Rivals

This is a kind of movie I've seen several times before. The movie starts with one of the final scenes, and you are about 95% sure what will eventually happen to Laurie. But I really enjoyed it. Mostly because of Marne Patterson as Michelle. She was *awful*. She was so bad. One of the worst female characters I have ever seen on TV. And she did it extremely well. At least *I* was convinced she was the psycho she turned out to be.

Read that someone said that *too much* was changed from the original story. Too bad. Still worth watching though, indeed...

This true story is a modern, moving masterpiece. We see the life of Laurie Show (the delightful Jennifer Finnigan) get turned into a one way street to hell when she mixes with the 'popular crowd' only to find them to be deluded and physcotic.

The acting and writing is superb and the film maintains a believable, camp appeal,0 although sometimes it borders a non-realistic horror film.

this is a really good movie if you think of it as a fictional story and enjoy made for television movies. although only fragments of the story actually relate to the true case which i found kind of ridiculous. but it's good if your just looking for a interesting story line.

Classing this movie is difficult,it's bizarre,frightening and tragic.The fact that it was based on a true story got me watching and all the way till the end I was thinking about how unbelievably terrible this tragedy must have been,especially for the real Hazel Show.But my mind wasn't on much else,the scenes were scrappily put together,the script lacking and Finnigan....well let's just say she could have played the part better.It wasn't entirely bad though,Lambert(Patterson) was truly loathing and psychotic,and there were other notable performances namely that of Humes,Hunt and Vannicola.It was one of those movies that you HAVE to watch till the end,but once you've watched it you think it could have been done better.

The problem with this TV-movie, to paraphrase Dr. Johnson, is not that it is done so badly, but that it is done at all. Years ago a movie about the type of crime depicted here might have been unique and intriguing. Sadly for both society at large and the TV viewing public, it's all too commonplace now. There have been at least a dozen movies on this same subject. This film may be worse than some and better than others, but it does nothing to distinguish itself from the pack. After seeing so many similar flicks, some stock characters emerge. Of these, the terrorized victim and her mother aren't drawn too badly, but the closet psycho-homecoming queen is not as compelling as that character should be, in this viewer's opinion. And her oafish boyfriend is so shallow that he's a major irritation every time he's onscreen.

There are no laughable performances here, and the direction is at least competent, if not distinguished. Even Jennifer Salt's script is not a bad one, but she fails to convince us why we should want to watch these unpleasant characters. If you think you've seen one too many stalker movies, this certainly isn't the one that's going to change your mind.