Who Killed Mary What's 'er
Name?
(1971)
Director: Ernie
Pintoff
Cast: Red Buttons, Alice Playten, Sylvia Miles
Death can seriously make an impact. There are two
incidents in my childhood involving death that have stuck with me for
years and to this day. The first incident happened one afternoon when I
was walking home from school. Halfway home, I noticed three or so kids
my age looking at something at the edge of the cattle field that
bordered the road. Right at the fence line there was a large dead bird
lying on the ground. I stopped and listened to the kids speaking about
this bird. They were all fascinated about their discovery. I was not as
interested of the bird as they were, but I was interested in hearing
their thoughts about it. One of the kids got the idea to throw a large
rock on the bird to see if it would splatter blood and guts everywhere.
They got a large rock lying nearby, and promptly heaved it onto the
bird. The rock bounced off the bird, and no guts came flying out.
(Years later, I heard that writer Stephen King had a very similar
experience when he was a child.) The second incident happened several
years later, also on a school day. I had missed the school bus after
school, so I walked home, taking a short cut by walking on the train
tracks that lay in the area. It was winter, so there was snow
everywhere, but not enough to completely cover the discovery I was soon
to find. Halfway home, I came across, laying on the train tracks, a
large dog. The dog was clearly dead, and clearly had been dead for
several days. That was bad enough, but what made it really bad was that
the dog had been cut into two by a passing train.
Faced with a gruesome sight, I quickly left and tried to
blank out what I saw. I walked on those train tracks several more times
after that, and I was lucky not to see that dog again or anything else
that gruesome. (Though not seeing the dog again got me thinking that someone
must have cleaned up that scene. Who, and why? I never got the answers
to those questions.) That incident, and the bird incident made a
lasting impressing of death on me, and probably had at least a little
effect on how I subsequently saw things (including movies) in the
future. You may be wondering if I have had any experiences with death
that are human-related. Well, I have a few. About a year ago one
evening I came home to my apartment building after a long day at work,
and right in the lobby of the building was a man lying down on the
floor very still. With him was a woman who begged me to call for an
ambulance. I did so, and the ambulance came, though I don't know what
happened to the guy. Probably a near-death. As for actual
death, there are a couple of deaths that I have witnessed, both of
which have made an impact on me. Walking downtown one afternoon, I came
across a crowd that included an ambulance and a police car. There was a
small crowd, and in the middle of the crowd was a homeless man lying on
the ground - he was clearly dead. That was the first time I had seen a
dead (human) body. The second death was more personal, when a few years
ago my mother died. One of my biggest fans (she loved my web site), her
death has left a space that is still empty to me.
So I think I can say that death has had some impact in
my life over the years. Has this impact changed how I see various
things in my life? Well, if you have been reading all of the reviews on
my web site, you will see it hasn't stopped me from enjoying violent
movies, movies where people die. I watch various violent acts, whether it's
violence on people on the battlefield to the violence inflicted by a
mad slasher. But I must point out that there is always something in the
back of my mind that reminds me of something. It's more or less telling
me, "This is just make-believe - real violence, including actual death,
is much different in the non-movie world." That's how I currently
think. There is a chance I might think differently in the future if I
were to experience death in a way I am fortunate to have never
experienced. That is, death caused by murder. Sometimes I wonder: What
would I do if a loved one of mine was murdered? Could I do anything?
And what would happen if I was murdered? Would there be anyone out
there that would care to see that justice was done in my case? I know
from what I've seen over the years that there are cases where people
care little to nothing about someone's death, and seeing the movie Who
Killed Mary What's 'er Name? reminded me of this. It concerns a
diabetic ex-boxer named Mickey (Buttons), who at the beginning of the
movie has just been released from the hospital. While in the hospital,
he read in the newspaper a small blurb about a murdered prostitute, and
for some reason this story stuck with him. Out of the hospital, and
angered by finding indifference towards the victim everywhere he goes,
he decides to investigate for himself.
Before watching Who Killed Mary What's 'er Name?
for this web site, I haven't done that much in the way of reviewing
mystery movies. The only other mystery movie that immediately comes to
mind that I have reviewed for The Unknown Movies was the Mormon-themed
mystery movie Brigham City.
