Tag Archives: Jeff Kober

Jennifer Lopez has had ENOUGH (2002)! 

Posted on by Bradley Crain

This morning I got up to make coffee for me and my wife. When I came back to our room, she had started the movie ENOUGH (2002) with Jennifer Lopez on the new projector that she bought me for Christmas. I’m not that big of a fan of Lopez, but I decided I’d go ahead and sit down to sip on my coffee prior to starting my day. I ended up watching the whole movie! 

Jennifer Lopez plays Slim, a waitress in a diner in L.A., who meets a rich guy named Mitch Hiller (Billy Campbell) who impresses her when he gets rid of this rude jerk (Noah Wyle) trying to hit on her. Mitch and Slim get along famously, eventually getting married and having a cute little girl named Gracie. Everything seems perfect in their little world. Unfortunately, things aren’t what they seem, and one night Slim checks her husband’s pager. She calls the number and discovers Mitch has been cheating on her. When she confronts him about the affair, his entire countenance changes, and he begins beating the crap out of her. After the altercation, and before heading out to continue his affair, Mitch warns Slim not to leave because he refuses to live without her. With the help of her friend Ginny (Juliette Lewis) and a couple of others, Slim takes Gracie and they escape from Mitch. With all his money and connections, Mitch is able to track her down no matter where she goes. Feeling like she has no other options, Slim turns to her wealthy, estranged father, Jupiter (Fred Ward). He provides her the funds she needs to set up a new life and identity. Unfortunately, that damn Mitch tracks her down again. Narrowly escaping, Slim decides that she’s done running. She sends Gracie away with Ginny and begins training rigorously in self defense techniques. This time she’s taking the fight to Mitch with plans to end this shit once and for all. 

If you’re looking for a realistic drama about the effects of spousal abuse on the family unit and then across the larger society, ENOUGH is not the movie for you. This movie is more for the Charles Bronson crowd, where the bad guys are truly evil and the audience is in complete agreement with their need to perish. This is a formula that continues to work even if you have to completely suspend your disbelief. For example:

-Is it realistic that Mitch would be able to conceal what a complete and total asshole he is for many years from Slim, but then one night turn out to practically be the sidekick of Satan?

-Is it realistic that Mitch would be able track Slim and Gracie down time and time again, no matter where she goes across the country, even after she uses her Dad’s resources to change her identity?

-Is it realistic that Slim would be able to get enough self defense training in a short period of time to be able to confront the extremely fit Mitch at the end and kick his ass? 

While the setup is probably not the most realistic, we have to see images of Mitch beating up Slim on multiple occasions, even trying to kill her at one point. We also see him knock little Gracie to the ground and hurt her. We see him terrorizing her and anyone who tries to help her. This audience member just wanted to see Mitch pay.

I don’t really have any close connections to the main actors in ENOUGH, but they all do their jobs well enough to keep me involved. I have always been a fan of its director, Michael Apted. He’s made a few movies that I really like in CLASS ACTION (1991) with Gene Hackman, THUNDERHEART (1992) with Val Kilmer, and BLINK (1993) with Madeleine Stowe. He’s a more than competent director who knows how to get a reaction from his audience. This certainly may not reflect his best work, but he still handles the material in a professional manner. 

My final word on ENOUGH… I enjoyed the film in the same way I like the 3 piece combo at KFC, which I really do enjoy. I know it’s probably not the best stuff out there, but the classic formula still works, and I’m satisfied when it’s all gone! 

See the trailer for ENOUGH below:

Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 2.11 “The Monster Part II)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee and several other services!

This week, the story of Julian and Scotty continues!

Episode 2.11 “The Monster Part II”

(Dir by Victor French, originally aired on December 11th, 1985)

This week’s episode of Highway to Heaven begins where last week’s episode ended.

Julian (Jeff Kober) has been charged with attempting to murder Rachel McCullough (Annabella Price) and the whole town is ready to convict him because he has a birthmark on his face and a bratty kid named Ridley (Peter Billingsley) claims that he saw Julian push Rachel.  Rachel, having hit her head, is in a coma and not expected to survive.  Julian is pressured to accept a plea bargain but he protests that he’s innocent and that he loves Rachel.  He would never had hurt her, no matter what the ignorant townspeople believe.

