The Depressingly Generic 1991 "Erotic" Television Movie Love Kills Marks is an Unhappy and Unfortunate Reunion for Electric Dreams Stars Virginia Madsen and Lenny von Dohlen
Welcome, friends, to the latest entry in Control Nathan Rabin 4.0. It’s the career and site-sustaining column that gives YOU, the kindly, Christ-like, unbelievably sexy Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place patron, an opportunity to choose a movie that I must watch, and then write about, in exchange for a one-time, one hundred dollar pledge to the site’s Patreon account. The price goes down to seventy-five dollars for all subsequent choices.
I have spent a LOT of time thinking about Virginia Madsen since I agreed to watch and write about her complete filmography for one very generous, very appreciated patron.
I went into the project a fan. Now I’m something closer to a super-fan. So I’ve spent much of this journey asking myself the ultimately unanswerable question, “Why isn’t Virginia Madsen more successful?”
In a sense, that’s an unfair question because in many ways, Madsen HAS been extraordinarily successful. She’s worked constantly in television and film for going on four decades, has appeared in lots of iconic genre fare and was very rightly nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Sideways.
If I might unfairly compare Madsen to maybe the best actress of her generation, I can’t help but wonder why she never reached the heights of, say, Laura Dern despite her extraordinary talent. Then again Dern is part of a legendary acting dynasty and also, oddly enough, descended from Illinois political aristocracy and has illustrated uncommonly good judgment in terms of the roles and films she has appeared in.
Madsen is similarly talented but also chose to appear in motion pictures such as Hot to Trot and Highlander II: The Quickening that became instant shorthand for shitty movies.
Then there were the sub-Skinemax television movies she made in the late 1980s and early 1990s. So, so, so many sub-Skinemax television movies. I’ve already covered 1989’s utterly lethargic Third Degree Burn, which cast Madsen as a sexually dissatisfied wealthy wife AGAIN and now I’m writing up 1991’s Love Kills.
Up next is Raw Heat, AKA Victim of Love, which was also released in 1991 and ALSO cast her as a sexy woman caught up in an erotic love triangle involving a shrink and a possible murderer.
Madsen’s career got off to a roaring start in the mid to late 1980s, with a series of modest, overachieving gems like Electric Dreams, Fire with Fire, Modern Girls, Long Gone, Mr. North and Gotham.
Then Madsen got typecast as vixens, sexpots and femme fatales in a series of interchangeable erotic thrillers light on eroticism but heavy on cliches and conventions.
The negligible and forgettable 1991 television movie Love Kills pairs Madsen with her Electric Dreams costar Lenny von Dohlen but the reunion is an unfortunate and regrettable one.
Love Kills is as generic and charmless as Electric Dreams is distinctive and charming. Where Electric Dreams made inspired use of Madsen’s ethereal appeal in Love Kills she’s just another beautiful blonde woman in perpetual peril.
Madsen is more specifically Rebecca Bishop, a photographer from a distinguished family in a loveless marriage with Drew Bishop (Jim Metzler), an unfaithful psychologist who has just written a best-selling book about his patients in what is a clear-cut violation of doctor-patient confidentiality.
Even worse, the superstar head shrinker turned superstar scribe may have paid Jonathan Brinkman (von Dohlen) one of his former patients, fifty thousand smackers to kill his dissatisfied wife, who is on the verge of filing for divorce.
But before our gullible heroine discovers that her husband might want her dead she first makes the beast with two backs with the sexy stranger with the unhinged air. The wild-eyed maniac seems nuttier than a squirrel’s diet and crazier than a shithouse rat so our heroine doesn’t entirely trust him.
Rebecca confronts her husband with his former client’s allegations and he assures her that the would-be hitman is just a deeply disturbed maniac who killed his dad with a hammer when he was seventeen and consequently isn’t the most trustworthy source of information.
Von Dohlen really ratchets the craziness up to 11. It’s a wild burlesque of mental illness, all thousand yard stares and unwell intensity.
Rebecca has ample reason not to trust her philandering husband or the murderous madman she just had sex with. Then a bunch of bonus creeps enter the picture as red herrings/distractions.
A self-pitying family friend stops just short of carving Rebecca’s name on his forehead in a heart to broadcast his love for her while another hired killer pops up, gun in hand, to threaten the wealthy wife’s life as well.
Like Electric Dreams, Love Kills was directed by a filmmaker with a deep background in music videos. Prolific early music video director/Love Kills helmer Brian Grant even won the first Grammy for Best Music Video for Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical.”
But where Electric Dreams’ auteur transformed his directorial debut into an irresistible MTV fever dream of sound and image in perfect harmony, Grant’s direction of Love Kills is oddly devoid of style as well as substance.
There’s an inherent limit to how sexy a PG-13 movie can possibly be. There’s similarly a limit as to how scary a PG-13 movie can be. The same is true of television movies. A television movie forced to contend with the strictures and limitations of the form is inherently less sexy than a feature film that can show whatever the hell it wants because it doesn’t have to worry about network censors or advertisers or television executives.
Madsen created a big screen femme fatale for the ages with 1990’s The Hot Spot but her small screen work here is journeyman at best. She’s picking up a paycheck doing work that is beneath her talent and her dignity.
Love Kills is depressingly bad and anonymous. For my own sake I sincerely hope that the next boob tube erotic thriller in my journey, Raw Heat AKA Victim of Love, is better and more distinctive because this was dispiritingly bad.
Madsen is a great actress. It’s unfortunate that she was ever reduced to appearing in not just this turkey, but a whole lot just like it that I am doomed to experience on y’alls behalf.
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