Vengeance à domicile

Nurse Laura Harriman (Lisa Zane) is out to get revenge on Bob Martin (Michael Fairman) and his family. See Laura's dad was so distraught over an embezzlement charge that he killed himself and the rest of the family, leaving poor Laura alone, confused and mentally unstable. Fortunately for her, Bob has a stroke, leaving him completely incapacitated (his fully alert self inside an expressionless body), so he's in need of full time care, so Laura quits her job at the hospital and signs on as the live-in nurse. She seduces the son (John Stockwell), arouses suspicion in the daughter (Janet Gunn) and starts to do away with everyone (often right before the father's eyes). Good acting, particularly from the deliciously wicked Zane, and an overall air of nastiness save this oft-clichéd bitch-from-hell flick (with a rather poor ending) from boredom.

The story has been done before (of course) but 'The Nurse' without being entirely original hits a few high notes and certainly keeps you gripped into the watchable, yet predictable series of events. Lisa Zane is fantastic as the black widow, typed nurse, out for the complete revenge.

If you're expecting 'The Hand That Rocks The Cradle', please don't watch this, because even if it's got near enough the same plot, it Definitely isn't in the same league. That said, this is still a very gripping, and in places, darkly comical thriller.

Lisa Zane stars as a professional nurse, who gets a call from her father while working, who says that 'she has got to be strong'. However, he implies that he is going to do something terrible to himself, his wife and his son. Sure enough, he picks up a gun, loads it with bullets, and shoots his wife and his son (both whom are asleep). Lisa gets home just in time to see her father shoot himself on the stairs... Lisa blames her father's boss for these terrible events, as he has filed a case against her father for embezzling. When his boss hears about the shootings, he suffers a stroke, which leaves him totally paralysed. On being taken home, Lisa sees her opportunity to get revenge. The man needs a nurse to take care of him. However, before Lisa can scheme her way in, another Nurse is hired. The solution to the problem: kill the nurse. Soon after this death, she weasels her way into the family, and there, she begins to stage her ultimate revenge...

If you're in the UK, you can catch this on Zone Thriller some time, as I did last night. If you're in America, there is a DVD of this film which is quite cheap to buy, so no-one has an excuse for missing this.

If you get the chance, tune in!

1st watched 10/16/2011 – 3 out of 10(Dir-Rob Malenfant): Mediocre at best revenge flick that although premiered as a theatrical release comes across like a "B" television production with sub-par acting, bad editing including a left-in scene that made no sense, and is also predictable from the beginning to the end. The movie starts out as a man is being charged with embezzlement and being trashed by the local media. The company's boss and family are shown not intending for this to get out, but it does. Distraught, the man charged shoots his wife, child and himself. His daughter, played by Lisa Zane, gets wind of this at her place of work where she is a nurse and blames the company and the boss who let this out to the media. The boss, has a stroke, after he finds out from a reporter about the murderous man's actions and becomes paralyzed to the point where he can only hear what's going on but can't respond. The revengeful nurse then takes on the persona of a former employee, becomes his nurse, and plots to kill him and his entire family. Zane is kind of hammy in her role, but OK as the deviant nurse and the other actors are OK as well. But that's the problem with the entire movie, it's just OK. This obviously was meant for television but apparently was too rough, so they added a couple curse words to get the R rating and released it in the theatres. It was advertised on the DVD I watched as a horror movie, but it isn't a horror movie, and it's not very enjoyable either – so skip this one if at all possible.

We've have seen it all before. A person, often a female, gets angry about something that stands in her way of success or plain satisfaction. We saw that in for example "The Temp", "The Secretary", "Daddy's Girl" and "Fatal Attraction" by naming a few.

This time it's a nurse who infiltrates herself into a family where she holds the dad responsible for her own family's death. He has ended up in a wheelchair, totally invalid, still understands everything, but can't make himself heard. She plans how to kill his whole family right in front of him.

The main stars of the movie is Lisa Zane (Billy's sister) who plays the psycho-nurse. Beautiful Janet Gunn is the daughter who is the first to sense that things isn't alright with the new nurse. John Stockwell is the son who becomes attracted to the new nurse.

Even if I've seen everything before I think the movie is both exciting and fun to watch. Not a masterpiece, but also far from the opposite. An entertaining little movie.