Hot Picks
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The People Across the Lake
USA 1988
produced by Richard L. O'Connor, Bill McCutchen (executive) for Columbia/NBC
directed by Arthur Allan Seidelman
starring Valerie Harper, Gerald McRaney, Barry Corbin, Tammy Lauren, Daryl Anderson, Jeff Kizer, Gregory Togel, Gary Bisig, Dorothy Lyman, Thomas Peacocke, Frank C. Turner, Johannah Newmarch, Don MacKay, Matt Hill, Judy Herridge
story by Bill McCutchen, Dalene Young, screenplay by Dalene Young, music by Dana Kaproff
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Rachel (Valerie Harper) and Chuck Yoman (Gerald McRaney) move to a
house by a lake with their kids Lisa (Tammy Lauren) and Stevie (Gregory
Togel) - and soon they start finding corpses and severed bodyparts, and
start uncovering a mystery that seems to be hushed up by local
authorities. Especially Rachel soon takes an interest in the whole thing,
and her first suspect is their weird neighbour Henry Link (Daryl Anderson)
- until Link falls out of the Yomans' kitchen cupboard, quite dead. Eventually, suspicion falls upon benign neighbour Malcolm Bryce (Barry
Corbin), who has been living in the Yomans' house with his wife Martha
(Judy Herridge) about 15 years back - until she disappeared, but in fact
he murdered her and still keeps her in a secret basement under the Yomans'
house. One day though, he decides to get rid of the Yomans altogether,
and he even gets his unstable son (Jeff Kizer) to help him - but the whole
thing goes somehow haywire when the secret basement (and the Yoman-house
in the process) catches fire, Bryce's son is caught in an animal trap, and
the Yomans actually put up resistance - enough to last until the police
arrives and puts an end to the horror with a couple of well-placed bullets
... So-so made-for-television murder mystery that on one hand
at least tries to create a creepy atmosphere and contains quite a few
gruesome details, on the other hand though, cast and direction are hardly
above routine, and the script contains quite a few plotholes - beginning
with the questions as to why the killer mutilated some but not all of his
victims, why he killed them in the first place, and what proof is there
actually that he has indeed killed all those people, who seem to have
nothing to do with the loss of his wife. Not really worth a look, but
I've seen way worse.
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