She Lives!

I watched this movie when it first came on in 1973 (I was about 8 or 9 at the time) and I loved it! I finally managed to get a copy of it just a few months ago - thanks, Regina, wherever you are! - and I still think it's a pretty good movie. Season Hubley and Desi Arnaz, Jr. are very convincing as the young couple whose happiness is threatened when Pam (Season) gets cancer. It's not a Love Story ripoff, in that this movie centers around the illness itself and not how the characters are so different. Also, you can tell by the title how the movie ends.

The Seventies T.V. movie (A.B.C.'s "Movie Of The Week" here) left an

impression on many, from "Maybe I'll Come Home In The Spring" to the more

lightweight "But I Don't Want To Get Married", to the best known "Tribes."

This was an early "Cancer" movie before the subject would be done to

death. Probably remembered by most as the first time they heard the touching folk/pop of Jim Croce (If only HE had lived), these A.B.C. movies, in the tradition of shows like "Room 222", was T.V. jumping on the "Hip" train a little late(what the hell, some say the "sixties" were really 65 to 75. Lucy's troubled Son is not much of an actor, but otherwise this time capsule of a more hopeful time has it's heart in the right place, maybe it's head too.

I can remember seeing this movie like it was yesterday. It made such an impression on me that whenever it was re-run on TV I made sure to watch it. This movie is a perfect example of a simpler time in some of our lives when a movie, even a TV movie could entertain us without sex, drugs or violence! The music by Jim Croce was probably the one thing that has kept this movie in my mind all these years. After seeing this the first time I went hunting for anything by this then 'unknown' singer. I still have all the albums and I had "Time in a Bottle" for my wedding song. I only wish some of the great TV movies from years gone by would be put out on DVD.

Set at UCLA, with much less appealing leads, hysterical script, and relentless abuse of the Jim Croce song. I didn't detect any chemistry between Arnaz and Hubley. Hollywood's campaign to make Arnaz happen was in embarrassing evidence throughout the film. Also missing were any appreciable supporting characters. The sense of doom and tragedy in "Love Story" was lost, with the emphasis on the search for a cure, and made this one seem trivial.

The plot of "She Lives!" is very, very similar to "Love Story" in that it's about college students who fall in love...and the lady comes down with a terminal illness. But, unlike "Love Story" there is hope in this film that she MIGHT not die.

I can barely remember seeing "Love Story" but can say that with "She Lives!" I had a hard time sticking with it because I didn't like the couple and really didn't care if she lived or died! The editing was terrible--with choppy bits of Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle" clumsily dropped into the film. Some of the camera-work was blurry and looked cheap. And, the acting, at times, was silly--with some terrible overacting. A few scenes which show this was the screaming scene which was unintentionally funny as well as when she later said she felt fine and only seconds later she was on the ground...practically dying. So, aside from the writing, acting and filmmaking the film wasn't bad...though I guess that really doesn't leave much, does it? Oh, and I forgot to mention that the ending was VERY abrupt and incomplete.

In retrospect, with a title like "She Lives!", I wish it had been a horror movie.