The Cover Girl Murders (1993 TV Movie) User Reviews

A long way from home

[sol1218 · 5/10 · 3 September 2005]

**SPOILERS** Having trouble with the sluggish sales of his top fashion magazine "Image" owner and editor Rex Kingman, Lee Majors,plans to shoot his anniversary issue in an exotic and deserted Caribbian island far from civilization. With a bevy of his most gorgeous fashion models, to jump start his lagging publication.

Being a man who knows what sells and what doesn't Kingman takes advantage of everything that goes right or wrong in selling his magazine. At that out of the way island things go a lot worse then anything that he could have even imagined. One by one almost all of his fashion models end up getting killed and their bodies lost under the warm Caribbians surf and waters. Until the only one's left are his lover Kate and her younger sister Rachel, Jennifer O'Neill & Venessa Angel. Kingsman is so distraught over what happened to his girls and even worse the impending collapse of is magazine "Image" that he starts to drink heavily and even take pills on the side. Where he becomes a total wreck of a man.

The last straw is when Kingman,drunk and out of control, attacks and tries to rape young Rachel which has Kate, who still had some affection left for him, tell Kingman just where he can go. Kate also threatens to report him to the police when they get back to the states. The next morning waiting for the plane to show up, and take whoever is still left on the island back home, Kate is found dead floating in he swimming pool. Meanwhile Rachal, in a struggle with the now blind drunk and almost insane Kingman, ends up getting shot and killed by him.

By now the man, Kingman, is a complete and utter wipe-out but wait there's more to the story then what you've seen up until then. It has to do with Kingman's past a past that finally caught up with him. Lee Majors as Rex Kingman is as sleazy and manipulating as anyone you'll ever see in this movie about revenge and retribution. A story that has to do with what turned out to be, for everyone in the movie, the swimsuit fashion shoot from hell.

"The Cover Girls Murders" keeps you guessing to just what's going on until the very end. When it finally exposes to it's audience what was really going on in the movie, and what Kingman is really all about, you'll know what the the saying "What goes around comes around" really means.

Majorly flawed, highly predictable... strangely appealing.

[GregJayC · 7 July 2000]

The title says it all - several gorgeous models running around on the beach, à la Baywatch, each getting killed in a seemingly accidental way.

If you're a gore hound, forget it: there's little action and absolutely no blood or bodies. If you're a true horror fan, you'll have figured out the plot after five minutes. The rest of the film is then spent laughing at the amusing and almost camp way which people die.

But despite all of this, it managed to keep me watching for ninety minutes. The plot, while not exactly Hitchcockian, is enough to keep amateurs guessing to the end - and the characters are easily sympathised with - the development of the main four is not all bad. Perhaps if good old Ehren had watched this movie beforehand, we might have all enjoyed a much better "Scream 3".

Nevertheless, the plot's twists and turns are actually its downfall. So many things are left unexplained at the end of the film that you wonder why you bothered at all.

But what can you expect from a TV movie? They're all the same. Tepid films with no real depth or suspense - quite how the Netherlands saw the need to cut three minutes from the film, I'll never know.

If you're a real slasher fan like me (the kind who likes sequels and will watch any trashy slasher) then watch it, but don't expect too much.

If you're an occasional horror fan, then rent "April Fool's Day" instead. There are many similarities, and it's much better done. Plus, there's added blood ;-)

* * * ½

dull as all get out

[FieCrier · 1/10 · 10 February 2008]

So you've got a number of models on an island, and one by one they're picked off Agatha Christie-style. We get somebody lost at sea, pushed off a cliff, poisoned by a solvent, driven off a cliff, blown up, etc. Nothing terribly graphic.

Before any of that starts, one woman inexplicably has a dream of a killer in a weird human face mask.

The owner of the magazine is a sleaze who had an affair, and somebody had photos taken of her before she was of age.

In the end, it's all about business, or something,

There's an 80s style montage of a photo shoot, most of the bathing suits being one-pieces, surprisingly. A couple are fairly translucent. There's camera clicks during the montage where the frame of the camera appears as a white square or rectangle within the picture. The photographer is rather bad at framing!

