Filmed on location in Milwaukee and Southern California by Trinity Pictures Inc. and Hallmark Entertainment. Producer, Julie Corman; director, Terence H. Winkless; writer, D.K. Hadley; based on the book "The Westing Game" by Ellen Raskin.
Ray Walston, Ashley Peldon, Diane Ladd, Sally Kirkland, Cliff DeYoung, Sandy Faison, June Christopher, Lewis Arquette, Diana Nadeau, Billy Morrissette, Shane West, Jim Lau, Ernest Liu, Wilson Davis, Terence Henry, Father Bob Curtis, Catherine Corman.
Scenarist D.K. Hadley has turned Ellen Raskin's prize-winning children's mystery into an intricate, complex romp whose outre characters and labyrinthine plot could use polishing. Directed loosely by Terence H. Winkless under the Showtime Original Pictures for Kids banner, "The Westing Game" will delight susceptible teenagers with its amiable look at murder.
Turtle Wexler (Ashley Peldon), 13, has moved with her parents (Sandy Faison, Cliff DeYoung) and her older sister Angela (Diana Nadeau) into the Sunset Towers, where everyone seems to be associated with one another. Turtle is dared to enter a haunted house alone and, in good haunt-haunt scenes worked up by designer Stuart Blatt and with appropriate music by Parmer Fuller merged with effective sound effects, Turtle turns up the corpse of millionaire Sam Westing (Ray Walston).
Other tenants of Sunset Towers are invited to the reading of the will of Westing, who, farfetchedly, has connections with all of them. The will promises $20 million to the one who nails the murderer, who's supposed to be among them.
The will also requires that everyone pair up with a partner to work on fuzzy sets of clues leading to the killer: It's the Westing Game. For $20 mil, it beats Parcheesi.
The less-than-shy Turtle, not above kicking shins (a lukewarm plot device), narrates and leads the game. Her encounters are sometimes bizarre, occasionally amusing. Peldon plays the youthful detective with unbecoming brashness, as the role demands, and her encounters are sometimes bizarre, occasionally amusing, sometimes blah.
Among Turtle's companions are keen-witted Diane Ladd as a cleaning woman with a past; exuberant Sally Kirkland, an over-the-top ex-secretary with a Pekinese; determined DeYoung as Turtle's loving, busy-busy dad with his own problems; dedicated Shane West playing a speech-impaired computer whiz.
And Walston, who appears in several guises and knows what he's doing.
The puzzler displays some effects that just don't work, such as an upward shot of Turtle carrying a passkey and a suspenseless reading of the will. Several secondary actors don't measure up to standards, as producer Julie Corman, who cast the telefilm, might have suspected.
Tech credits are acceptable. But program's a satisfactory kid-pleaser; and after all, that's its purpose.
camera, Kurt Brabbee; editor, Jim Makiej; production designer, Stuart Blatt; sound, Itamar Ben Jacob; music, Parmer Fuller; casting, Julie Corman.
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