Charlie’s Angels disbanded long before 1992, but that year found two of the Townsend Agency’s finest still solving murders in TV movies: Jaclyn Smith in In the Arms of a Killer, a police procedural that wanted to be more hardboiled than it was, and Farrah Fawcett in Criminal Behavior. The superior performance and film belong to Fawcett, whose breezy mystery is as edgy as it is convoluted.
In a rueful opening voiceover, her Jessie Lee Stubbs divulges “I was nine years old when I began to hope criminal behavior didn’t run in the family genes.” (Raquel Welch later tackled the same subject in a rather more salacious manner in Tainted Blood.) Born to a stickup artist father and madam mother, and raised alongside a drug-dealing brother, Jessie works as a public defender, a position that nurtures her bone-deep distrust of the police.
She knows a patsy when she sees one, and in her latest assignment, the representation of Ella Barker (Nada Despotovich), there are indicators galore that the simpleminded nurse is caught up in someone else’s game. Barker was arrested for attempting to pawn a piece of jewelry that was traced to a recent murder; she was given the loot by her mysterious so-called boyfriend, Larry Gaines (Morgan Stevens), who is possibly gay and definitely a criminal.
With Larry on the lam and the corpses of his associates piling up, Stubbs crosses paths with Det. Pike Grenada (A Martinez) more than she’d like. “You take your work seriously, don’t you?” he asks after watching her mete out a little street justice to a deadbeat dad who has money for flashy watches but not court-ordered child support payments. That flattery gets him nowhere with her (“More seriously than cops do,” she derisively replies) only strengthens his resolve to win her over.
Screenwriter Wendell Mayes (of Anatomy of a Murder, The Poseidon Adventure and Death Wish, among others) struggles to condense this adaptation of a Ross Macdonald novel; the sprawling story would’ve been better suited to a miniseries. As chock-full of colorful characters as Jessie’s glove box is unpaid parking tickets, Criminal Behavior boasts an impressive number of memorable performances, including those of Despotovich, Dakin Matthews as a wealthy mark, and James Gammon as Stubbs’ incarcerated father. But there’s a longer list of ancillary characters, equally important to the plot, whose appearances are too fleeting to make an impression.
Director Michael Miller got his start with Street Girls (1975) and spent the early ’90s churning out Danielle Steel telefilms. There’s a hint of such preoccupations in a weird, brief fantasy sequence of a shirtless Martinez, his chest oiled like roasted potatoes, holding a nightstick near a chain link fence. (Were I a straighter woman, perhaps it might’ve done something for me. As a homosexual, all I could think of was “Night Stick,” a song from Liza Minnelli’s Rent-a-Cop.) As we already knew from her previous endeavors, Fawcett was equally adept at comedy, drama and action, and here one of her funniest moments is a shocking line to Matthews involving his young wife, whose family tree has shaken loose some startling secrets. I won’t spoil it for those of you who plan to seek this one out, but if you want an extra chuckle, just try to imagine Jaclyn Smith saying it.
Streaming and DVD availability
Criminal Behavior isn’t available on DVD or authorized streaming platforms, but there’s an old VHS transfer on YouTube.
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Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
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