Lizzie Borden Movies
Born Linda Elizabeth Borden to an upper-class family, Lizzie Borden legally changed her name after hearing about the famous axe murderer. She studied painting at Wellesley and worked as a film critic in New York City while making short films in the '70s. After five years of production, she completed her first feature in 1983. Shot with an extremely low budget and no script, Born in Flames envisioned a socialist revolution brought on by women working together across race and class lines. Though not very accessible, it's still regarded as a classic of feminist independent film and has been widely debated over the years. Her next feature, Working Girls, was also shot in a kind of faux-documentary style although with a more manageable budget. It positioned prostitution as a reasonable source of income for middle-class women, focusing on a lesbian photographer working in an upscale brothel. Working Girls won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance. She made her third film in 1992, the big-budget erotic thriller Love Crimes, which was a failure in many respects. For the rest of the '90s, Borden worked on television and straight-to-video projects, directing the horror TV show Monsters, the Showtime series Red Shoe Diaries, and the Playboy video Inside Out. She didn't return to filmmaking until 1994 to direct a segment in the anthology film Erotique. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
- 2005
- Add History's Mysteries: The Strange Case of Lizzie Borden to QueueAdd History's Mysteries: The Strange Case of Lizzie Borden to top of Queue
The childhood limerick comes to startling life in this revealing documentary that takes a closer look at the case that sent a small Massachusetts town into shock before making the history books as one of the most chilling unsolved crimes ever committed. It was no secret that thirty-two-year-old Lizzie Borden despised her step-mother and resented her miserly father, but was her anger truly powerful enough to drive her to commit such an atrocious and brutal crime? Borden's story is without question one of most distinctive in all the annals of crime, and though she was eventually acquitted of the double homicide in court, she would forever be condemned socially by the suspicions of her fellow townspeople. In this release, investigators speak with the people who know the facts of the crime best, including the town curator and the legal historians, to paint a vivid and chilling portrait of the murders that would still chill true crime buffs over a century later. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
In this off-beat low-budget horror outing, two teenage co-eds are hired to babysit a young girl; after the girl's parents have left for the evening, the babysitters invite their boyfriends over to play cards and try to make a Ouija board work. Meanwhile, the girl they're supposed to be watching is upstairs in her room, amusing herself with a video called Terror Toons, which looks like a children's television show gone horribly wrong. As the girl watches the video's gory mayhem, two of the characters, Max Assassin and Dr. Carnage, decide they're tired of being trapped on videotape and escape into the real world; soon Carnage and Assassin are running around the house looking for victims, while the girl and her guardians for the evening try to figure out how to send the bloodthirsty creatures back to video-land. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- 1994
This unique, erotic film is a compilation of four separate vignettes done by four different artists. The first episode, "Let's Talk about Love," focuses on a phone-sex worker, Rosie, who finds herself attracted to a regular caller. The story focuses upon their conversations and upon the revenge she exacts from him after she learns the truth. In the second, "Taboo Parlor," two lesbians plan to go out and make it with a man. They go to Taboo Parlor, a local club which is managed by Hilde and Franz. In the third episode, "Final Call," a teacher who gets attacked on a train begins a relationship with her rescuer. The fourth episode, " Wonton Soup," examines an Australian-born Chinese man and his ex-girlfriend from Hong Kong, who reunite after years apart. In an effort to reconnect, the man prepares an evening of gourmet food and Chinese sexual techniques for the ex-girlfriend. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bryan Cranston
- 1992
- R
Love Crimes, an erotic thriller directed by Lizzie Borden, explores the psychology of a con man posing as a photographer, who seduces women and then blackmails them using humiliating, revealing pictures he has taken of them. David Hanover (Patrick Bergin) preys on the hopes of women by offering them love and a possible career as fashion models. When some of the women complain, but refuse to aid in Hanover's prosecution, DA Dana Greenway (Sean Young) becomes obsessed with catching Hanover, to the point where she tracks him down and spys on him in his secluded home, making herself a potential victim. He catches her and holds her captive. Feminist filmmaker Borden, who also directed the remarkable, low-budget film Working Girls, raises interesting questions regarding sex, humiliation and male-female relationships, but the film is spoiled by the ambiguity of her central character, Dana. An abused child herself, she has the same self-loathing that the other woman who are preyed upon by Hanover possess, but her motivations for her actions remain murky. Despite these flaws, Borden, always an interesting filmmaker, raises important issues which perhaps can't be adequately resolved using the restrictions of the thriller genre. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sean Young, Patrick Bergin, (more)
- 1987
This low-budget action film from genre specialist David A. Prior stars Lynda Aldon as Rachael McKenna, the sexy blonde leader of a group of female prisoners hired by the CIA to bring down renegade agent John Mickland (William Zipp). The film presents itself as a distaff variation on The Dirty Dozen, as tough Sgt. Roberts (cult favorite Edy Williams) trains the convicts for jungle warfare in Colombia, but it cannot come close to its model in either excitement or spectacle. Peopled with a cast of former television actors including Edd Byrnes and Gail Fisher, Mankillers is the sort of film insomniacs might choose as an alternative to medication, but it offers little chance of success. Filmmaker Lizzie Borden appears as a drug smuggler. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Edward Byrnes, Gail Fisher, (more)
The Working Girls in this New York-based film are laboring away at the World's Oldest Profession. Molly (Louise Smith), a Yale grad whos lives with her lesbian lover, turns tricks to keep food on the table. She approaches each day with fear and loathing, carrying out her responsibilities with crisp, businesslike efficiency. Her coworkers include Gina (Marussia Zach), who hopes to stay a hooker just long enough to finance her own business, and Dawn (Amanda Goodwin), an outspoken college student who harbors dreams of becoming a lawyer. The film covers a single day in the lives of these three ladies, neither judging nor apologizing: a job's a job, the film seems to be saying, whether it's punching a clock or rolling in the sack with an elderly stranger. Director Lizzie Borden's matter-of-fact approach to her material (based on six months' worth of interviewing genuine prostitutes) places Working Girls head and shoulders above the usual lachrymose "ladies of the evening" drama. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Louise Smith, Ellen McElduff, (more)
Independent filmmaker, artist, and critic Lizzie Borden made her feature-film debut with this bold fusion of science fiction and feminist politics. In the near future, America is celebrating the tenth anniversary of a socialist revolution that has changed the political fabric of the nation, but some aspects of life have evolved much more than others. As some Americans become disenchanted with the new order, racism and sexism are on the rise, and though the new leaders may talk a good game about economic justice and equality in the workplace, women find they're still working harder and being paid less, and their jobs mysteriously vanish when they complain. Adelaide Norris (Jeanne Satterfield) is an educated African-American woman who is also a blue-collar laborer; fed up with the double standards that control her life, Norris helps form the Women's Army, a revolutionary feminist group that serves as a vigilante force to protect women on the street and a paramilitary unit to fight the powers that be. The Women's Army are successful enough in protecting women against rape and assault to gain the unwelcome attention of the FBI. The FBI succeeds in putting Norris behind bars, where she's killed in a shadowy incident, but New York City's female-run underground media rises up to make sure the people know the truth about her death. Eric Bogosian makes his screen debut in Born in Flames; he has a minor supporting role as a technician at a television studio. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Honey, Jeanne Satterfield, (more)
