La sorellina

My TIVO is programmed to get William Shatner films since he's usually so much fun to watch in action. But he proved relatively restrained in his role.

Frankly, I wasn't expecting much from this film, perhaps a kitschy hour and a half of entertainment.

I've never seen Remingston Steele, so as soon as a young Zimbalist comes on the screen I could no help thinking "wow, who is that?" She is very convincing in the role of an enigmatic housekeeper who works her way into the family of Shatner and Duke-Astin.

The film begins at a slow pace, but has the saving grace of not falling into the typical and predictable TV movie of the week plot.

The acting is very good all around, as well as Zimbalist, Duke-Astin and John Houseman turn in good performances.

I was surprised to see on IMDb after watching the film that it was directed by Peter Medak. I greatly respect Medak for his work in _The Changeling_ (1980), _The Krays_ (1990) and _Romeo is Bleeding_ (1993), all non-mainstream highly-respected (nearly cult) films. It is really surprising that Medak seems to weave between these films and TV sitcoms, movies of the week, and so on. His influence in creating the proper mood is, in retrospect, dominant in the film.

As someone else mentioned, the sound quality is quite bad and it is at times difficult to make out the dialog.

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.

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...

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.

A family thinks they've hit gold when they hire the almost perfect Joanna Redwine as The Babysitter. They'll soon find out that they should have done a background check first.

The Benedict family just moved into a beautiful house on the water just outside of Seattle. Tara is a spoiled problem child for her parents Jeff and over protective/worrying mom Liz. One day while outside playing, Tara sees this beautiful 18 year old girl named Joanna. She's very mysterious and almost mesmerizing in the way she talks and walks around, and she grabs a hold of young Tara's impressionable innocence. After we see her cause Liz to get into a car accident, Liz decides to hire Joanna as her live in nanny for the summer responsible for cooking/cleaning and taking care of young Tara.

All is well at first. Tara and Joanna get along perfectly, Joanna cooks amazing food for the family, and she starts a deep friendship with Liz. The friendship seems caring at first, with Joanna helping Liz with her self confidence as a mother and wife, but quickly turns a bit dark as she starts pushing Liz to drink after a year of sobriety. Eventually she gets Liz out of the way (thanks to her alcoholism) and seduces Jeff into beginning an affair with her. As Joanna's past starts to come to light thanks to a nosy neighbour, she gets backed into a corner which causes her severe dangerous side to come out.

The Babysitter is a fun little early 80's movie that is really about two different stories melded perfectly into one film. On the one hand, it is about a mysterious and dangerous girl who works hard to break up the Benedict family. On the other hand, the movie plays into the failing marriage between Liz and Jeff. It's kind of sad to watch them crumble even when Joanna doesn't try to ruin things for them. The ending is unfortunately kind of lackluster and doesn't provide that big pay off I was hoping for. We get an idea of how psychotic Joanna is and what she did to families before the Benedict's, but it only touched on that topic and never dived deep into it.

It is a bit of a slower paced made-for-TV thriller, but there is something about the story and the mystery of Joanna that keeps the viewer glued to the screen. Stephanie Zimbalist performance as Joanna is definitely mesmerizing and hypnotizing, not only to the family she's manipulating, but the audience as well. Patty Duke is a definite standout for me. She does a good job as the alcoholic mother who is desperate to keep her family together while she battles the bottle. William Shatner is his usual self, with a couple of over the top moments in his performance.

All in all The Babysitter was an enjoyable movie, especially for Made-for-TV fans like myself. It loses marks with how slow it runs (the middle frame is a bit dull), but the acting by Zimbalist and Duke along with a compelling mystery kept my attention the whole way.

6/10