Ah, the great outdoors. . . . And what would go better on a hike through the towering natural splendor of the mountainous North Cascades National Park than a nice cold one?
Go ahead there, Kolt (Lee Arenberg), pop another brew as you and your buddies Murdoch (David Dukes) and Loomis (Branscombe Richmond) trek through the trails. Never mind that it`s below zero and a blizzard is raging. Hey, so what if you`ve been lost for two days and are wearing a thin jacket and nothing on your head but a bandanna?
You`re an escaped criminal, lugging a huge sack of cocaine. So why not stroll with a beer too?
This nonsensical beer-drinking episode is the only light moment in an otherwise unremittingly bloody tale called ”Snow Kill” (7 p.m. Sunday and 1 p.m. Aug. 4 on USA cable).
It is one thing, I suppose, to use excessive violence when it is essential to the story. But when it is used with such cavalier gruesomeness as it is here, one resents the filmmakers even while understanding their motives. It`s obvious that screenwriters Raymond Hartung and Harvey Zimmel and director Thomas J. Wright were aware that their paper-thin plot and cardboard- like characters needed some assistance. What better way to distract viewers than by bathing the screen in blood?
For all of its considerable problems, the film finds in Dukes a villain of intense viciousness. It is to his credit that he accepts his over-the-edge assignment with a certain glee: threatening, maiming and killing with wild-eyed elan.
He shoots a disloyal former minion in the face; does in a few of the corporate executives (who include Patti D`Arbanville and John Cypher) who are on some sort of wilderness-encounter trek; and rapes and kills the wife of a mountain trapper.
That was his big mistake, for the trapper (played well by a stoic Terence Knox), is knowledgeable if the ways of the mountains and trained in weapons art, his choice being a crossbow.
It`s a particularly grisly end that meets Dukes, but it fails to really shock us, since it comes after so many other bloody encounters (and cliches)
that we are already numb. Or asleep.
`SNOW KILL`
A USA cable production. Executive producers are Dori Weiss and Mark Ovitz;
produced by Raymond Hartung, directed by Thomas J. Wright; written by Raymond Hartung and Harvey Zimmel from a story by Hartung. With Terence Knox, Patti D`Arbanville, John Cypher, Clayton Rohner, David Dukes, Joey Travolta, Rick Lieberman, Branscombe Richmond and Lee Arenberg. Airing at 7 p.m. Sunday and 1 p.m. Aug. 4 on USA cable.
`ROOM FOR ROMANCE`
9 P.M. FRIDAY, CBS
Yet another failed pilot. And am I ever getting sick of the drivel of the summer offerings from the networks, trying to pass off their garbage as something other than what it is.
The sorry premise of this latest trash is that a well-to-do New York City apartment house is a hotbed of romantic tales of various sizzle and laughs.
Instead it`s zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, as this land-locked ”Love Boat” (it also recalls ”Love American Style”) offers the most hackneyed romantic encounters, from a grandmother`s shock over her granddaughter`s live-in boyfriend to a young woman`s attempts, on the advice of an astrologer, to sleep with a virginal cello player.
In standup comic Dom Irrera, as the building`s concierge and frequent commentator on the structure`s happenings, ”Room for Romance” has one of the most unattractive characters of any show I`ve recently seen.
What more is there to say about a show that resorts to a stuck elevator to allow two feuding lovers to have at it?
