Her Only Child

Sometimes we watch Lifetime movies because of who's in them (Judith Light, I'm lookin' at you) and sometimes we watch them because their titles are so titillating (Baby Monitor: Sound of Fear, anyone?). This one, well, I can't really tell you why we watched it. We just did.

And, frankly, it was dull. This movie is about a boring young woman who lives with her overbearing mother. Every scene is expanding on this basic premise. She goes out on a date, her mom fakes an injury. She says she's going away for the weekend with her new boyfriend, who is -- in Lifetime fashion -- unnaturally understanding and patient with this dull, neurotic woman who lives with her mother, and her mother attempts to poison her dog...and fails. That's pretty much this movie in a nutshell: mother tries very diligently to be stone cold nuts, daughter continues to put up with it, mother tries something outlandish, mother fails to register fear/concern in daughter.

I realize that in some people's experience, this is what being an only child is like. If you look at this movie as a cautionary tale, its message would be: do not only have one child because it will turn you into an obsessive lunatic, but not a very good one.

Instead of telling you anything more about what this movie had, I will tell you a few things that would have made it better:

• Some parental abuse, Hilary Swank-style
• A less-supportive boyfriend, maybe one who had a cyberporn addiction
• Mom's addicted to prescription pills
• Several hobbits, real or imagined
  
• A sibling, preferably with an eating disorder or anger management problem
  

Rating: 2. This movie is not recommended on account of its unrelenting dullness. Also -1 for canine violence!

Watch the trailer, if you must. Trailer gets +1 for having Dutch (?) subtitles, which makes it marginally more interesting.

Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life

Have you ever caught your child/spouse/friend looking at porn on the internet? Yes? Then we have bad news: according to Lifetime, your loved one will be floating face-down in a pool in no less than three months.

We're used to Lifetime laying the warnings on thick: take one drink and you end up an icky prostitute, take one puff of pot and you find yourself selling your spare organs in a back alley, flirt with your secretary and in two weeks your entire family has been executed gangland-style. But this one takes the cake: look at some naked people on the web and die.

The stupidity of this premise is what makes this movie such a keeper. With voice-cracking authenticity, Jeremy Sumpter plays Justin, a good kid who does a little late-night surfing, likes what he sees, and so starts seeing more... and more... and more... until soon he's shotgunning Red Bull and stealing his mom's credit card to purchase entry into freaky websites. It all comes to a climax (sorry) when, rudely spurned by his Christian girlfriend, Justin retreats to the booby embrace of a webcasting hottie. It's a case of a cheap lay gone horribly wrong: soon Justin is bloody and beaten and floating in a pool.

The real lesson from watching this movie should be don't overdo the Red Bull, kids. I mean, that stuff actually is dangerous.

RATING: 8. Bonus points for somehow faking us into thinking none of these surfings resulted in a single masturbation. If that's the case, Justin's problem is bigger than we thought. And super-bonus points for somehow managing to work in this.

Lock your door, make sure no one's looking, and sneak a peek at LMN's Cyber Seduction website - you filthy pervert. By the way, ancillary evidence leads us to believe that this is one of LMN's most popular movies. They even have resources to help you help the cyber-sex-addict in your life. Fun! This popularity is probably because of its ridiculousness as well as Sumpter's apparent tweenie fan base, the likes of which you can sample right here:



See the trailer. Hell, just watch the whole thing.

Dead Before Dawn

It's possible that Google has sent you here as you searched for information on director Sam Raimi's Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn, the boisterously gory story of a man stuck in an isolated cabin desperately staving off legions of undead attackers. It's a great movie. This is not that movie.

No, this is a lackluster 1993 Cheryl Ladd vehicle that currently stands as one of the most formulaic Lifetime movies we've seen yet, which is saying a lot. Cheryl plays a woman married to a rich dude who owns a bunch of big companies and who, in his spare time, likes to smack around his wife. She wisely opts to divorce him, but then he hires an assassin to kill her. Hey, can you blame the guy? I mean, he tried smacking her around and she had a problem with that, too.

Anyhoo, then she's forced to fake her own death so the cops can catch the husband and the assassin. At this point, we tuned out. Hey, don't get all up in our grill about it. No one's paying us to watch these movies. It's not like we don't have dishes to do and stuff.

RATING: 2. The only thing about this movie that ruled was the hired assassin. He was this Asian guy and I guess in 1993 Asian-Americans were still kind of exotic or something, because when the husband first meets him he says, "I didn't realize you were... uh..." "ASIAN?" the Asian barks, raising his Asian eyebrow and looking all smug, Asian-style. If the movie had pursued this fascinating Asian angle further, who knows how awesome it coulda got.

Fake your own death at LMN's Dead Before Dawn website. They got a trailer on there, too.

