Mother! Murderer! Podcaster!

At first glance Paper Dolls, the 1982 TV movie which spawned a short-lived primetime soap, looks like glittering 80's camp wearing neon pink blush, wrapped in a gold lamé Nolan Miller dress. But the movie reveals itself to be a smart, sensitive examination of the modeling industry––how it uses and sexualizes teenage girls, and the price those girls pay. Darryl Hannah, excellent in an early sta...

For Valentines Day, we're covering the 1989 TV movie "A Cry For Help: The Tracey Thurman Story," based on a true story, starring Nancy McKeon and Dale Midkiff. You'll be relieved you're single! Tracey Thurman tried to escape her abusive husband Buck, but he followed and relentlessly stalked her. No matter how many time she reported him to the police, they refused to help her. Then one day, Buck st...

For our Christmas Episode, we're covering A Smoky Mountain Christmas, Dolly Parton's 1986 TV Movie that retells Snow White with an Appalachian twist, co-starring Lee Majors, Anita Morris and John Ritter and directed by Henry Winkler (!). Dolly stumbles upon seven orphans in a cabin, and then must fight off an evil mountain witch and sexually harassing, false-arresting crooked cops to save...

Sophia Coppola's 2023 biopic "Priscilla," starring Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi, wasn't the first film about Priscilla Presley! The two-part 1988 TV movie "Elvis and Me," also based on Priscilla Presley's memoir, starred Susan Walters and Dale Midkiff. "Elvis and Me" went deeper and darker than "Priscilla," showing a version of Elvis Presley wh...

During the late 80's, Ryan White was the public face of AIDS. Ryan was a heterosexual teenage boy from Kokomo, Indiana who got HIV from infected blood products used to treat his hemophilia. His legal battle to be able to attend school after being diagnosed became a national sensation, and his case won the hearts and minds of middle Americans who had seen AIDS as a gay disease. This 1989 TV mov...

She's a mom..and she ROCKS. She's Rock n' Roll Mom! This heartwarming, campy 1988 TV Movie from the Wonderful World of Disney stars Dyan Cannon as Annie, a small-town single mom who's a singer/songwriter in her spare time. When she's accidentally discovered by a major label, a stylist (Fran Drescher) transforms Annie into Mystere, a mysterious rock star who's 13 years young...

MMP gets topical with Roe vs. Wade, the 1989 NBC TV Movie about the landmark legal case that made abortion legal—at least for a while. The film stars Holly Hunter in an Emmy-winning performance as “Jane Roe,” and Amy Madigan, who won a Golden Globe as the lawyer who argued the case. Katie and Louis talk about abortion, religion, feminism and the batshit life of Norma McCorvey, the real life Jane R...

In 2023, between fitness influencers, Ozempic injections and BBL's, it can feel like there's never been more pressure to have a perfect body. But the fitness craze, plastic surgery and health food all went mainstream back in the 1980's. In the 1988 ABC TV movie Perfect People, supermodel Lauren Hutton and hunky Perry King don wigs and stomach padding to play Kenneth and Barbara, a schlumpy middle-...

In honor of Brendan Fraser's comeback in Darren Aronofsky's The Whale, we're covering his 1997 Showtime TV Movie, Twilight of the Golds, co-starring Faye Dunaway, Jennifer Beals, Rosie O'Donnell and Gary Marshall. Based on the Broadway play, Twilight of the Golds explores the hidden intolerance in a supposedly liberal family, the Golds. When Suzanne becomes pregnant, she takes an experimental gene...

It's time! We're finally covering our podcast's namesake, the 1991 ABC made-for-TV movie "Wife, Mother, Murderer." Judith Light, of Who's the Boss fame, stars in a true crime story with big plot twists and bigger shoulder pads! When Marie Hilley's husband dies of a mysterious illness and she collects the life insurance, no one asks questions. But when her own daughter then becomes sick, and the po...

Andrew Dominik’s Netflix film Blonde, a fictional version of Marilyn Monroe’s life based on the Joyce Carol Oates book, caused a lot of controversy recently––but it wasn’t the first screen adaptation of Blonde! In 2001, CBS released a made-for-TV miniseries of Blonde starring Poppy Montgomery as Marilyn, and co-starring Ann Margret, Kirstie Alley, Patrick Dempsey, Patricia Richardson and Griffin D...

For our Halloween episode, we’re covering the horror-comedy The Midnight Hour, an ABC made-for-TV movie from 1985. It’s basically Michael Jackson’s Thriller as a feature length movie. It’s got all the classic Thriller touches–– zombies, werewolves, a mix of 1950’s and 1980’s teenagers, and a big MTV-style musical number. Yet the Midnight Hour doesn’t come off as derivative; it’s spooky fun with gr...

Cult leader and weight loss guru Gwen Shamblin and her husband Joe Lara became infamous after they died in a plane crash in 2021, and then were the subject of the HBO docu-series The Way Down. But it wasn’t Lara’s first time in the spotlight—he first entered the public consciousness as the star of the campy 1989 made-for-TV movie Tarzan in Manhattan. Lara, a former male model, is pure eye candy sw...

In this 1991 true crime TV movie based on the Redmond murder case, Donna Mills plays Joyce Lukezic, a wealthy woman framed for two murders she did not commit. Joyce has to toughen up to survive life in a women’s prison, clear her name, and hold on to her false eyelashes! Buy us a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/tvmoviepodc Our Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZl9ysOSINvxi4uV...

The 1983 made-for-TV movie “Making of A Male Model” stars Jon-Erik Hexum and Joan Collins in a sexy, campy tale about the price of fame. Joan Collins was a former Hollywood actress who became a household name in the 80’s playing a glamorous villain on Aaron Spelling’s prime-time soap opera “Dynasty.” Jon-Erik Hexum was an up-and-coming heartthrob whose life was cut short by an on-set accident with...

True crime and Tori Spelling collide in this based-on-a-true-story made-for-TV movie. Join Louis Jordan & Katie Madonna Lee for an entertaining discussion about one of the most iconic made-for-TV movies of all time: Death of a Cheerleader.  Buy us a coffee and support our show: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/tvmoviepodc Our Youtube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZl9ysOSINvxi4uVEqXSC2Q O...