3199 replies to this topic

[MethodActor05]

I figured it was time to start a thread about tv movies when I saw that they're re-running A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick story, cause that movie was the shit. Meredith Baxter-Birney makes herself so raw and trashy that she seriously gives Faye Dunaway's Mommie Dearest a run for her money. She also, physically, inhabited that character, with the tacky brassy blonde hair and the wrinkles. I can't imagine either Valerie Bertinelli or Cheryl Ladd or Jaclyn Smith being able to come close to doing this.

I think my favoirite scene is when she's trashing the house...damn. I heard Molly Shannon as Mary Catherine Gallagher did a monolgue from this, but I don't remember how it went. I think one line was, "I shot him! I shot him DEAD! lol, but I don't know if that's from the movie or another movie homage that Mary Catherine Gallagher did.

[haleyj]

That one is awesome...it's like, good scenery chewing.

Edited by haleyj, Aug 11, 2005 @ 12:38 PM.

[Eegah]

I think the first really great tv movie was Steven Spielberg's Duel, which was quickly followed by Brian's Song. Sadly, things have rarely gotten to that level again.

[nicepebbles]

I shun TV movies that are not the Hallmark Hall of Fame ones or ABC Family Movie. I think the last one I saw was the one where Nancy McKeon was a battered wife. I think that came out in like the early 90s. After that one, I began to notice how similar they were - stupid woman in peril.

I have to admit though I have been enticed to watch a few strickly for the cheese factor but I can't really bring myself to do it.

I may have seen the TBBS. I remember when it came out. It was some hoopla surrounding it.

[Eegah]

Well, they both aired in 1971, so who knows.

Billionaire Boy's Club is another favorite of mine; Judd Nelson and Brian McNamara are perhaps both at their career highs in it.

[Meadra]

I have to admit, I love the crappy movies that Sci-Fi airs on Saturday nights. My husband and I pop a big bowl of popcorn and MST3K them.

[JuliJBG]

I can't believe I am admitting this, but I am a little bit obsessed with Mother May I Sleep with Danger and will stop whatever I am doing to sit and watch this train-wreck whenever it is on... I also like the one (can't remember the name) where Kellie Martin is so hell-bent on becoming popular that she murders Tori Spelling. Ha!

I remember when NBC (I think) was running a really bad t.v. movie every week in the early 90's. IIRC half of them starred Tori Spelling, and I loved them all! The only t.v. movies now are so hallmark-y looking and sappy that I refuse to tune in.

Where are you, Tori?

[TraceyBee]

"Born Innocent" starring Linda Blair

Was that the one where Linda's character got put in reform school, and a bunch of other girls raped her with a broom handle (or maybe it was a bottle)? It got a lot of press when it aired, as I recall.

[Sarcastico]

For balls-out Meredith Baxter Birney scenery chewing, nothing beats the binge/purge tour-de-force... the movie's name escapes me. But the climactic kitchen orgy scene is without rival.

Kate's Secret

Edited by Sarcastico, Aug 11, 2005 @ 1:40 PM.

[Lady M]

Hey I remember that Tori Spelling/Kellie Martin movie...the former got STABBED to death with a vegetable peeler.

But nothing tops "Co-ed Call Girl." I mean, in the suckage department.

[Natchou]

Oh, yeah, I loved when they aired TV movies every week on NBC. Though I can't really recall all of the titles, but I liked the one with Yasmine Bleeth where there were pod-people and every organ in their bodies were in the opposite direction of where they're supposed to be like, their hearts was on the right and stuff like that. Missed the ending though. That was in the cheezy section. But my favorite in the non-cheezy category was "Every 9 seconds" with Annie Potts (I think) where a receptionist from a abused women center tries to stop a woman who's going to kill her abusive husband. Don't know how that one ended either.:(

Also, from what I saw of it, I liked "Their eyes were watching God" with Halle Berry.

I think these days there are some TV movies that actually rise above the cheese. Like the Halle movie or the upcoming "Ron Clark story" with my boy Matthew Perry that I'm sure is going to kick ass.:)

Edited by Natchou, Aug 11, 2005 @ 2:22 PM.

