When last we saw Dr. Albert Beck (Eric Roberts), the world’s second-most dangerous cardiothoracic surgeon, he was starting a new life as an international fugitive following a kidnapped patient’s daring escape from captivity. Stalked by My Doctor: The Return (2016) finds him in Acapulco, and one can only assume that Lifetime couldn’t afford to license the Four Tops’ “Loco in Acapulco,” which would’ve been the perfect soundtrack to a sequel that zestfully embraces the abject terribleness of its slightly more serious predecessor.
Its villain, now posing as a pediatrician named Victor Slauson, practices his own form of self-acceptance by ignoring the advice — and pharmaceuticals — offered by his psychiatrist, Dr. Clark (Tiffany Adams). Their online appointments convey Beck’s commitment to indulging his madness, as when he confidently tells the doctor of his plan to stalk 18-year-old Amy Watkins (Claire Blackwelder), who he recently saved from drowning. “I’m thinking I can date the mother, which would help me get closer to the daughter,” he muses. “The mom likes me, I can tell. But don’t worry, she won’t be bothering us for long.”
Amy’s mother, fragile widow Linda (Hilary Greer), is an easy mark for the sociopathic surgeon. Afraid of heights following her husband’s fatal fall and vaguely afflicted by psychosomatic ailments, she’s so desperate for a caregiver that she stands by Albert even after Amy accuses him of sexual harassment. There’s a spark of something interesting in Greer’s performance that was missing from the parents in the first installment, a suggestion that just as Linda is capable of making obscenely stupid, selfish decisions, so can she wearily accept within the span of a nanosecond the depths of her foolishness.
It takes a village (of morons) to welcome a criminal as bumbling as Albert Beck into their ranks, and Linda is aided first by Amy, a pre-med hopeful who instantly adores him even as boyfriend Garth (Mark Grossman) clocks him as a creep. Laypeople might not realize that pediatrics isn’t lucrative enough to support Slauson’s lavish spending, but why doesn’t anyone recognize Beck? His mug was undoubtedly plastered around the globe following his previous crimes, and even on the lam he does nothing to significantly alter his appearance. I can accept that none of these characters read newspapers, but haven’t they ever watched Dateline?
Disappointingly, Beck’s peripatetic existence means that Stalked by My Doctor: The Return contains fewer scenes of him practicing medicine. But you can rest assured that when he does, it doesn’t make a modicum of sense. (For more on that, you can refer to my wife Crankenstein’s comments in our conversation about the movie.) He is otherwise left to slip deeper into delusions, administer the occasional acid bath and conveniently intercept crucial calls and texts just in the knick of time.
Prolific Lifetime auteur Doug Campbell (Swim Instructor Nightmare, Deadly Mile High Club) hews closely to his original Stalked formula while making a critical adjustment. The imperiled patient is now an afterthought and Beck is our unlikely ingénue, which improves the watchability of this sequel. From its opening moments, as Roberts performs unrealistic CPR in a howler of a scene, Campbell courts lovers of schlock, sending us roses with every demented compression-accompanying grunt. In the prior film, “lymph nodes” was misspelled as “lymphnods” in a patient’s chart. Stalked by My Doctor: The Return is a worthy follow-up appointment that was lovingly crafted in the spirit of that typo.
Streaming and DVD availability
Stalked by My Doctor: The Return hasn’t been released yet on DVD but you can currently stream it on both Amazon (where it’s free to Prime users) and YouTube (where it’s free to all).
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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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