Change Your Image
SandVis
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Stalked by My Husband's Ex (2020)
Just watch the trailer
If you don't feel like spending 90 minutes on this movie just watch the trailer. A complete summary of who kills who plus the ending.
IMDbrief: Bowl Cuts, Wild Accents, & an Epic Mud Battle: What to Watch After 'The King' (2019)
Misleading headline
This video claims to tell you which other movies to watch if you're in the mood for something set in the late Middle Ages, but then it only mentions Kenneth Branagh's Henry V and Chimes at Midnight. The rest is just filler about The King and Robert Pattinson.
Midsomer Murders: The Electric Vendetta (2001)
Lame, lame, lame
This has to be one of the series' weakest episodes. It starts off with a body left in a crop circle and I was expecting some sort of clever explanation but what they came up with isn't much more plausible than being abducted by aliens. It was also a daft with lots of plot holes.
SPOILERS FOLLOW: I'm adding this for other viewers who would like to refresh their memory about the solution without having to watch the whole thing again.
Sir Harry Chatwyn finds a body of London criminal Ronald Stokes (spare a thought for the poor actor who had to lie there naked but doesn't even get a credit!) at the centre of a crop circle in one of his fields. He's naked, a bit of his hair has been shaved off and he has puncture wounds in his back. Local Ufologist Lloyd Kirby claims that the man was abducted by aliens but the autopsy reveals he was electrocuted. Later the body of another criminal, Eddie Fields, is found in the same place.
Barnaby and Troy discover that the house of Sir Christian Aubrey is wired with high-voltage electricity. You can break in but once you're inside you can't touch any door or window handles without being electrocuted (as another reviewer noted Barnaby and Troy's actions are very dodgy, plus they're made to look idiotic because they don't know that they can just use a wooden object to prise the window open). Sir Christian tells them that his old love rival, Peter, Marquis of Ross, never got over the fact that Christian won a duel for the hand of Isabel, whom they both loved (never mind the fact that she should have made the decision herself and not string them both along!). Peter keeps sending people to try to kill Christian, so he's had to fortify his house. Ronald Stokes was electrocuted when he broke into Christian's house so he called Lloyd Kirby for help to dispose of the body and Lloyd couldn't resist dumping it in the field and making it look like an alien-abduction victim.
Petty criminal Dave Ripert and receptionist Sally Boulter are trying to steal and melt down a cache of silverware. Eddie Fields was helping them but got electrocuted so Dave dumped him in the cornfield too. Sally is hiding the silverware in a cottage on Sir Harry's land (she's sleeping with him). Lloyd and Harry's wife, Beatrice, were childhood sweethearts but Beatrice's parents forbid them to marry. So she entered into a loveless marriage with Harry. Lloyd left for Australia but when he came back he and Beatrice became friends again. When Lloyd goes to the cottage to meet Beatrice he stumbles upon Dave and Sally with the stolen silverware so Dave kills him and dumps him in the cornfield too.
The other victim is Harry's boorish son-in-law, Steve Ramsey, whom Harry electrocutes in his car after Steve's tryst with Sally in the cornfield. Harry hated the way Steve treated his daughter, Lucy.
Midsomer Murders: Death of a Stranger (1999)
Convoluted and melodramatic like the best Midsomer episodes
The big reveal of how the victims are connected is quite complicated but well thought out and it's one of those episodes where you'll never guess the motives but it all makes perfect sense in the end. Like many Midsomer episodes it's got to do with the sins of previous generations that have a bearing on the present.
SPOILERS FOLLOW: I'm adding this because I'm always looking for a quick recap but can never find anything.
The killer is posh heir Grahame Tranter. His mother, Marcia, knew her husband was impotent so she had James Fitzroy, who was in love with her, murder him. James paid for an old man who had helped him bury the body to be cared for at a luxurious old-age home in return for his silence.
Marcia had an affair with an actor who looked a lot like her husband and he is Grahame's father. Marcia created the illusion that her husband had left her by getting the actor who looked like him to pose for a private eye's picture at a cafe in Antwerp so there would be a sighting of him.
The problem was that if anyone found out Grahame was illegitimate they would lose the estate and it would go to a cousin, Henry Carstairs. So when the actor turned up again, now as an old tramp living in the woods, and started blackmailing Grahame with naked pictures of Marcia, Grahame murdered him. When Grahame was rifling through the tramp's things in the woods to find the pictures Ben Gurdie - father of Billy the young troublemaker who was arrested for the tramp's murder by overeager detective Ron Pringle - stumbled upon Grahame and so had to be killed.
