Philip Casnoff is one of many pawns in Susan Lucci’s game.

All My Children legend Susan Lucci’s long and not-so-illustrious career in TV movies (dating back to 1984’s Invitation to Hell, which we’ll get to eventually) was running on fumes by the Miracle at Christmas: Ebbie’s Story era of the mid-’90s. Its last gasp (to date — you know how soap actors love to reanimate the dead) came in 1998 with Blood on Her Hands, the perfunctory tale of a seductive schemer who leaves a trail of ruined men in her wake.

Unlike her character in 1991’s The Woman Who Sinned, Lucci’s Isabelle Collins is not a reluctant adulteress. She embraces the role with gusto, expertly fanning her cuckolded husband’s suspicions and taunting him with thinly veiled banter she knows will provoke a reaction. Stewart (John O’Hurley), an ill-tempered venture capitalist whose hobbies include golf and domestic violence, is happy to comply. A typical nasty exchange goes like this:

Stewart: Married people tell each other about their days. […] I could grill you on what stores you went to. I could demand that you show me what you bought. I could make you show me the receipts. Where were you?

Isabelle: I was at Bloomingdale’s for shoes, Neiman Marcus for perfume, and Bergdorf’s for a dozen sailors who made love to me all afternoon.

[Stewart backhands her]

Isabelle: You always liked it rough, didn’t you?

Blood on her hands (1998)
Susan Lucci and John O’Hurley in Blood on Her Hands.

Stewart’s instincts are right: Isabelle’s been indiscreetly cavorting with debonair Richard Davis (Philip Casnoff) for months. Richard, a Navy veteran turned yacht broker who still nurses simmering class resentments, is predisposed to hate Stewart even before a determined Isabelle bruises her own neck—indirectly blaming the marks on her husband—to set a murderous plot into motion. “He’s too powerful, he’s too connected,” she replies when Richard suggests leaving him. That leaves them with few alternatives.

After her brake line is cut, causing a minor accident, Richard searches for a hitman the way some of us cast around Nextdoor for plumber recommendations. His search yields the dimwitted Doggett (a bizarrely unconvincing Nicholas Campbell), a hardened career criminal who summarily dispatches of Stewart. Isabelle and Richard, shameless even by the standards of made-for-TV movies, start a new life together before his corpse is cold, in plain view of curious investigators.

Philip Casnoff is in over his head in Blood on Her Hands.

Was any thought whatsoever put into any of this? Screenwriter Steve Johnson works from a punch list of rote developments, including Isabelle’s race to the sack with Richard’s sleazy defense attorney (Kamar de los Reyes). Steven Robman, primarily a director of episodic television, shows some life when Isabelle’s at her most conniving but drops the ball when it comes to her backstory, including a traumatic childhood that left her (like Cheryl Ladd in Vows of Deception), with pathological control issues.

What confused me the most (even more than this tawdry tale being set in Ohio) was the timeline of Isabelle’s marriage. She cited fear of a custody battle as one of her reasons for not leaving Stewart, and their daughter seemed to be in late elementary or early middle school. Lucci was obviously in her early fifties and we can assume Isabelle wasn’t much younger. Are we to believe this woman, presented as the ultimate black widow, is new to this? It’s rare to celebrate one’s AARP eligibility by going on such a sophisticated crime spree.

Sex and murder trials, two staples of Susan Lucci telefilms.

Had more effort gone into the screenplay, this might have been a fitting final TV movie for Lucci. There are hints of froth and frivolity beneath all the violence, murder and intergenerational trauma. But Isabelle’s sordid machinations are frustratingly hampered by lack of context or character development, a familiar problem that plagued most of Lucci’s extracurricular work.

Streaming and DVD availability

Blood on Her Hands is currently out-of-print on DVD. You can stream it for free (with ads) on several platforms, including IMDb TV and Tubi. And, if you’re looking for something else starring Lucci, several of her films are available for streaming, several at no cost, through Amazon.

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.

… But wait, there’s more!

I’d be remiss not to take this opportunity to point out that Casnoff appeared on a very special episode of The Nanny, one that also featured Burt Bacharach.

In “The Cantor Show” (S3E24), Fran Fine raises her mother Sylvia’s hopes by dating their temple’s dreamy cantor, played by Casnoff. Things go awry when she introduces him to Bacharach, who is being courted by C.C. and Mr. Sheffield. My dog and I used to watch The Nanny shortly before her bedtime (it’s a long story) and for whatever stupid reason I particularly enjoyed this episode.