CABLE TV REVIEW : A Walk on the Dead Side in a Flawed ‘Gotham’

You’re tending bar alone in the quiet, tag-end of night, when your last customer, haggard and rumpled, leans toward you in the dim light and asks, “You ever find yourself walking down a dark street and you think you hear footsteps . . .? “

Send the kids to bed. Those footsteps are spike heels on pavement and that’s no ordinary ghost in Showtime’s “Gotham,” an adult horror feature that premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. on that pay cable service.

The bad news is that not even a good cast can save this fitful two hours, more remarkable for unintended silliness than shivers.

Written and directed by Lloyd Fonvielle (he wrote “The Bride”), “Gotham” is an ‘80s version of the tough-guy detective movies of the ‘40s and ‘50s, with a supernatural twist. The look is alternately seamy and stark; a gritty backdrop for the luminescent beauty of Virginia Madsen, who plays a gorgeous succubus in high-fashion ensembles and bare skin.

Tommy Lee Jones, beetle-browed, baggy-eyed and bearing a strong resemblance to Richard Nixon, is down-and-out gumshoe Eddie. He’s approached by morally bankrupt, financially rich Charlie (Colin Bruce) with a tall tale about being haunted by his dead wife Rachel (Madsen).

It seems Rachel objects to her husband digging up her body to steal her jewels. Charlie wants her to leave him alone.

Eddie, skeptical but broke, takes the case and suddenly falls victim to a hellish sexual obsession.

What viewers fall victim to is a flawed vision. Suspense fizzles into steamy homage to Madsen’s beauty, clad and unclad; New York City locales are unbelievably underpopulated; a street bum sings “Danny Boy”--all of it--and Madsen’s exquisite lips are either framing romance novel banalities or a favorite obscenity. A dream visit by Eddie’s dead grandfather is a gratuitous little filler.

The pat resolution is prompted by a Russian Orthodox priest (Frederic Forrest in an unenviable cameo) imparting park-bench wisdom on the ways of the undead.