Though on the surface this is a fairly routine made for TV murder mystery about a wealthy medical doctor who is a widower falling for a pretty stripper who reminds him of his deceased wife, it works best as a psychological character study of a tormented topless dancer who wants more out of life that she has experienced, including world travel and a respectable family. When all this is thwarted by her husband's snobby friends, his older daughter's rejection, and nostalgia for her old lifestyle, she seeks a vent for her frustrations. I know of no Hollywood film that successfully deals with prostitution or stripping in a realistic way. "Pretty Woman" was a successful glamorization of the world's oldest profession, bearing no resemblance to the real world of the high-class call girl. At least this film does try (without complete success) to actually get inside the mind and heart of a typical stripper. What it finds there is a ball of confusion between what is and what could be. The acting is top of the line for a TV movie, with standout performances by many of the supporting actors. The music to strip by could have been better. Prince's "Darling Nikki" by the Foo Fighters or something comparable would have created a more realistic atmosphere. But all in all a very worthwhile flick.
6 Reviews
Stripped Bare!
sol12184 September 2006
Warning: Spoilers
(There are Spoilers) Having lost his wife two years ago widower Dr. Ben Pierce, Powers Boothe, needs the companionship of a woman in the house to not only fill the void that his deceased and dear wife left in his life but also be a mother to his two young daughters Alyssa & Natalie played by Tracy and Jessie Gold who incidentally are sisters in real life.
Feeling that he needs a little entertainment in his life the straight as a arrow Ben goes with his fellow doctor plastic surgeon Jimmy, Jeff Olsen, to the downtown strip club "The Brink" and meets and later falls in love with one of the entertainers that works there stripper Marcie Ellis, Kelly Brown. It so happened as Ben left the strip joint he was mugged by one of Marcie's boyfriends Rodney Roland who took, at gunpoint, both his wallet and watch.
Embarrassed to report the incident to the police as a concerned Marcie, who quickly came on the scene, told him not to Ben didn't since he didn't want anyone to know that he frequented a place like "The Brink". Later Ben started to get a real strong feeling,of mutual companionship more then physical love, for Marice. Meeting Marcie the next day with his stolen wallet, that she took back from her crummy ex-boyfriend, Ben really went head over heels for her by how kind and understanding she was and felt. Ben there and then decided that Marcie was the person who he'd want to spend the rest of his life with.
Getting married in less then two weeks everything seem to be going great with Marcie and even Ben's younger daughter Natilie liked her as if she were her own mother. Still the older daughter Alyassa seems to be a bit taken not only by Marcie's past as a stripper but her father's, what seems to her, unnatural and almost teenage like attraction towards her.
It turned that the union between Ben and Marcie was a marriage made in hell with Marcie not able to get away from her past as a stripper and, as it's later found out by her shocked husband, prostitute. Ben trying to have a normal married life is slowly reminded by Marcie's actions that something isn't quite right with her. Not only is Marcie a bit off the wall but also extremely jealous of him innocently being around and talking to any other woman! like Natalie's guidance counselor Blair, Kerrie Keane.
Marcie resorts back to type by going back to "The Brink" and getting picked up by one of it's costumers non-other then Ben's golf instructor the hunky and beach-boy looking Eddie Meredith, David Chokachi. Ben finding out about Marcie's carousing secret life just about had it with her and decides that the marriage is no longer working and files divorce papers. This leads to a number of underhanded actions on Marcie's part to not only keep from getting thrown of of the Pierce home but from being forced to go back to the life, as a stripper, that she thought was now far behind her. Desprerate situations call for desperate actions. With her life as a successful doctors wife about to come to an end Marcie acts desperately. Not only in keeping Ben from divorcing her but from cutting her out of his will and life insurance policy thats a cool one million dollars.