Rod Stewart, who would never dream of beating up on Cheryl Ladd, tells her (lately) how much he loves her:

A Kidnapping in the Family

Sarah Taylor (Tracey Gold) seems to be your regular chain-smoking, beer-swilling trailer trash (in other words, classic Tracey Gold). Her mom (Kate Jackson) disapproves of her party-girl 'tude and has just about had enough, when suddenly Sarah meets a sensitive art student with a flowing brown mane. After one date - one date! - they decided to get married, and before you know it they have themselves a boy-child.

Seems like ol' Sarah's gone done reformed herself! Well, not so fast - mom sets out to prove that Sarah is in fact indoctrinating her boy-child into the satanist church. This leads to one of the best scenes in Lifetime history, wherein the bored boy-child reels off the names of numerous underworld deities. At this point we were practically begging: Oh, please let this all lead to an unholy sacrifice!

Sadly, there's ne'er a pentagram to be seen. Turns out, Mom's just plain insane and wants the boy-child to herself. When the satanist ploy flops, she just nabs the kid and takes off, setting off the most boring manhunt in history. Then again, you can't really go anywhere but downhill after involving Satan.

RATING: 5. Props for the hilariously supportive boyfriend (pictured here, wielding a gun from a different, probably better movie), but shame on you, Lifetime, for suckering us into busting out our Iron Maiden T-shirts for no damn reason at all.

You really owe it to yourself to check out the official Lifetime page for this movie, if for no other reason than the following fan comment:

"Kleep The Son White He's Mouther."

This insightful analysis was added by "Icebabby," whose profile reads: "I Like To Read And Go To Work At Shaws And Hig Out White My FianceeJeff And I Like ToSwim".

Well kleeped, Icebabby. I couldn't have kleeped it mouther myself.

Extra bonus Satan:

Terror in the Family (1996)

Fifteen year old Deena Martin (Hilary Swank) is at the middle of a family maelstrom: her father (Dan Lauria) is obsessed with making wooden bowls, her mother (Joanna Kerns) is a whining, hapless drunkard, and her brother is a frustrated pianist plagued with the double whammy of a budding addiction to drink and a prematurely wrinkled forehead.

On top of all of this excitement, she has a new boyfriend who finds himself unable to cope with his own troubles at home. What does he do? He takes it out on the old six string (they're in a band together) and by climbing rollercoasters.

Lest you think that this sounds like a rudderless Lifetime snoozefest, let me add this: she has a rage problem. When Deena is provoked -- and it takes but a question to provoke her -- she flies off the handle like Mike Tyson. The girl beats her parents.

That's right, this is a movie about a girl. A girl who beats her parents.

Imagine if you can that all sitcoms are made in the same place, and during lunch breaks and smoke breaks and whatever other kinds of breaks sitcom actors take, the actors all hang out together in, like, a cafeteria or something. This must be where the idea for Terror in the Family was hatched, because it is clearly the brainchild of a person (or persons) who take no small pride in cramming as many issues and sitcom stars as possible into one 90 minute Lifetime bonanza of feelings.

Rating: 9. Frankly, we're not sure it gets much better than this. Fine, there were no cheerleaders and no one gets killed, but Hilary Swank beats on her parents, who are played by Mr. Arnold and Maggie Seaver. Who hasn't wanted to pop these two at some point? There's also a red herring of "the band", which the parents never even find out about because they're too busy rushing to the ER to take care of their busted hands/lips/etc. If they only knew how their daughter could shake a tambourine with the zeal of a tuneless 3rd grader! If only they knew that their son, a strange shrunken hobbit of a boy, was heading down the same dangerous road to Boozetown that his mother and grandmother took. If only...

Oh! And if all that didn't convince you, please note the similarities:

Donna Martin (Tori Spelling) vs Deena Martin (Hillary Swank)

• both have strangely skinny/noodly bodies
• both are prone to exposure of the midriff
• both have a penchant for troubled, relatively ugly dudes in bands (Ray Pruitt/"Garrett")
• both of these ugly dudes have names that end in double t's
• both actresses were on Beverly Hills 90210
• their names differed by only a single vowel sound
  

...and the differences:

• Donna was a prudy virgin, Deena put out
• Deena was in the band, Donna was not
• Deena had fairly normal makeup and hair, while Donna definitely did NOT
• Deena beat her parents, Donna did not
  

Look, it's Garrett:

"Waaah please don't hit me"

No One Would Tell

Breaking News Alert:

FRED SAVAGE KILLS CANDACE CAMERON!!!

It seems like a headline that could only exist in your tawdriest of Tinseltown fantasies, yet here it is staring you right in the face like a freakin' punk. Only the twisted sitcom switcheroos of Lifetime Hell can such depravities be served up between commercials for that thing that sucks all the air out of your clothing bags. This movie is a prime example why we worship and sacrifice our young at the Lifetime altar. Teach us, O Darkthroned Underlord!

Let's see if we can steer this boat back to shore: Fred Savage, formerly seen as that Wonder Years kid, is now a muscle-bound moron who likes to rough up his girlfriend, Candace Cameron of Full House infamy. Plenty of high-school wrestling scenes, bruises, and declarations of "But he really loves me!" ensue. Not one but two Rozes try to stave off the inevitable, but it's, well, inevitable. That's right: Cameron, with her selfish refusal to do everything her abusive boyfriend says, downright forces him to murder her. Women!

