Night Game

R

Released Sep 15, 1989

1h 35m

Mystery & Thriller

List

0%

7 Reviews

Tomatometer

11%

50+ Ratings

Audience Score

A Galveston, Texas, detective (Roy Scheider) finds a link between a pitcher's strikeouts and a throat slasher.

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Joe Kane

New York Daily News

Sort of a "Field of Yawns," "Night Game" has the feel of a feeble made-for-TV movie fleshed out with a few R-rated epithets and glimpses of gore (not unlike your typical made-for-cable time-killer).

Rated: 1.5/4

Aug 19, 2021

Full Review

Michael H. Price

Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com

Scheider's performance is solidly convincing but not particularly energetic. Story construction is severely flawed as well...

Rated: 5/10

Aug 19, 2021

Full Review

Michael Wilmington

Los Angeles Times

"Night Game" answers the burning question: Would bad, improbably plotted slasher movies be any better if they had humor, strong characters and pungent dialogue instead of incessant car-crashes and blood-letting? The answer, surprisingly, is no.

Aug 19, 2021

Full Review

Bill Kelley

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Unless you have a weakness for hard-boiled detective movies that overstay their welcome by an hour, there's no reason to chase after this one.

Rated: 1.5/4

Aug 19, 2021

Full Review

Chuck O'Leary

FulvueDrive-in.com

An average serial-killer thriller made watchable by the always interesting Roy Scheider.

Rated: 5/10

Feb 17, 2006

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Alexander H

Truly, one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It's a movie that wants to be a slasher, murder mystery, and comedy all at once. Roy Scheider appears to be attempting a 1940s film noir detective but no one is joining him for the ride. Above all, it's excruciatingly boring.

Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars

03/19/24

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Steve D

There is nothing great about it but there isn't anything wrong either.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

02/27/23

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william s

Scheider is almost always good but this stinker really stretches that assumption to the max.

Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

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Audience Member

Bitter former Astros pitcher kills women every time his replacement wins a night game at the Astrodome. The always reliable Roy Scheider leads the frantic search for a killer as pennant race heats up and threatens to put the season into extra innings. Nice to bring back memories of the Astrodome.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

02/24/23

Full Review

Audience Member

From one Roy Scheider movie to another. I remember the week NIGHT GAME was in theaters. I'd really wanted to see it, as I was really into horror films at the time and liked baseball, so the poster art, featuring a metal hook slicing through a bleeding baseball, just seemed like the MOST AWESOME THING EVER. I look at it now and it's still cool. Blood and baseball! What could be better? Well, as I learned from [url="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/journal_view.php?journalid=13186&entryid=77588&view=public"]BLOOD GAMES[/url], plenty. NIGHT GAME features Scheider as worn-out Texas detective Mike Seaver who gets growing pains when he goes from the big city (Houston) to the smaller city (Galveston). A serial killer is running around, killing blonde women on the beach. Can you guess what color hair Seaver's fiancee (Karen Young) has? Very good. You get a "Snickers." The serial killer strikes every time the Houston Astros win a night game, hence the title. I'm not spoiling this plot twist for you--it's right there on the video box, and the movie is called NIGHT GAME, for Chrissakes. So the film spends a good half-hour simply getting its' characters' knowledge to the point where the audience's is before the opening c...[color=transparent][color=transparent]redits.[/color][/color] Feh. There's a fair share of sub-plots, including Seaver's wedding being postponed because he attacked his future mother-in-law (!) and a squabble with a county sheriff (Paul Gleason) that ends without any real impact. Meanwhile, Scheider does his bitter cop thing competently enough, but you can kind of see the quick paycheck in his eyes. In fact, the whole movie has no real impact. The killer isn't anyone that we've seen at any point in the movie, and when he finally does appear, even with a hook for a hand, he's about as memorable as the killer on the average COLUMBO episode. Of course, the climax involves the fiancee getting chased around by him, a situation that could have been avoided had (a) she not decided to desert a heavily-populated area to wander around an empty pier when she noticed she was being followed or (b) Seaver had had the intelligence to warn his lady love not to, you know, hang around the beach where girls that look like her keep getting killed after he figured out the pattern. It's predictable, lamely directed stuff without a moment of real tension, and the connection between murder and baseball never really connect. (Nobody, for example, gets murdered anywhere near anything to do with baseball.) There's a silly little in-joke where the characters pass a movie theater showing KANSAS (by the same writer) and FULL MOON IN BLUE WATER (by the same director) that's briefly cute, and Lane Smith plays a government agent in a barely-there bit role (he's third billed, so it's possible he was mostly cut out) so it's not a total waste, but still, nothing here to recommend. Damn, that's [url="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097971/posters"]great poster art[/url], though. (Get it? Mike Seaver? "Growing Pains?" Bah. My wit is wasted on you.)

Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars

01/25/23

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Peter Masterson

Director

Roy Scheider

Mike Seaver

Karen Young

Roxy

Richard Bradford

Nelson

Paul Gleason

Broussard

Carlin Glynn

Alma

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Synopsis

A Galveston, Texas, detective (Roy Scheider) finds a link between a pitcher's strikeouts and a throat slasher.

Director: Peter Masterson
Producer: Moshe Diamant, Eduard Sarlui
Screenwriter: Spencer Eastman, Anthony Palmer
Production Co: Epic Productions, Sarliu/Diamant
Rating: R
Genre: Mystery & Thriller
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Sep 15, 1989, Limited
Release Date (Streaming): Mar 7, 2021
Box Office (Gross USA): $228.1K
Runtime: 1h 35m
Sound Mix: Surround

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