Somebody Killed Her Husband (1978)

Few things get under my skin like a movie that is made for reasons other than wanting to make a good movie.  Somebody Killed Her Husband is such a movie.  It was touted as a return to the great old comedy mysteries of the 1930s, which is coded for me as yet another desperate attempt to recapture the magic of The Thin Man series with Nick and Nora Charles.  But the real motivation was to get Farrah Fawcett into a movie.

Somebody Killed Her Husband was what attempt, made at the peak of Farrah Fawcett’s popularity.  She had become a phenomenal success on “Charlie’s Angels” and then had become and even bigger phenomenal success with the most famous pin-up poster since Betty Grable.  The movie seemed like the next logical step.

Unfortunately there’s not much here.  Yes, she looks great, but looking great without a real story to be involved in is well . . . just another poster.  It pairs her with Jeff Bridges who plays clerk in the Macy’s toy department who meets Fawcett when she comes in with her infant son.  They meet, they discuss caterpillars (?) and before long they are having a flirtatious lunch in the park.  He’s desperately in love with her (who wouldn’t be?) but her marriage and motherhood means that she’s off the market.

The title tells you what happens next.  Yes, someone kills her husband and Jeff and Farrah suspect the they are the prime suspects so they stuff the husband’s body in a freezer and decide to try to solve the murder themselves. 

This sounds way better than it plays out.  The investigation is deadly dull.  The two leads have no chemistry – perhaps because the movie won’t let them.  And the conclusion to the murder takes so long that you really give up trying.  It is deadly to a mystery when we don’t care about the mystery.

What we would like to care about is the couple at the center, but Bridges and Fawcett aren’t give time to develop any sparks beyond their initial flirtation and so the movie becomes a long painful slide into nowhere.  So, can Farrah act?  Based on this movie, I have no idea.