Marked For Murder (1989)

1989's MARKED FOR MURDER is a terrible direct-to-video thriller that is every bit as sloppy and stupid as you would expect from the director of HOBGOBLINS and six VICE ACADEMY movies. It’s ridiculously cheap-looking—a television news set is literally an ordinary desk and a blue sheet—and the worst car chase ever runs red with obvious continuity errors and an actor, screaming in terror while his runaway car is supposed to be in midair, being filmed with the car on the ground and the road clearly visible in its back window.

Pacing is insanely slow, the actors thoroughly unappealing, and the writing wretchedly amateurish. All blame goes to Rick Sloane, who not only directed the film, but also produced, wrote, and edited it. Somehow he managed to enlist a few name actors to pick up some scratch for a few days work, and even Martin Sheen (APOCALYPSE NOW) dropped by for a bewildering, wordless cameo as a guy reading a newspaper. I hope it’s on his reel.

The star of MARKED FOR MURDER is Renee Estevez, Sheen’s daughter (who played a White House staffer in several WEST WING episodes). She plays Justine, a production assistant at a TV station owned by Emerson (Wings Hauser), who sends her and gofer Corey (Ken Abraham) to recover a videotape from a co-worker’s apartment. The corpse of Kent (Scott Pearson) is later found dead there, and guess who is blamed.

Jim Mitchum (TRACKDOWN) mumbles his part as some kind of cop (the film isn’t really clear), and Ross Hagen (WONDER WOMEN) shows up at the end as a drug dealer. The only fun in this movie is Hauser, who acts totally unhinged and eccentric and is mostly likely ad-libbing many of his scenes that don’t impact the storyline. You may derive some laughter from Hauser’s weirdo performance and Sloane’s ineptness on the set and in the cutting room. I wouldn’t advise finding out.