Melissa Gilbert and Matthew Lawrence in With a Vengeance.

If there’s a sensitive ’80s sitcom dad you never expected would chase Little House on the Prairie’s Half-Pint through the woods with a bloody knife and murder in his eyes, it’s probably Steven Keaton of Family Ties. (Give Jason Seaver a little coke or booze and who knows what he’s capable of doing.) That element of surprise lends a subversive jolt to the opening scenes of With a Vengeance, a 1992 TV movie also known as Undesirable, when Frank Tanner (Michael Gross) frenziedly slashes a Washington mother and her children to death and sets off after Melissa Gilbert, the only witness to the crime.

Six years later, she’s living in California as Jenna King, a nanny who breaks down when her newest employer, Mike Barcetti (Jack Scalia, Sweet Deception), questions her phony background. She admits to living under an assumed name and tearfully confesses “I don’t know where I went to high school. I don’t know if I went to high school. I don’t know where my family is. I don’t know if I have a family. The truth is, I don’t even know who I am.” Luckily for her, he’s not just a ruggedly handsome single father but a tenacious DOJ attorney determined to help cure her amnesia and uncover her true identity.

Melissa Gilbert and Michael Gross in With a Vengeance.

As she settles into a comfortable routine with Mike and his son Phillip (Matthew Lawrence), Jenna’s reluctant to probe too deeply into her past. “What if I did something horrible?” she muses. But she’s plagued by headaches and nightmares and never knows when another fragment of her memory will traumatically resurface. “I’m afraid all the time,” she admits to Phillip, who has worries of his own — namely, that she’ll return to her former life at the expense of his family. Still, he accompanies her on a trip to the Pacific Northwest, where they chase leads provided by an investigator friend (Roger Aaron Brown).

What good can come of a vulnerable amnesiac facing a violent, uncertain past with only a child at her side? Donna Mills’s travails in The Lady Forgets suggest the answer is ‘nothing.’ But Gilbert and Lawrence make their characters too levelheaded and resourceful to invite much worry, even as Tanner, homicidal as ever, revisits old haunts and renews his search for Jenna. His derangement, thinly concealed behind an affable exterior and conservative suits, is redolent of The Stepfather’s Jerry Blake, though a scenery-chewing Gross lacks Terry O’Quinn’s subtlety or guile.

Melissa Gilbert with Jack Scalia in With a Vengeance.

There is little in Renee Longstreet’s screenplay that adequately explains With a Vengeance’s watchability, and this is as good a place as any to note that her credits include Frog Girl: The Jenifer Graham Story. Tanner’s motives and methods don’t withstand scrutiny and you see every twist coming from a mile away. Undeterred, director Michael Switzer (Unlikely Angel) serves up scares where he can, even in Jenna’s five-second flashbacks to the slayings. That Gilbert plays a teenager in those scenes without eliciting peals of laughter is an endorsement of his nimble touch and her appealingly uncomplicated performance.

Flashbacks and their triggers are a delicate matter in telefilms, particularly those made in the early-to-mid-’90s. When botched, as in Shelley Long’s egregiously awful Fatal Memories, they undermine the plot. Rarely, as in Tony Danza’s abysmal Deadly Whispers, they create a standout scene or two in a sea of dreck. In With a Vengeance, Jenna’s fractured memories are more suspenseful than not and typically advance the story. Amid the excessive suffering of her post-Prairie heroines, it’s pleasing to watch Gilbert confront trauma rather than luxuriate in it. She works particularly well with Lawrence, who uses his puppy dog eyes to winning effect as her unusually observant charge.

Streaming and DVD availability

With a Vengeance currently streams on YouTube. It’s out-of-print on DVD but can be purchased secondhand. As of this writing, Kindle Unlimited users can read Melissa Gilbert’s memoir, Prairie Tale, for free.

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