The Babysitter

Well, I bought this movie for the fact that Stephanie Zimbalist (Laura Holt of Remington Steele) played a leading role in it. Everything I had seen of hers was pretty good so far, and I'm a Remington addict, so I figured this would be good as well. I was mistaken. It wasn't exactly garbage. If written differently, it could've been a really good movie. The category in which it's categorized is all wrong as well. This is definitely not a suspense or horror film. There was no blood or gore, which is what I describe a horror film as to be. As far as suspenseful goes, it almost meets that category, as I said, if written better. My opinion, the writing stunk. The storyline could've been extremely better. It's definitely not a movie you'd view more than once, IMO.

Couple (Patty Duke and William Shatner) hires an orphaned teenage girl (Stephanie Zimbalist) with a dark and mysterious past as a nanny. At first she is perfect and keeps there house in top shape and makes life much easier for the couple, but as time goes on she becomes destructive and turns Duke and Shatner against one another and the house is becoming a total mess. She then starts to show her true colors and people start to drop like flies. Sometimes haunting and disturbing TV film is given lush direction and entertains untill it crumbles apart at the end. Zimbalist makes a good psycho, but Shatner is miscast.

Not Rated; Violence.

Good acting by a solid cast makes this somewhat-familiar material worth slogging through, even though the issues it raises seem to get all fouled up. Patty Duke Astin plays a doctor's wife who has hired a mysterious young woman to care for her rather hapless daughter, which causes friction in their already-shaky household. Quinn Cummings, fresh off her stint on TV's "Family", has a few surprisingly strong scenes standing up to babysitter Stephanie Zimbalist, but Zimbalist's role is a wash-out. Her character isn't given the grand, juicy build-up that villains usually receive in television suspensers, but perhaps this time it was a mistake (director Peter Medak is so overly-cautious letting the pieces fall into place that he becomes unintentionally coy about the whole thing). The film is shrouded in murk; Medak, going for a low-key mood, doesn't allow the drama to take shape, and as a result the story and characters become lethargic blobs.

When I first saw "hand that rocks the cradle" I remember thinking this premise had been done before in a really chilling TV movie. Couldn't remember the title. For some reason I thought it was The nanny.(Haha). Well, it came back to me so here's my review of the babysitter.

I can't call this anywhere near a good movie but I liked it when I saw it mainly because the whole "stalker movie" genre had not been overdone as of yet-or maybe I was just to young to care.

At any rate-this follows a very similar premise to cradle-I guess Joanna was more a housesitter then a nanny, though I seem to remember it differently. It doesn't matter though because if you know the plot of hand that rocks the cradle you know the plot of the babysitter. For some reason, though-and maybe it was because of the then newness of the premise this TV movie scared the heck out of me.

It is more chilling then cradle, less campy. Joanna, whose name I remembered after all this time, is genuinely frightening. I wouldn't mind seeing this again mainly because this was an early stalker movie and I'd like to see if it still chilled me as much.It's hard to do a complete review as the movie's a bit of a blur to me but I do remember the story as being dark and really creepy. I don't remember any gore-if it were to come out now I'm sure it'd be laughed at by many but back then, when the premise was still new it was pretty darn good thriller material, if not a genuinely good movie. For Genuine fans of cradle though, this is a must see.

In THE BABYSITTER, a family is undermined by the cunning manipulation of a beautiful, young woman named Joanna (Stephanie Zimbalist). After insinuating herself into the family, she begins seducing the husband (William Shatner) and emotionally sabotaging the wife (Patty Duke).

Knowing nothing of Joanna's extremely dark past, the family is unaware of just how dangerous she is, though the 12 year old daughter (Quinn Cummings) seems wiser than her clueless parents. Will they realize what Joanna is doing, before she causes irreparable damage, even death?

Duke is great, and Shatner is less Captain Kirk than usual. However, this is Zimbalist's movie, and she is the blackened sun at it's center. There's even a LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN moment on the lake! Mostly though, THE BABYSITTER prefigures the future POISON IVY, only in a more "family-friendly", made-for-TV form.

Co-stars John Houseman as a doggedly suspicious neighbor...