[Photo Geek]

I shun TV movies that are not the Hallmark Hall of Fame ones or ABC Family Movie.

I am a big sucker for Hallmark Hall of Fame flicks, even though they are melodramatic as sin. Earlier this year I watched every single minute of The Magic of Ordinary Days, the one with Kerri Russell and Skeet Ulrich. It was ham-bone to the core. But it had that syrupy-sweet ending, and I cried a little, even through all the bad acting. I also cry during the commercials. I'm a big ol' cryin' fool.

::sniffle:: Don't look at me!

Edited by Photo Geek, Aug 11, 2005 @ 2:37 PM.

[Shnuglet]

I guess Lifetime gets the Lifetime (HA!!) Achievement Award here.

There's one of theirs I've seen about 3 times. I never remember the name of it but I'm sure it's as sappy as it is vague (most certainly the word "Love" is in it), with Brooke Shields as a lesbian and Cherry Jones as her partner who has a baby girl that they raise together, and then Cherry dies of some disease. But they live in Florida, and Cherry's parents --Anne Meara plays the mom and she does a wonderfully bitchy job of it!--who were originally fully supportive of the couple, get custody of the little girl and give Brooke the glacial shoulder. Brooke tries to fight them, but, hey, it's Florida, so she has a snowball's chance in hell of getting her kid back. She goes into kind of a catatonic state and ends up in a mental hospital until Whoopi Goldberg (seriously!) becomes her lawyer and wins her custody of the daughter. It's a true story!

[FirstAndTen]

Looked it up on the Internet Movie Database...it's called "What Makes a Family"

More information from imdb

[enthralled]

Great thread! Sometimes a cheesy TV movie is just what the doctor ordered.
Two of my favorites from the seventies: "Summer of Fear" with Linda Blair and Lee Purcell as her fake cousin who is actually a witch. & "The Initiation of Sarah" Morgan Fairchild, Morgan Brittany and Kay Lenz about witchcraft and sorority sisters.

[Stanwyck]

Anybody remember Champions: A Love Story? I can still remember when Jimmy MacNichol's character died and just weeping uncontrollably (Hey, I was 13! It must have been the hormones). Every time I see a figure-skating movie, I think of this one.

Do Afterschool Specials count? I don't remember actual plots, but it seems every other movie was about an orphan, addiction to some substance or starred Lance Kerwin, Rob Lowe and/or Melissa Sue Anderson. Nothing like a morality tale in the afternoon.

[AfroJo]

Who can honestly forget Lifetime's very own Cyber Seduction?

Such a disaster of a movie and I only got to watch the first hour.

There was one movie about teenager girls who happened to be cheerleaders and were sexually harassed by the football players. One girl finally tells her parents what's going on and her friends choose to shun her and won't come forth to show any support until the very end. I actually liked that movie but cannot come up with a title as I do not remember any actors from the film. Sorry.

Another movie, When Friendship Kills starring Jennifer (Marley Shelton) about a young woman who has bulimia and her best friend, Lexi, who taught her the habit of throwing up. Lexi ends up becoming very sick and tells her mom where she picked up bulimia, a friendship is broken, and Jennifer ends up dying in a car accident before they could ever rectify the situation. Had Jennifer not been bulimic, she would have survived, but alas, she suffered from heart failure and passed on.

Oh, and finally, Love's Deadly Triangle: The Texas Cadet Murder starring Holly Marie Combs as Diane Zamora and David Lipper as David Graham was really good. Zamora and Graham (midshipman and cadet, respectively) are a couple and Graham has an affair with a fellow cadet. Zamora vows to kill the young woman Graham had an affair with. Very unfortunate true story.

I love TV movies. Lifetime truly cooks up some of the best.

Edited by AfroJo, Aug 11, 2005 @ 3:57 PM.

[Decormaven]

Definite hand claps for Cyber Seduction. That movie begged for Meredith Baxter Birney to make a Very Special Appearance as the expert who explained the perils of internet porn.

[Eegah]

There was one Lifetime movie called Heart of Fire that I have no idea in hell how it was made by the channel, as it was a manly, ultrarealistic tale about firefighters trying to rescue a little girl who's pinned under a gas tanker following a big accident. That was a good one.

