LMN - Our Mother's Murder (Daughters)

This is probably one of the best (coincidentally, meaning one of the worst) Lifetime movies. This one is a pure classic. I've probably seen this movie maybe two or three times, off and on, since about 1997. As it's known on Lifetime, the movie is called Our Mother's Murder. I believe the original title is "Daughters". The movie is supposedly fact-based, or based on a true story.

So anyway, the movie's biggest star is pubescent boy fan-fav, Holly Marie Combs, who's biggest role was a character called Piper Halliwell from the uber-crap-fest WB network superstar show, Charmed. So Combs plays Alex Morrell, daughter of Anne Scripps Douglas, a famous heiress to the Scripps Howard newspaper chain. While the real-life story is pretty tragic, the movie, taken as a movie, is pretty bad.

So Alex Morrell narrates the entire movie. In the first two minutes of the film, you already hit your own head at the blatant campiness of the line, "When mom got married, she was practically almost a virgin". YIKES. So she goes on to say how her mom grew up with all this money and was really nice and protected. Then her mom married her dad and had two girls, Alex, and her sister, Annie, who's played by Sarah Chalke, who's biggest things she ever did were two "Wow, who gives an F" shows, Scrubs and How I Met Your Mother. So after Alex's mom and dad had the two of them, they then divorced.

So it starts with Annie and Alex both coming home from being away at some type of boarding school or something. They come home and find their mom racing out for a date with a "much younger man". So things escalate and eventually the mom marries the guy, who's name is Scott Douglas, played by James Wilder, a Lifetime movie regular. Turns out he's a carpenter with a bad drinking habit. Annie and Alex both suspect of him trying to move in our their mother because she's innocent, naive, and vulnerable, not to mention one of the wealthiest single women in the US.

So after a while, Anne (the mother) and Scott get pregnant and have a daughter, Victoria, often called "Tory" (what a terrible name). This is where things escalate. During a Christmas party, Anne has invited some relatives of her ex-husband, Annie and Alex's father. Scott flips out (it's suggested throughout the movie that he has some sort of inferiority complex with Anne's ex-husband) and takes Tory away from the party. Afterward, he hits Anne for inviting her ex-husband's family. After a while, things settle down. A couple years later, Anne throws another party for her daughters' friends and Scott comes home to find Anne smoking around Tory. Again, he flips out and beats attempts to beat her up, but one of Anne's friends comes in to find him and he pushes her down the stairs. The police arrive and Scott claims it's an accident. This is when Alex flips out and gets Scott to try to attack her.

The drinking/anger/beating happens again until Scott and Anne go out for a night of dinner and dancing with Anne's friends. Scott obviously doesn't fit in with the high and mighty wealthy people as he keeps trying to get them to hire him to be a builder/contractor for them. They laugh him off as they never talk business at social gatherings. Scott gives one of Anne's friends a business card which he laughingly throws in the ashtray when Scott walks away. When Scott comes back and sees it, he flies into a rage and gets in the car with Anne. Here, he tries to push her out of the car while it's going over 90 mph. He roughs her up so badly that he almost kills her and Anne runs away to hide with Alex.

This is where the second half of the movie begins. The rest is all about Anne trying to get separated from Scott and take Tory with her, which Scott finds out about and starts tormenting Anne, even threatening her when she sleeps. Eventually, Scott murders Anne and this is where the movie ends.

Pretty brutal and it's crazy that it's a true story. The movie teaches a valuable lesson to women about abusive relationships, but again, taken as a movie, it's just not that good. The best acting job is done by Wilder, who plays the part of a psycho pretty well (as he is type-cast to play these types of roles in a lot of other Lifetime movies). Holly Marie Combs more or less narrates the entire movie and just tries to look pretty most of the time. Anyone who's ever seen Charmed knows she's not the greatest actress.