Only Jonathan and Scotty (James Troesch) believe that Julian is innocent.  After Jonathan saves the depressed Scotty from drowning in his swimming pool, Scotty agrees to put off suicide so that he can defend Julian at his trial.  Scotty does so from his motorized wheelchair and, as he explains to the jury, he knows what its like to be treated a certain way because you look different.  With ease, Scotty demolishes Ridley’s testimony and puts the smug prosecutor in his place.  All of the reporters in the courtroom are shocked when Julian is acquitted but the prosecution really didn’t have a case, beyond Julian having a birthmark on his face.  Scotty gets back together with his wife (Margie Impert) and Rachel not only wakes up but she wakes up with her sight restored.  Despite Julian’s fear, Rachel loves him even more when she can see his face.

Awwwwwww!

(Where is Mark during all this?  He doesn’t show up until the final few minutes, probably because Victor French was busy directing this episode.)

Even if one sets aside that this episode is nearly 40 years old, it still feels old-fashioned.  This is the type of courtroom drama where the trial watchers gasp at each piece of testimony.  As far a courtroom procedurals go, this episode went more for melodrama than realism but that’s to expected with this show.  It was heartfelt and earnest and Jeff Kober gave a touching performance as Julian.

Probably the most interesting thing about this episode was the number of times Jonathan got mad at people.  He got mad at Julian’s original lawyer.  He got mad at Scotty for trying to drown himself.  He called Scotty’s wife a “jerk” to her face.  He gave the prosecutor a dirty look during the latter’s opening statement.  He even got annoyed with Julian’s overly protective mother (Ann Doran).  Jonathan may be an angel but this episode suggests that even angels lose their patience.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 2.10 “The Monster: Part One”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee and several other services!

Scottie returns!  Unfortunately, he’s a drunk now.

Episode 2.10 “The Monster: Part One”

(Dir by Victor French, originally aired on December 4th, 1985)

It’s another week and another visit to a small town for Jonathan and Mark.

This time, Mark thinks that they are only in town to visit his cousin, Diane (Margie Impert), and her husband, Scottie (James Troesch), the quadriplegic attorney who appeared in a few episodes during the first season.  Mark tells Jonathan that, when he last spoke to Diane, she said that she had something important to talk to him about.  Mark assumes that Diane is pregnant but actually, it turns out that Diane and Scottie’s marriage is in trouble.  Scottie may be an attorney but he has no clients and Diane has gone back to work to help pay the bills.  Feeling like a failure, Scottie has taken to drinking.

While Mark deals with Diane and Scottie, Jonathan has an assignment.  He working as a handyman for Ella McCullough (Barbara Townsend) and her blind daughter, Rachel (Annabella Price).  At first, Rachel is bitter and stand-offish but Jonathan wins her over by encouraging her to leave her little cottage and explore the world.  While relaxing at a nearby creek, Rachel meets a man (Jeff Kober) who is out for a walk.  Rachel tells the man that he startled her and then mentions that the neighborhood kids talk about a monster named Julian.  Julian lives in the woods and drags off bad kids.

“My name’s Clark,” the man lies.

Actually, the man’s name is Julian but you can understand why he might not want to admit that after listening to Rachel describe him as being a monster.  Julian is not a monster, of course.  He’s a sensitive sculptor who just happens to have a very large birthmark covering half of his face and neck.  Having been ridiculed all of his life, Julian lives with his mom (Ann Doran) and rarely talks to anyone.  Still, Julian falls in love with Rachel and Rachel falls in love with …. Clark.

Julian finally finds the strength to visit Rachel at her cottage.  However, when she tells him that she will be having an operation to resort her sight, Clark yells that he’s Julian and then he runs back into the woods.  Rachel chases after him.  When she trips and hits her head on a rock, Julian runs over to her and tries to help.  Unfortunately, that’s when the police arrives and promptly arrest Julian for assault.

Julian’s going to court!  Hey, does anyone know an attorney who needs a shot of confidence and who has a unique understanding of what it’s like to be an outsider?  We’ll find out next week because this is a two-part episode!

Reviewing a two-parter is always difficult.  Tonight’s episode ends with the story nowhere close to being finished.  I can’t judge the overall story but I can say that Jeff Kober gave a touching performance as Julian and he was the best thing about the first part of The Monster.  As for Scottie, he needs to stop blaming everyone else for his own lack of confidence.  Hopefully, that’s a lesson he’ll learn during the second part of this episode.

We’ll find out next week!

