Cranky Lesbian

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Category: TV Movies Page 9 of 13

Celebrating A Smoky Mountain (Lesbian) Christmas

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On July 25, 2022

In TV Movies

Dolly Parton’s Smoky Mountain wig is a precious gift to viewers.

“A film that defies both description and sobriety, you either understand its brilliance or you don’t—it’s the El Topo of made-for-TV movies.” That’s how I described A Smoky Mountain Christmas when Bo Hopkins died earlier this year. But I left out another, more controversial opinion: It’s also a psychosexual lesbian Christmas drama for the whole family.

The peanut butter to Kenny Rogers’ Six Pack jelly, this Henry Winkler-directed 1986 made-for-TV musical holiday fantasy begins with Parton’s voice-over narration. “Once upon a time, and not too long ago, a princess lived in a beautiful castle, built upon a grassy green hill. People thought she had everything. They envied her talent, her fame and fortune—and her special relationship with longtime gal pal Judy Ogle. And they said her spirit could light up the darkest corners of any heart.”

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Goddess of Love: I’d Like to Buy a Plot

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On July 18, 2022

In TV Movies

Vanna White’s hair was later dyed and worn by Billy Ray Cyrus.

Only a decade rooted in such material excess as the ’80s, and fueled by as much cocaine, could have given us something like Goddess of Love. How this gem escaped my attention over the years is anyone’s guess. But when Lisa, a commenter here, mentioned it, all it took was one look at the trailer and I knew I had to watch it. Now, having done so, I encourage all true fans of garbage to do the same.

This 1988 NBC telefilm opens with a title card reading “Mt. Olympus… Ages Ago.” A chagrined Zeus (John Rhys-Davies) attempts to discipline his daughter, Aphrodite (Vanna White), as wife Hera (Betsy ‘Mrs. Voorhees’ Palmer) looks on. It’s a familiar situation, you can tell, for all three of them. Before he can list her offenses, Aphrodite interrupts to chide her father for not using her preferred name, Venus.

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Killer Bees (1974): Gloria Swanson is Big, It’s the Killer Bees That Got Small

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On July 14, 2022

In TV Movies

Gloria Swanson’s the queen in Killer Bees.

The killer bee genre is a crowded one, with films like The Swarm (1978, starring Michael Caine in his “Sure, whatever, pay me in cash” phase); 1995’s Deadly Invasion: The Killer Bee Nightmare; and, perhaps most famously, My Girl (1991). I could go on and on. What makes this killer bee telefilm, creatively titled Killer Bees, so special, is its cast. Forget Kate Jackson and Lillian Gish, a memorable pairing in Thin Ice (1981). Here we have Kate Jackson and Gloria Swanson.

It opens with a pushy salesman pulling up to a filling station. The attendant (John Getz of Blood Simple) warns him not to trespass onto the neighboring Van Bohlen Winery property, but he does so anyway, and is summarily killed by bees. Forgive me, I’m being flippant. Technically, a swarm follows him into his car (it would’ve been funny if they had voice boxes like Richard Romanus in Night Terror), resulting in a crash and an enormous explosion. “I told him. I told the darn fool,” the gas station attendant mutters. Must happen all the time.

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Courtney Thorne-Smith is a Murderous Dairy Princess in Midwest Obsession

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On July 11, 2022

In TV Movies

We’re not watching outtakes from Drop Dead Gorgeous. This is all Midwest Obsession.

Try as the actors might, the only authentic performances in Midwest Obsession (1995) are those of its farm animals. That is the fault of the screenplay primarily, but I also blame the director, the producers, and possibly even society. (Were viewers not the ones demanding an endless supply of grisly movies-of-the-week during this era?) It must have been demoralizing heading to the set each day, trying to will a story this grim into existence.

We begin with a murder in a parking lot. The editing is abrupt and unsatisfying, leaving you less frightened than confused. The lighting doesn’t help; several scenes are too dark to fully keep track of what’s happening. It’s a problem that intensifies as the story unfolds. When our murderess loses control of herself, as happens now and then, the distorted shots and frenetic cuts are more suggestive of a Soundgarden music video than a movie. (The film’s fashions also aged poorly, which some of you might enjoy. If you’re in that camp, check out Gabrielle Carteris in Seduced and Betrayed, also from ’95.)

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Cheryl Ladd’s Oddball Dancing with Danger

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On June 30, 2022

In TV Movies

Saving the last dance for Cheryl Ladd is a dangerous proposition.

How or why Dancing with Danger was made is a mystery lost to time, but the answer might be found in its love scene. Before we get to that, let’s reacquaint ourselves with this 1994 USA Network telefilm. Cheryl Ladd stars as taxi dancer Mary Dannon, whose various disguises (all-black ensembles, berets, large sunglasses) counterproductively raise her profile.

Mary is already as conspicuous as any Guess Who? character in the opening scene, when she witnesses a street slaying in Atlantic City. She then moves cross-country to the Pacific Northwest, where trouble follows. She lands a job at the Star Brite, punching a time card before and after each dance. Her profession, popular in the ’20s and ’30s, was moribund by the ’50s and ’60s. Virtually no taxi dancers existed in the US by the ’90s, but this isn’t a movie concerned with realism.