LMN - Nightmare At The End Of The Hall

So I was lucky because this movie was on right after "You Belong To Me". This is probably one of the best LMN movies I've ever seen. But that's not really saying too much, since most of what LMN plays is just absolute garbage.

So the ultimate spectacular star of this wonderful horror/thriller jaunt is Sara Rue, whose only role I can vaguely remember is the slightly overweight girl in the failed teen drama series, Popular. So the movie is told in a rather confusing sort of way with series of flashbacks happening as the plot moves forward, letting the viewer know more about the past as the story progresses. It makes it hard to ultimately re-tell the story without completely giving it away right from the beginning.

But alas, I am indeed charged with this burdensome task, so I will do my best. Okay, so Sara's character, Courtney, is a some-what famous novelist. She wrote a book based off her experiences in college. In college, she had two friends, who were boyfriend and girlfriend, Jane (played by Jacqueline Wood) and Brett (played by Kavan Smith). The film is largely based around the fact that Jane mysteriously committed suicide (I think there's suicide in every Lifetime Movie somewhere in the film...) without leaving any type of suicide note or reason why she did.

So Sara, twenty years later, decides to go back to the college to finally face her demons and become fine with her friend's death. She gets a job at the school, teaching a writing class, but when she finds out where she's going to live, it's in her old dorm room from her college days. Now she's the Resident Adviser in the very dorm where her friend committed suicide, just down the hall (WHERE THE NIGHTMARE HAPPENED... *scary laugh echoes through your mind*). So she's getting all the rooms prepped for when the students arrive when she walks down to the room where Jane committed suicide (which was a storage closet when Jane died, but now has been renovated into a dorm room) and a girl opens the door who looks exactly like Jane. Freaked out, she learns the girl's name is Laurel (also played by Jacqueline McInnes Wood) and that Laurel has a lot of problems.

Later, she runs into Jane's old boyfriend, Brett, at the store, who immediately dispenses with the pleasantries and starts hitting on Sara right away. For some weird reason (which is explained later...), Sara ends up running away.

Anyway, the next hour of the movie kind of just drones on. Throughout the semester, weird things keep happening with Laurel. She apparently sleepwalks, often coming into Sara's room, quoting Jane. Sara sees visions of Jane at school parties and keeps having more and more problems with Laurel, often times relating to Jane. At one point, Laurel, who's actually in one of Sara's classes, turns in a paper that Jane wrote when Sara and Jane were in school together. Sara begins to suspect that Laurel has done this and all the other things just to be cruel to her throughout the semester, trying to undermine Sara and make her look crazy.

As all of this is happening, romance is also blossoming, very strangely, I might add, between Sara and Brett. As revealed in the flashbacks, we find out that not everything was so peachy-keen between Brett and Jane back in college. We find out that Brett was actually cheating on Jane with Sara, who Brett was actually terribly in love with. So this is where the love triangle is introduced and it's explained why the romance between Sara and Brett has been so hard all this time.

So Brett is the star of the entire college. He gets good grades, plays every sport, his dad is a a teacher at the school and he's also Jane's counselor. We find out Brett's dad has a lot to do with Brett's activities, as he is constantly pushing Brett to be the perfect son and be the best. Jane is widely regarded as being the prettiest girl in school, also with the best grades. So the dating romance started between Brett and Jane seemed like the "perfect match". Later on, however, we find out that Brett falls deeply in love with Jane's best friend, Sara. He doesn't want to be with Jane at all, but feels pressured by his dad to be with her, as they make the "perfect couple".

So, when she was in college, during the time she's cheating with Brett, Sara fills out an application to go to Oxford so she can further her writing. Later, Jane tells her that she has also applied for Oxford (alluding to the apparent struggle between the two for Brett). Sara is surprised by this and then even more surprised to find out that Jane has apparently got in and that Sara hasn't. This is even furthered by the fact that Brett's dad, Jane's counselor, lets Sara know that Jane has indeed been accepted to Oxford.

