An Element of Truth (1995)

Network: CBS
Original Airdate: September 26th, 1995

After taking a couple of years off from her bad girl role as Abby Cunningham Ewing on Knots Landing, Donna Mills revisited her femme fatale roots in the 1995 true crime drama An Element of Truth. Based on the story of con artist Glenda Elizabeth Bell, Mills is a somewhat fictionalized version named Vanessa Graves. From the start of the film she plays up a sympathy act, claiming on a job interview that her husband and daughter were killed in a car accident and she’s desperate to start over. Later, at an office party the story starts changing. Yes, her husband and daughter were killed in an accident, but this time it’s a plane crash. Sometimes it’s a boating accident. It’s whatever she needs to say to suit the situation. Vanessa visits a video dating service and eyes the kindhearted Sidney Wiltz (Peter Reigert, and I’m wondering if “Wiltz” is a play on his wilting nature?), who, of course, is instantly drawn to the gorgeous but grieving “widow,” taking her in almost immediately.

Don't fall for it, Sidney!

Vanessa tells Sidney she works as a secretary at an investment firm, but only holds the lowly position as a way to cover up her real reason for being there: She is, according to her own story, allowed to secretly invest in ventures as long as she does it in cash. So, Sidney starts forking over the big bucks, and Vanessa prints out legitimate looking Word docs indicating great financial growth. Fancy cars, pretty things, big houses, and life in a moderately fast lane seem pretty good and one might even think she actually likes Sidney, but then his garish but handsome (and down on his luck) buddy, Peter (Robin Thomas) shows up and begins an affair with Vanessa. However, it appears the con artist has met her match as he bilks her of all the money she’s collected from Sidney. This means Vanessa has to up her game, and no one is safe from the blonde flimflam as she shakes and shimmies her cold-heart through the rest of the telefilm. And honestly? It’s kind of glorious!

Glorious!

The 1990s was an oddball time in the world of the television film. Don’t get me wrong, I love it, and appreciate it more as time passes, but the true crime telefilm of that era seems infinite, and it’s easy to see why An Element of Truth has flown under my radar for the last two decades. There’s not necessarily a lot going for it that helps to distinguish it from similar fare, and there are admittedly more entertaining small screen examples, such as Death of a Cheerleader (Tori Spelling 4lyfe!), and Deadly Vows (John Ritter 4lyfe!), but that’s not to say it’s not a fun little potboiler, with some great photography and a really entertaining performance by Mills, who knows how sink her teeth into hustler roles. She’s captivating, looks ridiculously gorgeous, and despite playing a detestable character remains charming and watchable.

OK Sidney, you can fall for her.

In fact, the entire cast is quite good with a lovely Perry Reeves putting in an incredibly sympathetic turn as Maizie, Vanessa’s awkward coworker who develops a crush on Sidney. The film has a couple of really sweet moments as we see their relationship develop. Galdarnit! He deserves a good woman!

Love and money do not go hand in hand with these con artists!

Bell, the real con artist, not only managed to snake over a million dollars from her unsuspecting hubby before running off and remarrying, but she also faked a cancer diagnosis as part of her trickery! But the seedier true life elements of Bell's treachery were removed because the powers that be felt that audiences wouldn’t believe those things really happened! Stranger than fiction, folks!

Vanessa works the puppy dog eyes.

Produced by Miss Mills herself, this was just one of several TV movies the beauty took on after Knots Landing as way to help audiences separate her from her infamous Abby Ewing character. Donna Mills Productions, which was founded in the late 1980s, did quite well for itself, and Mills had 10 projects in development with ABC by 1993 (although not all of them came to fruition). While An Element of Truth puts her closer to Abby than any of the other roles I’ve seen, there’s something more sinister about Vanessa, although she is just as gleefully man-eating! It’s an interesting turn for Mills who manages to make Vanessa unique and even disarming at times. And, it's a decent time waster to boot.

The USA World Premiere Movie Project: Death Benefit (1996)

  
This review has been posted in conjunction with the Daily Grindhouse's year long tribute to the USA World Premiere Movie.  

I was five minutes into the USA Original telefilm Death Benefit before I realized that I was eerily familiar with its story. The very same year that this strangely serene and excellent true crime TVM aired on basic cable, NBC released Justice for Annie: A Moment of Truth Movie (Annie aired about three months before, in January). And thanks to a gazillion re-airings on Lifetime, I feel like parts of that movie have been tattooed onto my brain… OK, extreme, I know. But I do recall that Annie told the story from the mother’s point of view, whereas Death Benefit is lifted directly from the source, a lawyer named David Heilbroner who wrote a book about this case (in Annie, I believe the lawyer was morphed in to a detective). Heilbroner was an attorney who was helping a woman who had recently lost her daughter. There was some hiccup that prevented her from recouping the funeral costs through her insurance, and this leads to the grisly realization that her daughter has been murdered in an outrageous scam concocted by a sociopathic woman who may have killed before.

