As average as it is for a TV movie, the one thing that I got from THE CHINA LAKE MURDERS was the underlying aspect that the director or producers were more interested in showing off cops in their uniforms and the whole fetishistic aspect of their uniforms and the policeman's mantra stemming from this than anything else. The story is VERY slight, and it really doesn't make much sense when you start thinking about it (why doesn't the bad cop kill the people he stops on the road before putting them in the trunks of their vehicles? Bad cop's killing pattern doesn't add up, etc) and there's very little suspense or point to all of it. So, that leaves only one original aspect of this well photographed flick: showing cops in uniforms; An off-duty bad cop who likes to kill people while wearing his uniform; Good cop befriending psycho cop at the drop of a hot; Dueling cops, etc. One only has to look at the video's slipcover box to notice the film's obsession with uniforms.
The whole relationship between Tom Skerritt and the bad cop is tinged with an underlying subtext : Skerritt befriends the bad cop pretty fast. He even invites him to his home (hmm...ok) ; bad cop is obsessed with Skerritt and he's impotent in bed with women. The relationship between the two men is hard to explain but I suspect that there's more than meets the eye and, subsequently, this relationship brings the whole cop fetish aspect even more to the fore. Whether it was done intentionally or not, I don't know (I suspect it was) but without it, THE CHINA LAKE MURDERS would be a totally forgettable TV flick.
