Retro Television Review: Shattered Innocence (dir by Sandor Stern)

Posted on April 28, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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 1988’s Shattered Innocence! It can be viewed on YouTube.

Shattered Innocence starts with a young woman shooting herself in a nice bedroom, while someone on the outside bangs on the door.

The rest of the movie shows the events the led up to the suicide of Pauleen Anderson (Jonna Lee). On the one hand, starting a film with a literal bang is definitely a way to capture the audience’s attention. On the other hand, letting us know that the story is going to end with a suicide pretty much robs the story of the element of surprise or the ability to take the viewer by surprise. We know how the story is going to end and it doesn’t take long for us to figure out why it’s going to end that way.

From the minute we see Pauleen as a naive cheerleader with an overprotective family, we know that she’s going to end up hooking up with Cory (Kris Kamm), the local bad boy. As soon as she graduates from high school and gets a job as a waitress, we know that Pauleen is not going to be staying in Kansas. As soon as she and Cory end up in California and Cory suggests that Pauleen is pretty enough to be a model, we know that she’s going to end up modeling topless and that she’s going to deal with her nerves and her weight by snorting cocaine. We also know that she’s going to end up appearing in adult films and that her concerned mother (Melinda Dillon) is constantly going to be begging her to come back home and forget about Los Angeles and its sinful ways.

Apparently based on a true story, there’s not really anything surprising about Shattered Innocence. It tells a sordid story but, because it was made-for-TV, the scene usually ends right before anything really explicit happens. (Ironically, by keeping the sordid stuff off-camera, the film invites the audience to imagine scenarios that are probably a hundred times more trashy than anything that could be recreated on film.) Shattered Innocence gets by on innuendo, with frequent scenes of people saying stuff like, “Did you see the pictures?” or “You may recognize her from her centerfold.” Nerdy Mel Erman (John Pleshette), who becomes Pauleen’s business partner, first meets her when he asks her to autograph the cover of Penthouse. Otherwise, this film is actually pretty tame.

In fact, the one scene that really jumped out and made me go “Agck!” was a scene in which Pauleen’s nose suddenly started bleeding as a result of all the cocaine that she had recently done. That was frightening, just because I’ve always had to deal with nosebleeds due to my allergies. I hate them and the taste of blood in the back of my throat. In that scene, I could relate to Pauleen’s shock and embarrassment.

Shattered Innocence tells a story that’s as old as Hollywood itself, which is a bit of a problem. Too often, the movie just seems to be going through the expected motions. Jonna Lee was a bit dull in the lead role but Melinda Dillion and John Pleshette both did well as the only two people who seemed to really care about Pauleen. For the most part, though, Shattered Innocence was sordid without being memorable.

A Movie A Day #305: Go Tell The Spartans (1978, directed by Ted Post)

Posted on November 10, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

One of the best films ever made about Vietnam is also one of the least known.

Go Tell The Spartans takes place in 1964, during the early days of the Vietnam War. Though the Americans at home may not know just how hopeless the situation is in South Vietnam, Major Barker (Burt Lancaster, in one of his best performances) does. Barker is a career military man. He served in World War II and Korea and now he’s ending his career in Vietnam, taking orders from younger superiors who have no idea what they are talking about. Barker has been ordered to occupy a deserted village, Muc Wa. Barker knows that occupying Muc Wa will not make any difference but he is in the army and he follows orders.

Barker sends a small group to Muc Wa. Led by the incompetent Lt. Hamilton (Joe Unger), the group also includes a drug-addicted medic (Dennis Howard), a sadistic South Vietnamese interrogator (Evan C. Kim) who claims that every civilian that the men meet is actually VC, a sergeant (Jonathan Goldsmith) who is so burned out that he would rather commit suicide than take command, and Cpl. Courcey (Craig Wasson). Courcey is a college-educated idealist, who joined the army to do the right thing and is now about to discover how complicated that can be in South Vietnam. At Muc Wa, the soldiers find a cemetery containing the graves of French soldiers who died defending the hamlet during the First Indochina War. The inscription as the cemetery reads, “Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.”

