My wife and I are iced and snowed in here in Central Arkansas this weekend, so we’re watching movies. I was browsing Tubi when I came across the 1991 made-for-TV movie BUMP IN THE NIGHT. Knowing nothing about the film other than the fact that Christopher Reeve is prominently featured on the poster, I hit play and got a movie I really wasn’t prepared for, emotionally or morally! 

The film opens with a young schoolboy named Jonathan (Corey Carrier) leaving his home, where his alcoholic mother Martha (Meredith Baxter Birney) is passed out on the couch. Jonathan is on his way to have breakfast with his dad Patrick (Wings Hauser). Rather than finding his dad, however, he’s met by the mysterious Lawrence Muller (Christopher Reeve) who claims he was sent by his dad to pick him up. When Patrick and Martha, divorced well before the opening of the film, discover that Jonathan is missing, the two must try to put aside their differences to find their son, who’s been targeted by both a pornographer and a pedophile.  

We’ve been watching a lot of made-for-TV thrillers around my house lately that deal with people with various psychological issues, but I was not expecting a film that dealt with child pornography and pedophilia. And I certainly wasn’t expecting that pedophile to be played by Christopher Reeve. Reeve gives an effective and chilling performance, as his character starts out as kind and soft spoken to the boy, before eventually showing himself to be violent and emotionally unstable as he’s rejected and the walls start closing in on him. Meredith Baxter Birney and Wings Hauser are also effective as the divorced couple who carry a lot of emotional baggage, but try to put that aside while they’re looking for their son. Birney is especially good as she’s an alcoholic, and we see her fighting her own personal demons throughout the search. Hauser, who’s always so good when he plays the psycho in his movies, gets the straight role as the concerned dad and he brings a needed calm and steadying presence to the explosive material. 

You have to give BUMP IN THE NIGHT some credit for tackling some very difficult material, whether it be alcoholism, pornography or pedohilia, and it takes them head on. Based on the 1988 novel of the same name from author Isabelle Holland, there are limits to how far this TV production can take the material, but in some ways those limits make the film even more disturbing. We see bedrooms with multiple cameras set up for recording illicit activities with children. We see grainy VHS tapes from pornographers that show young boys holding hands and walking down the street. We’re told things like, “just make sure he’s ready for filming! It begins at 10:00!” Director Karen Arthur uses these types of images and thoughts to manipulate our emotions, with our own minds filling in the blanks with the worst fears that we can imagine. This gave me a strong rooting interest for the local law enforcement and parents to rescue their son before he’s exploited and abused.

Even with its excellent cast, I may not have watched BUMP IN THE NIGHT if I had realized the sordid nature of the material. I’ll be honest, with its title, I was expecting a more straightforward thriller. However, having now seen the film, I will give it credit for its effective handling of the material and its fine performances. I won’t ever watch it again though.