Directed by
Douglas Jackson
Cast
Alexandra Paul ………. Allison
Michael Woods ………. Ray
Cynthia Gibb ………. Marilyn
Rob Stewart ………. K.C.
John Ralston ………. Quentin
Kevin Jubinville ………. Jeremy
Sophie Gendron ………. Ellie / Elle
Judy Marshak ………. Beverly
Janet Lane ………. Bridgette
Steven McPhail ………. Jason Connelly
Run Time: 93 minutes
Unrated
DVD Release date: September 4, 2007
Apparently Lionsgate has a whole DVD division of made for Lifetime and made for Lifetime-ish movies. You know the sort. There’s a certain Mary Higgins Clark/ Danielle Steele air about them, and they usually have a generic name like Blood Stains, or An Ideal Au Pair, or The Surrogate. These names aren’t nearly as fun as their flashier MOTW counterparts like Satan’s School for Girls or The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom .
But I digress. . .
You know the sort of TV movies I’m talking about, right? Lifetime originals starring middle aged actors who lack all of their original parts? In which all the characters have secret pasts from which they can’t escape, a powerful individual or family rules over their generic small town, scores of Lady MacBeths plot to destroy their peers, and squinchy faced men don’t know whom to trust?
It’s almost as though USA were still running Silk Stalkings with the original cast.
Anyways, Demons from her Past stars Alexandra Paul of Baywatch as Allison, a middle aged woman who cannot escape her past. Two and a half decades ago she was the scapegoat for a vehicular manslaughter, and her life was subsequently torn asunder. She builds up one of those fancy European lives that the hausfraus seem to aspire to complete with French chef husband, and lives exotically in flashy locales drinking sparkling wine and wearing gloves.
Allison is called back to her hometown upon the funeral of her grandmother, and decides to seek justice for herself and the victim of said vehicular slaying. She aspires to get one of them to ‘fess up in the local pennysaver. But the culprits and accomplices of the cold case are now powerful men in town, politicians, doctors, lawmen and night managers of the marina. They are willing to stop at nothing to protect their dark secret. The town’s top surgeon, in a wonderful bit of soap opera logic, seems perfectly willing to commit a number of first degree murders to cover up his 25 year old perjury about a manslaughter.
Demons from her Past has terribly, terribly, terrible dialog, a silly story, and, well, all in all seems like that could have been written by my mother over the span of 2 hours. . . while drunk. Still, the film making is competent enough, and it isn’t without it’s trashy charms.
Night Man‘s Michael Woods plays Ray the sheriff, who bought beer for his underaged friends, John Ralston (a.k.a. Ming the Merciless) plays Quentin, Rays’s slacker brother who was in the car the night of the accident, and Painkiller Jane‘s Rob Stewart plays the evil K.C. who stomped on Allison’s foot causing the car accident.
The DVD
Audio and Visual
The movie looks and sounds okay. It’s a TV movie, so is available exclusively in 1.33:1 full frame.
The Extras
None.
