Mike Hammer: Murder Takes All

Mike Hammer is asked to Las Vegas by an entertainer named Johnny Roman, and when he refuses, he is abducted and parachuted into the town. Hammer thinks it was Johnny who shanghaied him there, but Johnny denies it. He explains that the reason he wants Hammer’s help is that the singer, Barbara Leguire, has stolen something from him.

While Hammer is a guest at the Hilton casino, he gets an anonymous request to meet a person at a wedding chapel who turns out to be a wealthy socialite named Helen Durant. Then Johnny dies in an explosive booby trap and somebody plants evidence that points to Hammer. He sets out to try and clear his name after Barbara, too, gets killed and he is again the suspect. While investigating, Hammer chases an unknown criminal who falls from the ceiling with him at the hotel's casino, landing on a craps table. The hospitalised Hammer meets a medical doctor named Carl Durant who asks him about Johnny's death and who had bailed him out of jail. The answer turns out to be his wife, Helen, who met Hammer at the wedding chapel earlier.

Hammer discharges himself from hospital and, while searching for clues, he meets Amy Durant and Carl's accountant, Brad Peters. Hammer turns off the Hilton's security cameras so as to gain entrance to the control room, but the guards arrest him and send him to the security officer supervisor, Leora Van Treas, who reveals to him that his attacker was William Bundy. After Hammer leaves Leora's office, Brad sets up a trip for Mike to Bundy's ranch, Rosy Buttes. After a fight with Bundy, Hammer is abandoned in the desert alone and is rescued by a biker. When Hammer returns with Brad to Bundy's ranch, they find Bundy murdered and have to flee from the policemen who came to investigate.

They soon find a prospector's cabin and call Amy to get them back to downtown Las Vegas in her car. Amy later tells Mike that Johnny Roman was her biological father, though Carl was the man who raised her. Hammer finds out that Helen lied to him about the true identification of Amy's father, so he seeks for Helen at Carl's clinic. There, Helen explains about Johnny taking advantage of her when she was a young chorus girl, but says that she married Carl during her pregnancy. Now she has to buy back Johnny's diary, which has details in it of a later affair she had with him. She has to avoid the damage a scandal would do to the children’s clinic at which she works. Hammer goes to collect the diary with a suitcase of money, but is ambushed by two riflemen from Carl's clinic, both of whom he shoots. After his return, Helen decides to hide out in her yacht and asks Hammer to come and guard her.

The next day, Carl and Brad arrive seeking an account book which Hammer had mixed up with Johnny's diary. Carl goes looking for Helen but is killed by a booby-trapped door that causes the entire yacht to explode. Hammer had saved himself by jumping overboard and, after he gets to the dock, realises that Helen is still alive when he sees a boat with her name on it. It now becomes clear that the account book and diary were false clues and that Johnny and Carl were stealing money from the telethon bid on which they were working prior to their deaths. Helen had instigated all the murders in revenge for her treatment.

After Hammer confronts Helen with her motives, she prepares to kill Hammer to prevent exposure, but ultimately attempts to commit suicide to avoid the consequences of her crimes. However, Hammer had removed the bullets from the gun earlier, and thus Helen is arrested. Her daughter Amy now has to face up to the fact that her real and supposed parents have been living a lie. Hammer tells her that she must rely on herself in the future and leaves the ransom money from Helen's case as a donation to the work of the defrauded charity clinic.

Reaction to the film has been largely indifferent. It goes unrated on Rotten Tomatoes[2] and Review Stream found it "too slow and crawling".[3] The reviewer there was also bored with Stacy Keach's performance while the Thrilling Detective website judged that "Keach's Hammer was all wrong. The cheesy mustache, the anachronistic fedora and the glib attitude made it all seem like some rather smug period piece".[4]

• Mike Hammer: Murder Takes All at IMDb