Powers Boothe's touching performance as the bereaved and betrayed Doc. Ben Pierce more then makes up for all the short-comings in the movie "A Crime of Passion". A kind and loving man who had only the best intentions towards his new wife Marcie is driven almost to drink and out of his practice as a successful physician. Concocting a plan, with one of her many boyfriends, to do in the good and kind Doctor Ben Marcie has all the bases covered as she makes sure that she's nowhere near the house when Ben gets it. It was Marcie's greed and all of a sudden touch of decency when it came to burn down the house, by her crazy boyfriend, with both Ben's daughters Alyssa & Natalie in it that caused her plan to backfire. Leaving her boyfriend dead ,with a broken back head and neck, and herself landing behind bars for the rest of her life. Crime doesn't pay and the scheming and maniacal Marcie Ellis learned that hard cold lesson in life the hard way. By paying for the crime, or crimes, that she committed against everyone, especially Dr. Ben Pierce together with his two daughters, in the movie.
Feeling that he needs a little entertainment in his life the straight as a arrow Ben goes with his fellow doctor plastic surgeon Jimmy, Jeff Olsen, to the downtown strip club "The Brink" and meets and later falls in love with one of the entertainers that works there stripper Marcie Ellis, Kelly Brown. It so happened as Ben left the strip joint he was mugged by one of Marcie's boyfriends Rodney Roland who took, at gunpoint, both his wallet and watch.
Embarrassed to report the incident to the police as a concerned Marcie, who quickly came on the scene, told him not to Ben didn't since he didn't want anyone to know that he frequented a place like "The Brink". Later Ben started to get a real strong feeling,of mutual companionship more then physical love, for Marice. Meeting Marcie the next day with his stolen wallet, that she took back from her crummy ex-boyfriend, Ben really went head over heels for her by how kind and understanding she was and felt. Ben there and then decided that Marcie was the person who he'd want to spend the rest of his life with.
Getting married in less then two weeks everything seem to be going great with Marcie and even Ben's younger daughter Natilie liked her as if she were her own mother. Still the older daughter Alyassa seems to be a bit taken not only by Marcie's past as a stripper but her father's, what seems to her, unnatural and almost teenage like attraction towards her.
It turned that the union between Ben and Marcie was a marriage made in hell with Marcie not able to get away from her past as a stripper and, as it's later found out by her shocked husband, prostitute. Ben trying to have a normal married life is slowly reminded by Marcie's actions that something isn't quite right with her. Not only is Marcie a bit off the wall but also extremely jealous of him innocently being around and talking to any other woman! like Natalie's guidance counselor Blair, Kerrie Keane.
Marcie resorts back to type by going back to "The Brink" and getting picked up by one of it's costumers non-other then Ben's golf instructor the hunky and beach-boy looking Eddie Meredith, David Chokachi. Ben finding out about Marcie's carousing secret life just about had it with her and decides that the marriage is no longer working and files divorce papers. This leads to a number of underhanded actions on Marcie's part to not only keep from getting thrown of of the Pierce home but from being forced to go back to the life, as a stripper, that she thought was now far behind her. Desprerate situations call for desperate actions. With her life as a successful doctors wife about to come to an end Marcie acts desperately. Not only in keeping Ben from divorcing her but from cutting her out of his will and life insurance policy thats a cool one million dollars.
Powers Boothe's touching performance as the bereaved and betrayed Doc. Ben Pierce more then makes up for all the short-comings in the movie "A Crime of Passion". A kind and loving man who had only the best intentions towards his new wife Marcie is driven almost to drink and out of his practice as a successful physician. Concocting a plan, with one of her many boyfriends, to do in the good and kind Doctor Ben Marcie has all the bases covered as she makes sure that she's nowhere near the house when Ben gets it. It was Marcie's greed and all of a sudden touch of decency when it came to burn down the house, by her crazy boyfriend, with both Ben's daughters Alyssa & Natalie in it that caused her plan to backfire. Leaving her boyfriend dead ,with a broken back head and neck, and herself landing behind bars for the rest of her life. Crime doesn't pay and the scheming and maniacal Marcie Ellis learned that hard cold lesson in life the hard way. By paying for the crime, or crimes, that she committed against everyone, especially Dr. Ben Pierce together with his two daughters, in the movie.
