Cranky Lesbian

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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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Stalked by My Doctor: The Return Improves on the Original

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On October 26, 2023

In TV Movies

Eric Roberts and Claire Blackwelder in Stalked by My Doctor: The Return.

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.”

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Gramps: Andy Griffith Romps as a Homicidal Grandfather

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On June 13, 2023

In TV Movies

Andy Griffith strikes a match in Gramps.

“Sometimes things happen between grownups that’s hard for kids to understand,” Gramps’s Jack MacGruder (Andy Griffith) gently counsels his grandson Matthew (Casey Wurzbach), whose parents are fighting again. (Wurzbach was last seen enduring yet another domestic ordeal in Because Mommy Works.) He might as well be addressing viewers who are similarly confused about the plot of this made-for-TV movie, which premiered on NBC in 1995 and also aired under the title Relative Fear.

Jack, a retired musician who claims to have worked with the likes of Hank Williams and Elvis, enjoys a rapprochement with his long-estranged son Clarke (John Ritter), a successful lawyer, following a death in the family. Eager to win Matthew’s affections, he plies the boy with ice cream and candy bars, tosses him a football and teaches him how to climb a tree. He kindly refrains from instructing him in arson, a skill we already know he’s mastered from Gramps’s opening scene.

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Ricki Lake’s Babycakes: Stalkers Come in All Sizes

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On April 10, 2023

In TV Movies

Ricki Lake in a scene from Babycakes.

“Love doesn’t come in sizes,” we’re assured by Babycakes, which simultaneously teaches us that stalkers do. Ricki Lake could’ve been a size two and her plucky Babycakes protagonist, lovelorn mortician Grace, would’ve still been an XXXL stalker. Requesting a month off work to dedicate herself to the pursuit of a stranger with whom she’s romantically obsessed, Grace goes so far as to don a disguise and infiltrate his boss’s office simply to learn his name.

He is Rob (Craig Sheffer), a motorman for the MTA; she knows this because she watches him at work, much as she watches him everywhere else. Whether he’s ice skating in public or lounging at home with his brittle, mismatched fiancée (Cynthia Dale), Grace is lurking nearby—even with binoculars, from a perch across the street—sighing at his every move, captivated by his mere existence. When men behave like this in made-for-TV movies, we know we’re careening toward a denouement in which our heroine unsteadily raises a gun in self-defense. In Babycakes, all that is raised of Rob goes unseen due to network standards and practices.

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Courtney Thorne-Smith is a Murderous Dairy Princess in Midwest Obsession

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On July 11, 2022

In TV Movies

We’re not watching outtakes from Drop Dead Gorgeous. This is all Midwest Obsession.

Try as the actors might, the only authentic performances in Midwest Obsession (1995) are those of its farm animals. That is the fault of the screenplay primarily, but I also blame the director, the producers, and possibly even society. (Were viewers not the ones demanding an endless supply of grisly movies-of-the-week during this era?) It must have been demoralizing heading to the set each day, trying to will a story this grim into existence.

We begin with a murder in a parking lot. The editing is abrupt and unsatisfying, leaving you less frightened than confused. The lighting doesn’t help; several scenes are too dark to fully keep track of what’s happening. It’s a problem that intensifies as the story unfolds. When our murderess loses control of herself, as happens now and then, the distorted shots and frenetic cuts are more suggestive of a Soundgarden music video than a movie. (The film’s fashions also aged poorly, which some of you might enjoy. If you’re in that camp, check out Gabrielle Carteris in Seduced and Betrayed, also from ’95.)

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Stalked by My Doctor Violates HIPAA, Good Taste

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On June 17, 2022

In TV Movies

The doctor is in(sane) in Stalked by My Doctor.

Written by a bot, directed by a Pomeranian recovering from dental surgery, and starring Eric Roberts (supported by a cast plucked at random from a Target parking lot), Stalked by My Doctor has no reason to exist. Since premiering in 2015, it has spawned 78 sequels, because something must fill the void in our hearts left by the conclusion of Syfy’s Sharknado saga. Recently, when curiosity about this morbid, unrepentantly tacky franchise finally got the better of me, I went to Amazon to see what I was missing.

Before pressing “play,” I invited my wife, Dr. Crankenstein, to share in this special viewing experience. (As previously reported, that was a terrible mistake. I’m now obliged to watch its sequels.) She personally knows a physician who was stalked by a patient, but no patients stalked by doctors. Of this premise, Crankenstein somberly remarked, “That’s not just a violation of the Hippocratic Oath, it’s also a violation of HIPAA.”

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Susan Lucci Will Not Be Ignored in Seduced and Betrayed

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On January 24, 2022

In Susan Lucci

Susan Lucci and David Charvet in Seduced and Betrayed

Susan Lucci’s no stranger to adulterous affairs in TV movies, but there’s a twist in Seduced and Betrayed (1995)—Lucci goes full psycho. In The Woman Who Sinned and Between Love and Hate, it’s the scorned other man who seeks his revenge. In Blood on Her Hands, she’s a schemer content to let others do her dirty work. But in Seduced and Betrayed, there’s no outsourcing. She’s as determined to claim David Charvet for herself as she was to ruin Christmas in Ebbie.

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Mark Harmon is Stalked by a Killer — and His Conscience — in Original Sins

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On January 18, 2022

In TV Movies

“Comin’ atcha at the top of the hour, we’ve got your traffic update… and a little murder.”

As a non-Catholic, I’m not sure how many Our Fathers and Hail Marys it would take to atone for such an absolute dog as Original Sins (1995), but I reckon it’s a lot. On the Tori Spelling scale of TV movie terribleness, it’s better than Mind Over Murder (so is gallbladder surgery) but not quite as convincing as Death of a Cheerleader, if that’s any help at all. Despite a sexy Father Ralph de Bricassart twist that might’ve titillated my grandmother in the ’90s, this one’s a massive yawner.

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Cheating with Jennie Garth is a Very Bad Idea in An Unfinished Affair

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On January 14, 2022

In TV Movies

Jennie Garth will not be ignored in An Unfinished Affair.

Here we go again with Tim Matheson and adultery. Having learned nothing from all the rampant infidelity that claimed no fewer than three lives in The Woman Who Sinned, his Alex Connor in An Unfinished Affair (1996) didn’t just mess around on any wife, he cheated on a woman dying of cancer. His biggest mistake is also his greatest joy: she miraculously, as he calls it, recovered.

“I know I need to put on some more weight, but at least I didn’t lose my hair,” Cynthia (Leigh Taylor-Young) sheepishly tells him during one of their scenes of domestic idyll. He couldn’t be happier to have his wife back and has even decided to give up a teaching side gig to rededicate himself to marriage. Pleased, Cynthia admits, “I know it’s selfish but I want you all to myself.”

Tim Matheson is keeping some painful secrets from Leigh Taylor-Young in An Unfinished Affair.

Does it make a ton of sense why he chose to scratch the teaching itch during the time he was most convinced his wife’s death was imminent? Of course not. But this is an exceptionally lazy screenplay (credited to Rama Laurie Stanger, later of Lifetime’s House of Versace, and Dan Witt) in need of a way to introduce the other woman, Sheila Hart (Jennie Garth), a graphic designer who took his class.

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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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