Because the film strives for realism over easy drama, Go Tell The Spartans has never gotten the same attention as some other Vietnam films. Unlike The Deer Hunter, Platoon, Coming Home, and Born on the 4th of July, Go Tell The Spartans received no Oscar nominations. It is still a brilliantly acted and powerful anti-war (but never anti-soldier) film. It starts out as deceptively low-key but the tension quickly builds as the soldier arrive at Muc Wa and discover that their orders are both futile and impossible to carry out. Vastly outnumbered, the Americans also find themselves dealing with a land and a culture that is so unlike their own that they are often not even sure who they are fighting. Military discipline, as represented by Lt. Hamilton, is no match for the guerilla tactics of the VC. By the film’s end, Vietnam is revealed to be a war that not even Burt Lancaster can win.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #71: Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction (dir by Paul Wendkos)

Posted on May 12, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Now, I originally saw the 1983 made-for-TV movie Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction on Netflix so I have absolutely no first hand knowledge of how this film was advertised. However, I have it on very good authority (i.e., I read it on another blog) that the image above is from the film’s VHS packaging.

Just looking at this image, you would be justified in thinking that Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction was an early David Cronenberg film. Seriously, it looks like a deleted scene from Scanners and Dennis Weaver’s head is about to explode.

But no! There are no scanners in Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction. David Cronenberg did not direct this film. As far as I can tell, it wasn’t even filmed in Canada. Instead, Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction is about one man who gets seduced cocaine.

You may have noticed that I enjoy reminding you that this film is called Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction. That’s because that’s a great title. If the film had just been called Cocaine, you might watch the film expecting it to be set on a 1970s film set. And if the film had just been called One Man’s Seduction, viewers may have watched the film expecting a Double Indemnity–style film noir. But Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction leaves no doubt about what we’re about to see.

Add to that, it’s a very melodramatic title and the name of this series of reviews is, after all, Embracing the Melodrama Part 2!

Anyway, Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction is about a real estate agent named Eddie Grant (Dennis Weaver). He’s the type of semi-successful white-collar suburban guy who you just know is going to have a really over-the-top midlife crisis. He has a wife (Karen Grassle) who loves him. He has a son (James Spader — yes, that James Spader!) who wants to put off going to college for a year. Eddie also has a job where he’s viewed as being an over-the-hill relic. People looking to buy a new home simply are not impressed with Eddie’s cheap suits, mild manner, and old-fashioned scotch-after-work style.

What Eddie needs is a new wardrobe and aviator sunglasses. And, as we all know from watching movies set in the 70s and 80s, nothing gets you into aviator sunglasses faster than snorting a line of coke.

Soon, Eddie is driving a fast car, he’s wearing nicer suits, and he’s keeping a lot of secrets. Then, one day, his son — JAMES SPADER! — happens to look inside Eddie’s shave kit and discovers where dad has been hiding his cocaine.

Now, this is where I was expecting Jeff VanVondern to show up and say, ” I see a bunch of people that love you like crazy and they feel like they are losing you. And they wanna fight to get you back.” But apparently, people in the 80s did not need an intervention to get them to go to rehab. Instead, they just needed to have a dramatic nose bleed at work and nearly overdose on someone else’s kitchen floor. They also needed to be called out by James Spader.

Of course, it also helps that Eddie is friends with a recovering cocaine addict who is played by a very thin-but-already-bald Jeffrey Tambor. Jeffrey Tambor is already something of a hyperactive actor (and that’s why we love him!) so when you combine that natural tendency with a character who is supposed to be coked up, it’s something that simply has to be seen.

Anyway, Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction is a fairly good example of the-worst-that-can-happen-will-happen cinema. If nothing else, it has some worth as a time capsule and it’s undeniably interesting to see James Spader play a role that one would normally never associate with James Spader.

Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction is currently seducing viewers on Netflix.