Joan Collins and Joanna Pacula wig out in Sweet Deception

Whoever greenlit Sweet Deception (1998) knew it was unmitigated crap. That’s how we ended up with not one but two very special guest stars: Kate Jackson (wearing the type of gaudy press-on nails favored by Linda Richman) and Joan Collins (styling wigs and giving manicures from a wheelchair). We’ll get to those two later. First we need to talk about Jack Scalia’s Southern accent, the least convincing thing in a movie full of ’em.

Joanna Pacula stars as Risa, the second Mrs. Gallagher. Her husband is Fin (Peter LaCroix), a wealthy serial philanderer we meet as he stashes millions of dollars in cash in an offshore safe deposit box. He isn’t long for this world, which is just as well because little about Fin and Risa’s pairing, or casting, makes sense. Equally nonsensically, Scalia plays Brett Newcomb, Fin’s slick Southern law partner in a San Francisco firm. He calls Risa “darlin'” about 87 times in the course of 90 minutes, sometimes while wearing a bow tie, as if lost on his way to a dinner theater production of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

The first Mrs. Gallagher, Kit (Kate Jackson), is also in the picture, making a scene at a soiree attended by her ex and casually greeting his new wife with an insult: “Hello, Risa. Beautiful dress. It’s a shame they didn’t have it in your size.” Jackson has very few lines altogether but might as well be in a Honeysuckle Ham catalogue with her exaggerated facial expressions and swigs of champagne that have absolutely nothing in common with the rest of Sweet Deception.