So back in the present, while Sara and Brett's romance is being furthered along, they make a pact never to mention Jane again, as it is too disturbing to their present romantic involvement (which is really just a continuation of their relationship that they had in college). But Sara has already contacted Oxford to find out if Jane really did attend Oxford. Later, Oxford contacts her back and lets her know that Jane never really attended Oxford, she never even applied.

This is where the movie has it's biggest twists, which really aren't that big. Sara starts to question Brett about him having contact with Jane while she was at Oxford and realizes that Brett never once contacted Jane, Jane only contacted him. All this was happening while Sara and Brett had their most amorous romance, because of the absence of Jane. Sara then begins to realize that something must have happened to Jane for her to fake going to Oxford. She then remembers that when Jane was supposedly back from Oxford, she was going to tell Sara some big news, right before they graduated. But three days before graduation is when Jane committed suicide and she never got to tell Sara the big news. Sara asks Brett if he ever found out, but he tells her he was unable to because the day Jane was going to tell him, he was in the locker room fooling around with Sara (yikes!).

So this is all realized as the stupidest/most unrealistic part of the movie happens. In a possessed-by-Jane sleepwalking stupor, Laurel sleepwalks into Brett's dad's house in the middle of the night (where Brett's dad was is never explained) and finds Jane's old journal. She then comes out of her trance and reads that (gasp!) JANE WAS PREGNANT! The reason she faked going to Oxford is because she was pregnant with Brett's daughter! Just as she reads this, Brett's dad comes in, explaining (DUN DUN DUH!!!) that he killed Jane! He killed her because she was pregnant with his granddaughter and he couldn't allow Brett to father this child because it would have messed up his plans for his son's life (remember how Brett's dad is possessive over him, wanting him to be perfect?). So while Sara and Brett had their last night of romance in the locker room, Brett's dad was killing Jane, staging it as a suicide. He then took his granddaughter and put her up for adoption.

As Laurel is hearing all this, Brett's dad goes into a psychotic trance, believing Laurel to be Jane, and starts to say "I'm going to kill you again, Jane!" Now here's another ridiculous part of the movie, Laurel escapes and runs back to the college, somehow. She runs to her room, where Sara has just figured out the mystery and checks a phone message she got from Laurel which says, "Jane was pregnant and Brett's dad killed her! I know the truth and now Brett's dad is after me!" Sara freaks out and runs to Laurel's room (where Jane supposedly hung herself) and finds that Brett's dad is now hanging Laurel. She gets him off of her, but Laurel passes out. Then Brett's dad starts to hang Sara, when Laurel is possessed again (for the 50th time in one movie) by Jane and gets Brett's dad off Sara. He then takes her down and luckily Brett comes running in, saving Laurel and Sara from his dad.

The movie ends with Brett's dad being taken away in a cop car and Sara explaining to Brett that Laurel is indeed his daughter, the daughter of him and Jane, which explains why she looks exactly like Jane. The movie ends with an embrace of Sara, Laurel, and Brett.

Awww..... the perfect family.

LMN - You Belong To Me

I couldn't really fall asleep a couple nights ago so I decided to turn on my favorite channel, LMN (Lifetime Movie Network). This little gem was on.

Let me tell you, this movie is BAD. Shannon Elizabeth, best known for her awful nudie roles, plays a single mother of a young child. Her husband, whose name was something outrageous like Fabian or Lucius or something, apparently was extremely violent, which is hilarious, because it has nothing to do with the story whatsoever. So Shannon is being stalked by someone, who she believes must be her ex-husband.

Random things start happening, her poetry book is often left on the floor, open to pages with threatening love poems, she's being left flowers constantly at her office, her boyfriend is attacked and almost killed while he's working underneath his car and things from around her house start to go missing. Meanwhile, at work, a friend of hers, Chris, who's played by Christian Campbell, husband of ultra Canadian craptastic actress, Neve Campbell, starts to appear to be taking a romantic interest in her. However, this is no big surprise though as she flirts RELENTLESSLY with him, letting him take her out to dinner and lunch and also taking him to dinner and lunch, even though she has a boyfriend (the guy who got stuck under the car). He tries to give her a sacred Irish necklace, which belonged to his mother, but she refuses.

