The killer caught red-handed! Or not
What a bizarre accident! A loaded handgun just fell out of a nearby window fired three shots into your boss’s chest and landed in your hand. Just then your wife your business rival the chief of police and a priest walk by and see you holding a smoking gun standing over the corpse of a man you publicly denounced as a “stinking traitor who deserves to die” on live television two hours ago. Wow this looks bad. Better start explaining….
No matter what vigilantes and superheroes would have you believe catching a killer red-handed is actually pretty rare. Still there is considerable drama in the whole scenario of a “man spotted at the scene of a murder acting suspicious” and plenty of movies and TV shows tackle the subject in a rather playful manner.
• Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969-1974). In one sketch from the legendary comedy TV series a man (Eric Idle) is innocently waiting in a room when a piece of furniture falls over beside him. The man convinces a butler (Graham Chapman) that no deliberate vandalism took place but another object comes crashing down as soon as he is left alone again. A buxom maid (Carol Cleveland) comes in to clean up the mess asks the man to hold onto her Brazilian dagger while she works then promptly trips and lands on the blade. Another servant appears on the scene and accidentally falls out a window while the man tries to explain what happened to the maid. A policeman arrives to arrest the increasingly flustered non-murderer and perishes under a collapsing ceiling. Now alone in a room full of corpses and debris the man awkwardly begins to leave while grandfather clocks and other fixtures collapse as he walks by them. The house explodes.
“Sorry!” squeaks the man now standing timidly amid the smoking wreckage.
• Cemetery Man (a.k.a. Dellamorte Dellamore ) (1994). This splendid art-house zombie flick takes a turn for the darkly comic when the main character Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett) starts killing people in a fit of grumpiness. He’s particularly chagrined when nobody seems to believe that he’s the murderer.
After going on a glum shooting spree in a hospital Dellamorte trudges downstairs like a moody emo kid despondent over the lack of attention he’s getting. All around him doctors and nurses are panicking over the discovery of the victims but nobody suspects Dellamorte of doing the foul deed. Finally a friend of Dellamorte’s appears yelling “There’s another maniac on the loose! He’s on the fourth floor killing people! He’s already shot three!”
The friend stops staring at the revolver in Dellamorte’s hand. The dullness vanishes from Dellamorte’s eyes as he realizes that he’s been caught. Finally he’ll be taken into custody and this charade can end! An expression of tension and hope crosses his face….
But no. The friend doesn’t get it.
“You have a gun!” he says. “Good! Now you can defend yourself!” The friend vanishes Dellamorte sighs and continues to trudge downstairs.
• Frenzy (1972). A serial killer is terrorizing London and an innocent man (Jon Finch as Richard Blaney) has been wrongfully imprisoned for the crimes. Blaney escapes and heads for the home of the real murderer with revenge on his mind. Instead he puts himself in yet another incriminating situation as a police officer finds Blaney standing over the body of the murderer’s latest victim holding an iron bar. Blaney can’t believe that it’s happened to him again — he tries feebly to explain his predicament knowing it won’t do any good.
Suddenly a scraping sound outside the door signals a change of fortune for Blaney. The real murderer enters the room dragging a chest with which to dispose of the corpse. The policeman closes the door and confronts the “necktie strangler” face to face at last by delivering the iconic last line: “Mister Rusk. You’re not wearing your tie.”
• The Wrong Guy (1997). Nelson Hibbert (Dave Foley) storms into his boss’s office only to find the man dead with a knife sticking out of him.
Nelson freaks out and pulls out the knife. Then he changes his mind and sticks it in again. Then he realizes that he’s leaving fingerprints all over a crime scene and panics even more. After running around the room like a decapitated chicken Nelson leaves the office looking extremely agitated covered in his boss’s blood. He passes several co-workers all of whom had earlier heard Nelson threaten the boss’s life. There’s nothing else for it. He must go on the run; now he’s a fugitive from the law sure to be hounded by police for a crime he didn’t commit.
The gag is that the cops aren’t even after him. Nelson isn’t a suspect. The actual murder was recorded by security cameras. So was Nelson’s embarrassing behaviour when he discovered the corpse. Nelson spends the rest of the movie in a panic sleeping in boxcars lying to motel employees and living the life of a fugitive for no reason at all.
