Cranky Lesbian

Look what the homosexuals have done to me!

Category: TV Movies Page 10 of 13

Please Don’t Hit Me, Mom Spotlights Abuse

By

On May 2, 2022

In TV Movies

Patty Duke and son Sean Astin costar in Please Don’t Hit Me, Mom

TV movie titans collide in Please Don’t Hit Me, Mom (1981), an Afterschool Special starring Patty Duke and Nancy McKeon. It begins in the typical style of such films, with McKeon’s Nancy Parks comically flying over the handlebars of her bicycle. Sprawled on the ground, she’s introduced to brothers Mike and Brian Reynolds (Lance Guest and Sean Astin). In the rare meet cute that intersects with child abuse, Nancy and Mike learn they’re new neighbors and will attend the same high school.

While the teenagers make eyes at each other, Barbara Reynolds (Patty Duke) angrily drags the younger Brian inside. The camera rests on the home’s exterior as she yells at him. We feel unsettled, a condition that extends to Nancy’s conversation with BFF Judy (Deena Freeman) about prom wear. “I blew my clothes allowance this month on a fantastic sweater,” Nancy admits. “So what do I wear to the prom?” She envisions unaffordable designer jeans.

Read More

Dennis Weaver’s Angst in Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction

By

On April 27, 2022

In TV Movies

Dennis Weaver in Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction.

There are endless ways to confront the pedestrian stressors and ennui many of us face as we hurtle toward middle age. Sports cars and extramarital affairs are usually the self-treatments of choice for forty-something family men in TV movies (rarer breeds make dirty phone calls), but Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction entices us with a hit of something different. In this 1983 offering that plays like an Afterschool Special for quadragenarians, Dennis Weaver escapes his professional and familial pressures by sniffin’ the devil’s dandruff.

Read More

Barbara Mandrell Fights a Coal Mining Crisis in Burning Rage

By

On April 25, 2022

In TV Movies

Barbara Mandrell struggles to save a small town from mine fires (and itself) in Burning Rage.

The most depressing thing about Burning Rage, Barbara Mandrell’s dramatic debut, is how contemporary it feels. In this 1984 telefilm, stubborn Americans would rather jeopardize their own safety, and that of their families, than listen to government scientists. There’s even a scene in which menacing goons try to prevent a scientist from conducting important research. They slink off when told, “Now if you have any problems with that you best take it up with the federal government!” These days, such an invitation might elicit a very different response.

Read More

Delta Burke Goes Mommie Fearest in Maternal Instincts

By

On April 15, 2022

In TV Movies

Maternal Instincts screen cap of Delta Burke in a psychiatric ward cell
Delta Burke in Maternal Instincts

As Delta Burke’s Maternal Instincts, a USA Network howler that premiered in 1996, reminds us, some women would die to be mothers—and others would kill for the same privilege. Her Tracy Patterson, an infertile former realtor whose biological clock could explode at any moment, technically belongs to both categories.

Dr. Eve Warden (Beth Broderick), a fertility specialist, cautions Tracy and her husband, Stan (Tom Mason), to be realistic. “Even if all goes well, there’s only a small percentage of success.” Tracy’s sure she’ll be part of that exclusive, odds-defying club, and has already purchased an antique cradle and selected a name for her daughter. Stan, who spoils his wife but can’t give her the one thing she wants the most, isn’t as sure.

Read More

Confessions of a Go-Go Girl Merits Hefty Penance

By

On April 13, 2022

In TV Movies

Chelsea Hobbs stars in Lifetime’s Confessions of a Go-Go Girl

The only thing you absolutely need to know about Confessions of a Go-Go Girl, a 2008 Lifetime movie, is “fresh cutlets.” When the titular character’s debut dance at an upscale gentlemen’s club is unwittingly crashed by her father, brother and boyfriend (shades of The Ultimate Lie), her dad tersely tells her this: “I have brought clients here before! Do you know what they call the new girls? Fresh cutlets.” You’ll never glance at another supermarket circular without remembering that moment.

When I first stumbled upon this title on the official Lifetime YouTube channel, I assumed it was a Jane Wiedlin or Belinda Carlisle biopic. A cursory investigation revealed that it was, in fact, about a go-go dancer. Jane McCoy (Chelsea Hobbs), a recent college grad, has caught the acting bug. Her prim and proper parents are aghast to learn she’s scrapped her law school school plans in favor of an acting program.

Read More

The Secret Night Caller: Psst—Mike Brady’s a Perv!

By

On April 11, 2022

In TV Movies

Robert Reed looks sinister in his car in an image from The Secret Night Caller.
Robert Reed plays a family man with a shameful compulsion.

The Secret Night Caller begins atmospherically enough. A woman walks home alone at night, carrying a grocery bag. She picks up the pace when passing a creepy man who smiles at her and then seems to follow her into the building. Inside her apartment, she locks the door with a sigh of relief—and, seconds later, the phone rings.

Before there was Scream‘s iconic opening scene, in which a mystery caller terrorizes Drew Barrymore’s character, there was this, in a 1975 made-for-TV movie. The woman picks up the receiver and is greeted by that scourge of the pre-caller ID era, the obscene caller. We only hear her side of the conversation: “Hello? Oh, yes, this is Charlotte, who’s this? Well, I’m fine, thank you, but who’s this? I’m sorry, could you speak louder? I can’t hear you.”