It's pretty much big-time fun watching Fred's facial tics, once used to comic effect, be used to communicate murderous rage. We know domestic abuse is no laughing matter, yet each time Fred snarls his cute little lip it's hard not to giggle just a little. We're going to hell for this, it's true, but we're pretty sure a few Lifetime execs will be down there waiting.

RATING: 8. Even if you skip the dreaded Third-Act Coma, this one's a keeper. Just like Crazy Fred Savage.

Conceal your gnarly bruises at Lifetime's official No One Would Tell website. By the way, this apparently is based on a true story.

Watch some of Fred and Candace's, uh, greatest hits:

Terminology: Third Act Coma

It doesn't matter if it's anorexia, incest, go-go dancing, or just fitting into middle school, chances are it's all gonna end in murder. And if it ends in murder - heck, even if it doesn't - there's nearly a 90% chance it ends in a courtroom decision. This is what we call the Third Act Coma.

Lifetime tends to kick all kinds of ass for the first 2/3 of their movies. Various characters rise and fall. Disgusting habits are adopted. Reputations are trashed. Lives are guttered. But, maybe because so many of these things are "based on a true story," they commonly stagger to a courtroom closing that is, well, kinda dull.

Maybe you like seeing your favorite actress sitting in a nice dress answering aggressive questions from a (probably Southern) attorney. And we do, too. But we'd much rather see them suffering rather than just talking about that suffering. Call us purists if you must.

Look, even the gavel fell asleep.

Co-ed Call Girl

Surgically-enhanced millionaire actress Tori Spelling tries to mix it up by portraying a plain-Jane lower-middle-class college student struggling to make ends meet. Working at her mom's bakery isn't really rakin' in the Benjamins, so she becomes a call girl. How does she come to this rather abrupt decision? In classic Lifetime fashion, she is seduced by an mentor-like vixen who convinces her that a life of sleaze is all fast cars and cool dudes and bling bling.

One thing her vixen mentor forgot to mention is that being a call girl also occasionally requires doing it with creeps. Oh, the chagrin upon Tori's face when she figures this out! Eventually, she wants to back out of her the sacred pact between prostitute and pimp, but in proper Godfather III fashion, just when she thinks she's out, they pull her back in. Eventually Tori plugs her pimp and then we slip into the requisite Third-Act Coma.

Tori is fast becoming one of our favorite Lifetime heroines. She does this weird nerdy giggling thing that is supposed to communicate innocence but just ends up looking like she's doing an impression of a pig. It's always inappropriate; thus, we love it. However, we finally figured out why Tori does this. It's a serious academic revelation that the Judith Light Conspiracy Theory is proud to debut right here:

Some of you may know that, shortly before 90210 premiered, Tori played Violet Anne Bickerstaff, Screech's nerdy love-interest on the teen sitcom Saved by the Bell. As it was one of her first featured roles, she came up with a nerdy demeanor befitting one of Screech's paramours. Once she had it down, she never stopped doing it - right through 90210 and onto Lifetime glory. Look, I realize this paragraph doesn't have a lot of jokes in it, but this is serious pop culture theory we're dishing out here, so stop complaining.

Anyway, combine these bizarre mannerisms with her Michael Jackson-y facial expressions and Star Trek: The Next Generation hairdos and you've got yourself a date with destiny.

RATING: 6. Tastes good, but needs a touch more degradation. And what's with Tori's penchant for playing hookers?

Get all dolled up at Lifetime's official Co-ed Call Girl website.

Watch Tori get her call-girl cut:

To Have and to Hold

They can't all be winners. Justine Bateman gives the ol' college try to shake off her "Mallory Keaton" label but that label proves far too powerful. She will always be Mallory to us. In fact, as we watched this, we just pretended that this was what happened to Mallory after "Family Ties" ended - you know, after Alex became a jazz drummer, Jennifer opened a meth lab, Stephen became the governor of North Dakota, and Elyse died in a horrible snowboarding accident.

I'm kind of killing space here because I hardly remember anything about this movie. And I just watched it! Here's what I can piece together: Mallory is a real estate agent dating a dude who has an affair with a hottie who convinces her drug-dealing ex-boyfriend to put a hit on Mallory's hubby after he dumps the hottie to go back to Mallory. Only Mallory turns the table on the would-be killer and stabs that sucker with a knife. Oh, snap!

We just spent a few minutes trying to remember the order of stabbings and shootings that follow and we failed. Suffice it to say that there are stabbings and shootings. Oddly, the only thing I really remember from this movie is Mallory's little girl, who goes down in the Lifetime Hall of Fame as the Most Boring Daughter Ever. I know this sounds mean, but geez was that girl dull. I hope she doesn't end up as the night manager at her local Hardee's, but I'm afraid she will.

Hey, did you know that Mallory makes clothes now (like these lovely green undies)?

RATING: 3. Mallory, why hast thou forsaken us?