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Danger Calls for Lynda Carter in Hotline (1982)

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On June 21, 2022

In TV Movies

There’s a killer on the line in Hotline.

If you’ve ever wanted to see Lynda Carter wear a trucker hat, operate a microform reader, or wield a harpoon as she takes down a deranged serial killer, have I got a movie for you. Hotline premiered on CBS in 1982, and, unlike other made-for-TV fare of the same vintage (see: 1981’s No Place to Hide), it backs up its suspense with some genuine scares.

Carter plays Brianne O’Neill, an art student and part-time bartender at a country-and-western watering hole. Widowed when her Navy pilot husband died in an accident—fortunately, there are no Thin Ice shenanigans afoot—she attracts unwanted attention wherever she goes, and particularly at work. “Watch out, Bri,” a waitress cautions at the start of her latest shift. “I think there’s a full moon out tonight. The fanny-grabbers are out in force.”

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Stalked by My Doctor Violates HIPAA, Good Taste

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On June 17, 2022

In TV Movies

The doctor is in(sane) in Stalked by My Doctor.

Written by a bot, directed by a Pomeranian recovering from dental surgery, and starring Eric Roberts (supported by a cast plucked at random from a Target parking lot), Stalked by My Doctor has no reason to exist. Since premiering in 2015, it has spawned 78 sequels, because something must fill the void in our hearts left by the conclusion of Syfy’s Sharknado saga. Recently, when curiosity about this morbid, unrepentantly tacky franchise finally got the better of me, I went to Amazon to see what I was missing.

Before pressing “play,” I invited my wife, Dr. Crankenstein, to share in this special viewing experience. (As previously reported, that was a terrible mistake. I’m now obliged to watch its sequels.) She personally knows a physician who was stalked by a patient, but no patients stalked by doctors. Of this premise, Crankenstein somberly remarked, “That’s not just a violation of the Hippocratic Oath, it’s also a violation of HIPAA.”

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A Mother’s Homophobia in The Truth About Jane

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On May 8, 2022

In TV Movies

Stockard Channing rejects her daughter in The Truth About Jane.

Being a gay teenager wasn’t particularly easy in 2000—ask me how I know! When Lifetime decided to examine the subject (two years after Jean Smart’s husband tumbled out of the closet in Change of Heart), it was appointment viewing for me. At the time, it felt underwhelming. It was a “message” movie and the conflicts were so easily, if imperfectly, resolved. At my house, it took much longer than 87 minutes for the arctic chill between a lesbian high school student and her conservative parents to thaw.

Revisiting The Truth About Jane as an adult perilously close to middle age, how differently would I feel? It turned out I liked it quite a bit more. Distance had dulled all the edges that were too sharp back then. I appreciated the clarity, and simplicity, with which writer-director Lee Rose captured what it was like to come out as a kid in the late ’90s/early aughts. And the homophobia of Stockard Channing’s character was much funnier to me than it had been back then, for reasons we’ll get to later.

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My Mother’s Secret Life … as an Escort

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On May 6, 2022

In TV Movies

Loni Anderson (un)dresses for success in My Mother’s Secret Life.

The big daughter-seeks-birth-mom TV event that everyone remembers from 1984 is, of course, the miniseries Lace. History has unfairly forgotten My Mother’s Secret Life, and I’ll be pleased if I can get even one person to revisit it. It’s an engaging (and unintentionally funny) telefilm that is perhaps best described as “Loni Anderson’s Charlene moment.” I encourage everyone to get in the mood right now by listening to the song of which I speak.

Now that we’ve taken the hand of a preacher man and made love in the sun, I think we can continue. My Mother’s Secret Life opens with Anderson’s Ellen Blake draped in about 30 lbs of designer clothes and furs. It’s all soon to be removed with artful precision in a demanding john’s penthouse suite. “I’m the buyer here,” he tells her aggressively. “I want to know what I’m buying. You do come at a premium rate.”

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Elizabeth Montgomery’s Sins of the Mother

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On May 4, 2022

In TV Movies

Elizabeth Montgomery raises a toast to an appalling lack of boundaries in Sins of the Mother.

If ever a film review deserved the headline “Bebitched,” it is Elizabeth Montgomery’s Sins of the Mother (1991). Adapted from Jack Olsen’s true crime novel Son: A Psychopath and His Victims, Sins does for motherhood what Montgomery’s The Legend of Lizzie Borden (1975) did for daughters.

Wooing her son one minute, tearing him to shreds the next, her Ruth Coe has the colorful vocabulary of Moira Rose; the histrionic tendencies of Rose and Lucille Bluth; and enough sinister Cluster B features to fuel an HBO limited series. On a cinematic scale of mother-son immorality, ranging from Psycho to Savage Grace to Ma Mère, Ruth’s relationship with son Kevin (Dale Midkiff of Back to You and Me) is mercifully mild. They are, in some ways, a more respectable version of con artists Lilly and Roy from The Grifters.

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