When we think of femme fatales, we don’t usually imagine scheming seductresses in mom jeans and cutesy vests. But Jaclyn Smith (In the Arms of a Killer, The Night They Saved Christmas) remains true to her early ’90s Kmart aesthetic in Lies Before Kisses (1991), even as she rushes from one clandestine meeting to the next, leaving a trail of besotted men — and planted evidence — in her wake.
The duality of her Elaine ‘Lainey’ Sanders, wife of publishing magnate Grant (Ben Gazzara), is exposed at their daughter’s birthday party. After a catering snafu leaves them cakeless, she graciously insists “Don’t worry. If we have to, we’ll put some candles on the pâté.” Her mood darkens moments later, once she overhears Grant on the phone with a mystery woman. Rather than confront her husband, she calls the catering company to unleash hell. Lainey is used to getting her way.
On Charlie’s Angels and in most of her TV movies, Smith brought a touch of class to low-brow material. How that might work in something as trashy as Lies Before Kisses is a more absorbing mystery than its whodunit. From the moment Elaine receives a glossy photo of a ‘model’ on all fours, attempting to look sexy on a futon — an impossible feat — we allow ourselves to hope that Smith’s elegance might burst into flames, like a vampire exposed to sunlight.
“Your husband is having an affair with me!” reads a note scribbled across the image, and though Adrianne (Lisa Rinna, her face not yet home to more toxins than a biological warfare lab) looks every inch the cheap Craigslist hooker, she has decent penmanship. A perfunctory blackmail caper begins as Lainey reels from Grant’s betrayal — “I was his baby!” she cries to a friend — and someone inevitably winds up dead. Did Grant commit the murder to protect his family? Could Lainey’s deep-rooted fear of rejection have sent her over the edge?
“I feel like he’s abandoning me. First my father, now Grant,” Lainey fumes, and it isn’t the last time she’ll conflate them in ways that make us uncomfortable. Sonny (Nick Mancuso, who worked with Cheryl Ladd in Vows of Deception), the tough-guy journalist she enlists to clear Grant’s name, has enough sense to remark, “Little girls? I don’t get it. You take little girls to the zoo. You take women to bed.” But, like all patsies in noirs and neo-noirs, he misses red flags, unable to see past his desire when they’re alone together.
A third man lurks on the periphery: Ross Sanders (Greg Evigan, The Lady Forgets), Grant’s spoiled son, whose scorn for his father and stepmother pervades their forced interactions. Though Ross shares Grant’s love of unattractive silk robes, Evigan lacks Gazzara’s gravitas — it’s questionable whether the Cassavetes stalwart could’ve sired someone so bland. And Gazzara wasn’t so much older than Smith that all of Fear Stalk screenwriter Ellen Weston’s creepy daddy stuff holds up, either.
Director Lou Antonio (a frequent Smith collaborator who made Nightmare in the Daylight and The Rape of Dr. Willis with her during this era) wakes up occasionally and gives us something unexpected. There’s a bit of suspenseful, claustrophobic courtroom staging and some quick, disorienting cuts to Lainey as her daughter’s pushed on a swing. That Smith’s almost equally muted playing good and bad is consistent with her appeal. Whether saving the day or leading men to ruin, she always looks ready to pitch in at a PTA bake sale.
Streaming and DVD availability
Lies Before Kisses is out-of-print on DVD and currently streams on YouTube. If you report dead links in the comments below, I’ll try to find replacements.
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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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