Consider the plot of 2022’s A Royal Christmas On Ice.
He’s a prince.
She’s a former Olympic skater turned hard-as-nails coach.
They meet in a small town.
They fall in love….
AT CHRISTMAS!
Seriously, has there ever been a film more obviously made for me? This is a cute movie and a reminder that you can find just about anything in Fred Olen Ray’s filmography.
Kirsten (Anna Marie Dobbins) is a professional house sitter who is looking for work.
Dan (Jason-Shane Scott) owns a house.
What could go wrong!?
Well, it turns out that quite a lot can go wrong. Kirsten may be a house sitter and she may have a few good references and she even shows up with a contract for Dan to sign, which seems very professional, but that doesn’t mean that Kirsten is the right house sitter. In fact, it turns out that she’s the wrong house sitter and that contract basically gives her the right to stay in the house for as long as she wants. Dan’s a writer and really, he should have known better than to sign a contract without actually reading it but …. well, he was in a hurry that morning.
So anyway, Kirsten is now living in Dan’s house and telling everyone that she is Dan’s girlfriend, despite the fact that Dan has a girlfriend named Mary (Ciarra Carter). (Dan also has an editor named Debbie, who is played by Vivica A. Fox. It’s not a Lifetime “wrong” movie without Vivica A. Fox in a supporting role.) Dan can either give up the house or he can stay in the house and hope that he finds a way to get Kirsten out of his life.
Really, Dan should have known better than to have hired Kirsten in the first place. When they first met, it was in a bookstore and Kirsten was talking about how much she loved Atlas Shrugged. Dan suggested that she check out The Fountainhead. I’m a libertarian and even I know that its time to run whenever someone says that Atlas Shrugged is their favorite book. Personally, I would have suggested that both he and Kirsten read Anthem, which gives you all the Ayn Rand you could want but which doesn’t require you to spend half a year reading it.
Regardless, Dan did hire Kirsten and now he’s stuck with her. And Kirsten really, really wants to make things work with Dan. In fact, she’s so determined to make things work that she’s willing to kill. It’s a Lifetime movie, folks. People are always willing to kill.
Anyway, our regular readers know that I like the “wrong” films, largely because they always seem to feature the nicest houses that one could hope to find in Canada. Dan’s house is really nice and you can understand why he wouldn’t want to give it up. The pool alone is worth a few murders. I mean, I would have totally been up to house sit that particular home and I wouldn’t have been as dangerous about it either. (Seriously, house sitting is a lot of fun! You get to sleep in a stranger’s bed without having to worry about seeing them in the morning.) Jason-Shane Scott has appeared in a few of these films and he brings his well-meaning charm to the role of Dan. Anna Marie Dobbins is appropriately crazed as the house sitter and Vivica A. Fox, as always, does good work as the no-nonsense authority figure.
Watch it the next time you’re tempted to let a stranger live in your house for a week.
Cheerleading is dangerous!
Of course, if you’ve been watching Lifetime for the past month or so, you know that. Lifetime has spent most of October showing movies about cheerleaders who are either killing or being killed. Now that Lifetime has decided to show Christmas movies for the rest of the year, the deadly cheerleader movies have moved to the Lifetime Movie Network.
For instance, last night saw the premiere of The Pom Pom Murders! Now, I was co-hosting the #ScarySocial live tweet last night so I missed The Pom Pom Murders but, fortunately, my sister Erin had the foresight to set the DVR for me. Thank you, Erin!
As I always do whenever there’s a killer cheerleader movie on the DVR, I tried to get Erin to watch it with me. Erin was a cheerleader in high school and I always feel it’s good to get an expert opinion on whether or not these films accurately reflect the cheerleading experience. (I always refused to try out for cheerleader in high school, mostly because two of my sisters had done it and I wanted to establish my own identity. Of course, since I was a teenager at the time, establishing my own identity meant writing a lot of emo poetry.) Erin, however, declined because no one was murdered while she was a cheerleader. I guess she has a point.