Grahame was madly in love with his indifferent wife, Kate, who was having an affair with layabout Dave Hedges and planning to leave Grahame and take their son along. Ron retired after arresting Billy and was eager to become part of the posh fox-hunting set so attended a party at the Tranters' estate. While looking for a bathroom he went into the garden where he witnessed Kate and Dave in flagrante. Because Grahame couldn't bear that Ron had seen Kate like that he also had to go.
Midsomer Murders: Judgement Day (2000)
Entertaining and quite funny
Although the killer's motive is a bit mundane this is still quite an enjoyable episode as it pokes fun at little England eccentricities and contains lots of black humour. It was also quite entertaining to see Orlando Bloom and Tobias Menzies in two of their first roles. Bloom doesn't seem to age but Menzies has certainly filled out from the scrawny specimen on display here! I'm a big fan of Foyle's War so I enjoy watching Midsomer episodes written by Anthony Horowitz and seeing how he's grown as a writer.
SPOILERS FOLLOW: I'm writing down who the killer is so other viewers can come here and refresh their memory about what happened without having to watch the episode again. I can never find this info anywhere so I thought I might as well start supplying it myself.
The story starts off in the '50s with an angry little girl called Annabel Weston killing her strict housekeeper and nanny because her parents left her at home while they went out. In the present this girl (now an adult of course) is still the killer but who is she now? Turns out it's Bella Devere, who was locked up in an institution for years where she became friends with depressive writer Samantha Johnstone. When Bella was finally released she met Marcus Devere, who knew who she was but fell in love with her anyway.
When it seems local gigolo and burglar Peter Drinkwater means to marry Bella's daughter, Caroline, he has to be got rid of and is promptly dispatched with a pitchfork through the chest.
Meanwhile the village where the Deveres live is competing the Perfect Village contest and unluckily for her Samantha Johnstone is one of the judges. When they arrive at the town fete Bella recognises her and tries to poison her so Samantha won't identify her as the infamous Annabel Weston. Unfortunately for fellow judge Rosemary Fuhrman she drinks the glass of wine laced with cyanide meant for alcoholic Samantha and dies. Bella cleverly throws suspicion off herself by drinking just enough of the wine to make herself ill. Samantha thinks she's escaped but is tracked down by Bella at her hotel and killed.
By the time Barnaby and Troy have put two and two together Marcus has given Bella a fatal overdose to spare her going back to an institution.
Midsomer Murders: Destroying Angel (2001)
Twisty and clever
This is one of the best episodes I've seen so far. Who the killer is, what their motives are and how they carry out the murders is quite clever and unusual. My only complaint is that damn Punch & Judy. I'll never understand why the tradition of this creepy and horribly violent doll is still kept alive but it did suit the story. I was quite amused when Troy finds Clarice attractive until she brings out that creepy Punch doll and then he's completely put off.
SPOILERS FOLLOW: I'm adding this for other viewers who would like to refresh their memory about the solution without having to watch the whole thing again.
At the start Gregory Chambers is killed in the forest while looking for mushrooms. He helped out at a hotel owned by an old man, Karl Wainwright, who was dying and planned to leave his property to Gregory, Gregory's wife, Suzanna the manager, her lover, Tristan the chef, and Julia the accountant. When Karl overhears Kenneth, Julia's husband, Suzanna and Tristan talking about how they're going to sell off some of the land he can't help letting slip that he's made a new will in which they don't inherit anything. Suzanna realises that Karl really trusted Gregory and that he must have the new will. She smothers Karl so he can't make it public that there's a new will and Tristan murders Gregory the day before Karl's funeral and takes the will before Gregory has a chance to make it known.
Tristan decides to pin the murder on Annie the gamekeeper who was having an affair with Gregory and is four months pregnant with his child. He plants Gregory's blood in her truck and burns Gregory's clothes nearby. He's dumped Gregory's body in a nearby pond and was planning to dispense with the head, hands and new will in the hotel incinerator but gets spooked by Colin running naked through the woods while being spanked by his housekeeper, Florence, and drops one of the hands, which is later found by a dog during a search of the woods.
