More like The Murder Years, am I right?

My forays into watching bad made-for-TV movies and chronicling them for posterity are well-documented. I'm sure what scant readers I have will remember my write-up on Perfect Body, the 1997 monstrosity starring the Pink Power Ranger, Goodwin from Lost, and an eating disorder so ill-defined it might as well have been Morgellons. I had to admit, though, that I was intrigued when, as I complained that I needed fodder for a blog post, my internet boyfriend Julian suggested No One Would Tell, a most excellent trash-TV flick which he very aptly summarized as "Fred Savage beats up D.J. Tanner." With a synopsis like that, how could I refuse?

(All of my made-for-TV indulgences are just holdovers until I can tackle the mother of all Lifetime movies, Queen Sized, starring Hairspray songstress and racist Top Model-maimer Nikki Blonsky.)

The only place where black and white come together in Nikki's world are on her cupcakes.

No One Would Tell, indeed, delivers on Julian's succinct premise: if you're in the mood for ninety minutes of Fred Savage beating up Candace Cameron, this is absolutely your film. And let me tell you, domestic abuse is never funny unless you're watching it acted out by Cameron and Savage in their mid-nineties finest: bulky vests, high-waisted Mom Jeans, and a collection of sweaters so stupid they send Bill Cosby weeping back to his Jell-O Pudding Pop in shame. Cameron in particular rocks the exact same powder blue turtleneck for much of the film, perhaps doing her damnedest to distract from the overwhelming abundance of denim overalls present throughout the rest of the production. 1996 was a rough year for everyone.

Cameron is Stacy Collins, a young optimist who spends her time taking in high school wrestling matches. It's during one of these meetings that she and her friends, Girl Who's Less Attractive Than Stacy and Is Possibly a Lesbian (Nicky) and Light-Skinned Dark Girl of Indeterminate Ethnicity (Val), first witness Savage's Bobby Tennison, a strapping young buck who enjoys hitting women, murdering them, and hiding their bodies, in that order. Stacy is indeed murdered within the first five minutes of NOWT, and the rest of the film takes place in flashback, though you spend the bulk of the time wishing that the flashback were somehow wrong in a way that would expedite her murder, such as her death actually coming at the hands of her mother at the morning breakfast table a good three days before her actual murder.

"Pep rally on Tuesday! Wear red! BLOOD RED."

It's worth mentioning that Val is played by Justina Machado, whose extensive fan club has uploaded not one, but two copies of NOWT to the internet. It's due to their mildly eerie obsession that I'm able to review this video for you today. Thanks for the crazy, jmachadofansite.

Anyway, Stacy and her friends do a bit of sassy girl power bullshit in the vein of Saved by the Bell: The College Years, until Stacy's eyes settle on Bobby as he wrestles and she thinks, "gosh, I wish he would beat me like that." So they're off, embarking upon a whirlwind romance of mushy words and shoving as Bobby slams Stacy into every available hard surface, and she makes up lies like she tripped and fell or she ran into a door or she fell asleep with her face on the iron. Of particular deliciousness is Stacy's hard shit-eating fall into a pile of rocks, as a butthurt Bobby dramatically rips up a poem he lovingly wrote for her and tosses it into the lake. Spoiler: that poem's not the only thing he rips up and tosses in the lake. Sorry, Stacy.

Meanwhile, we're treated to a "Stacy's mom is also in an abusive relationship" subplot that's as banal as it is uninteresting. Basically, Stacy's mom -- who, despite what the song would indicate, does not have it going on unless "it" is spousal abuse -- is dating this guy, Rod, who's a dick, and she stands up to him and everything goes well and she's totally not murdered. I guess this was included to keep the film from being utterly hopeless, which differentiates it from, say, Dancer in the Dark. The character of Carla, though, does her best Cara Seymour in the aforementioned Dancer by blatantly lying to get Bobby off the hook for Stacy's beating/murder. She's one of many members of an unsavoury and forgettable supporting cast, including the token arty/oddball girl whom I guess the producers were too cheap to hire Heather Matarazzo to play. Anyways, the point is, like mother, like daughter, which was actually the original title of this movie, before it was beaten by Fred Savage Beats Up D.J. Tanner and finally No One Would Tell.

"Be back home by eleven! Try not to punch her too hard."

We endure the Stacy/Bobby relationship as they get together, he becomes obsessive, calls her a slut for wearing shorts in school, hurls her into wall after wall and gives her conspicuous bruise after conspicuous bloody bruise, and slaps her at the fifties-themed sock hop that, true to the racial boundaries implied by the theme, is not attended by Val (who, to be fair, gets about four lines in the entire film and is probably played by a Swiffer during half of her non-speaking scenes). Finally, Bobby resolves to kill her, which is fine by me because I've been rooting her demise on for about twenty minutes now.

Anyway, the bottom line is, Bobby kills her, and presumably Danny Tanner's heart breaks somewhere in San Francisco and Winnie Cooper is struck with fear in Wisconsin or wherever the fuck. He tosses her in the lake, but is sold out by his reluctant accomplice and his stupid habit/motif of stealing flowers from centrepieces because I guess he's a giant cheapskate? Anyways, Nicky sprays Carla with her toxic lesbian pee and Carla disintegrates and everyone is happy except for Stacy, who's dead. Thankfully, Judge Sally Jessy Raphael (!!) is here to remind us all in voiceover about the dangers of domestic violence and give Bobby life in prison. Justice is served for everyone but the viewers, who just wasted one and a half health classes watching this tripe.



Always entertained fantasies of D.J. Tanner taking a stiff right to the face? Click here and watch No One Would Tell for yourself. But be warned: those YouTube commenters take this shit fo'real.