This is NOT a remake of Fatal Attraction. There WAS no extramarital affair. It was quite an enjoyable look back at the Lifetime TV movies of the early 1990s, where the coincidences always break bad, if the police are involved there is always a bad cop/good cop duo, and somehow you can make a living AND afford employees selling overpriced nick knacks nobody needs in a store where there never seem to be customers. But I digress.
Connie (Loretta Swit) is a psychopathic woman who, over twenty years ago, lost her virginity in a one night stand in college where the guy (Stanley) apparently lied and said he loved her to get in her pants, and she believed him. And then he dumped her. Now Connie has been busy all of these years. She almost killed her parents, not for lack of trying, and then she sees Stanley on TV ads selling furniture, and something must have been triggered. Like her finger. When she shot and killed her current boyfriend who was apparently a slob and abusive on her way out the door to find Stanley. But when she drives up to his almost-mansion to see him, she is shocked that he has moved on these past twenty years and is married to someone else (Barbara Eden as Terri).
What follows is the bodies piling up (including Stanley) as Connie sets out to destroy Terri's life. The police think Terri did it. In particular, one slimy little weasel of a cop thinks she did it while his older wiser colleague is willing to let the clues speak for themselves. Meanwhile, Stanley has been in trouble financially all of this time, mortgaging everything he had to get through a rough patch in business, and Terri knew nothing about this until Stanley dies and there is nothing left but bills. One day you are a housewife living in a mansion, wanting any kind of job because the nest is empty and you are bored. The next day you are penniless and homeless and need any kind of job and a psychopath that nobody believes exists but you is destroying your life.
The one unusual tack in this film? Out in Mayberry, Andy Griffith and Barney Fife's smarter brother are methodically solving their one homicide done by Connie - at the beginning they don't know who did it - while big city weasel cop is trying very hard to build a case against Terri.
The cast here is outstanding and so is the plastic surgery. Loretta Swit was 54 when she made this film and Barbara Eden was 60. They both look like a well preserved 35-40. Kim Zimmer, who played Reva Shayne on Guiding Light, is taking a break from marrying and divorcing Josh every six months to play Terri's best friend. Richard Kline, who played the playboy on Three's Company, plays Zimmer's husband.
This thing is so very Lifetime. So very much a guilty pleasure. And if Loretta Swit was trying to prove she was more than Hot Lips in the acting department I think she accomplished that.
Lesson learned - when you knock the gun out of a bad guy's hand, take it with you so he can't run you down and shoot you with it. In this case, take the gun, leave the cannoli.