Fall asleep standing up at Lifetime's official To Have and to Hold website.

Need a palate cleanser after that huge underwear picture? Try some classic-era Mallory shilling for Maxwell House:

Fatal Desire

Head's up: Anne Heche is crazy! If you're a single guy and you run into Anne Heche and you don't remember that she used to be an actual crazy person who woke up on people's porches and had to be checked into institutions and dated Ellen and whatnot, then let this movie serve as a warning. She is crazy and will toss you from the cliffs of insanity.

Also: Anne Heche is skanky! We've seen two Lifetime movies starring her now, and her skank readings are in the red. We don't blame her for this. Some people are just skankier than others. And if you're someone like poor Atlantic City pit-boss Joe, and you start an online affair with Anne Heche that spills over into real life, then skanky is obviously what you're into - and that's the plot of this movie.

Yes, Joe likes 'em skanky and filthy, and we don't hold that against him. Actually we wouldn't hold anything against him, because he's played by Eric Roberts, who's pretty skanky and filthy himself. Anyway, back to the plot: Anne ends up conning Joe into thinking she's got an abusive husband who needs to be dead. You can figure out the rest.

Highlights include: 1) Skankiness levels approach the legendary; 2) Eric Roberts always looking like a cat fell asleep on his head; 3) Joe's son, who may or may not be named "Titty"; 4) Anne's two karaoke numbers sung in a wheezy whine (see below); 5) Anne's daughter, who inexplicably vanishes in the second half of the movie and never returns; and 6) The fact that both Anne and Joe each have a Roz, and Joe's Roz meets Anne's Roz, momentarily creating the mind-bending possibility that we might have a Roz vs. Roz face-off, which would totally blow our minds and threaten the space-time continuum - perhaps fortunately for the human race, this meeting never happens.

RATING: 7. The montage of slutty Anne pics that end the movie is probably worth taping and watching in slow-mo. You know, if you're into that kind of thing.

(Left: Joe and Anne during happier times.)

Ho it up at Lifetime's official Fatal Desire website.

Below: Heche sings!

She's Too Young

In elementary school, communicable diseases worthy of a parent-teacher-kid trifecta freakout usually fall into several categories: itchy (chicken pox), insect (lice), or vomitrocious (flu).

In this high school, it was an epidemic of a different nature.
If you're thinking "syphilis?", you're right!

Fourteen year old freshman Hannah Vogul (a cute, but vaguely piggy Alexis Dziena) is running with a fast crowd. Her friends (one of whom is played by Degrassi alum Miriam McDonald), are into some pretty heavy stuff. Yep, I'm talking about orgies.

It all starts out innocently enough when Hannah goes out with the school Studly Dudley, Nick (a profoundly dopey Mike Erwin II). He invites her over, gets her clothes off, joins her in the hot tub and reminds her that he's not just about sex. Hannah is over the moon about this guy even though a couple of her friends have already had the pleasure of "doing" him. She's different! He "really likes her"! He gave her a stupid present and chastely watched movies with her at his house!

At this point, the movie is pretty much 100% realism. The girl looks and acts 14, the boy...well, he seems as quietly predatory as older boys are at that age. He is nothing like her boy-buddy, who is so nondescript that I have forgotten his name. That boy is a dork and is not orgy material.

Ok, so Nick puts the moves on Hannah and she says that she's not ready. He gives her the old boo hoo blue balls look and she gives in. It's quick and unreciprocal oral sex for this helpless naif. She doesn't seem to enjoy it much. She sure doesn't know that she just got the uncoolest present of all: syphilis.

The movie moves forward at a breakneck pace at this point. All of Hannah's friends are totally into doing as many guys as they can and so they all get syphilis. Hundreds of people in her school are screened, hundreds receive an antibiotic shot. There is a kindly social worker type who is trying to chart the spread of the syph on a whiteboard. She is coming up against a lot of resistance from the administration and parents who refuse to believe that their kids are sexually active. The girls have conflicts with their mothers, who all fall into different motherly stereotypes (the young-and-lenient, the overly religious, the PTA demon.)

In the meantime, the dork maintains his ardent love for Hannah and eventually uses his annoying cellphone camera to save the day. Wonder how this happens? You'll just have to see the movie.

I give this at least 6 points just for dealing with the unseemly topic of a syphilis epidemic in such an unusually realistic way. -1 for the dork, because most girls who give it up like Hannah don't wind up with such a nice dude, at least not right away. + 1 for indignant Marcia Gay Harden, who humiliates her daughter by holding her up as an example. Who wants a mom who makes YOU the poster child for VD?!?! +1 for being the kind of movie you could accidentally put on and watch with your teenage daughter to segue into a very important talk about not dating jerks.

Overall, I think this movie deserves an 8. I enjoyed it for its frank depiction of teenage orgies as well as their consequences.

Rating: 8.

