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Tag: '90s Films Page 1 of 6

When the Vows Break: Patty Duke’s Fight for Justice

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On March 19, 2024

In TV Movies

Patty Duke and Art Hindle in When the Vows Break.

When she wasn’t crash-dieting or beating her son, Patty Duke partook, as so many actors did, in the time-honored TV movie tradition of crusading for justice. She challenged everything from unsafe schools (The Violation of Sarah McDavid) to the FDA (Fight for Life), while also making time to repeatedly solve her children’s murders (A Killer Among Friends and A Matter of Justice). As Barbara Parker in 1995’s When the Vows Break (also known as Courting Justice), her target is not her estranged husband — she already knows he’s a putz — but the morally compromised jurist presiding over their divorce.

Judge Wendell Adams (Robin Gammell, face fixed in a perma-scowl) opposes divorce so zealously in his family courtroom that he denies a petition based “on insufficient grounds,” arguing that marriage does not require love. Though Barbara and Art (The Silence of Adultery’s Art Hindle) started dating as teens and she worked alongside him as they built a multimillion-dollar construction fortune, she is awarded only 2% of their marital assets. She’s also granted alimony that’s unsecured and subject to revision on the whims of both Art — a financial abuser and obfuscator whose money is his only means of control — and Adams, a clear misogynist.

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Black Death: Kate Jackson Fights the Plague

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On March 1, 2024

In TV Movies

Kate Jackson and Jeffrey Nordling in a scene from Black Death.

Imagine if Charlie dispatched his Angels to defeat pneumonic plague: Jill would’ve made out with it to create a diversion while Sabrina and Kelly broke into a locked medicine cabinet under cover of night to retrieve a cache of critical antibiotics like streptomycin. Then they’d sneak up on the plague, there might be a karate-chop or two and a couple of hokey one-liners after force-feeding it medication, and we’d cut to Charlie chuckling “Good work, Angels! That Yersinia pestis never saw you coming.”

Kate Jackson has a tougher time protecting the populace in Black Death (1992, also known as Quiet Killer), assisted not by comely crossing guards but an underfunded New York City Department of Health. As Dr. Nora Hart, the agency’s chief epidemiologist, her gal Friday is Dr. Jake Prescott (Jeffrey Nordling), a fresh-off-the-bus Indiana transplant whose corn-fed naïveté makes no sense in the context of his occupation: epidemiologists tend to be pretty well-versed in the gritty realities of urban living.

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With a Vengeance: Melissa Gilbert’s Memorable Amnesia Thriller

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On January 31, 2024

In TV Movies

Melissa Gilbert and Matthew Lawrence in With a Vengeance.

If there’s a sensitive ’80s sitcom dad you never expected would chase Little House on the Prairie’s Half-Pint through the woods with a bloody knife and murder in his eyes, it’s probably Steven Keaton of Family Ties. (Give Jason Seaver a little coke or booze and who knows what he’s capable of doing.) That element of surprise lends a subversive jolt to the opening scenes of With a Vengeance, a 1992 TV movie also known as Undesirable, when Frank Tanner (Michael Gross) frenziedly slashes a Washington mother and her children to death and sets off after Melissa Gilbert, the only witness to the crime.

Six years later, she’s living in California as Jenna King, a nanny who breaks down when her newest employer, Mike Barcetti (Jack Scalia, Sweet Deception), questions her phony background. She admits to living under an assumed name and tearfully confesses “I don’t know where I went to high school. I don’t know if I went to high school. I don’t know where my family is. I don’t know if I have a family. The truth is, I don’t even know who I am.” Luckily for her, he’s not just a ruggedly handsome single father but a tenacious DOJ attorney determined to help cure her amnesia and uncover her true identity.

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Lies Before Kisses: Jaclyn Smith’s Tawdry Neo-Noir

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On January 12, 2024

In TV Movies

Jaclyn Smith schemes and seduces in Lies Before Kisses.

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.

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Obsessed: Shannen Doherty’s Fatal Attraction

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On January 1, 2024

In TV Movies

Shannen Doherty channels Isabelle Adjani in Obsessed.

The early ’90s were a cinematic golden age of gorgeous obsessives scheming seaside in trash, glorious trash, and while Obsessed (1992), Shannen Doherty’s entry in that sweepstakes, was made for ABC, it has the lurid spirit of a Cinemax special. Your hopes will soar from its opening scenes, when her Lorie Brindel, a marine surveyor in her early-to-mid twenties, is dispatched to appraise a yacht for insurance purposes and arrives in her finest miniskirt, appallingly baby-voiced and flirtatious with a silver-haired client, Ed Bledsoe (William Devane).

“I’ve seen a lot of boats but not many this old, in this kind of shape, Mr. Bledsoe,” she coos, impressed by the majesty of his vessel. You’re forgiven for anticipating the strains of “bom-chicka-wawa” on the soundtrack, and that’s before she admiringly runs her hand along his yacht’s woodwork as he grins like a Cheshire cat. They show some propriety by arranging a dinner date, and their first tryst — a very ’90s ordeal with excessive closeups of limbs entangled in white sheets (and Lorie reverently kissing Ed’s saggy chest) — is scored with the same saxophone music that accompanied all sex in TV movies during the Clinton administration.

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Deadly Whispers: Tony Danza’s Odd Turn as a Murderous Father

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On December 27, 2023

In TV Movies

Tony Danza and Pamela Reed in Deadly Whispers.

