Susan Lucci’s Laurel Castle doesn’t come right out and quote Michael Corleone in Lady Mobster, but her behavior toward the heads of other crime families echoes something Michael told his consigliere: “I don’t feel I have to wipe everybody out, Tom. Just my enemies. That’s all.”
In this pulpy 1988 TV movie, Laurel has enemies from way back. A hitman killed her parents when she was a teenager, and slashed her face before fleeing from the police. (Her wound heals nicely, sparing her the fate of Judith Anderson’s Lady Scarface.) Her father was targeted for trying to take mafioso Victor Castle (Joseph Wiseman) legit, a crusade Laurel resumes as a young attorney.
When she’s summoned to the Castle compound to visit an ailing Victor, Laurel is newly established in her legal career and focused on earning a promotion. Victor, who became a surrogate father after she was orphaned, doesn’t want her mixed up in the family business. But when his renewed bid for legitimacy inflames underworld tensions, Laurel pleads to help, citing her experience in corporate takeovers.
She also finds time to sleep with Victor’s eldest son, Robert (Roscoe Born). “You’ve changed, you know that?” he says as they stroll the grounds of their shared childhood home. “Oh, you mean my new look?” she asks. “I did myself over last winter, part of my PR campaign to make partner.” Robert replies, in a not-so-brotherly fashion, “No, it’s more than that. Last summer you were still, I don’t know, a beginner. You seem more confident now. More…”
Laurel unsubtly finishes his thought: “Experienced.” (Postcoitally, she addresses their quasi-incestuous union by murmuring “Nothing’s wrong when two people love each other.”) To the family’s delight, they are soon wed. Unfortunately, the honeymoon goes as well for Robert as it did for Apollonia Corleone, which gives Laurel another loss to avenge. With Victor on his deathbed and his surviving offspring living “straight” lives (son Paul is a priest, daughter Anna a homemaker), she turns to his loyal enforcer, Nick Scalfone (Michael Nader of Dynasty) for help.
Nick, like Robert, first met Laurel immediately after her parents’ funeral, when Victor brought her home. That’s when the timeline gets fuzzy: if she has known him for 20 years, as she says, she’s in her mid-thirties. (The true age of a Lucci character is often nebulous.) When Laurel presses Nick on his personal life, he’s impassive: “Families are a liability in my line of work. You get too happy, you lose the edge.” Their affair, which begins soon after Robert’s death, kicks off humorously, with Laurel panting “You don’t have to be gentle, I won’t break.”
More than anything else, it’s the Lucci/Nader pairing that lends a boring script a little oomph. They played a twice-married, twice-divorced supercouple on All My Children in the ’90s, and their chemistry was already evident in Lady Mobster. Nick predictably becomes Laurel’s most trusted aide as she begins settling personal and professional scores. “An eye for an eye?” priestly Paul (Thom Bray) asks not long before she accessorizes with a holster. “It’s no good, Laurel. We are not barbarians.”
The mob conflicts and reprisals continue, proving his point, but Laurel’s raging animus toward her enemies is left frustratingly underdeveloped. We know why she hates them, but her grief and subsequent machinations cede the spotlight to more trivial subplots, like her seduction of Nick. Her relentless drive to legitimize the Castle family, and to protect Robert’s siblings, plays as more chaotic than methodical.
“The only way I can make the world safe for the Castle family is to destroy everyone in its way,” she tells a DA before spilling gangland secrets. Is ratting out a bunch of dons the best legal strategy for protecting the surviving Castles? Laurel works harder to secure their prosecutorial immunity and financial comfort than to ensure their physical safety.
“I came to say goodbye,” she tells pseudo-brother Paul in confession before executing a final maneuver. He counsels her, “Laurie, there can only be forgiveness if you forswear what’s in your heart. Can you promise me that your heart is free of vengeance?” Her earnest and unintentionally funny answer sounds like something Lucci might have breathlessly said about airlines in an SNL sketch: “God forgives. I can’t. I will always hate those who do harm to this family, I will never stop wishing for their deaths.”
Lucci, who often rushes her dialogue or pauses at odd moments, as if trying to remember what’s next, even works in one of her patented “Oh no, no, nos!” Despite Lady Mobster’s general awfulness, it contains one of her better, more subdued telefilm performances. She doesn’t always connect with the material but is more modulated here than in Ebbie, Seduced and Betrayed and Blood on Her Hands. By the late ’90s her material played like self-parody; here, she’s more invested in the material.
Streaming and DVD availability
Lady Mobster isn’t available on DVD. You can stream it for free (with commercials) on either IMDb TV or Tubi. As of this writing, quite a few of her films are also 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!
Lady Mobster‘s director, John Llewellyn Moxey, was a prolific TV veteran. He helmed 1981’s No Place to Hide, which scared me as a kid, and directed no fewer than 18 episodes of Murder, She Wrote. His Cabot Cove output included “Corned Beef and Carnage” (S3E5), a non-classic with a classic title, and undisputed classics like “Paint Me a Murder” (S1E14) and “Who Threw the Barbitals in Mrs. Fletcher’s Chowder?” (S4E12).
His crowning achievement, in my estimation, was “Jessica Behind Bars” (S2E9), whose title is self-explanatory. A partial list of its remarkable guest stars includes no less than Adrienne Barbeau, Yvonne De Carlo, Vera Miles, Mary Woronov, Darlene Conley, and Eve Plumb. You can stream it, and the rest of the episodes mentioned, at Peacock or on IMDb TV.
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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