Arlene Golonka and Robert Reed in scenes from The Secret Night Caller.

Charlotte (Arlene Golonka, of The Andy Griffith Show and Mayberry R.F.D.) grows dismayed, then hysterical. “What?! What did you say?! Hey! Hey, who is this? Who are you? No, stop that! Don’t talk like that! Oh, stop it, stop it!” she shrieks, dropping the phone. That’s how my wife typically reacts to fundraising calls from her alma mater, so it didn’t alarm me too much, but Charlotte’s fright is meant to be contagious.

Read More

In Thin Ice, Kate Jackson Romances Her Student

By

On April 8, 2022

In TV Movies

Screenshot of Gerard Prendergast and Kate Jackson in Thin Ice.
There’s probably more than one flagpole in this scene from Thin Ice.

Oh, the unexpected treasures that abound in Thin Ice, a strange little teacher-student romance that walked so A Night in Heaven (1983) could gyrate run. In this 1981 made-for-TV oddity you’ll look on, aghast, as Lillian Gish encourages her granddaughter, a high school teacher and Charlie’s Butchest Angel, to sleep with one of her students. You’ll stare in disbelief as a dead cat is placed on somebody’s doorstep, wearing a tiny bespoke noose. By the end, you’ll have no idea why anyone thought this was a good idea, but you may want to watch it again.

Read More

In the Arms of a Killer: Jaclyn Smith’s Absurd Detective Film

By

On April 6, 2022

In TV Movies

Jaclyn Smith solves a series of murders in In the Arms of a Killer.

Knowing as we do that Jaclyn Smith’s hair has been solving crimes since the mid-1970s, it was mildly surprising to see her as a rookie detective in 1992’s In the Arms of a Killer. Smith’s Maria Quinn looks close to 50 and exudes a soft-focus sophistication that puts her at odds with Vincent Cusack, her flashily besuited, cigar-chomping new partner. Cusack, a gruff motormouth played with panache by John Spencer, is immediately suspicious.

After confirming his hunch that she’s from a privileged background, he cuts to the chase: “Nobody gives anybody anything. What’s your juice, Quinn?” She answers, “I was married to a cop who was killed on the job. The brass gives me anything I want.” It’s one of our first indications we aren’t in for gritty realism, despite the film’s Sidney Lumet aspirations.

Read More

Angie Dickinson Wields a Badge (Again) in Prime Target

By

On April 4, 2022

In TV Movies

Angie Dickinson shoots to kill in Prime Target.

Eleven years after Angie Dickinson last nabbed a perp as Sgt. Pepper Anderson on Police Woman, she was back in the hunt in Prime Target (1989). This made-for-TV movie reunites her with Police Woman creator Robert L. Collins, who writes and directs. As veteran NYPD Sgt. Kelly Mulcahaney, she’s both predator and prey while investigating crooked cops who’ve been murdering women on the force, and Dickinson seems uncharacteristically peeved.

“So, why am I heading this task force?” she asks after being handed the assignment by Commissioner Peter Armetage (David Soul, who looks amusingly louche behind his giant desk). “Because you’re one of the highest-ranking female homicide detectives we’ve got,” he answers. “Because you’re on the women’s committee. Because I requested you, personally.” They have a history, of course, and that’s where the hardboiled dialogue begins:

Kelly: You know what they’re gonna say about this. About us. Again.

Peter: Kelly, Kelly, Kelly. My friend.

Kelly: Not anymore, I’m not.

Peter: How’s Judge What’s-His-Name?

Kelly: How’s your wife?

Peter: God, you’re tough. Why are you so tough, huh?

PRime target (1989)

On her way out she tells him, “Oh, and by the way, happy birthday, Peter. I’d have brought you a present except” — she shrugs — “what do you give someone who’s had everybody?” We trust that Kelly’s formidable, but Dickinson appears bored in another of her tough-broad-in-a-man’s-world roles. She dutifully pauses after each barb lands, her mind possibly wandering to that night’s dinner plans.

Read More

Jean Smart Hunts a Madman in Killer Instinct

By

On February 25, 2022

In TV Movies

Killer Instinct screen shot
Jean Smart nabs a perp in Killer Instinct

The powers of perception that eluded Jean Smart in Change of Heart — in which she was stunned to learn her husband was gay — are on full display in Killer Instinct, another Lifetime movie. Here she plays Candice ‘Candy’ DeLong, the FBI’s first female profiler. We’re reminded, often and somewhat aggressively, of her occupation, which is good for some early laughs.

Nabbing a child abuser in an opening scene, she identifies her agency as “The F.B. friggin’ I.” When the unrepentant perp calls her a pig, she replies “That’s Miss Federal Pig to you!” Smart sports a soft butch hairdo, erratically styled so she resembles a soccer mom in one scene and a victim of accidental electrocution in the next. A white tank, black leather jacket and shades complete the look, establishing DeLong as an anti-Charlene Frazier.

Read More

Page 10 of 13

Previous

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén