31 Flavors of Horror #25: Terror Tract

I love those old anthology horror films, from Asylum to Trilogy of Terror to Creepshow, they're always wonderful ways to pass a rainy afternoon or gloomy night. Usually a collection of morality tales with EC Comics-style twists, they're generally pretty oddball. I'm also a fan of the cheesy goodness of TV movies. So how can I turn down a double-dare like this?


Bonus: Will Estes, who plays Sean Goodwin, in 2005 starred in a little show called Reunion. That TV season was the year of the serial plot, since Lost was doing so well and I actually picked up a few shows that year and I watched a lot of TV then. When I backed Reunion, Commander-in-Chief, Surface, Point Pleasant, and Threshold only to see them ALL cancelled, I shifted my TV watching to pretty much DVDs of seasons so I wouldn't get "dumped" by TV shows like that again. The next year, I thought I'd give it one more shot and backed Kidnapped, Pepper Dennis and Vanished as promising. Needless to say, that's when I cancelled cable and went to an all-Netflix and DVD model of TV watching.

I will never understand the thinking of spending months and millions producing and marketing this stuff, only to cancel it within two weeks. Ridiculous business model. Anyhow, on to the fun TV movie... because THESE we need more of!

31 Flavors of Horror #24
Terror Tract



In my review of The House Where Evil Dwells, I opened with a paragraph that applies pretty well to this film as well:

"In both the movies and real life, a bitchin' piece of real estate will get snatched up off the market even if it is the site of multiple homicides. In the movies, however, they do tend to come with ghosts."

Terror Tract (aka The House on Terror Tract) is a TV-move trio of tales with a framing story involving a young couple (80s TV stalwarts David DeLuise and Allison Smith) getting shown a houses by their charming, but somewhat creepy, realtor John Ritter. He's very driven to close a sale.

The first house a lovely two-story with a bit of a Tudor flavor, but the owners aren't desperate to sell, you see, because they're dead! Bwahahahahahaha! ...and as real estate agents are bound to disclose a property's history, Ritter is only too happy to share.

Nightmare

The first story features those previous owners, the Freemonts. Louis leaves Sarah for his business trip, which is convenient or he would have run into her lover sneaking into the house. Of course, this is a morality tale, so you can guess just how far Louis actually traveled. Lou wants to kill them and make it look like a murder-suicide, but the tables get turned on him. As Sarah is about to find out, between guilt and suspicion, she hasn't quite gotten the last word after all.  His poor bod may be dead and dumped, but his cuckolded, furious spirit won't be stopped. Is he haunting her or is she imagining it?

Considering how the guilt of his death eats her up, you have to wonder if she was any fun at all while sneaking around...

(More moral tales bound to improve your life are after the jump)

One A Week Reviews #5: The Client List

Here's a fun one I got to review for dvdsnapshot.com, and I swore up and down I was being a discerning viewer of this trashy TV movie instead of just embracing the fact that I love trashy TV movies. 
  
Official Synopsis: 

Jennifer Love Hewitt starts in her sexiest role ever as Samantha Horton, a former Texas homecoming queen who always relied on her beauty and charm to navigate life, something her beautician mother Cassie (Golden Globe award winner Cybill Shepherd) taught her. But when the Horton family finds itself facing financial ruin, Samantha must take a job at a local massage parlor, only to discover it's a front for a high-end call girl operation – one so lucrative, she can't afford to turn it don. And when the parlor is raided, Samantha must either cooperate with police and give up her clients' identities, or lose everything she tried so hard to save.

Our Take:

Jennifer Love Hewitt won a Golden Globe award for this Television movie who's catnip tagline is “Inspired by a True Story.” Was ever a phrase more open to wide and loose interpretation?

Here she's Sam Horton, a housewife and mother of three possessed with an eidetic memory and a great rack. Her new job, complete with a TV ready cast of coworkers, turns out to be at a brothel, and she doesn't exactly sell the moral conflict as she limply wrestles with the decision to wrestle with her work.

“Doing what she has to do” in order to keep her family in big hair and smoky eye-makeup, she goes from tequila-swigging neophyte to the “belle of the ball.”

The movie dives right into random wisecracks in the best big-haired spirit of “Texas,” as in the impression others have of its mindset more than the state itself. Weirdly choppy with odd editing choices and tight close-ups, it skips from amusing to concern to moralizing. The concern is “there aren't enough hours in the day to service your clients and cook for the kids' bake sale.”

The tone of this film is just downright weird. Refreshingly, The Client List is also rather positive about sex workers. There's far more judgment of Sam's eventual cocaine use than her hooking. The turning point involves bad parenting more than the eventual bust, and then blows through it's legal-themed TV movie second half. Being a TV movie, there's lots of scenery chewing and moments where Hewitt can weep beautifully through her fake lashes. You imagine each time she blinks it must sound like the blades of a wind farm fan. Can she throw all the Johns on the bonfire to keep herself from prison? More importantly, will she get her kids back? Have you ever seen a TV movie?

This film is all Hewitt. She gets to play comedy and has moments of “Real Acting.” When the husband takes the kids to his mom, between her and the hand-held camera you'd think he was taking them to Treblinka. With her elongated lips, giraffe neck, and exaggerated eyes she's the always-in-motion center of the film. Even when alone she talks to herself, but also can defend herself eloquently against a horde of seemingly angry wives. Sadly, what she doesn't get with this role is many opportunities to flash that mega-watt smile that got America to fall in love with her back in her Party of Five days. Second-billed Cybill Shepherd, as her mother, doesn't have much to do but seems to be enjoying herself as a Texan matriarch.

All in all, The Client List is a somewhat sensationalistic “hooker with a heart of gold” story that charms more than it could ever offend. With the appealing leading lady and breezy tone, if it's sounded interesting to you so far, then it's worth a spin.

Special Features:

The Client List is presented in widescreen with English 5.1 Dolby Digital audio. English and English SDH subtitle options are available. The only extras are a few trailers.

Conclusion:

Jennifer Love Hewitt somehow remains America's wholesome sweetheart in this weirdly sitcom-friendly TV movie about a hooking housewife forced into court to defend herself and her choices from the judgments of others. The Client List is part The Happy Hooker, part legal drama and all campy, breezy TV movie. A surprisingly good time, if not memorable, anchored by the appealing leading lady at the center.

Overall Picture:

Movie: C+

Extras: D