Cranky Lesbian

Look what the homosexuals have done to me!

Tag: Family Drama Page 4 of 6

Laughter is Contagious in Someone I Touched

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On August 23, 2022

In TV Movies

Cloris Leachman and James Olson have trust issues in Someone I Touched.

The 1970s were a complicated time for telefilm husbands, whether it was Robert Reed making obscene phone calls and assaulting his wife in The Secret Night Caller, or Patty Duke’s dipshit spouse justifying his serial infidelity in Before and After by telling her “You see, when you were fat, I felt betrayed.” And so you may feel a familiar sense of dread from the opening moments of Someone I Touched (1975), largely due to its opening ballad.

That treacly theme, warbled by Leachman herself, appears to lay it all out, allowing us to mentally prepare for the inevitable moment when a woman accepts at least partial blame for her husband’s transgressions. Here is but a sampling of its lyrical treasures, which begin normally enough: “Someone I touched/You’re someone I touched/And right away, I knew/I was in love with you.” Things get slightly weirder as we enter “Forget the others I touched/Those others I touched” territory, which includes a cold, abrupt reminder: “Yes, everything dies.”

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Killer Bees (1974): Gloria Swanson is Big, It’s the Killer Bees That Got Small

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On July 14, 2022

In TV Movies

Gloria Swanson’s the queen in Killer Bees.

The killer bee genre is a crowded one, with films like The Swarm (1978, starring Michael Caine in his “Sure, whatever, pay me in cash” phase); 1995’s Deadly Invasion: The Killer Bee Nightmare; and, perhaps most famously, My Girl (1991). I could go on and on. What makes this killer bee telefilm, creatively titled Killer Bees, so special, is its cast. Forget Kate Jackson and Lillian Gish, a memorable pairing in Thin Ice (1981). Here we have Kate Jackson and Gloria Swanson.

It opens with a pushy salesman pulling up to a filling station. The attendant (John Getz of Blood Simple) warns him not to trespass onto the neighboring Van Bohlen Winery property, but he does so anyway, and is summarily killed by bees. Forgive me, I’m being flippant. Technically, a swarm follows him into his car (it would’ve been funny if they had voice boxes like Richard Romanus in Night Terror), resulting in a crash and an enormous explosion. “I told him. I told the darn fool,” the gas station attendant mutters. Must happen all the time.

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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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A Mother’s Homophobia in The Truth About Jane

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On May 8, 2022

In TV Movies

Stockard Channing rejects her daughter in The Truth About Jane.

Being a gay teenager wasn’t particularly easy in 2000—ask me how I know! When Lifetime decided to examine the subject (two years after Jean Smart’s husband tumbled out of the closet in Change of Heart), it was appointment viewing for me. At the time, it felt underwhelming. It was a “message” movie and the conflicts were so easily, if imperfectly, resolved. At my house, it took much longer than 87 minutes for the arctic chill between a lesbian high school student and her conservative parents to thaw.

Revisiting The Truth About Jane as an adult perilously close to middle age, how differently would I feel? It turned out I liked it quite a bit more. Distance had dulled all the edges that were too sharp back then. I appreciated the clarity, and simplicity, with which writer-director Lee Rose captured what it was like to come out as a kid in the late ’90s/early aughts. And the homophobia of Stockard Channing’s character was much funnier to me than it had been back then, for reasons we’ll get to later.

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My Mother’s Secret Life … as an Escort

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On May 6, 2022

In TV Movies

Loni Anderson (un)dresses for success in My Mother’s Secret Life.

The big daughter-seeks-birth-mom TV event that everyone remembers from 1984 is, of course, the miniseries Lace. History has unfairly forgotten My Mother’s Secret Life, and I’ll be pleased if I can get even one person to revisit it. It’s an engaging (and unintentionally funny) telefilm that is perhaps best described as “Loni Anderson’s Charlene moment.” I encourage everyone to get in the mood right now by listening to the song of which I speak.

Now that we’ve taken the hand of a preacher man and made love in the sun, I think we can continue. My Mother’s Secret Life opens with Anderson’s Ellen Blake draped in about 30 lbs of designer clothes and furs. It’s all soon to be removed with artful precision in a demanding john’s penthouse suite. “I’m the buyer here,” he tells her aggressively. “I want to know what I’m buying. You do come at a premium rate.”

