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...