Here's a video with clips from the movie set to a Pink song. I don't get it, but maybe you will.
A youtube commenter had this to say: "i love this movie its soo cool and also the guys sooo hot even wehn he sais I HAVE SYPHILIS UHH AHHH SYPHILIS SYPHILIS! "

Wife, Mother, Murderer: The Marie Hilley Story

In this movie, Alabaman slime-ball Marie Hilley kills her husband, tries to get insurance money by burning down her own house, blowing up her own car, and attempting to poison her daughter, then takes a new identity and marries a dude in Vermont, then fakes her own death, then comes back to the dude pretending to be her own sister, before finally getting caught in her own web of lies. If you're counting, that's like seven Lifetime movies condensed into two hours, all of them starring one Judith Light.

Oh, man, is this movie good. Just keep re-reading that first paragraph over and over until you're whipped into a frenzy of disbelief and joy, and you'll feel pretty much like we did after our second - that's right, our second - viewing of this modern masterpiece.

What can we say about Judith Light's performance? Her Scarlett O'Hara accent is better than her Who's the Boss's co-star's Rhett Butler impression, but it's still a train wreck. Her hair and clothes are - I'm sorry - I can't continue. I'm blinded by tears of disbelief and joy.

If they sold Marie Hilley action figures, we'd buy them. If a judge asked us to swear on a stack of Wife, Mother, Murderer DVDs, we'd consider it our proud honor. Look, we're running out of ways to say this movie rules.

RATING: 9. The best part is when she comes back as her own sister, complete with several different full-body rhinestone-plated denim jumpsuits.

Sprinkle a little Crazy Salt on your life at Lifetime's official Wife, Mother, Murderer website.

Here's the wacko part where she shows up in her denimwear:

Reckless Behavior: Caught on Tape

Odette Yustman may sound like the name of a fussy old biddy, but it's actually the name of this attractive young woman who apparently was on the show October Road as well as starring as one of the screaming kids in Cloverfield, which I saw. Since I can't accept her as "Odette," I'm going to have to refer to her as Cloverfield. Is that OK?

Regardless of your answer, this movie is about a young woman, Cloverfield, who really has it going on: she's got a fancy new job as a grade-school teacher, she has a hunky fireman boyfriend, and a great haircut. To blow off some steam from this entirely too stressful existence, Cloverfield and a couple of her girlfriends head off to the tropics for some harmless fun. Their harmless fun gets a little out of control when they meet Antonio Sabato Jr., who is always around making sure the girls are liquored up, dancing, and telling sexy truth-or-dare type stories--while constantly videotaping everything.

Yes, as the title may have hinted, this "reckless behavior" is "caught on tape." I know, you may be thinking that doing shots with your shorties and sitting around the fire making fake-orgasm noises doesn't sound all that reckless, it just sounds like your basic Friday night. Well, Lifetime is here to tell you that it is reckless. RECKLESS. You wanton sluts.

So anyway, Antonio mixes shots of Cloverfield dancing and fake-orgasming and splices it with porn shots, and the next thing you know it's the hottest porno on the net. Cloverfield's family, friends, and colleagues all end up seeing it, she loses her job, her boyfriend starts frowning almost 24/7, and no lawyer will represent her (although she does find one who gives Cloverfield, and all Lifetime viewers, a stern lecture on how we should really be blaming the whole situation on the evils of modern society, rap music, and fashion ads).

The interesting thing here is that the creators of this movie paint themselves into a narrative corner and can't figure out any way for Cloverfield to win. So this is what they come up with: Cloverfield tracks down Antonio at his dumpy L.A. pad (where apparently he executes George Lucas-levels of digital manipulation to get Cloverfield's head on various nude bods). Then she destroys a couple of his computer monitors and drives away looking all self-satisfied like she has just reclaimed her virtue. Destroying computer monitors has that effect, I guess.

RATING: 7. Personally, I love seeing reckless behavior of all stripes caught on tapes of any format, so I was totally into this.

Dig it: Lifetime's official Reckless Behavior website.

No official vid, though, so here's some promo thing from Cloverfield, which, if you think about it, also could have been titled Reckless Behavior: Caught on Tape.

See Jane Run

Joanna Kerns suddenly realizes she is in a grocery store and has no idea who she is. I don't mean that in an existential-crisis kind of way, either. She has amnesia, two pockets full of cash, and a big bloody stain on the front of her dress. What's a girl to do?

The answer: get suckered back into living with her Warren Beatty lookalike husband, who is trying to "help" her get her memory back by keeping her totally doped up on pills, courtesy of his strange woman/boy assistant. It's not as complicated as it sounds: her hubby is evil, he's hiding something, and those drugs he's giving her are actually drugs that will eventually kill her.

Joanna wises up, starts pocketing the pills, and eventually escapes, when a timely head wound magically gives back all of her memories. Turns out, Warren was sexually abusing Joanna's daughter, thus the money and the blood, blah blah blah. There's a rushed conclusion where the woman/boy suddenly changes sides and becomes the star witness who sends Warren to the slammer.