Marital Blitz
rmax30482324 August 2003
Warning: Spoilers
SPOILERS.
There seems to be no other user comment so I feel morally compelled to submit my take on this perfectly standard piece of TV-movie fare. I'd hoped it would be a murder mystery with some romantic intrigue in the background, but it was the other way around.
The movie is divided more or less into two parts. In the first, reminiscent of the second Jane Wyman/ Rock Hudson teaming, a widowered doctor (Powers Boothe, playing it kind of wearily) marries a stripper, Marci, who seems genuinely to love him as much as he needs her, perhaps for different reasons. But when he takes her home as his wife, in the manner of Jane Wyman marrying gardener Rock Hudson, Boothe's two children resent his having married beneath his station. They also of course resent Marci for trying to take the place of their real mother, but that's hardly worth mentioning because I can't think of a single film in which this dynamic isn't emphasized to death. Dr. Croesus, though, is not the smartest man on the planet and he can't understand their pique, or else he simply disregards it. And for obvious reasons. You have to see Marci in her underwear to understand the reasons thoroughly. But, also, she's not a bad type. And she's quite honest. She loves him, she tells him, "because you're a doctor, because if you can't come you call and tell me." But the friction between Marci and the two daughters -- Alyssa and Nancy, I think -- begins to generate some heat. And Marci, not knowing how doctors operate, so to speak, begins to wonder if he's not always tired and sexually inattentive because he might not be doing a little fee-splitting on the side. So she follows him one afternoon and spots him having lunch with a former girlfriend, who also happens to be Alyssa's counselor in medical school. Alyssa's grades have been declining and she might be washed out, which "would just kill Daddy." (Pardon me, I'm choking up a bit.)
Distraught following an argument with Dr. Croesus, Marci goes back to the stripper's bar to look up an old friend. He's no longer there, but she makes a new friend, one of those good-looking hunks who know how to ploy the system and provide a sympathetic ear while gradually coaxing the prey into the sack. It gets a little complicated now so try to follow this carefully.
Marci and Ed are spotted making out in the parking lot of the stripper's bar and Dr. Croesus is told of this by an informant. This prompts the unforgiving doctor to begin arranging a divorce, in which Marci is to get some kind of "adjustment" while the estate and the insurance go to the two kids. Marci, more distraught than ever, (everybody in this movie is distraught), goes back to Eddie and jumps his bones hungrily, and manipulatively as it turns out.
Marci then makes a big show of taking the younger daughter out on a shopping spree one night, even though Nancy doesn't particularly want to go. (Nancy is shown to be a naive airhead, bopping around silently to whatever is being beamed into her earphone from her Walkman.) Suddenly -- BANG -- or rather BANG BANG and Dr. Croesus is DOA.
But now our story turns a bit. Marci has seduced the insurance guy or the lawyer or whatever he is, and had the will changed so that she, Marci, gets a load of dough. And there has always been sibling rivalry between Alyssa and Nancy, so it's easy for Marci to recruit Nancy as a mole. Alyssa becomes the main suspect. The climactic scene has Marci and Eddie the Hunk gagging and tying both daughters to a chair, as Eddie covers them with a sheet and squirts charcoal-lighter fluid all over them, saying comforting words like, "Calm down. This won't hurt a bit."
I'll leave the plot at that point. The acting is no good, except for Booth and whoever plays Marci. The older daughter, Alyssa, has really only one expression -- a kind of angry indignation as the web is woven more tightly around her. The younger daughter hasn't reached that level of competence. But Marci fills the role pretty well. A slender but very neatly assembled figure, but at an age where the future is beginning to look a little darker than it did even a year or two ago. The kind of age that can lead to desperate acts in desperate women. (Cf: Janet Leigh in "Psycho".)
Marci's main problem is not her morals but her glands. She should have done whatever Dr. Croesus seemed to want of her -- even if it meant leaving him alone. Some people just don't realize what a treat it is to be married to a doctor. You actually have very few arguments with a husband who's a doctor because he's usually out of the house busily raking in the shekels. They're really easy to please if you just become a love slave and stop having birthdays. And as for Allysa's flunking out of medical school, well, so what? She can simply MARRY into the tribe.
