Les reines de la nuit

The made-for-television film "Beverly Hills Madam" has two major assets. One is the rich amount of absolutely stunning she-babes--Donna Dixon, Terry Farrell--who sashay throughout said production. The other is the positively smashing acting debut of Robin Givens. As one of high-class madam Faye Dunaway's leading prostitutes--the picture's older "Tootie," as it were--Robin makes a definite (favorable) impression. When her character, April Baxter, is canoodling with an older black man, one of Dunaway's customers, we immediately get why the black man is so quickly drawn to her. When we see April at her dance class going through her moves (her ultimate ambition is to be a dancer), her swaying and grooving instantly excite us. And when she's brutally murdered near the end of the film, we effortlessly join in Dunaway's grief for her and with equal effortlessness fully understand why April's murder makes her want to leave being a madam behind. Really and truly, the svelte beauty, the high-gloss charm, and the polished sexiness we've come to admire in Robin was apparent in her professional coming-out. When People Magazine did a story on her around the time "Beverly Hills Madam" was telecast, it quoted her as asking: "(I)f I'm supposed to be so sexy, why don't I have a date?" and concluded its piece by asserting: "Good question, although you somehow get the feeling that she shouldn't be adding her scorecard up just quite yet."Robin Givens's professional debut clearly heralded the fact that this was somebody who would go on to deserve to have a brimming scorecard.

The title character is one Lil Hutton (Faye Dunaway) who runs a high class out-call service catering to the kind of wealthy and powerful men who can afford $1000 a night for discreet encounters with very beautiful women who ask few questions and tell no tales.

Her very small roster of working girls includes some very flawed and damaged young women. Law student Wendy (Donna Dixon), jilted alcoholic Claudia (Anderson), snarky dancer (Robin Givens) are joined by an Amazon of a Nebraska farm-girl Julie (Terry Farrell) whom Lil has rescued from the streets of Los Angeles.

Lil's roster seems far too small for the kind of agency that can pay for her pampered lifestyle I should think unless the women were working around the clock instead of for $1000 a night.

Logically there would have to be more women in a real agency. That is something which could easily have been provided by bringing in peripheral call girl characters filled by actresses from central casting. All I'm asking is for a few short extra scenes with a few women then perhaps the mere mention of names of other women employed by the agency.

The dialogue is unbelievably clunky and without an ounce of originality. It is so poor I wondered whether or not the director just told the actors to say whatever they wanted as it would be dubbed in a foreign language later.

Going from poor melodrama in it's lacklustre first half to tawdry soap opera in its second half and featuring thoroughly unlikeable characters from lead to supporting roles there is very little that is appealing about the actual story here. Even with its short run-time it exhausts whatever real interest this story may have had early on and then drifts along to its implausible conclusion.

This exploitation drama with provocative subject matter was sanitized for TV to the point of being silly. Overall this was a huge missed opportunity to explore the lives of people in a high-risk and unconventional profession. They tried to turn it into a kind of romance with Jackie Collins style novel touches.

Faye Dunaway was at one time an A-list Hollywood star who appeared in highly regarded and commercially successful films like Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Chinatown (1974) and Network (1976). But she was apparently such an unbelievable pain to work with for so many, for so long that fewer and fewer people wanted to work with her by the early 1980s.

Few seem to remember what a breathtakingly beautiful woman Melody Anderson was. Those that think Canadians aren't sexy either never met her or don't know that she is Canadian. I don't believe she ever got the kind of shot at A list stardom she deserved in Hollywood.

The very appealing Terry Farrell would go on to fame on TV shows like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Becker.

Robin Givens had her first role here before going on to stardom in TV and feature films.

Poor Faye Dunaway! Seriously, what happened to her? She made A-tier dramas and showed serious acting chops in the 1970s, and then in the mid-1980s, she was relegated to lousy television movies. We can all point our fingers at Mommie Dearest, but was that really all it took? That movie was silly and melodramatic, but Faye put her heart into the performance. She shouldn't have been punished eternally for making fun of Joan Crawford.

Beverly Hills Madam was beneath her. Did she have it in her contract that she got to keep all her costumes and she needed a wardrobe infusion? Did she sign on before reading the script? With films like this and Pretty Woman, it's a wonder every woman in the 1980s and 1990s didn't quit their jobs and take to the streets. It glamorized prostitution beyond words. All Faye's "girls" were happy workers paired with clients who adored them. One showed kindness towards an elderly widower who wished to spend the night with a lookalike of his wife. Another had a "regular" who sent her diamond jewelry, fur coats, and first-class airline tickets to meet him wherever he was. A newcomer to LA, Terry Farrell, sees the wealthy, carefree lifestyle, and she requests to join Faye's gang. Faye loads her arms with literature on fine art and politics, teaches her poise, gives her a day of pampering at the salon, and dresses her in beautiful clothes. Terry giggles away while getting her transformation. It's crazy. She's not getting ready for the prom. She's getting ready to become a high-class call girl. Her first assignment? To de-flower an eighteen-year-old boy on his father's yacht.

The ridiculous message aside, the script is absurd. It's full of trite situations and melodramatic scenes we've seen a hundred times. Faye looked beautiful and put together, but that's really all you can say about this tv movie.

I miss the clothes women wore in the eighties. Hated the hair styles but loved the clothes. The movie is actually a humorous account of how to become a call girl in Hollywood and not starve to death doing it. Faye Dunaway was the best actress in the movie and still worth only 3 stars. The numerous beautiful girls couldn't act their way out of a paper bag but watch them try. One of them ended up on the TV show Becker with Ted Danson in the late 1990's and then I never saw her in anything else. I never heard of this movie when it was first released and wouldn't have seen it now unless it was on television when I wasn't doing anything else. Nevertheless, I liked it and if you see it in your TV listing watch it with a cold beer and some popcorn!

La Dunaway proves what Pauline Kael said about her in 1981 after the release of "Mommie Dearest" : she would never shake Joan Crawford. She's aching to bring out those wire hangers, and the line readings are pure camp Crawford. However, this gift of a performance will live in infamy, as she portrays a brothel madame in Beverly Hills, with hookers like Donna Dixon and Robin Givens in her stable. Feast your eyes on the most incompetent hookers in film history -- one of them actually gives up drugs and alcohol. While the filmmakers seem to attempt to portray the miserable life of a prostitute, I want to hitchhike to Los Angeles and give it a whirl. This brilliant film is succeeds as a painful reminder of the 1980s fashions we have long since left behind -- I Love the 80s indeed. I have to run now, because I'm going to watch it again. Thank you, Miss Dunaway.