***SPOILERS*** Disturbing film about this very unstable individual who just happens to be a member of law enforcement. It seems that over the last five years that every time Officer Donnelly, Michael Parks, takes his vacations he ended up in the China Lake area where a number of people also ended up brutally murdered.
There's no mystery in who the killer is since we see him-Officer Donnelly-in action within the first ten minutes of the movie. Donnelly impersonates a local traffic or highway cop who stops motorists in the unfriendly Mojave Desert on made up charges, like being drunk or not observing road signs, and ends up murdering them. Donnelly mostly does this by handcuffing and then locking his unsuspecting victims in their car trunk where they slowly suffocate to death in the scorching desert heat.
On this his fifth vacation to China Lake Donnelly really goes all out trying to break his previous record in not only murdering a record number of victims but also includes one of the local police Robert Wade, Doug Mears, among them. It's Wade's boss and good friend Sheriff Sam Brodie, Tom Skeritt, who at first befriended Donnelly as a fellow police officer who finally realized what a dangerous person he was and tried to stop him before he caused any more damage. Something that Brodie knew he'll have his hands full in trying to prevent!
What's so unusual about this cop killer, with the cop doing the killing, is that the deranged Officer Donnelly shows no real intentions of wiping out the criminal scum of society, like a Dirty Harry Callahan, with all of his victims being innocent and law abiding citizens. In fact it's in obeying Donnelly's ridiculous and unlawful orders, just because he wears a police uniform, that ends up costing them their lives!
***SPOILERS*** Not that good in explaining the criminal psychology that drives the psycho cop Officer Donnelly to do the horrible things that he does in the film "The China Lake Murders" nevertheless keeps its audience on the edge of their seats as they wait for the next shoe, or victim, to drop. We never know just what's going on in Donnelly's, who always seems to be grinning, very disturbed mind since he comes across as if he's under some kind of hypnotic spell that drives to commit his slew of crimes in the movie. Even Sheriff Brodie is completely mystified in Donnelly's strange behavior only knowing that someone like him is the reason people for the most part don't trust cops! Which makes it just that much harder, like in a number of incidents in the film, for him to do his job.
The movie's ending is a bit contrived in the street or highway smart Donnelly acting like a first class jerk by falling into an obvious trap that Sheriff Brodie set for him. But by then with Donnelly feeling invincible in outsmarting the law and those, like Sheriff Brodie, who enforce it he was due to overreach himself. It was that one mistake on Donnelly's part that put and end to him and his five year reign of terror in the community of China Lake.
There's no mystery in who the killer is since we see him-Officer Donnelly-in action within the first ten minutes of the movie. Donnelly impersonates a local traffic or highway cop who stops motorists in the unfriendly Mojave Desert on made up charges, like being drunk or not observing road signs, and ends up murdering them. Donnelly mostly does this by handcuffing and then locking his unsuspecting victims in their car trunk where they slowly suffocate to death in the scorching desert heat.
On this his fifth vacation to China Lake Donnelly really goes all out trying to break his previous record in not only murdering a record number of victims but also includes one of the local police Robert Wade, Doug Mears, among them. It's Wade's boss and good friend Sheriff Sam Brodie, Tom Skeritt, who at first befriended Donnelly as a fellow police officer who finally realized what a dangerous person he was and tried to stop him before he caused any more damage. Something that Brodie knew he'll have his hands full in trying to prevent!
What's so unusual about this cop killer, with the cop doing the killing, is that the deranged Officer Donnelly shows no real intentions of wiping out the criminal scum of society, like a Dirty Harry Callahan, with all of his victims being innocent and law abiding citizens. In fact it's in obeying Donnelly's ridiculous and unlawful orders, just because he wears a police uniform, that ends up costing them their lives!
***SPOILERS*** Not that good in explaining the criminal psychology that drives the psycho cop Officer Donnelly to do the horrible things that he does in the film "The China Lake Murders" nevertheless keeps its audience on the edge of their seats as they wait for the next shoe, or victim, to drop. We never know just what's going on in Donnelly's, who always seems to be grinning, very disturbed mind since he comes across as if he's under some kind of hypnotic spell that drives to commit his slew of crimes in the movie. Even Sheriff Brodie is completely mystified in Donnelly's strange behavior only knowing that someone like him is the reason people for the most part don't trust cops! Which makes it just that much harder, like in a number of incidents in the film, for him to do his job.
The movie's ending is a bit contrived in the street or highway smart Donnelly acting like a first class jerk by falling into an obvious trap that Sheriff Brodie set for him. But by then with Donnelly feeling invincible in outsmarting the law and those, like Sheriff Brodie, who enforce it he was due to overreach himself. It was that one mistake on Donnelly's part that put and end to him and his five year reign of terror in the community of China Lake.