It's not a very good movie, but is redeemed by two factors. 1) The woman/boy assistant is really peculiar. Is she a butchy lesbian? A forest sprite? Cute? Unappealing? It's impossible to tell. 2) While her memory is gone, Joanna is haunted by lots of bizarre dreams that over-use fog machines and wide-angle lenses to hilarious effect. Also, in these dreams, for some reason she always ends up beating the crap out of someone.

RATING: 5. I never thought I'd get to see Joanna Kerns punch so many people in my lifetime, much less a single movie.

Check out Lifetime's official See Jane Run page.

Deadly Whispers

A woman and her husband are sleeping in a modest, wood-paneled country home. The mom gets up, puts on one of her many housecoats and starts to cook a staggeringly large breakfast. The father goes into the bathroom and, eventually, emerges and eats breakfast with his family. The father is the manager of a junkyard, and he is concerned with his teenaged daughter's behavior. The mother is extremely houseproud and always does what needs to be done for her family. Then, one day, the daughter disappears. The father supposedly saw her drive off in a red pickup with a strange man.

A police officer questions the family, but they profess ignorance. What could have happened to Kathy? They vow to find her.

Sound familiar? This is standard Lifetime fare, save but for one small detail. The father is played by Tony Danza.



Well, three details. He's Tony Danza, and he's eventually accused of the murder. And he has multiple personalities.


This movie would be pretty boring, save for the absolutely preposterous casting of Tony "Eh Oh, Oh Eh" Danza as the threadbare West Virginia father clinging to his last smidge of sanity. His accent falls somewhere between Boston, Savannah, New Orleans and Brooklyn. It's nothing short of atrocious. On the other end of the spectrum you have the wife, who is frumpy and appropriately accented. Her face even hints at WV, with wide-set eyes and an angry little mouth that can only say like three things: "Where's Kathy?" "I want my children back" and "I have to support my family." OH, and Ving Rhames is the lead investigating cop on the scene, but he is not required to fake a WV accent at all.


Highlights include: the panoply of housecoats worn by the mom, the regionless idiolect spoken by Tony Danza, Heather Tom as "the slutty dead daughter" and, of course, the performance of Tony Danza himself, which is among the worst Lifetime Performances by a Lead Male that we have had the pleasure of seeing.


RATING: 8. It's not for the story, which is pretty pedestrian, but for sheer Lifetime ridiculousness, this one is off the charts.

Here is a shitty video of a metal band called Deadly Whispers, which clearly is an homage to this fine cinematic ode to multiple personality disorder.

Terminology: Double-clutch

You ever find yourself having a "Lifetime Moment"? Like maybe you're opening up to your best gal-friend about that time when you were shot down by gang members, or perhaps revealing to your mother how you prostituted yourself to buy street-grade crack, or sharing a moment with anyone about anything remotely having to do with rape? Then chances are you both had a large mug of steaming hot coffee (or tea), that you were each gripping with both hands for maximum coziness. This is known as the double-clutch.

Almost any heart-to-heart scene in any Lifetime movie has a couple double-clutches. Particularly good movies will have six or seven. When discussing your favorite Lifetime movies, we suggest using this term, as it will shave valuable seconds off your conversations, seconds you could be spending watching more Lifetime movies. "Wasn't it great when mother and daughter finally double-clutched?" you'll ask. "Yes it was," your friend will respond, as she double-clutches her own large mug of steaming hot coffee (or tea).

Pictured: Random woman honing her double-clutch. Not bad, lady.

Justice for Annie

Traveling all the way from the wonderful year of 1996, comes this devastatingly weird story about a girl, Danica McKellar (who we might as well just call "Winnie Cooper"), who is a normal girl graduating from high school... normal except for one thing.... she has DYSLEXIA!!!!!

Surprise! This isn't a dyslexia movie. Winnie Cooper goes and gets hitched with her sailor boyfriend and moves with him to Seattle, much to the dismay of her mom, Peggy Lipton. Things go south pretty fast and the sailor husband starts getting.... VERBALLY ABUSIVE!!!!!

Surprise! This isn't an abuse movie, either. Winnie leaves her husband and meets a new boy. This boy is played by Lochlyn Munro! Very exciting! You may not know who Lochlyn Munro is, but on Planet Lifetime, he is a god. He's got a strange, smashed-looking face, and beavery teeth and is always, always, always playing the rapist football player. Here he's playing the bait to lure Winnie Cooper to rent a room with his parents, who just happen to be in the business of killing people for life insurance money. Yep, it's a killing-people-for-life-insurance-money movie.

So anyway, these two old folks toss Winnie off a cliff, Peggy Lipton grieves, double-clutches (twice) with her Roz, then gets suspicious, then takes the killers to court, and then wins and achieves inner peace or something. Peggy Lipton gives another of her classic "I'm overdosing on Xanax" performances, and it's fun watching Winnie Cooper ruin her life so carelessly. But the main thrill for us was the brief appearance of Lochlyn Munro. Lochlyn Munro!

RATING: 8. This movie is so scattered, it's like three Lifetime movies in one, all of them awesome.