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: The First Power (dir by Robert Reskinoff)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this 1990 horror film, Lou Diamond Phillips plays Russell Logan, a Los Angeles police detective who specializes in capturing and sometimes killing serial killers.  (“So far,” a news reporter breathlessly tells us, “Detective Logan has captured or killed three serial killers!”)  His latest triumph is the capture of Patrick Channing (Jeff Kober), also known as the Pentagram Killer because he carves a pentagram on his victims.

Logan captures Channing thanks to a tip from a psychic named Tess (Tracy Griffith).  Tess specifically made Logan promise her that he wouldn’t push for Channing to get the death penalty.  However, after Logan captures him, he goes back on his word and Channing is sentenced to die in the gas chamber.  To be honest, I wasn’t aware that detectives had the power to decide whether or not to go for the death penalty when it comes to prosecuting murder cases.  As far as I’ve known, that’s always been the job of the district attorney’s office.  Maybe they do things differently out in California….

Anyway, Channing smiles when he’s sentenced to death and then he smiles again when he’s executed.  Logan shrugs all of that off but suddenly, the pentagram murders start up again.  The murderer is killing people in the exact same way that Channing did and he also appears to be targeting the people who were involved in Channing’s capture.  Meanwhile, Tess is running around angry because she specifically told Logan not to allow Channing to be executed.

Hmmmm …. have you figured out what’s going on, yet?

Of course you have!  That’s because you’ve seen a horror movie before.  From the minute that Channing was sentenced to die, you probably knew that Channing would eventually come back from the dead and start murdering people all over again.  It turns out that, by executing Channing, the state of California has granted him the first power, i.e. resurrection.  By committing more murders, Channing is hoping to unlock all of the other powers.  Those powers include the power to appear and disappear at will, possess other people, jump off of roof tops, and mockingly laugh at anyone who tries to stop him.

Apparently, Detective Logan is not a fan of horror movies because it takes him a while to figure all of this out.  (We should keep in mind that he’s a cop so his job is to be skeptical of claims of people returning from the dead.)  But once he starts hearing Channing’s disembodied voice and getting attacked by possessed priests and homeless women, he really has no other option but to accept the truth and work with Tess to try to end Channing’s reign of terror.

The First Power is one of those horror films that’s extremely predictable but effective nonetheless.  Lou Diamond Phillips manages to maintain a straight face, regardless of how outlandish this film gets and Jeff Kober seems to be having a blast as the flamboyantly evil Patrick Channing.  Channing jumps off of rooftops and through windows with a graceful aplomb and the film actually has some fun with the idea of Channing skipping from body to body.  The First Power is often dumb but always entertaining.

Film Review: Out of Bounds (dir by Richard Tuggle)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Just a country boy

Born and raised in South Des Moines

He took the midnight bus to anywhere….

That’s the story of Darryl Cage, the protagonist of the 1986 film, Out of Bounds.  Played by Anthony Michael Hall, Darryl is an Iowa farm boy who goes to Los Angeles to live with his brother.  Unfortunately, when his flight lands, Darryl’s suitcase is switched with another one that’s full of cocaine!  Darryl becomes an accidental drug mule and end up getting his brother killed!  WHAT A DUMBASS!

So now, Darryl is on the run.  He’s a small town farmer in the big city, trying to avoid bad guy Roy (Jeff Kober) and the police, led by Lt. Delgado (Glynn Turman).  Fortunately, Darryl meets an aspiring actress named Dizz (Jenny Wright).  Dizz gives him a makeover and introduces him to the Los Angeles club scene.  Siouxsie and the Banshees make a cameo appearance at one club.  They perform one song and fortunately, it’s Cities in the Dust.  Unfortunately, they don’t actually get involved in the plot of the film.  I would have liked to have seen Siouxsie beat up Jeff Kober.  But it doesn’t happen.

Out of Bounds is one of the many films that came out in the mid-to-late-80s in which the actors who were (somewhat unfairly) considered to be Brat Packers attempted to prove that they were capable of doing more than just projecting teen angst.  Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy, for instance, starred in a forgettable neo-noir called Blue City.  Andrew McCarthy starred in an interesting but ultimately uneven film called Kansas.  Emilio Estevez not only starred in Wisdom but he directed it too.  And Anthony Michael Hall starred in Out of Bounds.

