Cranky Lesbian - Page 21 - Look what the homosexuals have done to me!

Jack Wagner has dangerous abandonment issues in *Lady Killer*.

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.

Tori Spelling’s Brainless Mind Over Murder

By Cranky Lesbian

On January 12, 2022

In TV Movies

Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott in *Mind Over Murder*.

What is there to say about a movie as bad as Mind Over Murder (2005), a Lifetime offering starring Tori Spelling as an Assistant District Attorney in temporary possession of psychic powers? Everything about it is unusually tacky, even by basic cable standards, from its garish pink and green color scheme to its nightmarish faux comic sex scenes and lifeless acting.

Its distinct terribleness makes you long for previous Spelling affairs like Death of a Cheerleader and Mother, May I Sleep with Danger? — and, speaking of affairs, Murder mostly lives on as a trivia answer. It was on the set of this film that Spelling’s tabloid-ready liaison with costar Dean McDermott began.

A children’s treasury of Spelling’s regrettable wardrobe.

The plot, to the extent that one exists, involves Holly Winters (Spelling), an ADA in Cincinnati whose head-scratchingly casual wardrobe is a series of increasingly hideous pink and green shirts and cardigans that match her equally awful accessories (as well as the wardrobe and, in one instance, even the beverage of her boss, Julian Hasty, played by Tyler Benskin). My wife walked past the TV at one point and mused “She looks like she shopped at GAP Kids.”

Boredom is Deadlier Than a Loaded Gun in Sweet Deception

By Cranky Lesbian

On January 11, 2022

In TV Movies

Joan Collins and Joanna Pacula wig out in *Sweet Deception*

Whoever greenlit Sweet Deception (1998) knew it was unmitigated crap. That’s how we ended up with not one but two very special guest stars: Kate Jackson (wearing the type of gaudy press-on nails favored by Linda Richman) and Joan Collins (styling wigs and giving manicures from a wheelchair). We’ll get to those two later. First we need to talk about Jack Scalia’s Southern accent, the least convincing thing in a movie full of ’em.

Joanna Pacula stars as Risa, the second Mrs. Gallagher. Her husband is Fin (Peter LaCroix), a wealthy serial philanderer we meet as he stashes millions of dollars in cash in an offshore safe deposit box. He isn’t long for this world, which is just as well because little about Fin and Risa’s pairing, or casting, makes sense. Equally nonsensically, Scalia plays Brett Newcomb, Fin’s slick Southern law partner in a San Francisco firm. He calls Risa “darlin'” about 87 times in the course of 90 minutes, sometimes while wearing a bow tie, as if lost on his way to a dinner theater production of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Kate Jackson plays her embittered ex role a bit broadly.

The first Mrs. Gallagher, Kit (Kate Jackson), is also in the picture, making a scene at a soiree attended by her ex and casually greeting his new wife with an insult: “Hello, Risa. Beautiful dress. It’s a shame they didn’t have it in your size.” Jackson has very few lines altogether but might as well be in a Honeysuckle Ham catalogue with her exaggerated facial expressions and swigs of champagne that have absolutely nothing in common with the rest of Sweet Deception.

Susan Lucci’s Sultry Schemes Fall Flat in Blood on Her Hands

By Cranky Lesbian

On January 10, 2022

In Susan Lucci

All My Children legend Susan Lucci’s long and not-so-illustrious career in TV movies (dating back to 1984’s Invitation to Hell, which we’ll get to eventually) was running on fumes by the Miracle at Christmas: Ebbie’s Story era of the mid-’90s. Its last gasp (to date — you know how soap actors love to reanimate the dead) came in 1998 with Blood on Her Hands, the perfunctory tale of a seductive schemer who leaves a trail of ruined men in her wake.

Unlike her character in 1991’s The Woman Who Sinned, Lucci’s Isabelle Collins is not a reluctant adulteress. She embraces the role with gusto, expertly fanning her cuckolded husband’s suspicions and taunting him with thinly veiled banter she knows will provoke a reaction. Stewart (John O’Hurley), an ill-tempered venture capitalist whose hobbies include golf and domestic violence, is happy to comply. A typical nasty exchange goes like this:

Weekend Listening: Dusty Springfield’s “Closet Man”

By Cranky Lesbian

On January 9, 2022

In Weekend Listening

A few days ago, while listening to Dusty Springfield’s 1979 album Living Without Your Love on my tablet, my preferences were somehow ignored and songs I normally de-select were played. That included “Closet Man,” a sultry cover of a 1976 Jaye P. Morgan song that would be an interesting enough curiosity on its own but gains an added layer or two of complexity for obvious reasons as sung by Springfield. Having revisited it for the first time in years, I won’t keep it out of rotation from now on.

Written by David Foster, Donnie Gerrard and Eric Mercury, this four-minute ode to “[coming] out into the light” includes lyrics such as “Your love is soft and nights turn into tears/Your tattoos and your muscles disappear/And the ring that I once gave you, now you’re wearin’ in your ear/But your secret’s absolutely safe, my dear.” My personal favorite? “There’s nothing new at all under the sun/You’ve got company, you’re not the only one/Why, it’s older than religion and, quite honestly, more fun.” Who are we to argue? She knows of what she sings.

