If there are words that could accurately convey the fathomless stupidity of Touched by Evil, Paula Abdul’s 1997 telefilm debut, they are lost to me as I ponder what might be the dumbest film I’ve ever seen—and I am someone who has, through an unusual series of events, endured Moment by Moment more than once. My problems are less with Abdul, whose cheetah print poster hung above my bed in the early ’90s (alongside a gallery of New Kids on the Block posters), than with Phil Penningroth’s screenplay, which trivializes rape and treats not only viewers, but the characters themselves, as nincompoops.
Abdul’s Ellen Collier, newly divorced from MC Skat Kat, is attempting to forge a new life and career as a single woman when she’s attacked in her condo by the prolific Northside Rapist, who subsequently torments her with harassing phone calls. One of the few pieces of information she is given about her assailant is that he evades detection by always driving a different vehicle. You might assume this fact would give her pause when car detailer Jerry (Adrian Pasdar, oozing sleaze), keeps running into her and trying to make her acquaintance. But Ellen, though hyper-alert in other areas of her life, doesn’t find it strange at all. Even more unbelievably, her friends (Susan Ruttan and Tracy Nelson) begin pressuring her to date him shortly after the assault.
The screenplay’s list of contrivances is longer than Abdul, whose diminutive stature and cartoonish speaking voice lend Ellen a vulnerable quality that her acting couldn’t otherwise convey. Curiously, she does some of her best work in the attack scene, using mostly her eyes. It’s in selling the everyday details of Ellen’s life—conversations with friends, courtship scenes with Jerry, that her stilted delivery suggests she only recently arrived from another planet. Director James A. Contner (of another queasy rape-themed telefilm, She Woke Up Pregnant) carries on as if it’s normal that his lead actress is cosmically disengaged and that every last character is extravagantly dense.
Consider Det. Duvall (Charlayne Woodard), an investigator so useless she might as well be hunting Bigfoot. She’s reluctant to say that Ellen is a Northside victim, despite the details of the crime being identical to others; part of her reasoning is that Ellen is subjected to phone harassment and no one else was. At no point does she attempt to trace the calls, much as she never digs too deeply into the rapist’s unusual car situation or his unique scent, both of which dovetail with Jerry’s profession. When, in one phenomenally crass scene, Ellen gifts her a sample of Jerry’s DNA, Duvall scribbles the number of a laboratory and says to have it tested herself if she’s curious.
That’s just the tip of the WTF? iceberg, with Clara (Nelson) repeatedly urging Ellen to ignore the preponderance of evidence pointing directly at Jerry, mostly because he’s attractive. Then there’s poor Magda (Ruttan), a business advisor whose cat is eviscerated, jewels stolen, and house destroyed after she discourages Ellen from investing in Jerry’s company on the basis of his criminal history (which includes—drumroll, please—burglary). Even after all of that, Ellen, who never quite seems attracted to Jerry, perfunctorily embarks on a relationship with him because, in her words, “I don’t want to be afraid anymore.”
It is safe to say there is nothing here that makes a modicum of sense, from Evil’s most basic plot developments to its cavalier treatment of rape. None of Ellen’s female friends react to her PTSD or romantic reluctance in a realistic way, and her misguided DNA collection caper is equally bizarre. Her final showdown with her attacker serves no purpose other than to give her the opportunity to quip, in response to a sexually charged taunt, “Tell it to the guys in jail.” But the film’s funniest moment comes when the perp is nabbed, no thanks to Detective Duvall, who then has the audacity to remark “He was pretty convincing.” That’s more than we can say about Touched by Evil.
Streaming and DVD availability
Touched by Evil is available on DVD and isn’t currently on authorized streaming platforms, but you can track down an illicit copy of it on YouTube.
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… But wait, there’s more!
A real case out of Texas served as the loose inspiration for Touched by Evil. I found that information in an old IMDb discussion of the film and am putting it here for posterity for anyone whose curiosity is piqued by the card at the start of the movie that reads “Although fictionalized, the following dramatization was inspired by actual events.”
For reviews of telefilms with similar themes, you can check out Sins of the Mother (about a serial rapist with a glossy facade), Fear Stalk (whose title is self-explanatory) and Blind Witness (in which Victoria Principal, like Abdul in Evil, submits to hypnosis in a bid to identify her attacker).
Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
Lisa
wow. that you even got through viewing this one. Yikes. Still laughing over your “Moment by Moment” reference.