Anyway, The Pom Pom Murders is about Audrey (Anna Marie Dobbins), who tries out for a spot on the cheerleading squad of the Los Angeles Renegades basketball team! She makes the squad and she even gets a charming new boyfriend when star player Walter Wilson gives her a ride home! Everything seems to be perfect, until the murder of Bailey (Grace Patterson), a member of the squad and Walter’s ex-girlfriend! Bailey is strangled while her dog watches, just in case you needed any more evidence that this killer is ruthless.
With Walter as the number one suspect and an apparent killer stalking the Renegade Girls, can Audrey cheer the team to victory without losing her life? One would normally think so, seeing as how this is a Lifetime film and most Lifetime films do, eventually, have a happy ending. However, this film also features a rather snarky voice-over from Audrey, one which suggests that this story might not have a happy ending. Of course, Audrey also suggests that she might just be saying that to make you watch so one huge reason to watch the film is to see if Audrey’s an honest narrator or not!
The best Lifetime films always mix the melodrama with a healthy dose of self-awareness. These are films that go cheerfully over the top and make no apologies for doing so and that’s certainly the case with The Pom Pom Murders, which features an enjoyably eccentric group of suspects. Is the murderer the pervy janitor or the intense coach or the strange owners? Is Audrey going to be able to solve the case or is she going to end up the latest victim? Is she going to become the newest star cheerleader or is she going to finally listen to her mother and go to law school?
You’ll have to watch the film to find out! This is a fun movie. If you’re into Lifetime movies, you’ll be doing some cheering yourself.
Last night, I watched the latest Lifetime premiere, Deadly Mile High Club!
Deadly Mile High Club tells the story of three people who end up flying the unfriendly skies together. Tanya (Allison McAtee) is a flight instructor who has been haunted ever since the tragic crash that took the life of her lover and co-pilot.
Jake (Marc Herrmann) is the handsome guy who has a go-nowhere warehouse job where he works for his constantly critical mother-in-law, Margaret (Diane Robin). Jake has decided to make some changes in his life, starting with learning how to fly.
And finally, Annie (Anna Marie Dobbins) is Jake’s wife. They’ve been married for six years and, unfortunately, they’ve hit a rough patch. Annie is busy going to school and Jake is constantly fighting with Annie’s mother. When Jake tells Annie that she sounds just like her mother, Annie exiles him to the living room couch and good for her! Annie likes to wear pink. In particular, she likes to wear a pink hat, which is something that comes back to haunt both her and Jake later on in the movie.
Jake decides to hire Tanya to teach him how to fly. This quickly turns out to be a mistake because, while Tanya is a good teacher, she’s also totally obsessed with Jake. After Jake tells her that he and Annie had a fight the night before, Tanya flies him out to Palm Springs and suggests that they spend the night at a hotel. Jake eventually turns her down but later on, during one of their lessons, Tanya has Jake fly over his house. He looks down and he sees a strange man kissing a woman wearing a pink hat in the driveway. Is Annie cheating on him!?
Realizing that things are just getting too strange, Jake attempts to switch over to a different flight instructor. That flight instructor is named Gonzo (Damon K. Sperber) and he is, without a doubt, one of the greatest supporting characters to ever appear in a Lifetime movie. Gonzo lives up to his name, dressing like an old World War II pilot and then doing dangerous stunts in an old school biplane while his employees — who are all wearing retro purple flight attendant uniforms — assure everyone watching that flying is safer than driving. I won’t go into what happens to Gonzo but let’s just say that Tanya has a way of getting what she wants.
Anyway, Deadly Mile High Club is a lot of fun. It’s one of those Lifetime films that fully embraces the melodrama and goes cheerfully over the top with a wink and a smile. Tanya is the type of psycho who has no problem trying to trick someone into pushing their wife out of a plane and the entire cast appears to be having a ball with their crazed characters. Allison McAtee especially does a great job as the unhinged Tanya and she delivers all of her lines with just the right amount of menace and humor. Deadly Mile High Club is an entertaining film, one that takes the usual Lifetime tropes of the psycho stalker and the clueless husband and the loyal wife and which bring new life to them by putting them up in the sky. It’s also a film that has a nicely self-aware sense of humor, which makes it all the more fun to watch.
Deadly Mile High Club was on last night and it will undoubtedly be on again so keep an eye out for it. And definitely, keep watching the skies!
