Friday, February 8, 2008

"Cradle of Lies"

This weekend brings another staple of ABC's late night movie fare. It seems the 'ol Landfill is a dumping ground for Lifetime movies that the Lifetime Network has already shown. Lifetime Movies are the opposite of that other Late Nite Landfill mainstay, the "scorned mistress/seductress" flick, aka the "late night Cinemax/Showtime" flick.

The difference? In Lifetime movies, the woman is almost always the good guy - the victim - who must combat the cheating, nefarious man or men in her life. In scorned mistress/seductress flicks, the woman is the bad guy, the "other" woman adept at tricking and tempting the "good guy" - the male victim (give me a break) - into cheating on his wife (yeah, these are real "good" guys - NOT)! The other difference is the Cinemax/Showtime movies often show the skin that the Lifetime movies can't... at least until they make it onto channel 7 in edited form.

I'd love to show you a trailer, TV commercial or even a clip from this movie, but I could find none. The plot does sound like typical B-movie badness: in order to gain a family inheritance, a man must have a son - but his wife is pregnant with a girl! Now, the man will stop at nothing to get that son and claim his inheritance. Hoo boy. Read more at Lifetime's site:

http://www.mylifetime.com/on-tv/movies/cradle-lies

I don't want to leave you video-less here, however. Let's talk about the director. His name is Oley Sassone, son of the famous hair product mogul Vidal Sassoon. I can't imagine there's anyone out there who hasn't heard of Vidal, but if not, here's a fittingly cheesy 1980s-era commercial for his wares:



Oley is infamous for a noted wedge of cheese himself: the never-officially-released-to-the-public (but available as a bootleg for years) original 1994 version of "The Fantastic Four," based on the famous Marvel comic book. Produced by Roger Corman (who should need no introduction, but in case you don't know him, start your web search now).

The thing about this cheese is, even during its worst moments, it is pretty engaging and entertaining. And in retrospect, it turns out the big-budget 2005 version with Jessica Alba and Michael Chiklis only slightly improved on this paltry-budgeted initial attempt. Personally, I didn't find much improvement in the script, acting or effects in the recent blockbuster. At least the '90s original had a naive charm buried in its cheesy-bad goodness. Here's the trailer:



To watch "Cradle of Lies," tune in to WABC-TV Channel 7 (NYC) at 11:35 on Saturday, February 9th... if you dare!

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