Tom Fortuna Movies
- 1996
Filmed for television, Once You Meet a Stranger is a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, using the same Patricia Highsmith novel as its source but transforming the protagonists into females. A chance meeting brings together former child star Sheila Gaines (Jacqueline Bisset) and the deceptively charming social butterfly Margo Anthony (Theresa Russell). As the ladies converse, two major facts come to light: Sheila is saddled with an ex-husband who refuses to give him a divorce, while Margo despises her wealthy mother and wishes her dead. In what seems to be a playful hypothesis, Margo suggests that she and Sheila "trade murders"; she will kill Sheila's former husband, Sheila will do in Margo's mom, and the authorities won't be any the wiser. Figuring that Margo is a harmless eccentric at best and a nutcase at worse, Sheila laughs off the notion of such an "arrangement"--but she isn't laughing when her troublesome ex-hubby turns up dead! If you've seen Strangers on a Train, you know how this one turns out, so best to find another way to spend 95 minutes. Once You Meet a Stranger originally aired September 25, 1996 on CBS. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Millstone is the all-too-appropriate name of the Texas hometown of sophisticated career woman Martha (Loni Anderson). No sooner has Martha returned home after a 15-year absence than she witnesses a murder. Relating this information to her sisters, Martha is confused by their reaction. Only when it is nearly too late does the truth come out: The killer is Martha's own brother-in-law Eddie (Greg Evigan). This shock from the present only serves to dredge up long-buried secrets from the heroine's past--hence the title of this made-for-TV melodrama. First telecast by NBC on December 14, 1995, Deadly Family Secrets was based on Franklin Coen's novel Vinegar Hill--and also bears eerie echoes of the 1951 Ginger Rogers theatrical-movie vehicle Storm Warning. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