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Please Don’t Hit Me, Mom Spotlights Abuse

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On May 2, 2022

In TV Movies

Patty Duke and son Sean Astin costar in Please Don’t Hit Me, Mom

TV movie titans collide in Please Don’t Hit Me, Mom (1981), an Afterschool Special starring Patty Duke and Nancy McKeon. It begins in the typical style of such films, with McKeon’s Nancy Parks comically flying over the handlebars of her bicycle. Sprawled on the ground, she’s introduced to brothers Mike and Brian Reynolds (Lance Guest and Sean Astin). In the rare meet cute that intersects with child abuse, Nancy and Mike learn they’re new neighbors and will attend the same high school.

While the teenagers make eyes at each other, Barbara Reynolds (Patty Duke) angrily drags the younger Brian inside. The camera rests on the home’s exterior as she yells at him. We feel unsettled, a condition that extends to Nancy’s conversation with BFF Judy (Deena Freeman) about prom wear. “I blew my clothes allowance this month on a fantastic sweater,” Nancy admits. “So what do I wear to the prom?” She envisions unaffordable designer jeans.

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Doris Day Marries a Klansman in Storm Warning

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On April 29, 2022

In '50s Films

It’s cloudy with a chance of racism in Storm Warning.

A genre-blending mess of a film that takes frosty relations between in-laws to extremes, Storm Warning is also notable for its unusual denouement, in which Ginger Rogers is lashed (seven times!) with a whip. Alas, that is only the beginning of her suffering — her pregnant sister still has to die in her arms. We could debate whether Warning is more film noir or melodrama, but the question I kept returning to was whether its final 20 minutes might qualify as a primitive iteration of torture porn.

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Dennis Weaver’s Angst in Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction

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On April 27, 2022

In TV Movies

Dennis Weaver in Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction.

There are endless ways to confront the pedestrian stressors and ennui many of us face as we hurtle toward middle age. Sports cars and extramarital affairs are usually the self-treatments of choice for forty-something family men in TV movies (rarer breeds make dirty phone calls), but Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction entices us with a hit of something different. In this 1983 offering that plays like an Afterschool Special for quadragenarians, Dennis Weaver escapes his professional and familial pressures by sniffin’ the devil’s dandruff.

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Lady Mobster: Susan Lucci as Michael Corleone

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On April 22, 2022

In Susan Lucci

Susan Lucci is a diminutive mafioso in Lady Mobster.

Susan Lucci’s Laurel Castle doesn’t come right out and quote Michael Corleone in Lady Mobster, but her behavior toward the heads of other crime families echoes something Michael told his consigliere: “I don’t feel I have to wipe everybody out, Tom. Just my enemies. That’s all.”

In this pulpy 1988 TV movie, Laurel has enemies from way back. A hitman killed her parents when she was a teenager, and slashed her face before fleeing from the police. (Her wound heals nicely, sparing her the fate of Judith Anderson’s Lady Scarface.) Her father was targeted for trying to take mafioso Victor Castle (Joseph Wiseman) legit, a crusade Laurel resumes as a young attorney.

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Delta Burke Goes Mommie Fearest in Maternal Instincts

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On April 15, 2022

In TV Movies

Maternal Instincts screen cap of Delta Burke in a psychiatric ward cell
Delta Burke in Maternal Instincts

As Delta Burke’s Maternal Instincts, a USA Network howler that premiered in 1996, reminds us, some women would die to be mothers—and others would kill for the same privilege. Her Tracy Patterson, an infertile former realtor whose biological clock could explode at any moment, technically belongs to both categories.

Dr. Eve Warden (Beth Broderick), a fertility specialist, cautions Tracy and her husband, Stan (Tom Mason), to be realistic. “Even if all goes well, there’s only a small percentage of success.” Tracy’s sure she’ll be part of that exclusive, odds-defying club, and has already purchased an antique cradle and selected a name for her daughter. Stan, who spoils his wife but can’t give her the one thing she wants the most, isn’t as sure.

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