VOWS OF DECEPTION

VOWS OF DECEPTION (1996 telefilm). Director: Bill Norton.

Fresh off the bus after getting out of jail for child abuse, Lucy -- now Lucinda (Cheryl Ladd) -- runs into Detective Matt Harding (Nick Mancuso). Lucinda is obviously pregnant, so Matt decides to play a practical joke on his buddy, divorced lawyer Clay Spencer (Mike Farrell of Prime Suspect), by setting him up on a date with Lucinda. The plan backfires when Clay invites Lucinda out for dinner and begins an intense romance with her. Eventually the couple marry, and Clay becomes a father to Lucinda's little girl. Although Lucinda seems to be in love with Clay, she begins to make passes at her handsome stepson, Nick (Michael Woolson). How long will Nick, who has a girlfriend in Terry (Nancy Cartwright), be able to resist, and what on earth will it lead to? 

Inspired by a true story, Vows of Deception is a standard but entertaining true crime saga with some good acting from Farrell, Woolson, and especially Nick Mancuso, who is dynamic and excellent. Cheryl Ladd, who is quite sexy in this, successfully keeps the viewer from knowing exactly what's on her mind, increasing the suspense. Bill Norton also directed Gargoyles with Cornel Wilde and False Arrest with Donna Mills. Michael Woolson later became a notable acting coach and stage director.

Verdict: Minor-league but absorbing crime drama. **1/2. 

GARGOYLES

Cornel Wilde, Grayson Hall, Jennifer Salt

GARGOYLES (1972 telefilm). Director: Bill Norton. 

Dr. Mercer Boley (Cornel Wilde) and his daughter, Diana (Jennifer Salt), drive into the desert to seek out an old man (Woody Chambliss) who runs a museum of strange artifacts and has found a very weird skeleton. Just as Boley thinks the old man has put together a phony artifact, his home is attacked by a barely-seen creature that sets fire to the place and runs off. A motorcycle gang run by James Reeger (Scott Glenn) is accused of the crime, but Mercer and Diana know that there's something monstrous out there in the desert, or more to the point, in the caverns nearby. Boley has uncovered a nest of gargoyles, a demonic race that are intent on taking over the world. When Diana is kidnapped by the head gargoyle (a dubbed Bernie Casey), Mercer and the police track her to the caverns ... 

Scott Glenn protests his innocence

Gargoyles is pretty bad, which is a shame because it has some atmosphere in the beginning, as well as a workable plot, but it's just unconvincing and kind of cheapjack. Wilde and Salt do the best they can with the material, and Grayson Hall is fun as a slatternly motel owner who hopes to get a date with Wilde -- fat chance! Scott Glenn makes an impression as the motorbike guy who joins in the hunt for the gargoyles. The prologue to the film makes it sound as if this will be some kind of epic good vs. evil battle -- apparently the gargoyles were thrown down from Heaven and try to take over the world every several hundred years or so -- but this doesn't have the required budget to make it work. The overuse of slow-motion to depict action is a tiresome device that doesn't work at all. Director Bill Norton did a better job with False Arrest some years later.

Verdict: Another crappy 1970's made-for-TV horror flick that wastes its potential. **. 

FALSE ARREST

Robert Wagner and Donna Mills

FALSE ARREST (2 part telefilm/1991). Director: Bill Norton. 

In Scottsdale, Joyce Lukezic (Donna Mills) is married to her husband Ron (Robert Wagner), who is stepfather to her two children. One night Ron's business partner is murdered, along with his mother-in-law; his wife is severely injured. At first it seems like a simple home invasion, but the authorities, led by Detective Dan Ryan (Steven Bauer), begin to focus in on Joyce, feeling she had the most to gain from the murders and may have hired the killers. Arrested, she faces nasty fellow inmates, and is even raped. Meanwhile Ron hands her pills in her hospital bed, suggesting that suicide might be the best way out for her! If possible, things get even worse for Joyce after she's convicted and sent to prison, with not a soul helping her but moral support from Nadine (Mimi Kuzyk), a sympathetic lesbian who falls for her. 

Mimi Kuzyk and Mills

False Arrest is a riveting true-crime telefilm with a good, if non-revelatory, lead performance from Mills. Robert Wagner gives one of the best performances of his career as the very slimy Ron, who basically runs off and leaves his step kids on their own. There is also very good work from Kuzyk, Bauer, George Hearn as a lawyer,  Dennis Christopher as a coke-addicted co-worker, and Lewis Van Bergen as Joyce's brother, Arnie, among others. Although Joyce was eventually acquitted in a second trial, she was never fully exonerated. This is based on her book about her trials and tribulations. 

Verdict: Absorbing true crime story with some on-target performances. ***.