12 Desperate Hours, on Lifetime

Ann Rule fans might not recognize this title. It is drawn from her true crime collection Last Dance, Last Chance, but it is not the novella about the nefarious plastic surgeon that had the lion share of the page-count. Instead, it is one of two shorter pieces chronicling the crimes of parolees, who in retrospect, never should have been released. Denny Tuohmy definitely poses a danger to Val Jane and her two young sons when he takes them hostage in Gina Gershon’s 12 Desperate Hours, which premieres tomorrow night on Lifetime.

Val and Mark Jane have a nice suburban home, but money has been tight and their marriage is maybe getting a little stale. Then one morning, after he already left for work, she answers the door to find a sawed-off shotgun pointed in her face. At first, Tuohmy wants to wait for Jane to come home, so he can carjack him, but the worried mother convinces him to take her and her mom-SUV instead.

With Mother Jane as his chauffeur, hostage, and reluctant accomplice, Tuohmy sets out looking for the ex-girlfriend he is convinced still loves him. Their first fateful stop will be her mother’s house, who tells Tuohmy exactly what she thinks of him, in brutally honest terms. This could be a mistake.

Despite the Ann Rule brand, 12 Desperate Hours is pretty standard TV-movie stuff, starting with the flat, pedestrian direction from Gershon, the Showgirls thesp. However, she has a bit of a fresh take on the familiar hostage scenario. While Val never develops a full case of Stockholm syndrome, she had some sympathy for her captor—enough to try to broker a peaceful solution to their drama.

Bad Kids of Crestview Academy: Back in Detention

Remember high school, where kids learn to grow up and cover-up their own murders? That is how things work at Crestview. The family income levels are sky-high, but not so much the life expectancies. This is especially true for wrong-side-of-the-tracks “undercrust” students, like Siouxsie Hess and her sister Alyson—her late sister Alyson. When Hess schemes her way into detention to find out who was responsible for her death, soulless entitled brats start dying like flies in Ben Browder’s Bad Kids of Crestview Academy (trailer here) which opens this Friday in New York.

Yes, this is indeed the sequel to Bad Kids Go to Hell that nobody expected. Fear not, this is a whole new class of sociopaths, but the same bad karma still hangs over Crestview. There is some seriously sinister business going on in the background, but Browder only gives us glimpses. Instead, he focuses on the And Then There Were None day in detention. For fans of the first film and the graphic novels on which they are based, poor old Matt Clark is currently cooling his heels in a criminal asylum for the mass murders he did not commit, but it is probably safer for him there.

Thanks to a hacker-for-hire, Hess will be sharing senior detention with Blaine Wilkes, the senator’s son with serious mother issues, Faith Jackson, the promiscuous daughter of the senator’s “spiritual advisor,” coked-up gay playboy, Brian “Latin Spice” Marquez, and sexually confused, cat video-loving Sara Hasegawa. All four were somehow involved in Alyson Hess’s murder. Collectively, they also start dying during detention, which makes Siouxsie Hess the logical suspect.

Although it can’t keep up with Joseph Kahn’s wildly frenetic Detention, Browder (probably best known as the lead in Farscape) sustains an admirably high energy level. He also embraces the franchise’s black humor and sarcastic attitude. There is truly no place for good taste or restraint at Crestview.

With that in mind, Sammi Hanratty is really remarkably poised as Siouxsie Hess, the film’s primary pinball. She keeps her head and maintains the audience’s focus amid a whole lot of chaos. Erika Daly also earns points for making Hasegawa’s naivete so weirdly distinctive. Speaking of weird, Browder gamely reprises his original role as the anti-social school janitor, Max. However, Gina Gershon upstages everyone as the flamboyantly evil and tart-tongued Sen. Wilkes.

Crestview Academy is not at the inspired level of Detention or The Final Girls, but it still makes dead teenagers pretty darn funny. If only The Breakfast Club had been as rude and subversive. Recommended for fans of warped horror comedies, The Bad Kids of Crestview Academy opens this Friday (1/13) in New York, at the Cinema Village.