Wendy Benson Movies

During his all-too-short career (three starring roles in two years), James Dean helped to radically redefine the way teenagers were portrayed onscreen (and in popular culture in general), and the expressive naturalism of his performances did more to establish the "method" school of acting in the public mind than any other actor outside of Marlon Brando. James Dean is a made-for-cable biography that looks at the star's short but troubled life, his years of struggle before his sudden rise to fame, and the car crash that took his life at the age of 24. James Franco stars as James Dean, with Michael Moriarty as Winton Dean and Valentina Cervi as Pier Angeli, the actress Dean loved. Produced for the TNT cable network, James Dean first aired on August 4, 2001. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Aldous Huxley's 1932 science fiction novel was previously adapted to film (a 1980 TV movie starring Bud Cort) and radio (a 1956 CBS Radio Workshop two-parter with an opening intro by Huxley) and again to TV in this 1998 production. In a high-tech city of a future time, humans are genetically engineered, monogamy is frowned on, and the drug Soma is consumed to eliminate stress in a society where the citizens are niched into rigid classes (Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma). Scornful looks are directed at high-level Alphas Bernard Marx (Peter Gallagher) and Lenina Crowne (Rya Kihlstedt), a couple who have become interested in each other over and beyond the commonly accepted one-night stands. Bernard has climbed to the upper echelons at the Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning Center, while Lenina is employed in the educational conditioning field. When Bernard and Lenina visit an outlying Reservation, their copter crashes, and they are under attack by the locals when Shakespeare-quoting "savage" John Cooper (Tim Guinee) intervenes. When John takes Bernard and Lenina to the house where he lives with his alcoholic mother Linda (Sally Kirkland), Bernard is fascinated by John's retro way of life and his collection of literature. With automatic satellite tracking in play, a craft arrives in short order to return Bernard and Lenina to the city. For research purposes, Bernard takes the two back to civilization -- where John (aka "The Savage") becomes a media celeb, and Linda gets hooked on Soma. The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning (Miguel Ferrer) considers Cooper a threat to society, but his superior, the Controller (Leonard Nimoy), who thinks the social order is secure, holds a progressive, thoughtful attitude regarding past, present, and future. Meanwhile, Lenina has a sexual attraction for John, who rejects her passionate advances because it "isn't love," and he soon becomes disenchanted with the unspiritual, hedonistic way of life he sees in this "brave new world." Premiered April 19, 1998 on NBC. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

The made-for-TV Pretty Poison is a remake of the 1968 "cult" film of the same name, which starred Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld. Fresh out of a mental institution, the charming but delusional Dennis Pitt (Grant Show) cannot cope with the harsh realities of life and creates a dream world of his own, in which he is a daring government agent. In the course of his travels, Dennis meets a high school girl named Sue Ann Stepanek (Wendy Benson), who seems to swallow his tall tales about being an FBI man hook, line and sinker. As it turns out, however, Sue Ann has got a few problems of her own--chief of which is her deadly hatred for her domineering mother (Michelle Phillips). Inevitably, Mom is murdered and Dennis and Sue Ann hit the road together--and the question becomes not "When will they get caught?" but "Who exactly is manipulating whom?" Set in New England (but filmed in Montreal) and originally telecast by the Fox network on September 24, 1996, Pretty Poison was like its predecessor based on Stephen Geller's novel She Let Him Continue. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Making her annual pilgrimage to Ireland, Jessica (Angela Lansbury) is determined to catch up with the sightseeing that has so often been interrupted in the past by murder. Alas, it isn't long before our heroine is involved in another homicide case. This time around, the eldest son (Gordon Currie) of Jessica's widowed friend Fiona Griffith (Fionnula Flanagan) is accused of killing the American cousin (Andrew Robinson) who had planned to horn in on the family business. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi