The Rosary Murders

***/*****

I’m big on actors who can successfully portray conflict. That internal struggle that taunts action due to some moral code or order that dictates privacy and secrecy can be so overwhelming and torturous that concealing a horrifying truth could allow evil to continue. A serial killer of the clergy leaves rosary beads wrapped in the hands of his victims and confesses to Donald Sutherland’s Detroit parish priest. Because the admission from the murderer (this stems from the death of the killer’s teenage daughter, blamed on the clergy for reasons not elaborated in fine detail at the time he confesses to Sutherland) was in confession, Sutherland is under duty to The Higher Power to keep it between the two of them. Sutherland deals with the conflict of whether or not to tell the local authorities. If he adheres to the code he’s sworn to, more clergy will die, more nuns and priests will perish. Also a development involving a reporter played by Belinda Bauer (Robocop 2) has Sutherland besieged by desire for her.

The plot regarding the killer and his motives for committing murder left me unsettled. Killing innocent people for an absolution after copping to a continuously heinous sickening incestuous nightly sexual molestation (which led to the eventual death of the daughter)—“Cut it out. Cut it out, he said.”—seems so unjustified. Yet the clergy represents everything he now despises. He was told he had been absolved, to “say his Five Hail Marys”, and eventually his daughter (so troubled and under duress from the sexual abuse) committed suicide. While the father seemed to seek guidance in his awful sin, his conduct, absolved by a priest or not, led to an innocent girl seeing no other choice out of her situation than suicide.

Charles Durning and Sutherland as Catholic priests was kind of unusual and odd to me. If both actors weren’t so good in their parts, I would consider them miscast. Sutherland and Bauer share those awkward sexually tense scenes, wanting to speak how they feel but deterred by The Cloth and unable to really pronounce the feelings in word and voice that are so obvious in heart. Durning is worn and miserable…or that is how he conducts the character. To me, it was as if The Cloth has killed a piece of him every day for the 30 + years he’s been a priest.

The location of the film, Detroit, is presented as urban, blue-collar, cold, depressing, and poor. The Catholic Church for which Sutherland and Durning are priests looks quite aged and in a declining state (with certain locations even condemned). Sutherland, like Durning, shows signs of wear and tear. Long-term dedication to The Cloth seems to have tired both of them. Such a vocation to God, as shown in the visibly exhausted forms of Sutherland and Durning, seems to take its toll. The seal of silence that Sutherland must endure in terms of his concealment of a killer’s confession has placed him in an extremely burdensome situation. He wants to tell and even asks a fellow priest about what he’d do, not receiving the answer he’d hope for. How Durning plays an inadvertent role in the reasoning behind the murders comes to a suspenseful conclusion when two priests and the killer are together in the church office.

The grueling frustration in the numerous murders of members of The Church is well realized by director Fred Walton (April Fool’s Day; When a Stranger Calls), showing the police (character actor, Josef Sommer, is head of the investigation) quite unsettled (obviously) and needing to find this serial killer badly. So the film has a strong internal conflict in Sutherland and a desperation in the police hoping he can help them with some type of insight that might provide them with an approach needed to catch the clergy assassin.

While the killer reveals himself at the very end, his fiendishness becomes well documented. His chilling admission in the confession booth as Sutherland fears for his life. He hits a jogging priest with his car, pretending to be a shocked and concerned motorist who rushes to the man’s body only to look around just in case a witness might be nearby and soon taking advantage of the time of day and the location by putting a bullet in the victim’s brain. When Sutherland visits the gravesite of the killer's daughter, a voice in the area alarms him (the voice of the killer). Then we have the climax admittance of his incestuous abuse of his daughter, confession prior to her suicide, and rage at getting absolution from a specific priest. A gun with a silencer, used on all the victims, aimed one last time.

Bauer’s confessional really was quite a moment in the film for her. Sutherland has had an impact on her life. She tried to be a reporter and get the big story on the murder(s) investigation, but her inability to grab specifics (and her place in the pecking order at her paper) led to her dismissal. However, Sutherland’s presence while she was on the job left an impression she acknowledges while confessing her sins to him in the booth. She frees all of her past to him and Sutherland tries to convince her actually to not do it. It is one of those scenes where two characters understand their feelings for each other.

While Sutherland cannot break his solemn seal he does take it upon himself to investigate. Details he takes from the confession provide a start and he uses that to forge his own investigation. Soon he learns of the daughter who died and how. It will be up to him to uncover the identity of the killer and attempt to move him to either stop murdering members of The Church or turn himself in. Neither will be easy or even possible as it seems the killer is dead set on targeting one particular priest…could that be Sutherland? Or could it be someone even higher up the order of The Church?

 

Returning to Detroit, there are factories and old buildings, rail and junk metal, and this is quite a backdrop (in fact you can see a Ford building in the background as a priest does his morning jog) for the film. The film, as a whole, just has this melancholy to it. Is there real joy here? Do we ever really see true joy anywhere in the film? This stood out to me; this none more evident than Sutherland’s portrayal of the priest. One scene had Sutherland sitting on the stairs while his fellow priests were enjoying a party. His face is leaning against a rail and he can barely contain his agony. It is not just a moral trouble or bout with conscience, but Sutherland was struggling with spiritual torment. Everything he’s ever believed in is challenged thanks to the killer (and the killer’s admission).

The Rosary Murders is relatively obscure and not particularly distinguished. I think this is because the direction isn’t flashy and the characters don’t leap from the screen. The violence is off-screen, even if the killings are so cold-blooded and psychopathic. The conclusion lets us know that these killings were so senseless but a deep seeded fury instigates them. The voice of the killer as Sutherland reacts with terror provides us with a clear indication of that hatred that motivates his furor. I guess the interest in this film will lie almost entirely on Sutherland’s aching performance and the morbid plot synopsis. Catholicism once again is under the microscope. The question is whether or not Sutherland with “break the seal” and keep hidden the admission of a killer. Should he or shouldn’t he? That debate along with Sutherland’s developing feelings for Belinda Bauer make the movie an interesting piece of acting for the veteran actor. It does have a moment or two among all the gloom and woe that are humorous. Durning, despite his tired countenance, seems to offer the occasional remark and receives a shot to the back when an altar boy dozes in the middle of a Catholic Good Friday ceremony and drops the cross he's holding, with the police hidden in parts of the church emerging with guns in hand. But, for the most part, this is dead serious, with lots of choir and orchestral scoring to build the dramatics of the plot and when the killer targets victims. Sutherland very much serves as the visual elaboration of the plot itself. He's trying to cope with the darkness surrounding him. The seal ("professional secret" described by Sommer in an intense exchange in his office) leaves him carrying a heavy albatross, and when Sommer convinces him to look at the billboard and all of the victims killed by the man whose confession he keeps to himself.