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This television movie was one of CBS's Tuesday Night Movies which immediately follow Rescue 911. Despite the romantic-sounding title, Falling for You is about a psychotic killer who throws women out of windows. Viewers watching Rescue 911, many of whom are children, who continue watching CBS would find themselves immediately confronted with a shockingly graphic scene of a woman being thrown out of a window to her death. The network issued no advisory and, as mentioned above, the title might send a completely wrong expectation regarding the theme of Falling for You. Over the opening credits (before the theme is established), viewers hear a man and woman fighting and then suddenly see the woman pushed through the window of a high- rise, slowly falling. Then from above they see her land on a parked car. The camera moves into the car to clearly show her splattered on the windshield. There is blood everywhere. Finally the camera returns to its original perspective, looking down at the scene of death.
Based on the play "Last Tag," Falling for You is filled with highly stylized and glamorized scenes of violence. Starring Jenny Garth of Beverly Hills 90210, the movie is likely to attract young viewers. Throughout the movie there are several more scenes of women being thrown out of windows. Two of the scenes are excessively long; one lasts three minutes and the second close to four minutes. Some of the same scenes of violence are repeated through the use of flashbacks.
The opening scene was one of the most graphic and shocking that we viewed in the entire season. Following a program that considers public service part of its goal, and without an advisory, Falling for You catches viewers off guard and confronts them with shocking and disturbing scenes of violence. Concerns arise due to the number of scenes, their length and graphicness and the lack of warning as to the true nature of the program.
Getting away to spend some much needed time together, a family is imperiled when snow from an avalanche falls on their cabin and traps them inside. Far from anyone who can offer help, they plan their own rescue. Baywatch's David Hasselhoff, in an uncharacteristic role, plays a psychotic criminal (Duncan) who has just pulled a diamond heist. After Duncan shoots his accomplice in the head, his plane crashes near the house, causing the avalanche. When he first appears, the family views him as someone who can help them get out of the snow. Gradually they learn of his violent personality and have to battle him as well as the snow. The movie is filled with many scenes of violence, some of which are very graphic. Viewers know from the beginning that the family is in danger. The music and tone serve to emphasize this. Similar to other psychological thrillers in which someone begins to realizes that a familiar person is in fact a crazed criminal, Avalanche raises concerns because of excessively graphic violence. Once Duncan's true intent is revealed, he psychologically and physically brutalizes the family. Viewers see him stab the father (Michael Gross of Family Ties), tie up the daughter and hold the family hostage with a gun.
During a fight, another smaller avalanche causes Duncan to fall and be impaled on a large shard of glass. It is an extremely graphic scene. Standing over the seriously wounded Duncan, the daughter pleads with her father to kill him. Later, Duncan hits the father in the head with a pole and later Duncan himself is hit in the head with a pole.
Avalanche is a television movie about an innocent family encountering a vicious criminal. While the story requires some violence, what viewers see is overly graphic and prolonged. Instead of furthering the story, much of the violence continues to make points that have already been made or to move the story where it has already been.
As mentioned earlier, Fox has the unique problem among the networks of not having a 10:00 prime time hour. It must begin its two-hour programming at 8:00. Because of the earlier time slot, Avalanche does issue an advisory and repeats it two additional times. Despite the multiple advisories, its early time slot, its prolonged and graphic scenes of violence and the story's emphasis on violence combine to make this a television movie that raises serious concerns.
The long-awaited (over 55 years) sequel to Gone with the Wind, Scarlett was the big mini- series of the November 1994 sweeps period. A lush melodrama, Scarlett was a highly stylized production picking up the pieces of Scarlett's marriage after Rhett Butler walked away not "giving a damn."
The first six hours contained only minor scenes of fighting between Scarlett and Rhett. Rarely do we see anything more than an occasional slap. The final two hours, however, contained some of the most graphic and explicit scenes of violence viewed this season. Forty minutes into the seventh hour, Scarlett and a man (Fenton) get into a fight after which he rapes her and knocks her unconscious. A few minutes later Scarlett finds Fenton dead with a knife in his chest and blood everywhere. Slowly, she pulls the knife out of his body and witnesses see her holding the knife. The scene of Scarlett pulling out the knife was an excessively graphic image. While viewers needed to see Fenton dead and Scarlett blamed, the explicitness was far beyond what the story required.
In another graphically violent scene approximately an hour later, viewers see a flashback of Fenton's murder and learn that Scarlett did not kill him. In the flashback they see another character, Mary, go into Fenton's room and repeatedly stab him in the chest. The first thrust of the knife is very clear and viewers see the knife enter the body. Subsequent stabs are shown in shadow.
Interestingly, Gone with the Wind was able to tell its story without much explicit violence. Viewers do see bloodied soldiers and even Scarlett shooting an intruder, but the violence is within the context of the story and necessary to character development. The sequel Scarlett uses extremely graphic violence that is far more explicit than the story requires.
Representative of an interesting trend in television movies, the first two installments of Problem Child were theatrical films. In some cases when a series no longer delivers large box office and can no longer justify the expensive budget of a film, a concept is resurrected as a television movie. This is true of The Omen and a few other movies.
A comic version of The Bad Seed, Problem Child 3 continues Junior's antics as a kind of "devil child." None of the scenes compare to some of the intense violence described in other television movies above. It is, however, violence on a very different level and with a very different effect. The program appeals to young children and the 8:00 hour is sure to attract those kids. Most of the violence is caused by the young problem child, Junior, and he is rarely punished. Instead, the context sends the message that Junior's use of violence and other anti-social tactics get him the attention he desperately needs. The moral of the story is that this kind of behavior works, making this a particularly inappropriate message for children in the audience.
