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Death in Shadows (1985)

De Prooi


Cast:

Maayke Bouten is Valerie Jaspers
Erik de Vries is Paul
Johan Leysen is Mellema
Marlous Fluitsma is Ria de Jong
Wim Bary is Van Maurik


What the IMDBsays:

18-year old Valerie and her mother Trudy live together in rural Oostdijk, a quiet little village near Amsterdam. When Trudy comes home one night, she gets run over by a car. Dead. The autopsy reveals she has never bore a child. Soon after more strange facts are beginning to turn up. While police inspector Mellema hunts down the car driver, Valerie starts searching for her real parents, both leading to the same sad truth.


Plot:

Trudy is waiting at a bus stop until she's being trailed by a car that runs her over. Cut to a teen couple playing Space Invaders. Later, the police take Valerie to her mom who was taken to the hospital to be IDed. The next day, Valerie is shocked during semester finals when the police question her and reveal that the autopsy indicates Trudy couldn't have been her mother.

Valerie starts looking for everything about her mother at the house and finds an address for a garage and goes to meet Mr. Garrison who refuses to talk with her. The detective questions her and reveals that Trudy was never married and not got a pension.

After the funeral, Valerie talks with the attorney who tries talking her out of looking for her real parents. Afterwards, she is almost run over by a car like Trudy.

The detective has the idea that Valerie's mom had a brother and is now wanting to eliminate her for some unknown reason.

Valerie is wandering around the city and spots her neighborhood friend in the adult entertainment part of town.

A while later, she looks at some photos and gets the idea to search a cemetery to find her parents. She talks with a priest who mentions Trudy's brother, Hugo. She goes to find him and learns that Hugo left and married a rich lady. Hugo came back to Trudy with Valerie as a baby. He left to do something else.

The detective and Valerie go to the garage and find Hugo murdered.

Back at home that night, Valerie realizes some is in the house. Trying to hide away, she electrocutes the killer.

The next day, the detective reveals to Valerie that Trudy's brother spent all her money. Valerie rides off to bicycle on tour...


What I say:

Most b-movies are sci-fi, horror, action. Well, the early 1980s started a new grimy noir-thrillers like Hardcore and Body Double. For anything that is on a 50 movie DVD set, this isn't a movie you'd want to search down but at least it isn't one of those truly horrific movies on the 50 movie DVD collections. This is the kind of movie that now sounds like disposable plot from any generic episode of C.S.I.. Well, Death in the Shadows also has the Scooby Doo ending.

After Valerie's mom is run over in Death Race 2000 or taken by Ambulance and Cars that Eat Paris, Valerie starts trying to solve her murdered mother only to learn that every clue is making it even harder to solve. The detective side does seem like from the commonly used B-movie side.



2 NINJAS

Quotable Dialogue

"I bet busses are always late."
"It was hit and ran..."
"Now beat it! You're wasting my time..."


Morals of the Story

Teenage couples love playing video games.
Polka music is truly funky music.
Most people have maps of graveyards.


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