Anthony Michael Hall was best-known for playing nerdy characters in Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club and it’s probable that he was attempting to escape being typecast when he took his role in Out of Bounds.  This was Anthony Michael Hall’s chance to play an action hero!  Unfortunately, Anthony Michael Hall made the same mistake that many of his peers made while trying to give the performance that would allow them to break free of the Brat Pack label.  He tried too hard.  While Glynn Turman, Jeff Kober and Jenny Wright obviously understood the type of  rather silly movie that Out of Bounds was going to be and they modified their performances accordingly, Anthony Michael Hall apparently tried to duplicate the method intensity of Marlon Brando or James Dean.  In other words, Hall took the film far more seriously than it deserved to be taken.

Out of Bounds get off to a bad start as soon as it opens with Anthony Michael Hall on the farm in Iowa.  There’s absolutely nothing about the young Anthony Michael Hall that leaves on with the impression that he’s ever spent any time on a farm.  Everything about him screams Hollywood before he even lands in Los Angeles.  Hence, it gets difficult to really buy him as being the wide-eyed innocent that everyone else views him as being.  Since a good deal of the film’s plot is dependent upon Hall being naïve, that’s a problem.  He may be a farm boy but he certainly doesn’t freak out after shooting someone.  He’s also somehow learned how to throw a knife straight into someone’s gut.  Out of Bound‘s director, Richard Tuggle, directed two films for Clint Eastwood so he obviously knew how to frame a fight scene but Hall is so miscast that it’s impossible to really get into the movie.

The film is pretty much stolen by Jenny Wright and Jeff Kober.  Kober is properly menacing and, just as she did in Near Dark and I, Madman, Jenny Wright works wonders with a role that could have just been formulaic.  Jenny Wright has apparently retired from acting.  Jeff Kober still shows up in movies and on television, usually playing villains.  (Earlier this year, he played yet another drug trafficker on General Hospital.)  Watching them give compelling performance in a film like Out of Bounds, it’s hard not to feel that both of them deserved bigger career than they had (or, in Kober’s case, still have).

The film is also stolen by its soundtrack, which is very 80s but in the best possible way.  Adam Ant, The Smiths, the aforementioned Souixsie and the Banshees, they all make an appearance and provide the film with a bit of narrative momentum that it would otherwise lack.  Watching the film, 80s Los Angeles comes across like a fun place.  No wonder Darryl Cage wanted to stay even though everyone was trying to kill him.

Out of Bounds is ultimately pretty forgettable and it didn’t make Anthony Michael Hall into an action star.  But, that’s okay.  Like a lot of former Brat Packers, he’s proven himself to be a reliable character actor.  There is life after high school.  Even more importantly, there’s also life after Iowa.

Cinemax Friday: Demolition High (1996, directed by Jim Wynorski)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

A group of terrorists take over a high school and announce that, unless their demands are met, they will launch a nuclear missile at a nuclear power plant which I guess will cause double the nuclear destruction.  Since they already have a nuclear missile, it feels like also threatening to blow up the power plant is definite overkill.  With the school now full of terrorists and explosives, it’s up to one student to kill the terrorists one-by-one and save his classmates.  It’s Die Hard in a High School (cool!), with the Bruce Willis role being taken on by … COREY HAIM!

That bit of casting tells you both why Demolition High doesn’t work and also why anyone would be watching this direct-to-video “action” film in the first place.  The 25 year-old Haim plays Lenny Slater, a high school student who knows Kung Fu because he grew up in the Bronx.  His father (played by Alan Thicke!) moves to a small town, both to become a police chief and to hopefully keep Lenny from getting into any more trouble.  Lenny’s all trouble, though, and terrorist leader Luther (the great Jef Kober) is about to discover that he’s invaded the wrong high school.

If I had watched this film in the 90s or even the early aughts, I would have laughed at how bad Corey Haim is as an action hero but today, knowing all we know about his life and how Hollywood essentially enabled his worst tendencies and then abandoned him when he become too self-destructive to work, it’s not as easy to watch an obviously troubled actor who has gone from being a big star to appearing in a direct-to-video Die Hard rip-off.  Trying to disguise the fact that he’s too old to be playing a high school student, Haim wears a flannel shirt and an earring and has a bowl cut.  Whenever he talks to his classmates, you expect him to say, “How do you do, fellow kids?”  As heavily edited as the fight scenes are, it’s still obvious that Haim had no idea how to throw a punch.  On the plus side, even while obviously addled by drug abuse, Corey Haim was still a better actor than Stephen Seagal.

