Census Bloodbath: Death On The L.A. River

Year:
1984
Director:
Paul Leder
Cast:
Stuart Whitman, Greg Mullavey, Jim Bailey
Run Time:
1 hour 41 minutes

Plot: Vultures is an Agatha Christie-style mystery in its purest form. As the wealthy Ramon Garcia's health fails in Pasadena, his relatives gather around him, transparently in the hopes that they will be favored in his will. However, an unknown assailant begins bumping them off one by one. Detective Lou Ryan (Greg Mullavey of the 1986 slasher The Eleventh Commandment, also a Paul Leder joint) thinks the culprit is Ramon's brother, Carl (Stuart Whitman of Deadly Intruder, Night of the Lepus, and the Cardboard Science title The Day the Earth Stood Still), who was accused of murdering Ramon's nephew 14 years ago. Carl, who claims he was wrongfully accused and that the incident ruined his life, dedicates himself to actually getting to the bottom of it, both to get the heat off him and to protect his family.

Now we need to Meet the Meat, and what a sprawling platter we have this time. First, there's Ramon and Carl's siblings Elena (Carmen Zapata, one of the few actual Hispanic people to portray a member of this Mexican-American family), who lives in Mexico City and isn't that interesting, and Rose (Yvonne De Carlo of The Munsters and, equally importantly, American Gothic - but also Cellar Dweller and The Silent Scream), a brassy talent agent who lives in New York. Plus Carl's sons Michael (Kipp "Brother of Stuart" Whitman), a successful business type, and Richard (Jim Bailey), a shy man who is only recently un-estranged from his father.

Then there are the spouses and love interests, namely Rose's husband Wally (Aldo Ray of Terror on Alcatraz, Dark Sanity, and Mongrel), who we don't learn enough about for me to describe him all that well; the strapping young actor Frank Belson (Jimmy Stathis of Hospital Massacre), with whom Rose is having an affair; Ramon's estranged not-quite-ex-wife, Contessa Pamela Windsor (Maria Perschy); and Carl's much-younger girlfriend, Millie Grant (Ann Sidney), who is organizing a benefit. For what? I'm not sure. But it's important to everyone involved for reasons I couldn't wrap my head around.

And that's not even everyone! There's also the beautiful Dr. Baker (Meredith MacRae), who is running his estate with an iron fist while he deteriorates.

Analysis: Vultures makes the incredible misstep of opening with its best scene, but what a scene it is! It introduces us to Rose's philandering ways, blasts us in the face with Yvonne De Carlo's firecracker of a performance, and concludes with the most vicious death in the movie. Not only is the guy's throat slit, but it's slit multiple times. I've never seen anything quite like it. Anyway, it's a blast and it got me sitting up in my seat, ready for a good time at the movies.

Unfortunately, literally nothing else in Vultures is as bawdy and salacious as that opening, even though De Carlo does have a few more standout moments (during her all-too-brief appearance in the movie, she prances circles around the rest of the cast as a diva for the ages). The intro feels like it was spliced in from an entirely different project, because everything else is as staid and bland as a TV movie (I tried to look up if this was made for TV, and it doesn't seem to have been). 

While nothing and nobody in the rest of the movie is especially bad, Vultures proceeds through the remainder of its intricate whodunit storytelling with a minimum of fuss or fun. Thankfully, that storytelling is quite satisfying. I particularly like the wrinkle that Elena and Ramon were raised by their dad while Carl and Rose were raised by their mom and the pairs haven't seen one another in decades, which fuels some unique dynamics and pours more fuel on the fire for everyone to be suspicious of each other.

Perhaps because I am a dyed-in-the-wool Christie fan, I was able to see through the red herrings and figure out who the killer was pretty quickly. But I don't think that will be the case for many viewers, and even if you call the reveal ahead of time, it's fun to watch them set up the pins they're going to knock down during the big parlor room sequence. However...

[SPOILER ALERT from here through the end of the review]

The big finale is ultimately a mixed bag. In addition to being easy to predict if you're a fan of Agatha Christie, it's very easy to predict if you're a fan of Jim Bailey. Going into the movie, I didn't know he was a famous female impersonator, but anyone who does know that will see the ending coming from a marathon's worth of miles off.

It's fun to see just how many characters they can get Bailey to play by the end of the movie (including, for some reason, his onstage go-to Barbra Streisand). He does a great job at bringing them to life well enough to differentiate them and make it seem believable that nobody would notice that the characters are played by Richard in drag (the makeup team is less good at making this convincing, but good enough that I think viewers who haven't already cottoned on might not notice).

Unfortunately, he flubs his big reveal moment at the end. His final monologue weirdly has zero energy, and it all culminates in some transphobic hogwash (though that's not his fault). His one-man performance of multiple characters at once should have been a big, gonzo finale, but all it does is highlight his faults as a screen performer. He never did that much on-camera work, and now I understand why.

At the end of the day, Vultures is good enough at what it does to be entertaining, but the flaws with the middle and the end do pile up enough that you sure wish it wasn't more than 100 minutes long.

Killer: Richard Garcia (Jim Bailey)

Final Girl: Carl Garcia (Stuart Whitman)

Best Kill: Michael's death is the most elaborate and bizarre, as it involves him being swung on a rope across a stage, which sends him careening into a fuse box, where he is electrocuted. However, it gets even more interesting afterward, when his still-smoking corpse swings back and forth over the stage like a pendulum.

Sign of the Times: After Jim Bailey's Barbra finishes crooning, the most 1984 band on the planet takes the stage, but I can't for the life of me figure out who they are or what song they're singing. It's the curse of digging lost media out of garbage chutes.

Scariest Moment: This movie honestly isn't even trying to be scary, so I got nothing. I did get scared when I saw how much time was left after they had killed both the best actor in the cast (Yvonne De Carlo) and the hottest (Jimmy Stathis).

Weirdest Moment: What's wrong with this picture?

Champion Dialogue: “Knock it off, I can't fuck and think at the same time."

Body Count: 7; not including two people who are killed before the events of the movie, whose bodies are later discovered.

1. Wally has his throat slit multiple times.
2. Rose is rammed repeatedly with a truck.
3. Pamela dies in a boat explosion.
4. Frank is stabbed in the back.
5. Elena is shot offscreen.
6. Michael is hung from a rope and swung into a fuse box.
7. Dr. Baker is shot by Carl.

TL;DR: Vultures is a serviceable slasher whodunit, even if it's a little long in the tooth.

Rating: 6/10