A beardless Peter Horton stars in Death Benefit as Steven Keeney, a corporate lawyer who has lost his way from social justice as he navigates his "perfect" upscale lifestyle in a large city in the South. Whether or not he becomes interested in the investigation simply because of the challenge or because he is truly looking for justice is not quite clear and doesn’t really matter, because this case helps him come to the understanding that sometimes its OK to be a small fish in a big pond.

Keeney’s arch nemesis comes in the form of a woman named Virginia McGinnis, played with the proper amount of terrifying confidence by the great Carrie Snodgress. While this movie is clearly about Keeney, Snondgress is wonderful, memorable and steals each scene she’s in. In an interview to promote the movie, the actress spoke about playing a real life killer: “She had a deep-seated illness which, by and large, she covered up with a rigid self-control. She had so much control, in fact, that she was able to manipulate those around her, either through conviviality, intimidation or outright fear.”

It’s the kind role that I can see drawing in actresses. If memory serves, Susan Ruttan’s take on her in Annie was also well done and appropriately creepy. But, what makes Death Benefit work, and what makes it (in my opinion) a better film than Annie is the approach. With nary a hint of sensationalism, Death Benefit takes an intriguing procedural route, where a good portion of the film features Horton cutting through red tape via the phone or office visits. Yet, despite its lack of action, and even though Keeney has no real connection to his client’s daughter, the victim’s death travels through the film like a ghost, reminding you that even though Keeney’s original call to action might have come from guilt, there is someone there that will make sure this young woman is not forgotten.

What makes this even more fascinating is that we hardly know anything about her character. We don’t know exactly why she ends up with this couple (although it is eluded to that she was dating their son), and we don’t even really see her except through photographs and then through the haunting finale, where her death is recreated via brief flashbacks interspersed with an incredible trial on a sea cliff… OK, so there’s a little sensationalism, but just a touch.

However, as this is told from the point of view of the lawyer who wrote the book, it’s hard to tell if he was made more heroic by his own pen. And the mother definitely takes a back seat, which makes me think that somewhere between Death Benefit and Annie is the true-true story of what happened to that young woman. Still, Death Benefit rises above its network counterpart thanks to its under the radar performances, a beautifully somber score by Brian Adler (his first film credit), and the pacing. Well worth a visit if you like true crime adaptations.

Death Benefit aired on March 13th, 1996 and enjoyed promoted encore airings on March 17th and 24th. And it’s on VHS!

The USA World Premiere Movie Project: Ultimate Deception (1999)

 This review has been posted in conjunction with the Daily Grindhouse's year long tribute to the USA World Premiere Movie. 

Note: Who knew that a post about a USA Original flick would have a history, but this review was first written for my now defunct Lifetime Kills column, which originally appeared on Planet Fury (I miss you PF). I haven't really changed anything, so you will see some love for LMN throughout. Just a few weeks ago, I mentioned how Lifetime totally made the rep of some of the USA movies through their wise acquisitions, and here we are again! This is pure USA Original baby! Enjoy!  

One of my favorite things about the Lifetime Movie Network (and trust me, I love a lot of things about that channel!) is their True Movie Thursdays. Every week they show two movies based on real life events. They can be about anything although most of the films revolve around murder. I've always been fascinated by how filmmakers take these stories and condense them into two hour movies. Ultimate Deception, which originally aired on the USA Network on January 19th, 1999, is an almost a perfect example of how to do it right.
 
I've never been a huge Richard Grieco fan, but at the same time, I'll pretty much watch anything he's in. I'm not sure why. I think it's because he's kind of terrifies me in the same way Mickey Roarke does - oddly angled features with sinister eyes. Back in his Booker days, he was the be-all-end-all, but I was always slightly creeped out by him. In a film like this, that sleaze quality strongly factors in. And he works it! Grieco is Bobby Woodkin, a low rent con artist who pretends that he works for an ultra secret section of the military. Complete with his pristine white uniform, he appears in and out of Terry Cuff's (Yasmine Bleeth) life. Desperate to please her, he pulls so many capers it would make your head spin like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. Unfortunately, Terry doesn't want anything except a baby. Bobby (who'd gotten a vasectomy years before and not bothered to tell Terry) suggests adoption and tries unsuccessfully to steal a baby. Shortly afterwards, he returns to his hometown to find that his good friend just became a young grandfather.

You see where this is going…

With a plan in action, Bobby takes the new mother out under the guise he's going to buy her and her baby a present and he kills her and absconds with her child. Terry is so overjoyed with having a new infant that she overlooks a lot of little things that Bobby is doing, like when she finds out he's only renting the house he said he bought for her (and he's not even paying the rent anymore!). Eventually Terry wises up and begins to uncover the dark secret of her baby.