The movie made me long to see "Double Indemnity" again.
There seems to be no other user comment so I feel morally compelled to submit my take on this perfectly standard piece of TV-movie fare. I'd hoped it would be a murder mystery with some romantic intrigue in the background, but it was the other way around.
The movie is divided more or less into two parts. In the first, reminiscent of the second Jane Wyman/ Rock Hudson teaming, a widowered doctor (Powers Boothe, playing it kind of wearily) marries a stripper, Marci, who seems genuinely to love him as much as he needs her, perhaps for different reasons. But when he takes her home as his wife, in the manner of Jane Wyman marrying gardener Rock Hudson, Boothe's two children resent his having married beneath his station. They also of course resent Marci for trying to take the place of their real mother, but that's hardly worth mentioning because I can't think of a single film in which this dynamic isn't emphasized to death. Dr. Croesus, though, is not the smartest man on the planet and he can't understand their pique, or else he simply disregards it. And for obvious reasons. You have to see Marci in her underwear to understand the reasons thoroughly. But, also, she's not a bad type. And she's quite honest. She loves him, she tells him, "because you're a doctor, because if you can't come you call and tell me." But the friction between Marci and the two daughters -- Alyssa and Nancy, I think -- begins to generate some heat. And Marci, not knowing how doctors operate, so to speak, begins to wonder if he's not always tired and sexually inattentive because he might not be doing a little fee-splitting on the side. So she follows him one afternoon and spots him having lunch with a former girlfriend, who also happens to be Alyssa's counselor in medical school. Alyssa's grades have been declining and she might be washed out, which "would just kill Daddy." (Pardon me, I'm choking up a bit.)
Distraught following an argument with Dr. Croesus, Marci goes back to the stripper's bar to look up an old friend. He's no longer there, but she makes a new friend, one of those good-looking hunks who know how to ploy the system and provide a sympathetic ear while gradually coaxing the prey into the sack. It gets a little complicated now so try to follow this carefully.
Marci and Ed are spotted making out in the parking lot of the stripper's bar and Dr. Croesus is told of this by an informant. This prompts the unforgiving doctor to begin arranging a divorce, in which Marci is to get some kind of "adjustment" while the estate and the insurance go to the two kids. Marci, more distraught than ever, (everybody in this movie is distraught), goes back to Eddie and jumps his bones hungrily, and manipulatively as it turns out.
Marci then makes a big show of taking the younger daughter out on a shopping spree one night, even though Nancy doesn't particularly want to go. (Nancy is shown to be a naive airhead, bopping around silently to whatever is being beamed into her earphone from her Walkman.) Suddenly -- BANG -- or rather BANG BANG and Dr. Croesus is DOA.
But now our story turns a bit. Marci has seduced the insurance guy or the lawyer or whatever he is, and had the will changed so that she, Marci, gets a load of dough. And there has always been sibling rivalry between Alyssa and Nancy, so it's easy for Marci to recruit Nancy as a mole. Alyssa becomes the main suspect. The climactic scene has Marci and Eddie the Hunk gagging and tying both daughters to a chair, as Eddie covers them with a sheet and squirts charcoal-lighter fluid all over them, saying comforting words like, "Calm down. This won't hurt a bit."
I'll leave the plot at that point. The acting is no good, except for Booth and whoever plays Marci. The older daughter, Alyssa, has really only one expression -- a kind of angry indignation as the web is woven more tightly around her. The younger daughter hasn't reached that level of competence. But Marci fills the role pretty well. A slender but very neatly assembled figure, but at an age where the future is beginning to look a little darker than it did even a year or two ago. The kind of age that can lead to desperate acts in desperate women. (Cf: Janet Leigh in "Psycho".)
Marci's main problem is not her morals but her glands. She should have done whatever Dr. Croesus seemed to want of her -- even if it meant leaving him alone. Some people just don't realize what a treat it is to be married to a doctor. You actually have very few arguments with a husband who's a doctor because he's usually out of the house busily raking in the shekels. They're really easy to please if you just become a love slave and stop having birthdays. And as for Allysa's flunking out of medical school, well, so what? She can simply MARRY into the tribe.
