- Murder Me, Murder You
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Murder Me, Murder You 200px
Stacy Keach as Mike HammerGenre Mystery, Crime, Action Creator Mickey Spillane Directed by Gary Nelson Produced by Larry A. Thompson
Lew GalloWritten by Bill Stratton Starring Stacy Keach
Tanya Roberts
Don Stroud
Kent Williams
Delta Burke
Tom Atkins
Jonathan BanksMusic by Earle Hagen Country United States Language English Original channel CBS Release date April 9, 1983 Running time 96 minutes (approx.) Murder Me, Murder You is a made-for-TV movie starring Stacy Keach as Mickey Spillane's iconic hard-boiled private detective, Mike Hammer. The movie marks the first time the fictitious gumshoe would be portrayed on the small-screen since Darren McGavin played the part in the black-and-white version of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, a syndicated television series that aired from 1958 to 1960. Murder Me, Murder You was the first of two pilots - the other being More Than Murder - that blazed a path for the 1980s version of the CBS series Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer which debuted on January 28, 1984.
Contents
Plot
Mike is hired to protect Chris Jameson (Michelle Phillips), an old flame who he hasn't seen in almost 20 years. Chris heads up an all female high-risk courier agency that has become tied up in a dangerous exchange involving high-stakes bribes by an American helicopter manufacturer to a corrupt General in Central America. Chris nonetheless drops dead in the middle of testifying before a grand jury, but not before informing Mike that he has a 19-year-old daughter who is caught in the middle of everything and might already be dead.
Screenwriter Bill Stratton was awarded the Edgar in the category of Best Mystery Teleplay Special, the first time any Spillane-inspired material was ever given the MWA's top award.
Stacy Keach's First Appearance as Mike Hammer
The TV movie is significant because it marks the first appearance of Stacy Keach in the role of Hammer, a face that many now identify as the definitive identity of the rough-and-tumble detective. After the second pilot movie, which served as the initial episode of the first CBS series, Keach would go on to star in a third made-for-TV movie (The Return of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer), which was followed by the return of the series to CBS, now titled The New Mike Hammer. He went on to star in a syndicated series, Mike Hammer, Private Eye, in 1997. In 1996 his voice was featured reading the audiobook version of Spillane's penultimate Mike Hammer novel Black Alley, and Keach continues to portray Mike Hammer in a series of radio novels entitled collectively The New Adventures of Mike Hammer.
DVD release
After almost 25 years, Murder Me, Murder You was released on DVD by Sony Pictures. The DVD comes packaged as a two DVD set. The second disc featuring the subsequent Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer pilot More Than Murder.
External links
- Murder Me, Murder You at the Internet Movie Database
- Murder Me, Murder You at AllRovi
Novels I, the Jury (1947) • My Gun Is Quick (1950) • Vengeance Is Mine! (1950) • One Lonely Night (1951) • The Big Kill (1951) • Kiss Me, Deadly (1952) • The Girl Hunters (1962) • The Snake (1964) • The Twisted Thing (1966) • The Body Lovers (1967) • Survival... Zero! (1970) • The Killing Man (1989) • Black Alley (1996) • The Goliath Bone (2008)Films I, the Jury (1953) • Kiss Me Deadly (1955) • My Gun Is Quick (1957) • The Girl Hunters (1963) • Margin For Murder (TV, 1981) • I, the Jury (1982) • Murder Me, Murder You (TV, 1983) • More Than Murder (TV, 1984) • The Return of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer (TV, 1986) • Come Die With Me (TV, 1994) • Mike Hammer: Song Bird (V, 2003)Television Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer (1958-1960) • Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer (1984-1985) • The New Mike Hammer (1986-1987) • Mike Hammer, Private Eye (1997-1998)Films directed by Gary Nelson 1970s Molly and Lawless John (1972) · Santee (1973) · The Boy Who Talked to Badgers (1975) · Freaky Friday (1976) · The Black Hole (1979)1980s The Pride of Jesse Hallam (1981) · Jimmy the Kid (1982) · Murder Me, Murder You (1983) · Murder in Three Acts (1986) · Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1987) · Get Smart, Again! (1989)Categories:- American television films
- Mystery films
- 1983 television films
- American mystery films
- Films directed by Gary Nelson
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