There are over 20 fairly modest but mean-spirited scenes of violence in the movie. Five minutes into the program, a model of Saturn falls on a teacher's head causing her to fall into a snake cage and then out the window. The scene is played for laughs. Other violent acts include biting his dad on the arm; a tree falling on a scout-troop leader; a man being picked up, slammed against a truck and dropped on the ground; and multiple aggressive acts in a hockey rink.
Compared to Avalanche or Falling for You, the violence is comedic and certainly not intended to horrify. The sheer number of violent acts turns Problem Child 3 into a movie about little more than aggressive acts of violence that are not treated as a genuine problem, but rather as amusing behavior. The movie raises interesting issues about aggressive behavior that goes unpunished and ultimately is rewarded.
This is another television movie based on an earlier theatrical film that was turned into a Fox television series. Alien Nation is about outer space aliens moving to Earth and integrating themselves into society. One of the aliens is a cop who is teamed with a human. The original film raised interesting issues about prejudice and integration. This film is a vehicle for intense action.
Monitors watching Alien Nation were left with the impression that this was a television movie just about action. There are many scenes of action and violence and several are extremely prolonged.
Most of the violence was typical of action films: fist fights, guns and explosions. Almost halfway through the movie, there is a long scene of violence in which fist fights, guns and a lethal spray are employed. The spray is deadly to the aliens and causes them much pain. One of the aliens grabs on to a rising helicopter and falls a considerable distance to the ground just as the helicopter explodes. All this occurs in one scene of a little more than two minutes. It is a very prolonged, excessive and violent scene. The sound of the scene is also excessive.
Like other Fox television movies, it began at 8:00 and contained several advisories.
Gramps aired at 8:00 on Saturday night on NBC, a time and day likely to attract family audiences. Andy Griffith stars as the title character. Because of the star, the time slot and lack of an advisory, it would be a reasonable assumption for an unwitting viewer to expect a warm- hearted tale of an endearing grandfather. However, what unfolds over the next two hours is a story about an outwardly charming but psychotic grandfather bent on destroying his son's marriage so that he can steal his grandson from his parents.
In the course of the movie, Gramps shoots and kills his daughter-in-law's father, attempts to kill several children, smashes a police officer's head with a fire extinguisher and ultimately is sent plummeting over a waterfall. These are only a few of the disturbing, violent altercations with which the movie is filled.
Gramps is a movie based on an extremely violent and disturbing premise that is shown without an advisory in a time slot typically reserved for family-oriented viewing. The innocent sounding, misleading title and extremely atypical role for Andy Griffith combine to make the violence and subject matter of this movie surprisingly disturbing. The violent acts are very intense, dark and malevolent and would present problems at any time and on any day of the week.
The Danger of Love, originally a 1992 MOW rebroadcast this season, is another example of a movie based on a true story. Although the movie itself contained only two scenes of violence, we found the portrayal of one of these scenes to be excessive, overly long and altogether unrealistic. The Danger of Love is the story of Carolyn Warmus, a teacher whose obsessive love affair is linked to a brutal murder.
All of our concerns surround the scene which depicts the murder. The death scene was one of the most unusual and disturbing seen in any television movie this season. Confronting the wife of the man with whom she had an affair, Warmus pulls out a gun with a silencer and shoots her victim five times. After the woman (Mary Ann) falls, Warmus stands over her, steps on her back and fires four more shots into the already dead body. The viewer sees the first few bullets entering the body and a close-up of the gun firing. This description may lead one to believe that this murder is similar to many other homicides with guns in fact-based television movies.
What makes this scene so unusual is its extreme length and the surreal reaction of the victim. Mary Ann reacts with disbelief to the first few bullets. She does not scream or fight back; instead she stands there, not really in pain, just not believing that she has been shot and wondering what those bullet holes are doing in her body. Although she is shot three times in the upper torso, the first few bullets seem not to do any real damage. It is only on the fifth shot that she falls and lays motionless. Carolyn stands over her for the final four shots. The prolonged and excessive nature of the murder and the victim's unrealistic reactions combine to emphasize the violence, making this a disturbing, problematic scene. Furthermore, the scene avoids the harsh reality of the crime and cloaks it with a mysterious, surreal quality.
Lady Killer is one of a host of television movies broadcast this season which deals with issues of sexual abuse. The movie tells the story of a middle-aged, married woman played by Judith Light who has an affair with a younger man, Melrose Place's Jack Wagner. When she ends the affair for reasons of conscience, his affection turns into obsessive anger ultimately leading him to stalk and rape her in a haunting and disturbing scene. Realizing that he is unable to gain back her affection, his anger turns into vengeance as he first maliciously seduces her young daughter and shoots her husband. The movie concludes with a prolonged confrontation between Light, Wagner and the daughter, Growing Pains' Tracey Gold. In this scene Wagner tries to rape her again, beats up her daughter and is finally thrown off a lighthouse to his death on the snowy ground below.
Lady Killer is emblematic of the proclivity of television movies shown this season to feature sexual abuse as the main premise of the film. While we recognize that this is an important social issue, worthy of negative exposure and condemnation, the abundance of films dealing with it and the highly stylized manner in which it is portrayed, detracts from the seriousness of the topic. This tends to cheapen the issue and diminish its impact by turning it into a convenient plot device. By intertwining the themes of sex and violence and depicting them both as acts of passion, such television movies take a very superficial and romanticized look at a much more serious and emotionally unsettling issue.
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