Terminology: The Roz

Occasionally here at the Judith Light Conspiracy Theory, we feel the need to define some terms. That's because we throw around a lot of lingo. And if you're not hip to our jargon, you feel like a killdozer in a flabbapatch.

OK, I made those two words up. But a real term we use while watching Lifetime movies and discussing them amongst ourselves is The Roz. See, most Liftetime movies have a main heroine, and, to move the plot along, that heroine needs a friend. Sometimes that friend is what we currently call "The Black Friend." (We're working on a better term.) But often the heroine's friend is a slightly-less-attractive white friend and/or coworker. We like to call this person "Roz." Why? Because weren't all those kind-of-dumpy, wisecracking-but-bitter, hug-sharing teachers you had in high school named "Roz"? They're weren't? Well, they should've been. Shame on them.

Usually The Roz is just there for comic relief, double-clutching, and asking appropriate questions so that the heroine can move the plot along. It's a thankless job being a Roz, but for some ladies it's just their lot in life(time).

(Above: Rachel Dratch kinda seems like a Roz.)

OMG!

Friends Til the End is on tonight!
Hope you're all enjoying this fine piece of American cinema. We know we are!

The Governor's Wife

The general rule is: the older the Lifetime movie, the better we like it. As much as we love Lifetime and Lifetime Movie Network, we wish those CEOs would get it together and create Lifetime Classics (tm), a network of TV movies pre-1990. Those were really the glory days. But our love of vintage material doesn't mean we don't enjoy the new age of Lifetime movies, too. Case in point: us sitting our butts down to watch the World Broadcast Premiere of The Governor's Wife. Being a part of such a gala event was one of the proudest moments of our lives. Taste the magic.

It's about a girl (I don't know any of the actors' names so I'm just gonna call her Girl) who is about to get married to Guy who is the son of the Governor's Wife (GW). The Governor himself has just been mysteriously murdered, so Guy and Girl rush to the estate for the funeral. GW, played by someone semi-famous who is pretty old but nonetheless looks good in riding pants, is not broken up about her husband's death. At all. This fact is totally ignored by everyone. She's just happy to put on her riding pants and go parading around the house in her riding pants. She is mean to her servants, too, though they seem to be in secret cahoots with her. Riding pants.

Anyway, long story short, GW is a psycho who wants Guy to be the next governor, and of course only Girl is on to her. So GW starts shooting everyone and killing a bunch of people and is about to kill Girl at the end when Guy and the kindly sheriff blow her away. She is wearing riding pants during her death, by the way. As she's lying there writhing around in her death throes, it's notable that, again, no one cares. What is it about this family that they're so blase about shooting deaths?

Look, this was all right. There's one point where GW goes really over the top and starts sing-songing her dialogue like she thinks she's Jack Nicholson in The Shining. That part was worth like a "9." However...

RATING: 5. A good diversion from our bleak, riding-pants-free existences, but not as life-altering as a Lifetime movie should be. Couldn't there have been an ex-90210 cast member in this or something? Brandon Walsh would've made a good Guy. Just sayin'.

Trial by Fire

If you're a high school English teacher, have blonde hair and are reasonably attractive, you best WATCH OUT: according to this movie, friendly blonde teachers can be accused of murder, statuatory rape, name-sullying, school district ruining and a host of other small town plagues. They will also be reduced to choosing the creepiest, pastiest defense lawyer (Keith Carradine) to clear their good names.

In this rather dull 1995 courtroom/flashback drama (possibly based on a real story, we're not sure), Gail O'Grady is a lit-lovin' English teacher who is accused of having an unsavory relationship with one of her students, who eventually commits suicide. I can't be bothered to remember the details of this story, as it's relatively complicated and definitely boring, but I can assure you that it was Lifetimey. A highlight is Devon Odessa, better known as Angela Chase's scorned best friend on My So-Called Life, who is as bershon as it gets. Her face is always a complex stew of humiliation, outrage and boredom.

I wish I felt that strongly about this movie. As a "teacher does the vo-dee-oh-doh with student" genre goes, it's relatively tame. Gail O'Grady gives a good performance as The Overzealous Teacher Who Can't Stop Caring and Keith Carradine looks appropriately gross, like he sneaks off to the courtroom loo for a nip from his flask and to look at his pasty, drawn face and wonder where it all went wrong.

RATING: 6 above average, but the details were barely memorable.

Appointment for a Killing

They say that going to to the dentist is torture, but what if your dentist is also a murderer? Will we be drilling today...or killing?
That is the premise for this classic Lifetime era 1993 Markie Post/Corbin Bernsen/Kelsey Grammer mediocrity exhibition. Sure, there were high points. Among them:

• Kelsey Grammer's perm and mustache
• Markie Post looking halfway normal
• Corbin Bernsen freaking out over and over (as he is prone to doing in Lifetime movies)
  
• Extra special guest appearance by Patrick Swayze's brother Don, who looks like an exaggerated version of Patrick.

