Conference bookie::movies

53.0. "Judgement Day: The John List Story" by DSSDEV::RUST () Thu Feb 25 1993 00:10

    "Judgment Day" is a based-on-fact-made-for-TV-movie (or BOFMFTVM, as
    the Boston Phoenix is fond of saying) about one John List, a New Jersey
    man who murdered his wife, mother, and three kids, allegedly to save
    them from the sins of this world (but wouldn't kill _himself_ because
    he apparently considered suicide a more mortal sin than murder). [I
    wouldn't normally post something about a TV-movie in here unless it was
    available on video, but since this particular crime is a favorite of
    mine, and I had high hopes for its dramatic treatment, I wanted to spew
    some remarks net-ward.]
    
    List, having made careful plans, vanished immediately after the
    murders, and evaded the efforts of the local police and the FBI for
    some 18 years. He was eventually captured thanks to "America's Most
    Wanted" - which made the TV-movie look kind of silly when it tried to
    promote the standard "tenacious local cop finally tracks the killer
    down" subplot; the cop got to say all the usual stuff about how he was,
    too, taking the case personally, but in the end his only major
    contribution appeared to have been handing over the police photos to
    the TV show...
    
    At any rate, the movie itself was pretty darned trite, featuring
    generous helpings of Standard TV-Movie-ese, a dialect spoken by few, if
    any, real people, and never under the circumstances displayed in the
    production. Given the chilling nature of the actual crime, it would be
    hard to completely ruin it, but I have to say this production missed a
    LOT of bets; if a director who's good with suspense ever took hold of
    this story, the result would have people shrieking in the aisles, but
    the TV production never got past "Eeew, how awful."

    But. There was one facet of this production that, all by itself, left
    me chilled, gave me the creeps, left me looking over my shoulder: the
    casting. Beginning with Robert Blake as List (something of a step down
    from "In Cold Blood," career-wise, but I s'pose he wanted the work),
    the casting junta then chose Beverly D'Angelo (who's always looked a
    little wild-eyed to me, especially in the "National Lampoon" movies she
    did with Chevy Chase) as List's wife - a woman who married him on the
    rebound, spent their early married life demanding more money and a
    better house while fighting off chronic headaches with an assortment of
    prescription painkillers, and then began to lose her mind completely
    as a result of advanced, untreated syphilis. (As played by D'Angelo,
    the wife was so horrifying that _I_ wanted to kill her; this may not
    have been the producers' intention, but I found that it added some
    interest.)
    
    Then they cast Alice Krige (who played the smarmily creepy woman in
    "Ghost Story", and has given me the vague-uneases ever since) as List's
    wife's sister, who doesn't get murdered but does get to muse
    philosophically over her Cobb salads over the years about how he could
    possibly have done such a terrible thing.
    
    AND, in a final casting coup, List's second wife, whom he married under
    an assumed name while at large, was played by Melinda Dillon. (If you
    don't recognize her name - I had to look it up - she's a character
    actress who, from what I've seen, specializes in "mom" roles, from the
    worried-frantic mother in "Close Encounters" to the really ditzy mom in
    "A Christmas Story", and positively exudes an annoying kind of confused
    helplessness trying to find something to cling to - "Don't hit me, but
    if you do, please don't get blood on the towels.") Anyway, she was
    perfect for the role of "surviving victim," as List left her with
    almost no money and, in effect, no husband...
    
    So, while the movie failed in a big way to live up to the story it was
    based on, the casting choices did give it a certain twisted,
    disturbingly misogynistic quality that was plenty scary in itself. 
    
    -b

    Melinda Dillon played the woman who committed suicide in "Absence
    of Malice", due to a story planted in the local paper by an assistant
    DA (Bob Balaban) and written by a naive reporter (Sally Field).  Paul
    Newman was the object of the story, and Wilford Brimley was the man
    who brought the assistant DA down.  One of my favorite movies.
    
    NAZZ 

    >  I wouldn't normally post something about a TV-movie in here...
    
    Ah, the joys of moderatorship! (-hood?, -ness?)  
    
    - Dave