TV REVIEW : Voice of Mysterious DJ Leads to Suicides in ‘Night Owl’

It seems there’s a new female disc jockey in New York whose voice is especially seductive, even by sexy late-night jazz-radio standards. Her sonorous tones between songs are so seductive, in fact, that they positively possess the souls of sax-loving guys, who eventually are led to kill themselves in all sorts of unseemly ways.

Now, really, is that any way to keep your Arbitrons up?

“Night Owl” (at 9 tonight on Lifetime) has a premise awesomely silly even by supernatural TV-movie standards, which is saying a lot. You see, that’s not just any mysterious killer DJ spinning platters and driving obsessive guys to suicide. Rather, said voice is “the collective rage of all the unhappy women who’ve ever existed--bitter, scorned, having been defeated and abandoned by men. She’s female vengeance personified,” as explained by the movie’s resident expert on angry ancient goddesses.

“Can you really blame her?” the goddess expert adds in a boy-bashing, feminist grace note.

Hey! No fair! We’re calling in Warren Farrell here!

Jennifer Beals (“Flashdance”) stars as the estranged wife of a jazz cat, handsome James Wilder. The missus comes to realize her hubby’s in danger of being sucked in by the sexy voice of the unseen siren/succubus (though he’s in no danger of convincingly miming the ability to play the saxophone).

Once Beals realizes where the death toll among Kenny G fans and the mounting trouble in the bedroom are both stemming from, she marches down to the offending radio station. There she’s summarily informed that there is no such DJ as “the Night Owl”--a stonewall stemming no doubt from the station’s fears that if Infinity Broadcasting got such a heavy FCC fine just for putting Howard Stern on, there could be some serious liability here.

“Night Owl” is a hoot, all right, but better that its makers had taken their cue from Woodsy Owl and opted not to pollute.