• True story exaggerated to the point of farce
  

Even though it's always good -- excellent even!-- to have a Swayze in your movie, there were some low points as well:

• Robotic performance by a child
• Repeated scenes of aggressive sex starring Corbin Bernsen
• A sad, wrongfully accused African American character saying "tell it again, whitey"
• Not nearly enough Swayze to make this 2 hour movie worth it.
  

In sum, I would say that this movie had all of the elements of a classic Lifetime suspense thriller -- sex, killing, identity changing, treachery -- but little of the low budget charm of the other early-mid 90s Lifetime movies. Perhaps we had a difficult time enjoying this movie because we watched it on VHS (taped over some old sitcoms, in fact) and we had trouble hearing the dialogue. We thought Bernsen's character's name was Stan Vanderman but it turns out it was actually Benderman. We found this out at the end of the movie when they scrolled the epilogue past us at record speed to tell us that Stan Benderman was serving 5 consecutive lifetime sentences in Missouri.

Unfortunately, this movie also felt like a lifetime sentence.

RATING: 5. (would not watch again or recommend but do not feel time was entirely wasted)

There is not much about this movie on the web, but you can see a short preview in this preview of various movies on an Australian series called "Power to the People at Home". There are other TV movies in this trailer that look pretty good! Too bad they're not being shown on Lifetime and this one is...

Deadly Pursuits

Tori Spelling is an erotic dancer who... well, what's the point in going any further? You already know this is going to be worthwhile. Okay, honestly we missed the first half-hour of this, and we have a hunch that's when most of the erotic dancing took place, but we're okay with that. Really. We got a taste of her skills when the sweet music of a street saxophonist compelled her to bump and grind her new boyfriend right there on the sidewalk. Let's back up: her new boyfriend is some Ivy League dude who is looking for his dad, who has gone in hiding because Richard Belzer (playing a Colombian drug lord) wants to kill him. Whatever. The point is this buttoned-up nice kid gets mixed up with "bad girl" Tori and the result (for the viewer, anyway) is sheer pleasure.

Tori looks like she stepped right off the set of 90210. She has a crazy new hairstyle every 10 minutes, and she has a half-shirt for every occasion. Dining out? Half-shirt. Shooting bad guys? Half-shirt. She also gets some great lines, like "I picked a fine day not to wear a bra" and "I always cry when I'm drunk." She's horribly miscast, of course. Tori Spelling seems to us like a tightly wound kind of gal, and her attempt at playing a giggly free-wheeler reminds us of when Madonna tried the same thing in Who's that Girl? It's embarrassing, except that Tori doesn't seem embarrassed, so that makes it okay for us to enjoy it. Right? Right?

Rating: 6. Not nearly enough erotic dancing. Though that could be our fault for missing the first half-hour. We blame ourselves.



"Hi, I'm Tori, and this behind me is my white ceiling."

Friends 'Til the End

Shannen Doherty sings in a college band called (we think) Dead Pink. Her boyfriend, Jason London, is also in the band. For reasons entirely unclear, Dead Pink is all the rage on campus. Shannen is also in a sorority. You can tell already that this is going to be really good. Then it gets even better. Zanne is a psycho who weasels her way into Shannen's life and even gets in her band and steals her boyfriend. Along the way she kills some people, poisons Shannen, and stars in the most hilarious music video ever made. Some sleuthing by Shannen reveals that Zanne is a childhood beauty-pageant rival of hers and this is all part of some bizarre revenge. It all ends in a super battle of the bands where Zanne loses it on stage, followed by Shannen saving the day by singing an acoustic number about the hypocrisy of consumerist culture or something like that.

This is currently our favorite Lifetime movie of all time. The main reason for this is that there are tons of "alternative rock" songs, all of which are bad and sung by Shannen in a flat monotone. Everyone takes these songs really seriously, but they are just awful. The best one is called "Can Anybody Hear Me? (Because I Don't)". We're just assuming that's the song title from the lyrics, despite the fact that it's grammatically incorrect. (Get a sample of the song stylings here). Look, this movie rules. If there was a soundtrack, we'd buy it.

RATING: 10. Next time this is on we're setting our VCR to "record."

Lady Killer

Judith Light stars as a as lady who gets bored of her husband. She has an affair with Jack Wagner, but then calls it off when she rekindles her romance with her husband. Jack freaks out and rapes her, but she doesn't turn him in because she doesn't want anyone to know about the affair. Then Jack starts dating Judith's daughter, Tracey Gold. This pushes everyone over the edge, and Jack ends up shooting Judith's husband, and then getting pushed off the top of a lighthouse by Judith and Tracey. This movie is notable for the alarming hairstyles of both Judith and Jack (Judith has a turn-of-the-century poof, much as she often did in Who's the Boss, and Jack has a bob). There's also lots of wine drinking, bubble baths, uncomfortable Judith sexytimes, and stupid therapy.

RATING: 8. This is one of the best Lifetime movies we have seen. The hair alone is worth like 6 or 7. Tracey Gold is hardly even in this thing; she's just bonus!