Demolition High is pretty dumb but it was directed by Jim Wynorski so at least there’s some inside jokes.  Gerrit Graham and Dick Van Patten both have small roles and Alan Thicke gets to tell an FBI agent to “Think with your heart, not with your badge.”  Wynorski also cast Melissa Brasselle as Tayna, a sexy terrorist who wears black leather.  He deserves some credit for that.  (When the film was released on video, Brasselle was featured on the cover, not Haim.)  Some of the techniques that Lenny uses to take out the terrorists are creative, if never really plausible.  In this case, Lenny is helped by the stupidity of the terrorists.  It’s not every evil terrorist who is clumsy enough to stumble head first into a table saw.

Demolition High was apparently successful enough to be followed by a sequel, Demolition U.  I’ll look at the movie tomorrow.

Cinemax Friday: The Big Fall (1997, directed by C. Thomas Howell)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Directed by C. Thomas Howell!?

You read that right!  After spending years as a straight-to-video mainstay, C. Thomas Howell finally stepped up from just starring in these films to directing one.  Of course, Howell still stars in The Big Fall as well as directing it.  What better way to make sure that your star takes your direction than by casting yourself in the lead role?  It makes sense.  The end result is a lot better than anyone would probably expect it to be.

Howell plays Blaise Rybeck, a self-described “private dick,” who works in modern Los Angeles with his protege (Sam Seder) and his secretary (Kathy Griffin, whose role is thankfully small).  Rybeck talks and dresses like a hard-boiled, 1940s P.I., right down to wearing a trench coat and a fedora while delivering his lines in a Bogart-style rasp.  The decor of his office is straight from the 40s as well.  Despite this, the movie takes place in modern times, with people using cell phones and bungee jumping off of bridges.  That no one comments on how out-of-time Rybeck seems to be indicates that Howell knew exactly what he was doing with his directorial debut.  The Big Fall is a tone perfect send-up of the neo-noirs that Howell spent most of the 90s appearing in.  His direction shows far more wit than you might expect from the star of Soul Man.

Rybeck is hired by sultry Emma Roussell (Sophie Ward) to find her brother.  It turns out that her brother has gotten involved with a bunch of extreme sports-obsessed bungee jumpers.  (This film attempts to do for bungee jumping what Point Break did for surfing and it actually succeed because the bungee jumping scenes are pretty damn cool.)  It all has to do with a criminal named Axe Roosevelt, played by the great Jeff Kober.  Of course, it also turns out that there’s more to Emma than meets the eye because this is a noir and there always is.

As a director, Howell does a good job of spoofing the material while still playing it straight enough that the movie doesn’t just become one big inside joke.  Jeff Kober and Titus Welliver are great as the bad guys, Sophie Ward is sexy as the femme fatale, and C. Thomas Howell keeps things moving both in front of and behind the camera.  This is an unexpected straight-to-video gem.

One Tough Bastard (1996, directed by Kurt Wimmer)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

When the wife and the daughter of John North (Brian “The Boz” Bosworth) are gunned down by a mysterious gunman (Jeff Kober), North refuses to accept that they were just the victims of a robbery gone wrong.  Working with a tough street kid (DeJuan Guy) who needs a mentor to show him that violence is not the solution to all of the world’s problem, North sets out to discover the truth and get revenge in the most violent ways possible.  What North discovers is that the gunman who killed his family works for a corrupt FBI agent named Karl Slavak (Bruce Payne) and that Slavak is selling guns to a drug lord named Dexter Kane (played by … wait for it … MC HAMMER!)

You would think that any movie featuring M.C. Hammer as a drug lord would be worth seeing but the man who brainwashed a generation into making “U Can’t Touch This” jokes is actually pretty forgettable as Dexter.  This movie was made when Hammer had dropped the M.C. from his name and he was trying to reinvent himself as a harder-edged rapper.  That reinvention didn’t work because there’s absolutely nothing edgy about M.C. Hammer (much like Will Smith, he was the rapper whose music wouldn’t cause your parents to have an aneurysm) and One Tough Bastard proves it.