Everything up until this point works so well. The story is laid out meticulously for the audience, who will have an uncomfortable time dealing with the facts of the murder. Yasmine Bleeth is great as Terry and although you see her broadly looking past some specific indicators that Bobby has done something horrible, she plays her strong enough that you believe it. And like I said, Grieco is great as her creepy husband who shows little remorse for killing a young mother. This well crafted thriller plugs along splendidly (I even got a little misty eyed) and then in the last 10 minutes, Deception breaks down what it has taken the rest of the film to build up. Terry goes back to her house for "revenge" and the showdown scene borders on hilarious. I don't understand why the filmmaker shifted gears from heartbreaking thriller to "mom on a rampage." But wonders never cease, do they? Luckily, there’s enough good thriller in Ultimate Deception to make it worthwhile.

The USA World Premiere Movie Project: Our Mother's Murder (1997)

This review was written in conjunction with The Daily Grindhouse's year-long tribute to the USA World Premiere Movie.

It wasn’t planned, I swear. When I was choosing what USA movies I’d like to review this month, Murder on Shadow Mountain and Our Mother’s Murder simply looked like good choices (I must be drawn to the word "murder" and I’m not quite sure what that says about me!). If you read my review of Shadow you know it ended up being a bit of a disappointment. Luckily, I was already familiar with Our Mother’s Murder, which is one of the few TV movies I loved so much that I stood next to the VCR while copying it, so I could cut out the commercials. Dedication, people. Dedication. It’s not an easy movie to watch, because of the harrowing content and because it’s so damn heart wrenching. And, frankly, it’s perfect.

Like Shadow, Our Mother’s Murder (aka Daughters) is also based on a true story. Unlike Shadow, it’s utterly fantastic (OK, I’ll stop beating up Shadow now). This TVM tells the tragic tale of of Anne Scripps, a beautiful heiress who was brutally murdered by the hands of her abusive husband. The story is told through her daughter Alex (Holly Marie Combs in an excellent performance), who is desperate but powerless to keep her mother safe.

The film, which originally aired on July 16th, 1997, charts the whirlwind romance of Anne (Roxanne Hart, also excellent in the role) and her much younger lover, Scott Douglas (James Wilder, again, amazing performance). The couple was married ten months after they met, and afterwards, Scott begins to reveal a far darker side. It quickly escalates to physical abuse and even attempted murder, but is, as so often is the case, only looked at as a domestic disturbance. Anne, who was brought up in a very conservative lifestyle and is already embarrassed by her first divorce, and has a child with Scott (and because she's terrified), finds herself very reluctant to divorce him. At one point, she even agrees to a temporary reconciliation in the hopes that he won’t run off with their little girl. Scott goes from remorseful to violent in much the same way car chases in action films go from zero to sixty. His moods are sometimes unexpected and always terrifying. Anne’s grown up daughters, Alex and her sister Annie (Sarah Chalke… again… fantastic) watch helplessly as the danger escalates. The film’s title gives the ending away, so for much of the film it is simply an excruciating waiting game as we watch this disgusting man build up to murder.

Told without a hint of sensationalism, Our Mother’s Murder is almost too good. The film elegantly captures the idyllic life of two beautiful young teenagers with privileged backgrounds. Their innocent romances with boys and their strong bond with their mother belies the horrors that are about to happen. Our Mother’s Murder is about how abuse affects everyone, and each girl responds differently. Alex becomes a protective adult figure for her own naïve mother, and Annie finds herself drinking too much and getting involved with her own set of abusive boyfriends. They are relatable and their plight is moving.

Wilder’s performance is grotesque, horrifying and pathetic. In short, perfectly played. Scott is hateful but complex, and he’s not just a cardboard cutout bad guy. Wilder takes Scott to several different levels, and yet, we’ll never understand why he is the way he is. Anne is unfortunately the perfect victim because she is too ashamed to walk away. In one telling scene, Scott practically drags Anne out of a party and to their car. And while one couple follows them, they do nothing to stop what is an obviously dangerous situation. Anne's friend says, “She waved me off. She is probably embarrassed.” Just a few moments later, Scott tries to push her out of a moving car.

Truth be told, I can barely watch the entire film, I find it so real and heartbreaking. At the same time this is a film I feel everyone should see. It's not just a TV movie I love, it's an important story that is beautifully played and all to relevant. And unfortunately, the story doesn't end here. If you want to know more about Anne and what  happened to her children, start with the wikipedia page. Utterly tragic.

Now that I'm depressed, let's change gears. I can hardly believe that Bill L. Norton, who also helmed Gargoyles, directed Our Mothers Murder. Not because I don’t totally adore both films, because I do, but wow. That’s versatility! And trust me, after this tragic film, Gargoyles makes a nice pick-me-up companion. Hey, it's how I roll...