My review was written in April 1989 after watching the film on Vidmark video cassette.
Aimed at the international market, "Midnight Cop" is an okay tongue-in-cheek cop thriller, befitting immensely from the casting of top German character actor Armin Mueller-Stahl in title role.
Bookended, like Martin Scorsese's "New York Stories" segment, with "A Whiter Shade of Pale" on the soundtrack, pic limns Berlin inspector Glas (Mueller-Stahl) hunting for a serial killer of pretty girls who's m.o. Is to rub vaseline all over the corpses' faces. Jila Kent (who also co-scripted) is his pretty new sidekick. Bad guys include guest stars Michael York and Frank Stallone.
Morgan Fairchild dresses things up a bit as a call girl who eventually serves as a decoy to trap the killer. Tony Curtis' daughter Allegra, who looks a bit like mom Christine Kaufmann, makes a good impression as one of the victims.
Though plot meanders a bit, Mueller-Stahl holds it together with his mock-impression of "Dirty Harry" tactics. Handling his English-language dialog with ease, he has subsequently landed a co-starring role opposite Jessica Lange in Costa-Gavras' "The Music Box".
Tech credits are fine and pic overall marks a step up in the mid-Atlantic genre for Austrian helmer Peter Patzak.
Aimed at the international market, "Midnight Cop" is an okay tongue-in-cheek cop thriller, befitting immensely from the casting of top German character actor Armin Mueller-Stahl in title role.
Bookended, like Martin Scorsese's "New York Stories" segment, with "A Whiter Shade of Pale" on the soundtrack, pic limns Berlin inspector Glas (Mueller-Stahl) hunting for a serial killer of pretty girls who's m.o. Is to rub vaseline all over the corpses' faces. Jila Kent (who also co-scripted) is his pretty new sidekick. Bad guys include guest stars Michael York and Frank Stallone.
Morgan Fairchild dresses things up a bit as a call girl who eventually serves as a decoy to trap the killer. Tony Curtis' daughter Allegra, who looks a bit like mom Christine Kaufmann, makes a good impression as one of the victims.
Though plot meanders a bit, Mueller-Stahl holds it together with his mock-impression of "Dirty Harry" tactics. Handling his English-language dialog with ease, he has subsequently landed a co-starring role opposite Jessica Lange in Costa-Gavras' "The Music Box".
Tech credits are fine and pic overall marks a step up in the mid-Atlantic genre for Austrian helmer Peter Patzak.