Note: This was written before I learned of the death of Marilyn Bergman, so the theme to Maude and the soundtrack to Yentl (which is watched annually around these parts) will also be played today, among other songs, which is similar to flying a flag at half-staff.

Weekend Viewing: David Charvet (!) Edition

By Cranky Lesbian

On January 8, 2022

In Susan Lucci

Not to be confused with *Seduced and Abandoned*, which people should actually watch.

Ah, the look on your wife’s face when she sees what came in the mail this week, knows it’s absurd, and is faintly fearful she might be expected to watch it. In light of extenuating circumstances (i.e., the mystery knot currently residing in my underarm and my stint under house arrest while COVID overwhelms our local hospitals), she wisely refrained from comment.

UPDATE: Here’s the review.

Judith Light’s Lover Befriends Her Ailing Husband in A Strange Affair

By Cranky Lesbian

On January 7, 2022

In TV Movies

Judith Light and William Russ in *A Strange Affair* (1996).

Adjust your elegantly styled wigs, for we’re about to delve into a scandalous Judith Light romance that’s one of the better TV movies I’ve reviewed here so far, even though no one sleeps with danger or impregnates a nun played by Kristy McNichol. What we have instead is a good old-fashioned tale of a long-suffering wife, Lisa (Light), whose philandering husband, Eric (Jay Thomas), has a debilitating stroke just hours after she finally leaves him. Oh, and the new lover, Art (William Russ), who patiently helps her provide in-home care for her estranged husband even as they’re shunned by friends and family because of their unconventional arrangement.

Death of a Cheerleader: Mother, May I Cheer with Danger?

By Cranky Lesbian

On January 6, 2022

In TV Movies

Hold onto your pom-poms because strange worlds are colliding in this one. We’ve got Tori Spelling, who we just watched in Mother, May I Sleep with Danger? We have Valerie Harper, who we’ve seen in Night Terror and Strange Voices. And we’ve got ’em in Death of a Cheerleader, a 1994 TV movie that could best be described as Mean Girls meets The Craft meets Election meets The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom. Excited yet? Alas, I suggest tempering your enthusiasm.

Without further ado, Kellie Martin (who knows her way around a TV movie herself) is Angela Delvecchio, a bright and seemingly normal kid who is a little too captivated by her high school’s pep rally. Its inspirational theme: Be the Best. “I’m going to be,” Angela vows to her BFF Jill (Margaret Langrick, bedecked in the type of unfortunate headwear favored by Mayim Bialik and Jenna von Oÿ’s Blossom characters). “I am going to edit the yearbook, and I’m going to be a cheerleader.” And she’s gonna get all As in murder!

In Her Defense: A Dreary Canadian Neo-Noir with a Joe Eszterhas Twist

By Cranky Lesbian

On January 5, 2022

In Bad Movies

“The hell? Who knew broads could scheme?!”

As Felix Unger taught us lo those many years ago, when you assume you make an ass out of you and me. Reader, here I confess that I made an ass out of us all with this one. After watching Susan Lucci in The Woman Who Sinned, I noticed In Her Defense, another title with a similar plot (adultery, murder, legal jeopardy). It starred Marlee Matlin and Michael Dudikoff, who played the schmuck with whom Lucci sinned, and I thought maybe the films would make a decent double feature.

How wrong I was! By the time I realized this was not a campy TV movie of the week but dreary Canadian direct-to-cable-or-video dreck, I’d invested enough time in watching it that I didn’t want to scrap the whole thing. Gird your loins if you plan to continue reading, because this was brutally bad. Its saving grace was a half-baked lesbian twist that, despite feeling somewhat random, was less than surprising to anyone who has seen Basic Instinct.

Susan Lucci’s The Woman Who Sinned and the Vapidity of Infidelity

By Cranky Lesbian

On January 3, 2022

In Susan Lucci

Susan Lucci and Tim Matheson are on the outside of their marriage looking in.

First thing’s first: The Woman Who Sinned, a 1991 TV movie that bravely asks the question, Is it okay to cheat if you’re married to Tim Matheson?, is no Miracle at Christmas: Ebbie’s Story (1995). Few films are. If you’re here for Taran Noah Smith’s Tiny Tim singing a Christmas carol while Susan Lucci’s a raging asshole to everyone, you’re out of luck. If you’re here for endless scenes of Lucci crying and a few seconds of Matheson fresh from a swim, you’re in the right place.

What we have here, mostly, is adultery. Adultery as far as the eye can see. And, to keep things lively, the occasional murder. Lucci is Victoria Robeson, a gallery owner whose best friend, author Jane (Lenore Kasdorf), is an outspoken proponent of extramarital affairs. When Victoria is uncharacteristically tempted to have one of her own, Jane is full of encouragement. And when that tryst with Evan Ganns (Michael Dudikoff, In Her Defense) ends poorly, Jane winds up dead—and Victoria’s wrongfully accused of the crime.