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Saturday, May 29, 2010

They Shoot Housewives Don't They?

So awhile ago I had the "pleasure" of watching Casualties of Love: The Long Island Lolita Story on Lifetime. I wanted to find the other movies since it has been ages since I have seen them. Thanks to the awesomeness of cable and Netflix, I finally got my wish. Here's how the three movies stacked up.

Amy Fisher: My Story a.k.a Lethal Lolita (1992) : . This NBC offering is from Amy Fisher's point of view. Typical tale of a teen seduced by a married man and convinced to kill his wife. Amy sold her rights to her story to help with her bail. NBC was originally going to air it on January 17th until they learned that CBS and ABC were airing their versions 4 days prior. The film ended up airing on December 28 of 1992.
Newcomer Noelle Parker plays Amy. She is the best Amy of the trilogy, in accent and looks. The movie doesn't sanitize or gloss over the gritty details. Unfortunately it gets boring rather quickly. A half hour of the movie is literally Amy arguing with Joey, he doesn't want her dating other guys but refuses to leave his wife for her. Or Amy arguing with her lover Paul, he wants her to leave Joey but refuses to leave his girlfriend for her. Ad nauseum. The movie ends with Amy going to prison regretting ever meeting Joey.

Casualties of Love: The "Long Island Lolita" Story
: This version aired on CBS in January of 1993. It is obviously from the Buttafuccos point of view. Joey is portrayed as a faithful husband and father tormented by a teenage seductress. The movie ends with Amy getting her just desserts as the family rejoices. Alyssa Milano shed her good girl image in order to play Amy. As far as accuracy goes, Milano is the least believable in the trilogy. Alyssa makes no real effort to channel Amy and she comes off as one note and boring.

It's understandable though. It's the Buttafucco's version so they concentrate more on themselves and not so much on Amy. Reportedly they were paid 30,000 for their story.

The Amy Fisher Story a.k.a Beyond Control (1993): To this day, I still have no idea whose point of view this story is supposed to be from. I don't even think that ABC knew. Half the movie portrays Amy as a poor misled girl being unfairly punished. The other half portrays Amy as a manipulating, sex driven, seductress determined to get her way at all costs.

Drew Barrymore played Amy Fisher in this film. While she may not have looked too much like Amy, she did a good job of behaving like her. Her accent is halfway decent and if anyone fits the persona of a Lethal Lolita, Drew does.

I didn't like this film when it first aired but second time around I adored it. This version in my opinion is the most fun and entertaining of the trilogy. B grade cheesiness at it's finest.

3 comments:

Amiee said...

Didn't Drew Barrymore play another teen seductress in Poison Ivy? No wonder she had such a bad girl image back then!

LadyJ3000 said...

Yes she did. Interestingly enough the other Amy Fisher, Alyssa Milano, would later star in Poison Ivy 2.

Sadako said...

Oh man...Amy Fisher. I'm kind of surprised she doesn't have her own reality TV show.

Though I was at Book Expo and apparently Mary Jo Buttafuuoco was there and she'd written a book called Hole In My Head. Fifteen minutes, man.