Cranky Lesbian

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Tag: Bad Boyfriends

No One Would Tell: When Teen Romance Turns Deadly

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On May 22, 2023

In TV Movies

Candace Cameron and Fred Savage in No One Would Tell.

There’s a power in the casting of No One Would Tell (1996) that might be lost on younger viewers, but for children of the ’80s and ’90s, Kevin Arnold abusing D.J. Tanner was about as shocking as “Beaver” Cleaver giving Gidget a black eye. Based on the chilling true story of 14-year-old Amy Carnevale’s murder at the hands of her high school boyfriend, it stars Fred Savage as senior Bobby Tennison, a standout wrestler who can’t control his anger when girlfriend Stacy Collins (Candace Cameron) acknowledges the existence of anyone who isn’t him.

His rages — and her hidden bruises — multiply each time she laughs with pals, wears a miniskirt in public or exchanges pleasantries with male classmates. “Yeah, so he gets a little jealous, OK? Guys are like that,” she tells worried friend Nicki (Heather McComb). It’s a lesson she picked up at home, where mother Laura (Michelle Phillips) excuses the controlling behavior of boyfriend Rod (Paul Linke) despite Stacy’s concerns. After lashing out physically, Bobby turns into the domestic violence version of a Fisher-Price See ‘n Say.

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Paula Abdul is Touched by Evil in Her TV Movie Debut

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On April 4, 2023

In TV Movies

Paula Abdul gets mixed up with a cold-hearted snake in Touched by Evil.

If there are words that could accurately convey the fathomless stupidity of Touched by Evil, Paula Abdul’s 1997 telefilm debut, they are lost to me as I ponder what might be the dumbest film I’ve ever seen—and I am someone who has, through an unusual series of events, endured Moment by Moment more than once. My problems are less with Abdul, whose cheetah print poster hung above my bed in the early ’90s (alongside a gallery of New Kids on the Block posters), than with Phil Penningroth’s screenplay, which trivializes rape and treats not only viewers, but the characters themselves, as nincompoops.

Abdul’s Ellen Collier, newly divorced from MC Skat Kat, is attempting to forge a new life and career as a single woman when she’s attacked in her condo by the prolific Northside Rapist, who subsequently torments her with harassing phone calls. One of the few pieces of information she is given about her assailant is that he evades detection by always driving a different vehicle. You might assume this fact would give her pause when car detailer Jerry (Adrian Pasdar, oozing sleaze), keeps running into her and trying to make her acquaintance. But Ellen, though hyper-alert in other areas of her life, doesn’t find it strange at all. Even more unbelievably, her friends (Susan Ruttan and Tracy Nelson) begin pressuring her to date him shortly after the assault.

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A Soapy Sister Act in Dick Van Dyke’s Daughters of Privilege

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On January 20, 2023

In TV Movies

Dick Van Dyke stares into the ruins of his past in Daughters of Privilege.

Soapy, swampy and occasionally sultry, Daughters of Privilege (1991) is above all else fairly silly, even though its star, Dick Van Dyke, doesn’t trip over any ottomans—or, for the Golden Girls aficionados among us, practice law while wearing a clown suit. As Buddy Keys, a hard-headed businessman whose empire includes construction, real estate and newspaper publishing, there are secrets in his eyes and wisdom in his mustache, little of it shared with either us or his plentiful daughters.

From his first marriage to Trina (Marj Dusay), a treacherous social climber, he is father (or “Daddy,” as they call him) to crusading physician Mary Hope (Daphne Ashbrook) and rebellious Diana (Kate Vernon). He shares young newspaperwoman Felicia (Angela Alvarado) with an unseen second wife from whom he’s estranged. “A kid who doesn’t depress me!” he proudly calls Felicia. When she pronounces his newspaper boring, he is invigorated even as he chides her: “Why don’t you just speak your mind? Why don’t you show up here after 25 years of court-enforced visitation and tell me how to run my business?” And then he makes her an associate publisher.

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I Think I’m Having a Baby: A Teen’s Pregnant Pause

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On October 3, 2022

In TV Movies

Jennifer Jason Leigh, dressed in a red shirt, waves.
Jennifer Jason Leigh waves goodbye to her childhood in I Think I’m Having a Baby.

As strange a title as it is — it’s preferable to possess a degree of certainty about whether you’re expecting — I Think I’m Having a Baby is also perfectly in keeping with the utter cluelessness of this 1981 Afternoon Playhouse special’s 15-year-old protagonist. Laurie McIntire (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a child with the hair and makeup of a divorced and disillusioned single mother of two, has entered that hideous phase of adolescence where she’s constitutionally incapable of doing anything but mooning over an unimpressive boy.

Star athlete Peter (Shawn Stevens) dates her older cousin Phoebe (Helen Hunt), whose preppy sweater draped over the shoulders tells you all there is to know about her. Peter isn’t particularly bright (Phoebe does his schoolwork) and teases Laurie on the rare occasion he notices her at all. But when her best friend Marsha (Bobbi Block, now known as Samantha Paris) and little sister Carrie (Tracey Gold, years away from the torments of Lady Killer and Midwest Obsession) mock his ape-like walk across the football field, Laurie gets defensive. “He’s not really like that,” she insists.

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Love Note, an ’80s Teen Romance Costarring Jesus

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On March 8, 2022

In Bad Movies

Screen shot from the film Love Note (1987).
Craig Bierko and Sally Murphy fall for each other, and Jesus, in Love Note.

Watching Love Note, a 1987 Christian movie for teens that plays like an episode of Highway to Heaven, you see hints of things to come for lead actor Craig Bierko. Craig Johnson, his fast-talking salesman of a high school student, isn’t so different than Harold Hill, the slick Music Man role for which Bierko was Tony-nominated 13 years later. In Love Note, he’s simply peddling a different product than Hill—salvation.

Our introduction to this precocious teen gives us a lot to digest. Standing before his classmates for a speech assignment, he recites a well-oiled (but still squeaky) spiel that sounds like the work of a middle-aged “How do you do, fellow kids?” youth pastor. It kicks off with a knee-slapper of an anti-choice joke:

Craig: Good morning, and welcome to the morning edition of Point of View. My name is Craig Johnson and I’ll be your host for this morning’s controversy. I was gonna talk about abortion, but, uh, homicide seems like a real ugly way to start the day.

[Classmates laugh appreciatively]

Love Note (1987)

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In Lady Killer, Judith Light’s Affair with Jack Wagner Imperils Her Family

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On January 13, 2022

In TV Movies

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.

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