Melanie (Alicia Coppola) is a journalist who has a crush on her rich friend Danny (Randall Batinkoff). When Danny begins seeing the sexy Olivia (Elizabeth Berkley), Melanie, out of possibly a tinge of jealousy, begins checking up on her. She slowly begins to suspect that Olivia is laundering money out of a local charity, but of course nobody believes her. Even worse is the fact that Olivia may also be a serial murderer who marries and buries her rich husbands.
Directed by Armand (He Knows You’re Alone) Mastroianni, Black Widow was made for The Lifetime Channel. This was the era that was in between the ‘90s, when they would rerun network TV Movies of the Week, and today, when most of the “Wrong” series of thrillers dominate the airways. In fact, this almost feels like an early blueprint for those films.
I have a soft spot in my heart for Lifetime movies, so this one went down smooth enough. The scenes of Berkley romancing Batinkoff are amusing. It’s funny seeing her neckline become progressively lower from scene to scene, which correlates to his infatuation level. The stuff with Coppola and her girl Friday (Adriana DeMeo) digging into Berkley’s past are kind of cliché, but still watchable. Even when the plot begins spinning its wheels, you can still enjoy seeing Berkley and Coppola (no relation to Francis and his clan) acting catty towards each other.
Berkley is well cast as the femme fatale. This isn’t quite in the same league as her immortal turn in Showgirls, but it’s fun, nevertheless. Coppola is strong as the heroine who uses her journalism skills to uncover Berkley’s secrets, and Batinkoff is very Henry Thomas-like as the clueless mark. George (Fletch) Wyner also turns up as Coppola’s boss.
No one reinvented the wheel with this one. Mastroianni didn’t hit it out of the park or anything (the third act, especially the final confrontation with Berkley, is rushed), but it’s a respectable extra-base hit. If you find yourself watching this kind of stuff on rainy afternoons, it will get the job done. Berkley fans will also want to give it a look.
AKA: Dark Beauty.
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