We might as well get this out of the way here: I consider Judith Light the Maria Falconetti of American made-for-TV movies. She is without peer. No matter the limitations (or excesses) of the material or her costars, her performances tend to be tiny marvels of subtlety, sympathy and generosity. Lady Killer (1995) is only the second of her films I’ve reviewed here, after A Strange Affair (1996), and it’s easily one of my least favorite of hers, but no matter how silly it might sound to the uninitiated, she genuinely elevates the medium.
Here she stars as Janice Mitchell, a homemaker who spends more time in the company of her therapist than with her workaholic husband Ross (Ben Masters) and co-ed daughter Sharon (Tracey Gold). Ross is usually overseas and with Sharon away at school, Janice is lonely and directionless. For fun she takes architectural tours, which is how she meets Guy Elliman (Jack Wagner), a self-described sometime architect whose voluminous hair suggests the balance of his time is spent deep conditioning.
“Something tells me I should hang up,” Janice says later, when Guy phones her. He is persistent in inviting her out to lunch and she is particularly vulnerable to his advances after Ross cancels a planned trip home for her birthday. Her therapist (played by Diana Leblanc) points this out to her but Janice swears it isn’t a date. On this not-date, Ross explains what “sometime architect” means: “I’m an architect of the face. Of the eyes, smile. I’m a doctor, I’m a plastic surgeon. And you’re very beautiful.”
Guy exudes desperation but, like Susan Lucci before her in The Woman Who Sinned (1991), Janice’s judgment is clouded by her unmet needs. Her best friend, Liz (Elizabeth Lennie), picks up on her unhappiness and refers to her as a “business widow,” but Janice insists that’s not the case: “I have a life. A very comfortable life, thank you.” But when she pays Guy a visit at his high-rise apartment, he’s quick to declare his intentions.
“Let me make love to you,” he tells her (which is also what I murmur to black bean quesaritos when my wife attends professional conferences). A very uncomfortable-looking encounter on his spiral staircase ensues, Wagner’s bosom heaving as heavily as Light’s. “This is your first affair, isn’t it?” he asks her afterward, before confessing something that should’ve snapped her back to reality. He had his first affair at 17, with his mother’s best friend while his mom was away on business. “My mother was a very glamorous woman. Very beautiful. Like you. I wanna be with you for a long time.”
Even typing that made me mildly nauseous, but Janice enthuses to her therapist, “Guy makes me feel so young, and so wanted! I feel alive again. It’s like waking from a long sleep. I feel connected to something.” When the therapist asks “And Ross?” it’s evident that he’d slipped Janice’s mind entirely: “Ross?” And then she goes back to her Guy reveries, describing him as a lover and giving us a little TMI about his long fingers. “I know I should be feeling guilty about this,” she adds. “Do you?” her therapist asks. No, she doesn’t think so. “I feel like I deserve it.”
Reality intrudes when Ross unexpectedly returns, and this is where Light really shines (no pun intended). As in the uncomfortable confrontation she had with her daughter in A Strange Affair, when she said she loved two men, here she must verbalize her dissatisfaction to her husband:
Janice: We have to talk. When you came home today, I wanted you to make love to me the minute you walked in. On the couch, on the floor, in the shower. That sounds crazy, I know. But you make me feel like a wife.
Ross: I should hope so.
Janice: No! More like someone you know too well. There’s something missing, Ross. Something lost. I want you to want me as a woman. As a lover.
Ross: I do.
Janice: No, you take me for granted.
Ross: No, I don’t, Janice. I don’t. You know, all over the world I see other men going out with all kinds of women behind their wives’ backs, and it never appealed to me. I think about you all the time. I need you.
Janice: For what, Ross?
Ross: Just to be there to come home to.
Janice: I need more than that. We need to be more than that.
lady killer (1995)
Their conversation doesn’t end there, and as usual Light navigates her soapiest dialogue deftly. Her declarations are simple, not dramatic, and Masters is also restrained, though he can’t match her depth. Having finally overcome what had been, prior to the affair (which Janice does not disclose), their greatest obstacle — lack of open communication — their marriage enters a period of emotional and sexual renewal. Clingy, obsessive Guy, who cannot handle rejection, retaliates with stalking and sexual assault.
Rape as a sensationalized trope in TV movies has always made my skin crawl and the salacious way it’s handled (and flashed back to) in Lady Killer is no exception. Janice chooses to protect her reputation, and Guy by extension, by giving police a misleading description of her assailant. This facilitates the nasty final third of the film, which finds Guy re-victimizing her by dating Sharon, who invites him to the family cabin shortly after her mother’s assault. “Janice, you’re much better in bed than your daughter,” he taunts her.
While I can’t claim to appreciate the more disturbing elements of the plot, Lady Killer was competently directed by Steven Schachter (from a so-so script credited to Michael L. Grace). Guy is far from a believable character, but to Wagner’s credit he goes full bastard in the role and provides most of the film’s suspense. Ben Masters makes Ross a believably empathetic husband and Tracey Gold is appropriately annoying as the daughter who dooms us in the film’s opening moments by telling her mother “You don’t need to be in the middle of my love life!” In fact, Light is in the middle of everything. It’s her world and they’re just living in it.
Streaming and DVD availability
Lady Killer is out-of-print on DVD but can currently be streamed (free with ads) on IMDb TV and Tubi.
Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.
… But wait, there’s more!
Shout-out to Pixie Bigelow, who plays the docent of the civic center tour that brings Janice and Guy together. Not only does she have a phenomenal name, she was quite impassioned in her delivery of lines about “the egalitarian intentions of so many public buildings in recent years.”
Her role is small but important since she provides the verbal backdrop of their earliest bonding. You too will fall in love, even if it’s only with “the scintillating design of the black polished granite, which is all integrated with elegant splashes of terrazzo.”
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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