The Reason Mystery Science Theater 3000 Was Created

[missygoldstein · 1/10 · 23 January 2006]

This movie just happened to be on HBO yesterday so I watched it. This was a mistake. I guess I got sucked in and kept watching although it was a lot like a train wreck, terrible, horrible, but somehow you just can't look away. shaudenfraud I guess! ; ).

This is the story of a photoshoot for models on some island in the Caribbean. One by one they are all murdered. One drinks cleaning fluid, one gets blown up on a waverunner, one goes over a cliff...so these are NOT accidents, but for some inane reason the police are never called and no one thinks that perhaps they should "wrap" the shoot and go home, not just in respect for the dead, but perhaps out of fear for their own lives. No. They just continue with their shoot because THAT is what's most important. Forget about the dead models, we have a magazine to produce!

One of the subplots is the Evil magazine owner, played by Lee Majors, Rex is his name. He is the most obvious suspect and every time a model gets killed he twirls his mustache and says "well, I can't say this won't be good for sales", mooo hoo hoo hoo ha ha ha ha". So absurd. Another subplot is when it's revealed that Rex is one of the models baby dady, only when he learned of the baby he tried to convince the girl to abort. She didn't, but always resented him for even suggesting this.

They try to give you false clues and point toward some guy named Raule, seemingly because he's the only one with an accent and "looks creepy".

At the very end (sorry to spoil, but this movie came out years ago so if you haven't seen it by now...) one of the women was found face down dead in the pool. THIS was the Last straw!!!! Vanessa Angel, forget her characters name comes at Rex with a gun, they struggle, the gun fires and now SHE'S dead too!!! While she's laying on the floor his business associate tells him that with all this bad press the magazine will be worthless and it's all his fault. He gets him to sign over the magazine to him. Once he does voila! All the dead models come back to life and you find the entire thing was an elaborate ruse to get back at Rex.

Oy! What a ridiculous movie. As someone else said; if you want to see something like this April Fools Day is far better!

Majors & Barr Reunited After "The Fall Guy"

[brianscoopnemeth · 10/10 · 26 March 2021]

Majors played Colt Seavers, and Barr played Howie Munson, on the ABC action comedy The Fall Guy (1981-86). Seven years since the series ended in 1986, Barr and Majors are together again. This time, Barr works behind the scenes as a teleplay writer, while Majors is in the starring role. LOVE IT!

A very interesting movie!

[GOWBTW · 7/10 · 16 June 2006]

This movie I've seen is very interesting by the minute. Here you have a boss Rex Kingman(Lee Majors) who flies out his staff and models to a Mexican island to make his work on a magazine, and suddenly everyone around him disappears or worse wind up dead! Suspicions, suspicions, everyone on the island is a suspect, including Rex himself. Man, he's in ruins with his company, and everyone on the island is dying off one by one. It's scary to be on an island where there's hardly any maniac running loose, and others get dollar signs in their eyes making the chance to be in that picture. However, the whole thing turns out to be a trap for the editor, when his own indiscretions surfaces up. So who's the heavy now? This may have been a made for TV movie, even most of them seem to show their own spark in a way. I enjoyed this movie every single bit. Boy, this is like right off of a mystery novel, only more fun. Rating 2.5 out of 5 stars.

A Pretty Entertaining Tropical Thriller Flick

[opusx86 · 7/10 · 8 February 2006]

This film was a fairly decent tropical thriller. It has you on a one way street throughout the entire film. The very end has a unique twist, which surprising was pulled off well. I fairly enjoy tropical madness. The idea of being in paradise, where everything goes running amok, and people start to go insane, really can hit the senses sometimes. The film was developed well, because it pertained to the conflicts between the characters relationships with one another and the situation at hand. For an early 90's Yuppie soap/thriller, I found it entertaining. Plus, looking at all of those "cover girls" was excellent "eye candy", if you start to get bored of the film itself.