![]() Released a few months after Russell had finished his final film in the Dexter Riley trilogy for Disney (The Strongest Man in the World), the image of wholesome Russell sullenly eyeing a scrawny little puppy dog while debating whether to skin it with a bayonet), must have been a shock to TV viewers who had nothing but good feelings for the Disney star (as an absolutely devoted Dexter Riley fanatic, I know that image blew me away when I saw The Deadly Tower as a kid). Worse, this approach to Whitman spells an utter waste of what could have been a brilliant piece of perverse casting: Disney’s main leading man of the early 70s, Kurt Russell, as the all-American psychopath Charles Whitman. Little character touches such as having Whitman looking for a waste can for his candy wrapper after mowing down some people (a moment reminiscent of the other Whitman-inspired feature, Bogdanovich’s excellent Targets), or his growing anxiety at seeing his perfectly shined boots scuffed, are good, but think how much more impact those moments would have had, had they been put into some kind of context with a more developed character. ![]() What is he screaming at? And why? Is he upset he killed them? Or is he upset he didn’t kill more? We don’t know, and worse, we don’t care. Other than the narration we heard earlier, character development is almost nil, rendering his final anguished scream as the radio tolls the names of his dead and as the cops move in, meaningless. The early scenes with Russell stalking his family are menacing and quite frighteningly staged by director Jameson, but when we see nothing else is going to be divulged about the forces in his life that shaped Whitman, he just becomes an on-screen killing machine with ultimately very little viewer interest other than having him stopped. ![]() Were the network suits afraid of somehow “glamorizing” or excusing Whitman, had they explored what might have made him tick? Was it safer to go with the framing device of Martinez, with the cliched presentation (by TV drama standards) of noble Martinez suffering against a fictitious nagging wife and subtle racism at work (according to some reports, NBC president Robert Howard was talked into focusing on the Martinez character by The Deadly Tower producer Antonino Calderon, who headed an organization dedicated to putting more positive Mexican-American characters on television).Īs a result, nothing is truly done with the Whitman character, who functions more as an uptight Boogey Man than as a dimensional figure. Whitman’s background offered some fascinating possibilities for dramatic purposes (an abusive, authoritarian father, a highly intelligent child who showed an early fascination with guns, one of the youngest boys to achieve Eagle Scout…but also a strange prankster who was court-martialed by the Marines he hated), but they’re utterly ignored here, with Russell asked only to narrate one or two lines from his suicide notes as possible explanations for his actions. With The Deadly Tower, however, it’s difficult to apply that “live and let live” attitude, because critical elements and characters in the story are missing or altered, while the movie itself, outside of its historical inaccuracies, pastes on some questionable messages about gun control and, subliminally, racism, that serve as mere padding for a movie already short on real dramatics. Now, as long as the moviemakers are up-front about that dramatizing process, and as long as the true-crime event itself isn’t particularly well known to viewers (so they won’t be distracted by inventions and omissions they’re familiar with), it’s a valid process for concocting a dramatic television work. ![]() In my previous reviews of true-crime telemovies, I usually mention it’s best to view them as largely fictional works, because so often events and characters are altered, condensed, or outright fabricated for dramatic purposes. Thus begins a deadly confrontation that pits sniper against police officer as Martinez, step by harrowing step, gets closer to a final showdown with the psychopathic Whitman. As confused reports of the shooting eventually reach the police and the media, Martinez volunteers to report where he’s needed, and Lieutenant Lee orders him to the tower. Barricading himself now on the round, open-air Observation Deck of the tower, Whitman carefully arranges his weapons and begins to open fire on the crowds of students and passers-by below, causing pandemonium. ![]() Taking the elevator downstairs, she warns the campus security captain of what happened, but his sealing off of the elevators comes too late for a visiting group of tourists who suffer the first shots from Whitman’s sawed-off shotgun. ![]()
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