There's a reason that I have not taken upon it myself to review more
mystery movies. When it comes to mysteries on the printed page, I am
fine - I can remember in my childhood that I would devour Encyclopedia
Brown and Hawkeye and Amy mysteries, and I would find myself managing
to solve a fair number of them before flipping to the back of the books
to read the answer. And when it comes to mysteries on television, I
find I can follow and understand the detectives' progressing work on
solving the cases. However, for some reason, when it comes to mysteries
made for the big screen, I sometimes find that I get somewhat lost
somewhere along the way, and at the end I am sometimes scratching my
head on some details. I've seen a number of movie mysteries where I was
on the ball right to the end, like The Last Of Shelia
and Death On The Nile (and I figured out those movies'
culprits before the end), but the number of movie mysteries that have
got me lost may be considered significant by some. I am mentioning
this, because there is a part of me that wonders if a movie like the
one I am reviewing can get a fair write-up from myself. I was able to
follow the unfolding mystery of this movie for about half of its
running time before I started to get lost. If I don't always "get"
these movies, it may be unfair to blast the movie for people who might
understand it better.
In my defense, however, I must point out that there are
a number of things about this movie that suggest that the fault of not
properly understanding the movie may not be my failing, but that it may
be because of the fact (that I think all viewers will agree with) that
a good amount of the movie is badly made. The often shoddy nature of
the movie starts with the opening scene of the movie, showing Mary's
murder - we get multiple close-up shots of ornaments while we hear
shuffling and screaming, then when we actually get a shot of the
ongoing murder, the close-up camera shakes around so rapidly that we
can't tell what's going on. Not a good start, and when the opening
credits then started to display, and the onscreen title of the movie
had been written with a gross punctuation error, I had an idea that I
was in for a long haul. (By the way, the video box for the movie not
only continues this misspelling of the title everywhere on the box,
there are a couple more spelling errors in the plot description on its
back.) As the movie progressed, I found stuff like the central
character of Mickey being murky - why was he so obsessed with finding
the murderer? Well, he does say at one point, "If I wasn't so lucky, I
could have ended up alone in an apartment just like that." Okay, but he
also says that there's more to it than that. This seems to be an
indication that we'll find out later, but we never find out
what this other factor is. Evidently the screenwriter forgot, but he
didn't forget to add a few extra seconds to what appears to have been
the original end of the movie, which in those few seconds changes what
could have been an effective tragic ending to a ludicrous "happy"
ending.
Mostly I found the movie confusing. Some of this may be
because of my problem with movie mysteries, but there was stuff I knew
that wasn't my fault, like poor direction (most of the "action" scenes
make little sense), lighting (many scenes are too dark to make out),
and editing (many sudden jumps to elsewhere.) It's a wonder then that I
found a few decent things buried inside all this. Director Ernest
Pintoff manages to portray the New York City settings of this movie
very effectively. Never have I seen this city portrayed as broken-down,
dirty, and scummy as in this movie. For a movie about the investigation
of the murder of a low-class prostitute, these settings seem
appropriate for the subject matter. Also, I thought the performances
were generally decent. It may be a bit hard to swallow the thought of
Buttons as an ex-boxer, though the one scene where he has to pull out
his former skills is actually more believable than you'd think. Plus,
while his character may be obsessed with finding a murderer, he seems
to knows that playing it frantic would look silly. He plays it cool but
determined. An even better performance comes from Playten, who plays
Button's daughter. What could have been a stereotyped role instead
turns into a breath of fresh air by the way she plays it. Although her
character has some concern about her father, she is more supportive and
helpful, and acts as this kind of assistant with joy and energy. But
all this decent material doesn't make up for the general shoddiness. No
one was looking out for this movie, which probably explains why its VHS
release was done by an short-lived video company. They probably weren't
looking out for the movie as well - some flub during the transfer
resulted in one scene being played twice on the copy I got.
UPDATE: Mike Mueller sent this information in:
"I dimly recall a Dick Cavett interview with Alice
Playten, who was nonplussed by the indifference of director Ernie
Pintoff. When she or Red Buttons would suggest a re-shoot to
improve a scene, they were stonewalled with "The last take's good
enough." Big hairy-assed surprise that Pintoff soon landed
in television."
Check for availability on Amazon (VHS)
See also: Brigham City, Death Game, New York Cop
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