On Sunday night, I watched the third chapter in the Stalked By My Doctor franchise, Patient’s Revenge!
Why Was I Watching It?
The obvious answer is that I was watching it because it was on Lifetime. This summer, Lifetime is going to be premiering a new movie every Sunday. Given my obsession with Lifetime movies, it shouldn’t be hard to guess what I’ll be doing on most Sunday nights.
Of course, at the same time, I absolutely loved both Stalked By My Doctor and Stalked By My Doctor: The Return. There was no way that I was going to miss the next chapter in the saga of Dr. Albert Beck.
And finally, there’s the Eric Roberts factor. Quite a few of us here at the TSL Bunker are fascinated by the always interesting, often downright bizarre career of Eric Roberts. He’s a talented and always quirky actor who apparently really likes to work. The appeal of Eric Roberts is you never know where he’s going to turn up. You can find him in theaters. You can find him on Lifetime. You can find in him in blockbusters and you can find him in short students films. You can even find him in music videos. Eric Roberts is everywhere! And, even more importantly, he’s always willing to throw himself into every role that he plays, no matter how bizarre that role may be.
What Was It About?
Following the events of the second Stalked By My Doctor film, Dr. Albert Beck (Eric Roberts) was put on trial for kidnapping Sophie Green (Brianna Joy Chomer). Despite all of the evidence against him, Dr. Beck was acquitted. (Perhaps it had something to do with the way he smiled and waved at one certain juror during the trial…) Now, Dr. Beck is teaching at a college in Arizona. To most people, Dr. Beck appears to be perfectly normal, if understandably anxious. However, it doesn’t take long to discover that Dr. Beck still has plenty of issues.
For instance, the first time he steps into a classroom, he immediately imagine all of his students undressing in front of him. Whenever Beck talks to himself, he imagines that he sees another Dr. Beck sitting in front of him. The imaginary Dr. Beck wears a Hawaiian shirt and always seems to disagree with whatever the real Dr. Beck wants to do.
Following Beck’s acquittal, Sophie has started dressing in all black. She’s also secretly transferred to Dr. Beck’s school, where she immediately starts to circulate a petition to get him fired. However, Dr. Beck apparently has a new girlfriend. Her name is Melissa (Anna Marie Dobbins) and she appears to be just as obsessed with Dr. Beck as Dr. Beck once was with Sophie. When Melissa says that she’ll do anything to protect Dr. Beck, she’s not exaggerating. Soon, Melissa is taking things further than even Dr. Beck could have predicted…
What Worked?
Three words: Dancing Eric Roberts. At one point, out of nowhere, Dr. Beck starts to sing to Sophie. He takes her hand and the two of them start to dance by the side of the road. Of course, it’s another one of Dr. Beck’s fantasies but who cares? It’s a brilliantly strange and unexpected moment and it’s also a perfect example of what makes the Stalked By My Doctor films so much fun. Dr. Beck is such a flamboyantly unhinged character that literally anything can happen.
Just as in the previous two films, Eric Roberts appears to be having the time of his life in the role of Dr. Beck. He’s just so weaselly and desperate to be viewed as normal that it becomes fascinating to watch him try to fool everyone. Each Stalked By My Doctor film starts with the question of just how far Dr. Beck is going to go this time and, thanks to Roberts, it’s always a lot of fun to discover the answer. Rather brilliantly, in this installment, Roberts plays up Beck’s befuddlement. Often times, not even Dr. Beck can believe how crazy he is!
(“Did I do that?” Beck sincerely asks himself at one point.)
Brianna Joy Chomer and Anna Marie Dobbins also did good work in their roles. Dobbins, especially, seemed to be having a lot of fun outcrazying Dr. Beck.
There’s a twist towards the end of the movie, of course. You might see the twist coming but it’s still entertaining. In fact, the whole film is entertaining. This is a fun and over-the-top Lifetime melodrama, one that knows better than to take itself too seriously. With each wink at the audience, it invites us to relax and enjoy.
What Didn’t Work?
It all worked!
“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments
Much like Sophie, I used to always wear black. And, much like Melissa, I’ve learned that pretending to faint is a good way to become the center of attention.
Lessons Learned
You can’t keep a good doctor down!
Through the Shattered Lens 