Amnesia is contagious in The Lady Forgets (1989), afflicting not only its puzzled heroine, an art teacher mixed up in a murder she can’t remember, but screenwriter Durrell Royce Crays (Schoolboy Father), who seems to have misplaced its plot and improvised by scribbling bits of dialogue in spray cheese.
If you don’t feel like a neurologist within its first 10 minutes, when Rebecca Simms (Donna Mills) sustains one of her many head injuries and recovers previously lost memories while simultaneously losing newer ones, give it a little time. Eventually you’ll have wondered “Did he just have a stroke?” about several important characters, before finally questioning your own cognitive abilities as you struggle to make sense of anything you just saw — particularly Greg Evigan’s hair, the vivacious mullet of My Two Dads having been cruelly replaced by an ailing squirrel.
After thwacking her head during a purse-snatching, a dazed Rebecca returns home to a traumatized daughter and an angry husband, Andrew, who irrationally ignores her amnesia and accuses her of deserting their family. (He’s played by Andrew Robinson, a crusader against venereal disease in Someone I Touched.) “Maybe this wasn’t the world’s most terrific marriage, but I never believed you’d walk out on your own child,” he scolds her. “Not once in those two years did you even call her!” The Lady Forgets is full of maddening exchanges like this, its characters refusing to engage in basic communication to clarify important matters — until we’re introduced to its cartoonish villain, who refuses to shut up.
But before we get to that, Rebecca has a series of smaller mysteries to solve, like what happened on the night she went missing and during the years that followed, which she lived as Julie Black. There are potentially sordid clues — the engraving on a diamond bracelet, a crumpled receipt from the seedy Empress Hotel — and Julie is given flame-colored hair and bolder fashions to distinguish her from the dowdy blonde Rebecca. Tony Clay (Evigan), a womanizing artist with a disreputable goatee, helps fill in the blanks when he isn’t drowning his sorrows in smoky jazz clubs. Naturally, the closer she gets to the truth, the more danger she’s in.
Director Bradford May, who had a bit of fun with Andy Griffith as the homicidal Gramps, is less jocular here, with Crays’ screenplay decidedly lacking in mirth — and logic. Again and again, characters make egregiously stupid decisions solely to advance a paper-thin plot. Take, for instance, the dogged pursuit of Rebecca in broad daylight by Crew Cut (Lon Katzman), a menacing man in a suit and trench coat, who pointlessly waits far too long to reveal his gun. She responds to this brush with death by asking Andrew, who’s on his way out of town, if she can stay home alone with their daughter. Even more bizarrely, he allows it.
Robinson, a dependably offbeat character actor, is permitted just enough weirdness to create a little suspense. Otherwise it’s in short supply, leaving you to marvel at the frequency with which Mills — a TV movie mainstay since the ’70s who recently became a Lifetime fixture again in her eighties — wearily rubs her temples or places her head in her hands. Even if Rebecca wasn’t constantly getting knocked on the noggin, what else was there for Mills to do with two boring characters, each devoid of chemistry with her leading men? The Lady Forgets for a reason.
Streaming and DVD availability
The Lady Forgets is out-of-print on DVD and currently streams free (with ads) on Amazon. It’s also on Tubi and YouTube.
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Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
Lisa
omg…dying laughing
“Eventually you’ll have wondered “Did he just have a stroke?” about several important characters, before finally questioning your own cognitive abilities as you struggle to make sense of anything you just saw — particularly Greg Evigan’s hair, the vivacious mullet of My Two Dads having been cruelly replaced by an ailing squirrel.”