You might be, as was I, shocked by the number of people who wind up dead at the end on “Murder of Innocence” (8 p.m. Tuesday, CBS-Ch. 2), the frightening film that charts the deadly life of Laurie Dann.
That name-now part of that bloody list of local lunatics, along with Gacy and Speck-is enough alone to chill those who remember the woman’s rampage through the leafy North Shore in 1988.
So will this film. Although the woman is called Laurie Webber Wade in the movie, the story is based on Dann’s slide into homicidal madness, as reported compellingly in book form by the Tribune’s Eric Zorn, George Papajohn and Joel Kaplan and now brought to the screen in handsome if horrific fashion.
It’s sure to attract viewers who have never heard of Dann, for it stars the current queen of the made-for-TV-movie realm, Valerie Bertinelli. She will surprise many who think of her only as a cutie-pie, as here she shows considerable depth and skill.
Her character’s behavior is spooky, almost from the start. Married to an overly smitten young man (Stephen Caffrey), she is unable to unpack after she and her husband move into their new home; she vacuums in the middle of the night; she stores makeup, rather than food, in the ice box; she lies; and finally she trashes the house and threatens her husband with a knife.
Her husband doesn’t know what to do, until he just splits; her shrink comes off as an idiot, unable to recognize danger signs; and her parents (Jerry Hardin and Millie Perkins) are emotional enigmas.
Why is Laurie flipping out?
That’s the great question that frustratingly goes unanswered. There are some periodic flashbacks to the young Laurie being taunted by other kids in a play ground. But that in itself is hardly enough to explain her mental deterioration.
Her odd parents, remote and indulgent, seem to regard their only daughter’s strange behavior with as much concern as if she had a cold.
It is they who allow her to live alone, and she moves into a university campus apartment where madness reigns. She piles raw meat sickeningly in the refrigerator, lets garbage pile up, writes on the walls, plays with the gun she has bought and, finally, takes off on her murderous day.
Many of these scenes are wordless, and one can’t help but be impressed by Bertinelli’s direct, powerful and spooky performance. The film stays admirably far from cliches and boldly tries to visually mirror the chaos of Dann’s mind. The moment of murder in a schoolroom is handled with admirable restraint. That we never are able to understand what led the woman to her rampage makes her savage acts slightly pathetic. Could she, and those she hurt, have ever been saved?
– I might have done without Mike Wallace, fresh from his self-aggrandizing stint on the “60 Minutes” anniversary show, yammering about the skills of the TV interviewer, but otherwise “One on One: Classic Television Interviews” (8:30 p.m. Monday, CBS-Ch. 7) is a delightful clip job, offering segments of TV interviews with a vast array of people, from presidents to celebrities. There’s Elizabeth Taylor, shooting an evil look at Richard Burton; Katharine Hepburn, trying to arrange the set for her interview with Dick Cavett; Alfred Hitchcock, discussing film; and all sorts of other treats. Perhaps the best is the encounter between Louis Armstrong and Edward R. Murrow in a basement jazz club in Paris after an all-night session.
