films set in Arizona
Films set in country houses
Films set in deserts
Films shot in Arizona
Films shot in Berlin
English-language German films
Films about adultery in the United States
Films about businesspeople
Films about poisonings
Films about security and surveillance
Films about the upper class
West German films
1980s American films
1980s English-language films
1980s German films
1980s psychological thriller films
English-language horror films
English-language thriller films