The movie made me long to see "Double Indemnity" again.
Kelly Rowan is quite good...
MarieGabrielle9 April 2007
as Marci, a young woman who works at "The Brink" ( a seeming metaphor for her life) until she meets her doctor, well-portrayed by Powers Boothe.
Tracey Gold is the caretaker daughter, who takes care of her father (and his assets) and resents the fact that Marci (Rowan) has now entered the picture.
Basically, there is the usual friction. The new stepmother dynamic. Rowan makes a lot of her TV movie roles believable, and is quite versatile. While glamorous and sometimes wanton, she also seems to be the type of woman with a good head on her shoulders. She is not just eye candy for the doctor.
There is a plot involved. David Chokachi portrays Rowan's sometime boyfriend. This movie is worth watching for Rowan, who is good in many of her recent roles. Powers Boothe is always excellent, although this plot was a bit hard to believe in that a man of his intelligence and at his level, could not see the writing on the wall, but this was based on a true story, and sometimes love really is blind!. 8/10.
Tracey Gold is the caretaker daughter, who takes care of her father (and his assets) and resents the fact that Marci (Rowan) has now entered the picture.
Basically, there is the usual friction. The new stepmother dynamic. Rowan makes a lot of her TV movie roles believable, and is quite versatile. While glamorous and sometimes wanton, she also seems to be the type of woman with a good head on her shoulders. She is not just eye candy for the doctor.
There is a plot involved. David Chokachi portrays Rowan's sometime boyfriend. This movie is worth watching for Rowan, who is good in many of her recent roles. Powers Boothe is always excellent, although this plot was a bit hard to believe in that a man of his intelligence and at his level, could not see the writing on the wall, but this was based on a true story, and sometimes love really is blind!. 8/10.
An object lesson in marrying below your station
duraflex3 January 2010
Warning: Spoilers
When the good doctor marries a stripper, you can bet it won't turn out well.
This made-for-TV-movie makes the point beautifully. With some twists and turns along the way, it's an interesting ride, perfect for Lifetime Movie Network.
Tracey Gold is excellent as the smart eldest daughter who sees through the conniving new wife from the get-go.
The sociopathic step mother goes so far as to provide a sexual favor to the sleazy life insurance agent in exchange for altering the husband's life insurance named beneficiary - her. To collect on the policy, she simply uses sex to get another miscreant to murder the husband who is about to divorce her after just 3 miserable months.
Like most of these movies, loose ends are never tied up and who went to prison and for how long are never disclosed.
Nevertheless, the moral of the story is clear: Don't marry below your station, sooner or later you will regret it.
This made-for-TV-movie makes the point beautifully. With some twists and turns along the way, it's an interesting ride, perfect for Lifetime Movie Network.
Tracey Gold is excellent as the smart eldest daughter who sees through the conniving new wife from the get-go.
The sociopathic step mother goes so far as to provide a sexual favor to the sleazy life insurance agent in exchange for altering the husband's life insurance named beneficiary - her. To collect on the policy, she simply uses sex to get another miscreant to murder the husband who is about to divorce her after just 3 miserable months.
Like most of these movies, loose ends are never tied up and who went to prison and for how long are never disclosed.
Nevertheless, the moral of the story is clear: Don't marry below your station, sooner or later you will regret it.
Good enough for a weekend afternoon
moonchildiva17 May 2004
I've seen this movie twice and watched it while cooking dinner. It was good enough to discuss who did it and feel surprised at the end. That's about all you can ask. There were some good looking folk in it, too. What I'd call pretty much a typical lifetime movie. To me, that's a good thing. With commercials, one can pay attention to the movie no matter what, see some recognizable actors, become interested in new actors as they begin their career. There's something comforting about being in the house watching lifetime movies as if nothing bad was happening in the real world... that's something we all need lately. If this movie's on in another five years, I might be watching it again!!
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