Morbid curiousty made me check out The Truth About Jane, about a high school girl who discovers she's a lesbian and her mother, whose liberal beliefs are shaken to their core by this. There was actually a lot of potential here; it's been demonstrated a few times that people who consider themselves open-minded about homosexuality can quickly change their tune when a family member announces they're gay, and an examination of this could have been pretty good. Instead we just get the usual sledgehammer melodramatics, with the mother instantly entering Fred Phelps territory. Jane herself is not too likable either, acting like she actually expected everyone to take this huge revelation completely in stride.

[shootingstar]

I can't believe I am admitting this, but I am a little bit obsessed with Mother May I Sleep with Danger and will stop whatever I am doing to sit and watch this train-wreck whenever it is on... I also like the one (can't remember the name) where Kellie Martin is so hell-bent on becoming popular that she murders Tori Spelling. Ha!

Loved this one. So cheesy - so good.

There have been some really TV Movies that were well made and still haunt me to this day:

The Murder of Mary Phagan was very sad and haunting. It was about a young girl murdered in the factory where she worked in the early 1900s.

Adam is a classic about the Abduction of John Walsh's son. (He when on to creative America's Most Wanted after that tragedy).

The Atlantic Child Murders was another sad true story.

And of course, there's Roots!

Edited by shootingstar, Aug 11, 2005 @ 4:04 PM.

[EllieJ]

Lifetime will occasionally do this mothers who murder marathon. They always play the movie with Judith Light who plays a woman who kills her husband, tries to kill her daughter and then jumps bail. She then meets Charles from MASH and marries him. Then she pretends to get sick, says she doesn't want Charles to witness her death, moves away, and then comes back after she "died" as her own twin. Charles then marries the "twin." Then she's discovered by a suspicious co-worker. She eventually goes to jail, escapes with the help of Charles, and then dies of exposure. The best part is that it's based on a true story.

[ladyrott]

There was a lifetime movie called Too Young to Die that was so heartwrenching, it made me give up lifetime movies. It's about this 15-year old girl, played by Juliette Lewis, whose been abused her whole life. Her mother abandons her one day and she ends up marrying her boyfriend. When that doesnt work out, she finds herself working in a strip club. She eventually kills the only guy who was ever nice to her (he was in the service and asked her to leave his home after the base commander found out about her), at the prompting of this guy who plies her with drugs. The part that killed me....she is in jail, awaiting trial for murder and, when her lawyer asks if there is anything he can get her, all she wants is candy. She was just such a child!

[Mimi10022]

There's another Lifetime eating disorder one starring, uh, OK, I just IMDB'd her...Crystal Bernard...as an anorexic/bulimic, overachieving lawyer wife of a politican with HUGE 80's glasses. I don't remember her character's name but Big Glasses' name is "Frederico" and she says his name 50,000 times in the movie.

[McKay]

I feel like I'm coming home at last!

I'm addicted to TV movies, particularly the stuff Lifetime tosses at us.

When Friendship Kills was pretty good, but I think I've seen that too many times. Unfortunately, the bulimia movies are running together for me. Is that the one where the girl is pounding holes in the walls and dumping her food in there?

The Truth About Jane was so well-cast. Ellen Muth was terrific. Shame the movie kind of sucked.

Death of a Cheerleader remains a favorite of mine. There's just something so satisfying about watching Kellie Martin stab Tori Spelling to death. (Spoiler?)

Was Beverly Hills Madam made for TV? I thought it was, but I'm not entirely sure. I've only seen it twice, but I just love it.

One that I find genuinely moving is You Belong To Me Forever, aka In Quiet Night. A man is acquitted (wrongfully) of molesting his daughter, and the child is taken by the local deputy DA in an attempt to rescue her. The little girl is played by Alexandra Kyle (30 Going on 30, A Time to Kill), who is just heartbreaking. And it costars Julian McMahon, which is always a good thing (IMO).

[joanne3482]

It is so wrong, but anytime Friends 'Til the End comes on, I am watching it. Shannen Doherty and one of the London brothers in a band. Shannen sings! A crazy girl who wants to take over Shannen's perfect life. It is awesome.