Evelyn, who ran the local Punch & Judy puppet show with Gregory, figures out that Kenneth, Suzanna and Tristan killed Gregory. When she sees Suzanna chasing away Karl's nurse, Denise, from the funeral by implying that Denise's incompetence caused his death Evelyn realises this can't be true because Denise is a good nurse. When Denise later tells Evelyn that she had witnessed Karl's signature she realises it had to have been for a will. She also knew that Gregory was going to harvest some of the Chicken of the Woods fungus but then his basket was empty though Evelyn did spot some traces of the fungus in it. To make sure she sent her niece Clarice to take a picture of the rare fungus and the way it was cut was unique to Gregory so she realised he'd been in the woods and that the killer had taken the mushrooms Gregory had collected.
In quite a clever twist she turns out to be the one who murders Tristan, Kenneth and Suzanna because they wouldn't confess. You half expect her infirmity to be only an act but she pulled off the killings with the unwitting help of her gardener, Ben, and Clarice. First she sends Clarice to drop off death threats by telling her they are letters of commiseration for Gregory's murder. But when the killers don't confess it confirms their guilt (otherwise they would have reported the threats) and sets out to murder them. She gets Clarice to pick the Destroying Angel poisonous mushrooms and sends Ben to deliver them. He adds them to Gregory's mushrooms that Tristan kept and then eats. There's no cure for Destroying Angel so he dies a slow agonising death.
Then she phones a builder who's done work for Julia and Kenneth before and mimicking Julia's voice tells him to unscrew Kenneth's massive drinks cabinet from the wall. In quite a hilarious moment this then falls on Kenneth. She then phones Suzanna and pretends to be a hysterical Julia. When Suzanna phones Tristan about what to do he tells her to get rid of Julia, who's already been unnerved by the Punch & Judy show mentioning a piece of paper (Evelyn pretends it was written by Gregory but she was really the author) and could crack and tell the police everything. Evelyn also phones and threatens Julia in Punch's voice so she takes a shotgun to bed. When Suzanna sneaks in to murder her Julia shoots her.
In the end we find out that Annie was Karl's daughter and that he left the estate to her so at least there is a happy ending for someone who deserves it.
Midsomer Murders: Garden of Death (2000)
Enjoyable while it lasts
Although it starts off promisingly, the identity of the killer is a let down as your first guess and their motive turns out to be correct and rather straightforward.
SPOILERS FOLLOW: I'm writing down who the killer is because I sometimes want to go back and check the solution but I can never find this information on the internet and I don't feel like rewatching the whole episode.
At the start of the story you're on the side of Hillary, the daughter who was given up for adoption. I kept hoping she wouldn't be the killer and that she'd end up with the estate after the deaths of her horrid half-sister, mother and grandmother. But in the end it turns out she killed Fliss and Elspeth because she found out she was the child of Elspeth's childhood friend Bishop Richard Deverell. Elspeth and her mother, Naomi, had used this fact to blackmail Richard's father, Augustus, to give them the funds to buy back their manor house. Elspeth and Naomi didn't want Hillary there because they loved her but because she was insurance and she imagined them and Fliss laughing behind her back. Augustus was desperate for Richard to become a cardinal, which wouldn't happen if the fact that he had an illegitimate child got out.
The only real twist, which is quite a good one, is that the disappearance of Cynthia, the wife of Gerald Bennet, who bought the manor house from the Inkpens and later sold it back because it became too much work, had nothing to do with the Inkpens' murders. Cynthia was sleeping around so her daughter, Jane, killed her because she didn't want her father, Gerald, to find out. Jane buried Cynthia in the memorial garden Gerald was creating so when the Inkpens decide to dig up the garden to build a tea shop Jane isn't opposed because it would ruin her father's garden but because she feared Cynthia's body would be found. So when it was dug up she killed her father to spare him from learning the truth.
So there were two killers whose crimes had no connection except proximity. It all ends as a bit of a downer as everyone is either dead or in prison
Midsomer Murders: Blue Herrings (2000)
Enjoyable episode
I really enjoyed this episode and the title is very apt. I see that a big kerfuffle is being made about spoilers but I'm writing this primarily because I've decided to note from now on who's the killer is each episode as I don't find this information anywhere on the internet and sometimes you just want to go back and check without having to watch the whole episode again.
So in this one there's only actually one murder and it's Pru Bennett who euthanises her aunt Celia Armstrong because she's very ill and she didn't want her to suffer.
The rest was all just red herrings but still very entertaining and refreshing in that it's actually a twist that there isn't a big conspiracy to bump off old people after they've changed their will to benefit the doctor and Miss Richards.