MURDER IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

Hank Stratton and Helen Hunt

MURDER IN NEW HAMPSHIRE: THE PAMELA WOJAS SMART STORY (1991 telefilm). Director: Joyce Chopra.

Pamela Smart (Helen Hunt) is the media director of a high school in New Hampshire. She begins work on a project with several teens, and begins an affair with one of them, 15-year-old Billy Flynn (Chad Allen). Pamela assures Billy that her love for him is genuine, but that her supposedly abusive husband, Gregg (Hank Stratton) will make her life miserable if she divorces him. Pamela importunes Billy, with the help of some friends, to murder Gregg, and after some agonizing, he does. Pam is sure that the police will never figure out her involvement, but people, after all, will talk ...

Chad Allen as killer Billy

Murder in New Hampshire is based on real-life events, some of which were later fictionalized in the film To Die For. This is a fairly standard TV movie with some good acting, but it is never what you could call riveting film-making. Allen, who was 17 at the time, probably makes the best impression as the gullible Billy, although there is good work from Stratton and from Ken Howard and Michael Learned as Gregg's parents. Hunt is also good, but she doesn't get across the hardness and sheer dumb dead-commonness of Pamela Smart. Chad Allen, who is openly gay, later appeared in the film Save Me (along with many others), and again proved what a fine actor he is.

Hank Stratton  as Gregg Smart

Smart, who is serving a life sentence, was recently interviewed on Dateline. She maintains her innocence to this day, and refuses to show remorse or admit her guilt, two things she must do if she ever wishes to be paroled. (Flynn and the other boys have all been paroled.) She downplays the fact that she had an affair with a minor, a fact that might well have sealed her fate even if she were, improbably, innocent. The point was made, as it should be, that the true victim in this is Gregg Smart, who by all accounts was a perfectly nice guy. Joyce Chopra later directed a somewhat better telefilm, The Danger of Love, which was about another sociopathic lady, Carolyn Warmus, who murdered her boyfriend's wife. Not surprisingly, Smart and Warmus became friends in the penitentiary!

Verdict: Fair-to-middling TV version of a fascinating case. **1/2. 

TO DIE FOR

Nicole Kidman

TO DIE FOR (1995). Director: Gus Van Sant.

"You're not anybody in America unless you're on TV." -- Suzanne Stone.

Suzanne Stone (Nicole Kidman of Eyes Wide Shut) is determined to have a career in broadcasting, and using her perch as weather girl for a local channel, works with some young people on a documentary that she hopes will get attention. Suzanne is beginning to believe that her loving husband, Larry (Matt Dillon), will only hold her back from her ambitions. Beginning an affair with the boy Jimmy Emmett (Joaquin Phoenix of The Village), Suzanne tells Jimmy that the only way they can be together permanently is if Larry is out of the picture ...

Joaquin Phoenix

To Die For was inspired by the real-life Pamela Smart case as seen in the earlier telefilm Murder in New Hampshire. It may seem in bad taste that this story -- although the names have been changed along with certain incidents, and Suzanne is much more over-the-top than the real Smart -- is played as a very dark comedy, but the film has a serious undertone throughout, and "Larry's" death is in no way made fun of. The one person who comes in for drubbing is Pamela/Suzanne, who is depicted as a self-absorbed and narcissistic monster. The audience laughs at her and her outrageousness, not with her. Based on Joyce Maynard's novel, Buck Henry's screenplay delves into celebrity, sociopathology and other trenchant topics in very entertaining fashion. 

David Cronenberg

Nicole Kidman is perfect as Suzanne, and there is also good work from Phoenix as her young lover; Dan Hedaya as Larry's father; Holland Taylor as Suzanne's mother; Illeana Douglas as Larry's sister; Casey Affleck as one of Jimmy's murdering buddies; Alison Folland as Lydia, a friend of Jimmy's; and an uncredited George Segal as a slimy newsman who gives Suzanne some sexist tips. David Cronenberg, who directed many of his own movies, shows up at the end as a hit man pretending to be a Hollywood producer. Suzanne's final fate in this movie is perhaps more satisfying than what happened to Pamela Smart, who is still in the penitentiary as of this writing!

Verdict: Absorbing, very darkly amusing film with a strong lead performance. ***.