Instead, One Tough Bastard is worth seeing because of the epic meeting between two action stars who epitomized everything great about straight-to-video movies in the 90s, Brian Bosworth and Bruce Payne!  The Boz may have been a bust as a football player but he was a good action star, delivering one-liners and viscous beat downs with aplomb and, unlike some action stars (*cough* Seagal *cough*), he could play the dramatic scenes without embarrassing himself.  With his long hair and his nosering, Bruce Payne may be an unlikely FBI agent but he’s a great villain and he has no fear of shouting almost all of his dialogue.  Add in Jeff Kober and you’ve got a dumb but fun movie that’s enlivened by three actors who know how to be convincingly tough on camera.

One Tough Bastard lives up to the promise of its title.

Missed Opportunities: Alien Nation (1988, directed by Graham Baker)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Alien Nation starts out with an intriguing premise but sadly doesn’t do enough with it.

In 1988, a spaceship lands in Mojave Desert.  Inside are 300,000 humanoid aliens, known as the Newcomers.  Intended to serve as intergalactic slaves, the Newcomers are now stuck on Earth.  (Of course, in the view of many humans, it’s Earth that’s stuck with them.)  Three years later, the Newcomers have settled in Los Angeles and they have adopted human names.  Some of them, like businessman William Harcourt (Terrence Stamp), have become successful and have been accepted by the human establishment.  The majority remain second-class citizens, facing discrimination and feeling alone in a world that doesn’t seem to want them.

Detective Matthew Sykes (James Caan) does not like the Newcomers but, after his partner is killed by one of the aliens, he ends up working with one.  Sam Francisco (Mandy Patinkin) is the first Newcomer to have been promoted to the rank of detective and is eager to prove himself.  Sykes renames him George and enlists him to investigate a series of recent Newcomer deaths.  Sykes’s real goal is to use Francisco’s Newcomer connections to investigate the death of his partner.  What the two of them discover is that the deaths are linked to a drug called Jabroka, which has no effect on human but was previously used to keep the Newcomers enslaved.

Alien Nation starts out with an intriguing premise.  I love the early scenes of Sykes driving down the streets of Los Angeles and seeing Newcomer prostitutes, Newcomer families, and even a Newcomer dance studio.  There is a lot promise in those scenes and they capture the feeling of a familiar world that has been irrevocably changed.  Both Caan and Patinkin give good performances and the alien makeup is still impressive.  Unfortunately, once Sykes and George start their investigation, the movie becomes a standard-issue police movie with a plot that could easily have been lifted from a Lethal Weapon rip-off.  So many interesting ideas are left unexplored, making Alien Nation an intriguing missed opportunity.  (There was later a television series based on the movie, which explored the Newcomer culture in greater detail.)

Alien Nation still has a strong cult following and I wouldn’t be surprised if it influenced District 9.  In 2016, it was announced that Jeff Nichols would be writing and directing a remake.  Nichols seems like the ideal director for a film like this and this is the rare case of a remake that I’m actually looking forward to.

A Movie A Day #321: The Baby Doll Murders (1993, directed by Paul Leder)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Naked women are turning up murdered in Los Angeles.  The only clue that the crimes are connected: the baby doll that is left beside each body.  Can detectives Louis (Jeff Kober) and Larry (Bobby Di Cicco) solve the case while also dealing with issues in their own private life?  Louis’s girlfriend (Melanie Smith) is worried that Louis is becoming obsessed with is work and that he is not willing to commit to their relationship. Larry is upset because he suspects his wife is keeping a secret from him.  Their chief (John Saxon) wishes they would just solve the case, especially when the killer targets his own daughter.  The problem is that Louis is so driven and prone to violence that he has managed to get himself suspended from the force.  Why does that always happen to good cops?

The Baby Doll Murders is a straight-to-video thriller that used to be popular on cable, back in the Skinemax days.  Probably the most memorable thing about the film is the absurd lengths it goes to find an excuse for every woman in the film to have at least one topless scene before being attacked by the baby doll murderer.  Otherwise, it is a predictable movie with a better than average cast.  A talented character actor, Jeff Kober gets a rare lead role here and Bobby Di Cicco has some good moments as his neurotic partner.  Any film that features John Saxon as an authority figure can not be considered a total loss.  Saxon does not get much screen time but he does get all of the best lines.  When Kober theorizes that the murderer might have a political agenda, Saxon snaps back, “Now, wait a minute, Louis,” a lot of people have the same beliefs as the baby doll murderer and, “not all of them are killers!”  Saxon delivers his lines like a champ.