Rehearsal for Murder (1982)
“Reunions are good for the soul.” - Dennison, played by Robert Preston, informs his collaborators, which includes a younger Jeff Goldbum, pictured above.
I found this little gem of a TV movie on Youtube. The plot: A playwright sets out to find the murderer of his actress girlfriend a year later by inviting his five theater collaborators under the pretense to rehearse for his “new play.” It is essentially a contained suspenseful thriller (primary location being the theater) and a smart one at that. It is also sort of a play within a play (within another play, maybe?).
Robert Preston plays the poised and vulnerable playwright, Alex Dennison. His love is nervous actress Monica Welles, played by Lynn Redgrave, who ends up as a corpse at the beginning. It’s ruled a suicide, but Dennison believes it was murder. The cast is truly impressive; William Daniels is the sarcastic money-conscious theater producer (who I know of course as Mr. Feeny from Boy Meets World), William Russ (who would also go on to do Boy Meets World) plays a cop, Jeff Goldblum, a theater actor.
“Rehearsals can be an intimate process.” - Dennison tells his “suspects.”
Written by Richard Levinson and William Link and directed by David Greene, Dennison is a famous and seasoned theater playwright who is determined to find his love’s killer by staging and reimagining his collaborators’ motives towards Monica. He also has Russ (who plays Frank Heller) watch the entire “interrogation” on stage from the top balcony, which provides this premise with suspense.
I am being very careful intentionally in revealing any more specifics regarding its tight thriller story elements. The film has several twists that are really effective and enjoyable, especially towards its resolution. Even on my second viewing, it was still fun watching Dennison calculate and scheme his five collaborators and then of course Heller… It’s rare that a little movie like this can still impress me the second time around. Even though the plot may seem mechanical and formulaic on the surface, it’s really its structure that kept me engaged and watching from opening to its closing.
Its slick, intriguing structure: Dennison gives each collaborator a scene from his “new play” called “Killing Jessica” (about a murdered actress), to play out and that’s when we cut to flashbacks of each character’s last moment or meeting with Monica. It is Dennison thinking out loud and creatively predicting each of their potential motives. Monica (or Redgrave) returns from the dead in a sense and is able to have a say in Dennison’s reimagined scenes. This structure sets up for us to distrust each character and their word, but it is a great story distraction or misdirection. That’s all I can really say.
The script is really smart and tight and I’m glad this came across my Youtube algorithm. This is a definite recommend.
A note on its director, David Greene; his career consisted of a lot of TV movies and interestingly enough, he directed I Start Counting (1970), which I’ve wanted to see.
Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsoLABh80LQ