tomdoyle1962

I saw this episode on my cable access channel recently and was impressed. To summarize, a woman comes home to take her dad to a medical appointment and notices some suspicious mail. Turns out she is a U.S. Postal Inspector. From there, the story moves through investigation of the company that sent the mail, to finally busting them for mail fraud. I'm not sure Anthony Robbins appreciates the bad guy being a look-alike, but it seemed an interesting choice for casting. I thought the production values were great, they did a great job with lighting and shooting it in an almost film noir style. Great job by Leigh Hill as the lead and an informative button at the end of the piece warning seniors about scams. Overall, a great use of the public service airways without being preachy or talking down to the audience.

I was an uncredited extra in this film and got about 8 seconds of on-camera time out of it. We were filming in the crew quarters of the USS North Carolina. While the crew slept, an alarm went off. After an officer told Schroeder "We're going to war", the crew filed out behind him. I planned to toss and turn in the background before the lights came up (to give myself more of a chance of being seen) and lo and behold, that made it in the film in addition to me filing out of the quarters. I've seen this movie on Lifetime a few times in the past few years, and I get a kick out of that scene every time it comes on. I remember Schroeder being aloof towards the extras during shooting, but then I don't think I expected him to sit down with us and have lunch. He was the central character of the film, after all. In terms of the overall film, I found the story interesting. It's odd that we go to such lengths to protect children from all kinds of dangers now. Some group would have some naval officer arrested for felony child abuse today for daring to let a 12 year old into a battle zone. All in all, it was a good "made for TV" movie of its time.