Murder Elite

I remember seeing the movie many, many years ago on TV back in the 90's (I think) and it always stuck in my mind for some reason and wanted to view it again, but couldn't as it was very hard to find, until now that is and so it had to be good right... Nope it was very dull, despite an interesting opening which was the only thrilling part of the movie, the rest of the flick gets bogged down with very uneven acting, boring dialogue scenes and a lame third act that failed to offer any excitement whatsoever.

The plot centres around Diane (Ali McGraw) who returns to her family home a stableyard which is run by her sister Margaret (Billie Whitelaw), all the while there's a serial killer lurking about the area. Diane begins an affair with the farmhand Ron (Ray Lonnen) and plots to kill her sister and sell the property.

I guess you can call this film a weird hybrid between a slasher flick and a murder mystery, but neither of these elements feels fully explored as the murder mystery element only plays faintly in the background, whilst the bulk of the film is taken up with endless boring scenes of the sisters drama. This may have worked if the acting was better, but Ali McGraw is painfully miscast in this role, very unconvincing as the scheming seductress and it doesn't help that she's upstaged by the far better actress Billie Whitelaw who really gives it her all, despite the awful material. The male leads are okay, Hywel Bennet doesn't have much to do but lurk in the background as a possible red herring.

Despite a mildly interesting plot, everything falls flat rather quickly with uninteresting visuals and a painfully predictable plot twist where you have to be blind not to see coming and a flat third act where things just kinda ends on a drab and sour note.

Any movie that begins with a shrieking girl running through the woods, whilst being chased by a maniac with a knife, immediately receives my full and utmost attention. Usually this means the beginning of a vile 80s slasher, but in case of "Murder Elite", the opening sequence is extremely misleading. This is nowhere near a slasher, and the family-drama plot feels as it was plucked out of a TV soap-opera like "Home and Away" or "McLeod's Daughters". Two British sisters live at the family's horse-breeding farm, and the youngest recently returned from America without a single penny left of her father's inheritance. Margaret works hard and respects her family's legacy, while Diane is lazy, sleeps around with the stable boy and wouldn't like anything better than to sell the entire estate. When Margaret stubbornly keeps refusing to sell, Diane persuades her lover to kill her older sister during one of her nightly walks and blame the murder on the maniac who's at large in the area. See, the exhilarating two-minute opening only connects back into the plot at the very end, and out of the four lead characters, it's not too difficult to guess who the secretive murderer is, neither. I really wanted to be more generous for the rating and review of "Murder Elite", but the harsh truth is the quality level never surpasses that of an ordinary episode in a crime/whodunit TV-series. The film is overlong, tedious, talkative, and seriously lacking excitement. Good performances, noticeably from the female leads Ali MacGraw ("The Getaway") and Billie Whitelaw ("The Omen"), can't save the film from righteously having ended up where it belongs: in the 80s horror-oblivion.

(*) User-comment subject title taken from the lyrics "Country House" by Blur.

'Murder Elite' is somewhat of a curio piece; a British pseudo-slasher set in the bucolic countryside, that feels more like a particularly sedentary episode of 'Bergerac' than a lurid 80's horror. Thus far it sounds as if I am being condescending, but I'm merely try to place this rather obscure title in a truer perspective; while it concerns the murderous machinations of a provincial serial killer, 'Man Bites Dog' it 'aint!

All that said, and with its palpable lack of sanguinary violence, I really enjoyed it; and while it is definitely more tea & biscuits, than Troma & Jack Daniels; the fact that 'Murder Elite' takes a rather sedate, bucolic approach, which ultimately endeared the film to me greatly; and this was largely down to the largely excellent cast: Billie Whitelaw and Hywel Bennett were tremendous in the roles, and it was a joy to see Garfield 'The Sweeney' Morgan reprise his role of Detective Chief inspector Haskins (sort of!) and while he didn't get to do more than sneer, and regard everyone's paltry alibi with scorn; as expected, he did this with aplomb! This stoic fellow was born to play a TV copper, such verisimilitude, such perfect pitch of derision was never quite so pronounced in any other thespian. Again, this is a largely esoteric reason to enjoy a film, but there it is!

The one major suspension of disbelief has always been that Ali MacGraw was in any way,shape,or form a competent actor: she wasn't; and the energy expenditure it required to accept that she was Billie Whitelaw's sister took infinitely more creativity than N. J Crisp displayed in his somewhat piecemeal script. Watching Steve McQueen's main squeeze stumble-bum through her performance as a libidinous strumpet, was, in its own way hugely amusing. The weary plot would suit the yellowed pages of a pre-30's pulp pot boiler, and, along with MacGraw is definitely the last chicken in the shop; but the true gold is the woefully grandiose score by Hammer legend James Bernard; his heady, Gothic bombast raises this anodyne effort to that of magnificent folly with his HUGE overbearing score; let me just say this is no fault of his; he remains one of the all time greats; but this slender tale couldn't hold the cumbersome weight of his muscular score: a bit like slathering the most grandiose John Williams effort over a scratchy Doris Wishman effort: thereby creating a gravitas overload which soon escalates to unbound jocularity. If Christopher lee were creeping, swivel-eyed through the misty gloaming; repeatedly tearing nubile throats asunder, THIS would be a stupendously exhilarating score: Hywel Bennett repeatedly mucking out the stable is, frankly, too prosaic a visual, and requires considerably less orchestration, if any, really.

The film is absurd, hysterical, and rather pedestrian, and, still, I found much to enjoy here: I definitely prefer the European title of 'Elia Mordercow' to 'Murder Elite': 'Murder Elite'? Why? Because it's a far better moniker than 'bloodless killings on a somnolent, near- bankrupt farm'

Just remember to crank up the giddy James Bernard score! 'Elia Mordercow' will probably have its greatest appeal to Hywel Bennett fans, or those singular individuals who can glean inordinate amounts of pleasure from the kind of ragged, celluloid nonsense most sensible folk would cast violently from the village with bilious hue & cry, and raised, angered pitchfork.