An older woman seduces a younger man and then breaks up with him. He becomes obsessive and refuses to accept the break up and subsequently turns violent.An older woman seduces a younger man and then breaks up with him. He becomes obsessive and refuses to accept the break up and subsequently turns violent.An older woman seduces a younger man and then breaks up with him. He becomes obsessive and refuses to accept the break up and subsequently turns violent.
Photos
- Katherine Templeton
- (as Moira Harris)
- Poolside Mother
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThis movie is based on the October 4, 1975 murder of Harriet Robinson of Jackson, MS by John Peyton Alexander II. She was 38-years old, he was 20-years old.
- Quotes
Charles Templeton: Your mother was worried half out of her mind when you didn't come home last night.
Matt Templeton: I told her I'd be late.
Charles Templeton: This isn't late, Matt. It's dawn. Where the hell have you been, anyway?
Matt Templeton: None of your business.
Charles Templeton: Matt, as long as you're living under this roof, everything you do is my business.
[walks over to Matt]
Charles Templeton: Look, I just want to make sure you're not doing something you'll be sorry for later.
Matt Templeton: [not buying it] Get real. You don't care about me. You don't care about Mom either. And the only reason why you're back in this house is 'cause you're flat broke.
Charles Templeton: [slaps him hard]
Matt Templeton: There's Dad I know.
The main difference between the two films is that in "Seduced and Betrayed" it is the young lover, a married man, who wants to break off the affair, whereupon Lucci's character Victoria turns nasty. In "Between Love and Hate" it is Lucci's character Vivian, a married woman, who breaks off the affair under pressure from her husband, even though he himself has frequently honoured his marriage vows more in the breach than the observance. (The husband is played by Barry Bostwick, like Lucci an actor who seems to turn up in every TV movie). Not that Vivian does not have previous form herself. She makes a habit of seducing, then dumping, a new toyboy every summer. The problem is that on this occasion the young man, a college student named Matt, refuses to take no for an answer.
In "Seduced and Betrayed" I felt that the moral boundaries were too sharply drawn. Victoria was so obviously selfish and manipulative, using her wealth, beauty and influence to snare her victim Dan, that it was impossible to feel any sympathy for her. In "Between Love and Hate" things are, or should be, more nuanced. Although Vivian is just as selfish and manipulative as Victoria, it is she who becomes the victim and Matt the perpetrator of violence. It should, therefore, be possible to sympathise to some extent with both parties, with Matt as a young man driven to extremes by Vivian's thoughtless emotional cruelty and with Vivian as a woman who suffers far more than she deserves as a result of that thoughtlessness.
The trouble is that a storyline like that demands higher standards of acting than those normally found in run-of-the-mill TV movies. Lucci, admittedly, is better here than she was in "Seduced and Betrayed", largely because in that film she had to convey violent emotions which seemed beyond her range. In "Between Love and Hate", Vivian is an entirely shallow character to whom strong emotions of any sort, whether of love or hatred, appear entirely foreign, so Lucci copes much better with the task of playing her. Patrick van Horne as Matt, however, seems so wet and spineless that it is hard to imagine him suddenly transformed by raging passion into a violently unstable individual. Although van Horne was 24 when the film was made, his character is only supposed to be 19 and he comes across as younger still, more like a wet-behind-the-ears schoolboy than a college undergrad. (David Charvet, who played Dan in "Seduced and Betrayed", was 23 at the time but looked rather older).
Like many TV movies, this one is a fictionalised dramatisation of a real-life case. Given the emotions and human drama involved, it should have been possible to have turned the story into an engrossing film. Unfortunately, as with many TV movies, this one appears to have been made by film-makers and actors who imagine that the only skill needed to turn real-life events into a great film is the ability to alter the names, dates and places in an old newspaper cutting. 4/10
- JamesHitchcock
- Mar 23, 2012
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