Malice In Wonderland (Telefilm)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C- Telefilm: B-
As the TV
movie declined, a few interesting works managed to get made before the whole
thing collapsed into garbage. Stories
about the heart and soul being ripped out of the telefilm started popping up
all overt the place. One of the last
solid examples made was Malice In
Wonderland (1985), in which Elizabeth Taylor starred as Louella Parsons and
Jane Alexander more than held her own as Hedda Hopper.
Based on
George Eells’ book Hedda & Louella,
the rivals meet at one of the big restaurants at their peak and everyone in
town is expecting a royal fist fight, but instead, we get a flashback on how
their rivalry began. The Jacqueline
Feather/David Seidler teleplay keeps things interesting, but sometimes gets
caught up in too much name and film title dropping, when it should try to
develop other ideas, concepts and touches of authenticity that could have upped
a good story with a good cast. Tim
Robbins shows up as Joseph Cotton, while Denise Crosby plays Carole
Lombard. Richard Dysart is very
interesting as Louis B. Mayer. Joyce Van
Patten & Jon Cypher also star, offering the kind of interesting cast that
used to turn up in these productions all the time.
The leads
certainly help the authenticity of the work, and then-active ITC was still
putting smart, interesting projects together in general. It flows well and is not a victim of the
choppiness such a film would have today with 25% of all programming being
usually forgettable (if not stupid and offensive) advertisements. Malice
In Wonderland is worth catching up with, and it is much more than a trashy
cat-fight film.
The full screen,
color image is not bad, shot by cinematographer Philip Lathrop, A.S.C., and has
good color quality. The transfer is a
later analog transfer, but is cleaner than usual. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is fair for its
age and for being a telefilm, with clear dialogue and a good-enough score by Charles
Bernstein. The few extras include profiles
on Taylor, Alexander & Dysart, then on Hopper & Parsons, then you get
text on the ten biggest Hollywood scandals up to the time of the pressing of this DVD. That’s not bad, but the film is what you
should watch first when catching the film.
- Nicholas Sheffo
