The Podcast Macabre 2023 Horror Challenge
5/52
51. Sports related
Tubi

Baseball season is here! I thought now would be a good time to pop this on.

Roy Scheider plays a burned out Texas cop. Formerly a big shot Dallas detective, some incident got him sent down to the "minor leagues" of Galveston. Scheider's character, Mike Seaver (not to be confused with the kid from GROWING PAINS) is obsessed with the Astros, who are closing in on a pennant.

This makes me nostalgic for a good old-fashioned pennant race. As a lifelong Red Sox fan, I remember when the latest team news overwhelmed water cooler talk. When every goober with a phone would call up talk radio to pitch idiotic trade ideas. When fans would debate every single lineup spot and analyze every pitching move. I was a college student during the tragic 2003 season and the miraculous 2004 season, and we lived and breathed the Red Sox. It took years off my life, but it was worth it.

Baseball's popularity has fallen way down in recent years; I tuned in to my local sports radio station the morning of Opening Day, and they were discussing the Patriots offseason. Tickets were still available for the season opener at Fenway. You can blame this on Red Sox ownership being cheapskates and letting their stars walk, and MLB for making it harder and harder to actually watch games on TV.

NIGHT GAME has a lot to offer if you're a baseball geek like me. It's also a decent police procedural. And if you love the 80s, it's got that sexy 80s saxophone. This is one of those films that gets split among the "slasher" and "thriller" buckets and I'd lean more towards the latter. The kill count is pretty low and it's more about the investigation than the scares. Yet the actual mystery seems to get solved by a random eureka moment from Seaver.

The final showdown is a bit of a letdown and feels like they just ran out of juice at the end. Still, performances are strong and the atmosphere is great for a moody neo-noir. It's worth a watch if you like cop thrillers, and special bonus for the baseball flavor.