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Whistle Stopper - Small Sacrifices Miniseries
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List Price: $9.99
Our Price: $52.99
Your Save: $ ( % )
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Manufacturer: Starmaker Entertainment
Starring: Farrah Fawcett, Ryan O'Neal, Gordon Clapp, John Shea, Emily Perkins
Directed By: David Greene
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786304312209
Format: Color
ISBN: 6304312202
Label: Starmaker Entertainment
Manufacturer: Starmaker Entertainment
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Starmaker Entertainment
Release Date: 1997-01-07
Running Time: 159
Studio: Starmaker Entertainment
Theatrical Release Date: 1989-11-12
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: small scarifices
Comment: I was very impressed by the quailty and how everything they said about the product was true i'll be buying from this company again
Customer Rating:
Summary: Movie should be on DVD
Comment: I agree with most of the reviews and am hoping that there will be a DVD version made. VHS tapes fade and get noisy with static.
Customer Rating:
Summary: un film époustouflant
Comment: Aussi loin que je m'en souvienne ce film m'a toujours beaucoup ému un film remarquable avec des acteurs merveilleusement bien choisis.Ce film retrace parfatement le crime odieux que Diane Downs a commis envers ses propres enfants pour un homme marié n'aimant pas les enfants!!!
Après Ann Rule,David Greene a su bien mettre en scene cette tragique histoire.Encore bravo
Customer Rating: 
Summary: A Fawcett triumph
Comment: The small screen treatment of author Ann Rule's best-seller is all the more gut-wrenching because this really happened, a self-absorbed mother whose horrific act of violence against her own children (all for a boyfriend who, it turned out, couldn't wait to unload her?) commanded overdue attention to the threat to children in their own homes. For anyone still unconvinced by "The Burning Bed" that Farrah Fawcett can act better than she can jiggle, they won't be with this one. Fawcett is superlative in getting across the pathological selfishness of Diane Downs and how her children paid for it. The performance was, for Fawcett, a richly earned Emmy nomination. Despite more than ample supporting acting by the likes of John Shea, et al, Fawcett carries this production and highlights it with an indelible emotional wallop. This is an important social piece, much as is "The Burning Bed" remains, and forces us to examine our childrens' safety in a new light. Read Rule's book for background to appreciate the production's faithfulness to its subject matter. Despite that wrenching subject matter, the film gives us some comfort in knowing that the justice system worked this time.
Customer Rating:
Summary: a true story
Comment: This TVM directed by David Greene is based on the book by Anne Rule and the teleplay adapted by Joyce Eliason. The female contribution accounts for the stance taken on Diane Downs, an Oregon postal worker who in 1983 was accused of murdering her own children to free herself for a lover who "just don't wanna be a Daddy". The crime outrages the male DA's assistant and presecutor with it's seemingly Medea brutality, their suspicion of Diane raised, in spite of her claim of a "bushy haired stranger" being responsible for the shootings, based on her "weird" behaviour. This behaviour is said to include a lack of emotion, inopportune humour, and a taste for the Duran Duran song Hungry Like the Wolf. (Greene's attempt to make Diane the wolf via her car headlights as eyes is a bit much). The DA's office takes months to form their case against Downs, and in their frustration, resent Diane's use of the media to gain sympathy, though we hear someone comment that "the camera loves her", implying that she possesses an unnatural empathy. At one point the audience becomes the TV camera with Diane talking to us subjectively. Given the nature of the context, it's easy for Downs to be more sympathetic than the police who wish to do her harm, but this perceived unbalance in the light of their feeling about the crime isn't helped by Greene's casting of John Shea as the DA's assistant and prosecutor, who specialises in a wooden stare. Eliason's teleplay reduces Downs by having someone say "She doesn't love. She devours" and gives her a memory monologue that she inexplicably delivers to Shea where she confesses that she hates men. There is also a court opportunity for Shea to project all his bile, and a queasy plot point of Shea's interest in Diane's children, overstepping his professionalism and getting way too personally involved. Greene uses similar cutaways of a crowd outside the courtroom during the trial, and stages a court re-enactment of the shootings in a model car for the camera with projected crosscuts, that the jury is unable to see.
As Downs, Farrah Fawcett has some delicious moments. Although an actress whose effort is always obvious, she captures Diane's recklessness and beauty, as she walks down a hallway talking and passing Shea, and as the camera circles her when a psychiatrist gives an evaluation of her personality. If she says and does things that appear to deliberately make herself look bad in the eyes of others, she still retains tube empathy so that we don't want to see her be found guilty, perhaps because only seeing her doing the shooting through the eyes of the prosecutor, helps it remain unreal. The casting of Ryan O'Neal as her former lover allows her to be uninhibited with him, though funny because of his resistance. There is also a perversity in the casting since it represents them at a time when they were a real life couple, but his stock was falling as hers was rising.
This TVM originally ran at 186 mins which is the version I saw, but ironically the length works against the treatment. In spite of it being truthful to the length of time the real events took, the inbalance of empathy becomes even stronger, and while we wait and wait with the police for Down's surviving daughter to regain her speech so she can stand as a witness against her mother, Fawcett's achievements become Greene's own small sacrifices.
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