In Arsenic and Old Lace, Cary Grant’s character famously quips “You see, insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.” Tainted Blood, a 1993 made-for-TV thriller starring the tiniest bits of Raquel Welch and Joan Van Ark’s original faces, takes that premise and stigmatizes it within an inch of its life—it would make you cry uncle, if you weren’t afraid that he, too, would show up and go on a killing spree.
Welch, inexpressive as ever in a series of drably colored power suits, plays Elizabeth Hayes, a bestselling author of books about “the breakdown of the American family” and “prostitute spies in Washington, D.C.” We meet her as she crashes a funeral in Oklahoma, where high school athlete Brian O’Connor (John Thomson) shot his parents and then himself in a crime that left their small town reeling. Her instincts for tabloid journalism are rewarded when Brian’s grieving aunt (Molly McClure) reveals her adopted nephew was born in a psychiatric hospital.
Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
