Isn't It Shocking

ISN’T IT SHOCKING

A made-for-TV movie from 1973, Isn’t It Shocking opens with a scene in which a man uses a portable machine (carried in a suitcase) to electrocute a woman in her bed in the middle of the night.  The coroner rules the death a heart attack, but police officer Daniel Barnes (played by Alan Alda) concludes that there must be foul play afoot when two more citizens of the same small town die in the same way within a week.  Barnes and his associates realize that all the victims graduated from the same high school in 1928 and race to protect the few remaining members of that class.  At the home of “Crazy Marge” (an eccentric woman with a house full of cats), Barnes crosses paths with the antagonist and learns his reasons for picking off these individuals.

Isn’t It Shocking boasts some exceptional witty dialogue that balances out the grim nature of the bulk of the story.  The project runs only seventy minutes in length, and by the end I wanted to spend more time with these characters.  While there’s no mystery about the identity of the killer (the viewer gets a good look at him early on), I was immediately curious about his unusual method of murdering his victims and why he was choosing to kill these particular people.  Worth seeking out, Isn’t It Shocking remains engrossing decades after it was produced.