Shannon finally starts to put it together that Chris could be the stalker, as he's often quoted the poetry that he leaves in her room at night to scare her when they're out at dinner, but stupidly accepts a ride from him to "go get some coffee" on a rainy night. He drives her out to a cliff (where his mother supposedly committed suicide) and tries to push her off out of his love for her, again quoting poetry lines like "I'll love you even after death." But in a strange twist of fate, Shannon manages to push him off the cliff, leaving his sacred Irish necklace on the edge of the cliff.

Okay, so far, this is all acceptably believable. Having said that, this movie probably should have ended here. But no, here's where the movie turns insanely stupid. So she goes back to her house with her son and some other girl (Her sister maybe..? I don't know if it's ever explained.) and tries to fall asleep that night. She can't though, as a vase on her desk flies out of nowhere at her. She also finds the same poetry book on the floor, with the page turned to the "I'll love you even after death" poem, with a picture of her and Chris.

Yep, you guessed it. Chris is now haunting/stalking her from beyond the grave. She meets with a psychic who believes she was surrounded by dark energy in the beginning of the movie, who tells Shannon that she needs to get a picture of Chris, some kind of personal object of his, then roll it up in some copy of an ancient scroll and burn it when Chris appears to her out on the cliff, where his power is "the most strong".

I mean, are you kidding me? This was just such an incredibly stupid idea! I couldn't believe it when she had to roll up what looks like an old newspaper but is supposed to be some kind of magic scroll and burn it. It's also revealed that Shannon looks exactly like Chris' divorced mother did who committed suicide, alluding to some type of time warp cycle where Shannon is Chris' divorced mother, as Shannon has also has a son who looks like Chris. But this is never actually developed or explained, just left completely open. What a terrible movie. And it seems Shannon can't manage to do any type of role without taking her clothes off, as she sleeps with her boyfriend who just got out of the hospital, almost being killed by the car falling on him, while his arm is in a sling and he has however many broken ribs! SHEER STUPIDITY!

LMN - Personal Indiscretions (Primal Doubt)

Yikes. This movie is certainly MST3K-worthy. Can I first say I love watching absolutely awful, cheesy Lifetime movies?

First of all, I have to say that this is one of the better ones. Top 5% and it was still terrible! Okay, so Janine Turner plays a stay-at-home wife romance novelist who is really bored with her marriage because her husband's a big time jerk (wow, something new for Lifetime!). So she decides to go on a dating website and have a look around. She ends up having what the police call a "cyber-affair" as they keep e-mailing back and forth, eventually leading to a face to face meeting for lunch. After the face to face lunch, they decide to meet again, where Janine sits in her car, arguing with herself in the rear-view mirror about how they're "just going to talk". She knocks on the door and no one comes to the door. So she decides to have a look around inside the house (trespassing) and ends up finding her cyber-lover-chat-guy dead in his home with his throat slit.

This is where the movie descends into everyone being killed, thus being labeled as a "thriller". It becomes a guessing game of who's killing everyone, whether it be the best friend, the therapist, the daughter, the husband, the maid, the movie even alludes to the girlfriend of the cyber-lover who committed suicide.

Anyway, this one wasn't actually the worst Lifetime movie I've ever seen. It was a lot better than most, although the acting was absolutely terrible. Janine's best friend, Holly, was especially annoying, her banter with Janine's husband was laughable at best. Janine also had her moments where she just looked absolutely dumb-founded, staring blankly at the screen like she couldn't even say her own name. It was actually pretty funny.

It's too bad that it was getting to late because I wanted to watch the next movie, "To Have and To Hold", which was EXCEPTIONALLY bad and cheesy!