Claudette Mink | Through the Shattered Lens

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 2001’s Return To Cabin By The Lake! It can be viewed on YouTube.

Stanley Caldwell (Judd Nelson) is back!

At the end of Cabin By The Lake, screenwriter Stanley had managed to escape from the police by faking his own drowning. Return to Cabin By The Lake finds Stanley using a variety of disguises and fake identities in his effort to once again become a part of the film industry. He is particularly interested in the fact that his previous murder spree is being turned into a movie. He’s considerably less happy about the fact that everyone involved in the movie continually disparages his work as a screenwriter. He’s even less happy when he hears them speculating that there was a sexual-motive behind Stanley’s murders or that Stanley was acting out against his mother. For someone who spent the previous movie drowning innocent women and then visiting their bodies in the lake, Stanley sure does seem to be shocked to discover that most people don’t have a high opinion of him. You’re a murderer, Stanley. People don’t like murderers.

Anyway, as a master of disguise, Stanley is able to work his way into the production of the film. Even though everyone on the set is spending 24 hours a day obsessing on and recreating the crimes of Stanley, no one is suspicious of the guy who looks just like Stanley and who keeps saying stuff like, “Stanley would never do that!” Stanley becomes obsessed with script writer Andrea (Dahlia Salem). He also comes to resent the film’s shallow director, Mike Helton (Brian Krause, giving the film’s best performance). Stanley decides that he would be a better director of the film so he buries Mike alive and then takes over direction.

Return To Cabin By The Lake is a bit more deliberately humorous than the first film. If Cabin By The Lake was full of pleasant townspeople and earnest police officers, Return To Cabin By The Lake is populated with caricatures of various Hollywood phonies. Everyone involved in Return To Cabin By The Lake‘s film-within-a-film is blithely unconcerned with the feelings of the the victim’s loved ones nor do they really care about telling the story accurately. Helton’s only concern is that the script have enough sex. That Stanley not only takes over as director but turns out to be a pretty good at it would appear to be Return To Cabin By The Lake’s ultimate statement on the film industry.

Judd Nelson is a bit more energetic in the sequel than he was in the first film. That said, Return To Cabin The By The Lake makes the mistake of asking us to buy the idea of Stanley being a master of disguise. Judd Nelson is always going to look and sound like Judd Nelson, regardless of whether he’s wearing a wig or not.

Though it’s a bit constrained by being a made-for-TV movie, Return To Cabin By The Lake is a marked improvement on the first film, one that has more humor and a better performance from its lead. The film ends with an opening for another sequel but it was apparently never to be.

Tamara was a good entertaining horror/teenage angst movie in the same vein as De Palma’s Carrie and pretty much most of the teenage revenge/slasher flicks of the late 70’s and early 80’s. Such horror films involved the high school jocks and popular cliques getting their comeuppance by way of the nerdy student who has had enough. This time around the nerd in question is one Tamara whose shy, bookish and frumpy nature makes her an easy mark for every other kid in school.

Newcomer and extremely hot Jenna Dewan plays the title role and she does a very good job pulling off the dual personality role the film requires from her. The first half of the film has Dewan as very believable as the mousy and nerdy student whose low self-esteem adds to keeping her ostracized from the rest of the student population. It doesn’t help that she begins to misread one of her teacher’s (played by Matthew Marsden) attempts to help her as some sort of loving attention she so craves. There’s a small bit of a bright side to her daily existence in the form Chloe (played by Katie Stuart), she of the popular girl with a heart-of-gold role. Tamara’s life soon turns for the worst as her attempts to show her love for her helpful teacher gets rebuffed and her published article about drug-use in athletics puts her in the crosshairs of a couple of jocks with much to lose.

Typical of such teenage revenge horror films, the cruel jocks and popular kids concoct a plan to humiliate and embarrass Tamara, but just like those past films their plans backfire and the target of their plans gets killed during the the prank. The filmmaker really don’t add something new to this tried and tested formula. Instead of calling for the authorities to report the accidental death of their schoolmate, the kids decide, through the bullying by the alpha-male in the group, to bury Tamra instead and forget anything ever happened. This plan probably would’ve worked if Tamara wasn’t dabbling in witchcraft as ostracized teenagers are wont to do. Tamara’s spell prior to the prank to spellbind her teacher backfires as its activated by the spilling of her blood and to the surprise of the students who did her harm she returns alive, healthy and completely different the start of the new school week.

To say that Tamara returns utterly different in more ways than one would be an understatement. Ms. Dewan does a vampy, sometimes campy, job portraying the new and improved Tamara. Dewan goes from nerdy, plain-jane Tamara to ultra-sexy, barely there skirt wearing teen seductress whose touch does more than seduce those she has targeted for revenge. Jenna Dewan as the reborn Tamara steams up the screen with her overt sexuality and she practically saves the film from just being an ok, by-the-numbers horror film. Tamara was Ms. Dewan’s film from beginning to end and she does a very good job of keeping the story interesting even if it meant just being on the screen.

This film doesn’t break new ground in the realm of teen horror. In fact, it’s a mish-mash of alot of past teen horror flicks of the past that one could see the many influences in its story. Tamara was part Carrie, Black Christmas, The Craft and, more recently, Diablo Cody’s Jennifer’s Body. The direction was adequate at best and that’s really all one could hope for in a genre film like Tamara. What makes this film entertaining and worth watching was the joy of discovering the new scream queen talent in Jenna Dewan. Tamara might not be a great horror film, but Ms. Dewan sure more than tries to make it more than it’s B-movie pedigree.