****SPOILERS**** "Traces of Red" would have been a decent modern Film-Noir thriller if it only ended like it started but the makers of the movie had to add on some ten minutes to the story and that just about destroyed it. Trying to be cute and twist and fool the audience with an off-the-wall ending made it look both foolish and unconvincing and it even showed on the faces of the actors in the film;as they tried to keep a straight face and not crack up from laughing.The movie had all the ingredients for a good police whodunit: a good cast beautiful women and locations and even a part in the story that dates back some thirty years. This dark secret has something to do with the murders and is linked to the detective investigating the killings but that really ridicules ending sunk the film. Det. Jack Dobson, James Belushi,is investigating a number of murders of beautiful young and rich widows, aren't they all, in rich and socially prominent Palm Beach Florida.
The killer purposely leaves clues that somehow tie all the killings to Det. Dobson. The killer sends him letters after each murder with a kiss mark on them that has the same kind of lipstick that the murdered women had smeared on their lips after they were killed. The letters are typed with an imperfection of the letters D & L and it's obvious that the killer wants the police or Det. Dobson to know this.
As the Palm Beach Police Department try to find out who the killer is something comes up out of the blue about the detective on the case Det. Dobson which has him taken off the case. It turns out that this person Ross Worth knew one of the murdered women in Key West when she worked at a nightclub there. The woman Morgan Cassidy, Michelle Joyner, just happened to be Det. Dobson girlfriend!Now get this! Ross Worth's mother Gloria Worth was arrested and put away for some twenty years for molesting Det. Dobson when he was six years old when she was his first grade teacher;it was Dobson's testimony that put her away. Mrs. Worth died a week before the killing in Palm Beach started and the police there think that it's her son Ross who's doing them to get revenge for his mother. It's also found out that all the women killed were involved with Det. Dobson. Taken off the case because of his possible connection to the murders Det. Dobson is replaced by his partner Det. Frayn, Tony Goldwyn, who flies to Key West to check out Ross Worth only to find out that he died of AIDS the year before. Det. Frayn does find one of Det. Dobson's lady friends another beautiful rich and widowed Palm Beach socialite Ellen Schofield, Lorrain Bracco. Lorrain has a one-night-stand with Det. Frayn, who's married, and later blackmails him by calling his wife Beth, Faye Grant, and leaving a massage on the phone recorder. Det. Dobson get very upset with his partner Det. Frayn for having an affair with his girlfriend Ellen and Frayn's wife leaves him with her young daughter. When Det. Frayn goes to see Ellen at her home on the beach he finds her murdered.
The film was really starting to pick up and really become interesting even up to the final minute but then the "Surprise Ending" came in and just deep sixth the entire movie. I don't know why the movie-makers had to put in that moronic ending. It may have been a way to make the star of the movie James Belushi not look so bad. You already saw at the very beginning of the film that he was killed and we were getting all this, the story, from him from the grave in flashback. But that "ending" was just too much and it took everything out of what was up until then a fairly good crime/suspense film.
The killer purposely leaves clues that somehow tie all the killings to Det. Dobson. The killer sends him letters after each murder with a kiss mark on them that has the same kind of lipstick that the murdered women had smeared on their lips after they were killed. The letters are typed with an imperfection of the letters D & L and it's obvious that the killer wants the police or Det. Dobson to know this.
As the Palm Beach Police Department try to find out who the killer is something comes up out of the blue about the detective on the case Det. Dobson which has him taken off the case. It turns out that this person Ross Worth knew one of the murdered women in Key West when she worked at a nightclub there. The woman Morgan Cassidy, Michelle Joyner, just happened to be Det. Dobson girlfriend!Now get this! Ross Worth's mother Gloria Worth was arrested and put away for some twenty years for molesting Det. Dobson when he was six years old when she was his first grade teacher;it was Dobson's testimony that put her away. Mrs. Worth died a week before the killing in Palm Beach started and the police there think that it's her son Ross who's doing them to get revenge for his mother. It's also found out that all the women killed were involved with Det. Dobson. Taken off the case because of his possible connection to the murders Det. Dobson is replaced by his partner Det. Frayn, Tony Goldwyn, who flies to Key West to check out Ross Worth only to find out that he died of AIDS the year before. Det. Frayn does find one of Det. Dobson's lady friends another beautiful rich and widowed Palm Beach socialite Ellen Schofield, Lorrain Bracco. Lorrain has a one-night-stand with Det. Frayn, who's married, and later blackmails him by calling his wife Beth, Faye Grant, and leaving a massage on the phone recorder. Det. Dobson get very upset with his partner Det. Frayn for having an affair with his girlfriend Ellen and Frayn's wife leaves him with her young daughter. When Det. Frayn goes to see Ellen at her home on the beach he finds her murdered.
The film was really starting to pick up and really become interesting even up to the final minute but then the "Surprise Ending" came in and just deep sixth the entire movie. I don't know why the movie-makers had to put in that moronic ending. It may have been a way to make the star of the movie James Belushi not look so bad. You already saw at the very beginning of the film that he was killed and we were getting all this, the story, from him from the grave in flashback. But that "ending" was just too much and it took everything out of what was up until then a fairly good crime/suspense film.