Imagine Tony Danza in a frilly dress and sun hat, clutching a parasol and drawling “Fiddle-dee-dee! Ashley Wilkes told me he likes to see a girl with a healthy appetite!” and you’ll have some idea of the absurdity of his casting in Deadly Whispers (1995). The extent to which he mangles an exaggerated Southern accent is hard to overstate; when he says “Yo missin’ The Waltons” (rather than “You’re missing”) only 10 minutes into the movie, you might laugh harder than you ever did at Who’s the Boss?

Unfortunately for Danza, Deadly Whispers isn’t supposed to be funny. In this thinly veiled dramatization of the 1987 murder of Kathy Bonney, he plays Virginia salvage yard owner Tom Acton, the last person to see his troubled teenage daughter Kathy (Heather Tom) alive before she disappears. A high school dropout who answers the phones at Tom’s business — he doesn’t need the help but refuses to let her out of his sight — she defiantly teases her hair and bares her midriff in pursuit of a married coworker.

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A Mother’s Justice: Meredith Baxter Goes Charles Bronson

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On November 26, 2023

In TV Movies

Meredith Baxter and G.W. Bailey in A Mother’s Justice.

There are worse tales of maternal vigilantism than Meredith Baxter’s A Mother’s Justice: John Schlesinger’s notorious Eye for an Eye, starring Sally Field, springs immediately to mind. But don’t take that as an endorsement of Baxter’s film, which premiered on NBC in 1991 and found a second home on Lifetime. It’s still quite bad, just not as grotesque as Field’s revenge fantasy. The closest it comes is a misguided scene at an Italian restaurant that brings new meaning to the slogan “When you’re here, you’re family.”

Justice, directed by Noel Nosseck (No One Would Tell), opens suspensefully, with a predator prowling the streets. His abduction of Debbie (Carrie Hamilton), a 23-year-old aspiring nurse, is more graphic than her subsequent rape, which she immediately reports to police. Det. Bogardus (Blu Mankuma) assures her it wasn’t her fault and awkwardly tells her “I know I’m the same color as the man who attacked you, but I just want you to know, we get ’em in all colors. Like I said, don’t worry. If he goes on, we’ll get him.”

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Doing Time on Maple Drive: A Favored Son’s Gay Secret

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On November 7, 2023

In TV Movies

James Sikking, William McNamara and Bibi Besch in Doing Time on Maple Drive.

Before there was Beverly Sutphin, Serial Mom’s murderous matriarch, or Joanna Kerns in Mother Knows Best, there was steely social striver Lisa Carter (Bibi Besch) of Doing Time on Maple Drive (1992). So obsessed is she with making the right impression that you’re forgiven for wanting to shout “Don’t go in there, she has a knife!” at son Matt (William McNamara) when he ventures into the kitchen following a bruising family fight.

Though she’s only preparing dinner, Lisa’s so incandescent with rage over Matt’s broken engagement to Allison (Lori Loughlin, poignantly pretty, with the depth of a thimble), the wealthy daughter-in-law of her dreams, that you half-expect her to stab him. “You’re just going to let him get away with it?” she challenges husband Phil (James Sikking), a rigid military man turned restaurateur. “With embarrassing us? With humiliating us?” Who knows how she’d react if he wore white after Labor Day.

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Kate Jackson Fools Around in The Silence of Adultery

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On September 23, 2023

In TV Movies

Kate Jackson and Robert Desiderio in The Silence of Adultery.

The loftiness — and supreme silliness — of The Silence of Adultery’s title drew me in because it was almost Bergmanesque. Doesn’t it conjure mental images of Erland Josephson or Max von Sydow meeting Harriet Andersson or Ingrid Thulin in a barn in rural Sweden for joyless assignations before an indifferent, possibly nonexistent God? And while we’re asking unserious questions, if your adultery is silent does that mean you’re doing it wrong?

This 1995 Lifetime movie isn’t prurient enough to provide an unequivocal answer, but there isn’t much heat between the married Rachel Lindsey (Kate Jackson) and Michael Harvott (Robert Desiderio), a recently separated father. They’re introduced when Michael brings his nonverbal son to the barn where Rachel offers equine therapy to autistic kids. Her qualifications are unclear — the script says she isn’t a doctor, despite IMDb calling her one — and don’t matter, anyway. Autism is merely a plot device to introduce the lovers.

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Connie Sellecca Cries and Commits Bigamy in She Led Two Lives

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On September 14, 2023

In TV Movies

Connie Sellecca and Perry King in She Led Two Lives.

We meet Rebecca Cross (Connie Sellecca), a 35-year-old flannel enthusiast with a flawless complexion and unfortunate bangs, when she’s hauled off to jail in handcuffs. Suspenseful music plays as she’s booked — what crime did the mild-mannered cancer researcher commit? For the answer, let us turn to one of Barbra Streisand’s greatest hits: Rebecca is “A Woman in Love.” And she’ll do anything to get Mike (A Martinez) into her world and hold him within, even if it means committing bigamy. It’s a right she defends over and over again.

Rebecca is already married to Jeffrey (Perry King of Inmates: A Love Story), a dashing surgeon. Weeks earlier, he slid a bracelet onto her wrist for their seventh wedding anniversary and proposed a toast: “To Rebecca. I didn’t think it was possible but I love you more today than the day we were married.” And then he is paged to the operating room, a familiar conclusion to their nights together. Her loneliness is accentuated by her father’s deathbed regret at not spending more time with loved ones, a fate he implores her to avoid.

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