Hell Hath Nothing On AnnaLynne McCord

Sometimes, you see cover art on Amazon Prime and feel a warm, comfy feeling that someone out there knows what you like: elevated Lifetime thrillers about dramatically angry women taking control of their lives. Then you look closer and see the cast involves Billy Zane, AnnaLynne McCord, and Spartacus's Viva Bianca and you wonder if you're actually dead because folks, Scorned...Scorned is heaven.

Quick Plot: We open a very cheap way of showing a text conversation between two hip abbreviations-using cheaters as they discuss their next meetup. Next, we meet the man on the end of it and yes, it's none other than Billy Zane tied to a chair.

Zane is Kevin, a wealthy gentleman with an incredibly active libido. 28 hours before his capture, his girlfriend Sadie (the glorious, never restrained McCord) was predicting his marriage proposal over shots with her best friend Jen. If you haven't guessed by now, Jen happened to be the other woman on that fateful text chain, she with the "magical pussy" and use of "U"s.

After some lakeside lovemaking, Sadie discovers the affair via Kevin's phone. Lucky for her, she's packed a generous supply of Vicodin despite this just being a weekend getaway. Having disabled the former Demon Knight with surprising ease, Sadie lures Jen and her Yorkie puppy Bootsie to their remote mansion for a wild evening of teeth pulling, shin hobbling, taco eating, and so much more.

I'm not going to tease anything here: Scorned is a ridiculous good time.

Emphasis on ridiculous.

Directed by Doll's House royalty Mark Jones (he of the first Leprechaun and the one and only Rumplestilskin) with a script cowritten by Sadie Katz, Scorned understands its Eat-Your-Heart-Out-Lifetime place and GOES for it. Is Sadie faster than The Flash? Sure! Do we get Billy Zane attempting to foot call the police? HELL YES. Even the music choices seem tongue-in-your-cheek clever, which makes perfect sense if you watch the credits long enough to see that Jones wrote most of the lyrics. 

This is the kind of movie that has a character try to get even by shouting, "you flat-chested whore!" One where two women can be lifelong best friends and yet somehow one doesn't really seem to know anything about the fact that her BFF was committed to a mental hospital and given electric shock therapy for seven years. Size 0 Sadie drinks 3/4 of a full bottle of Maker's Mark and is not only still standing, but has the ability to kidnap two people, make a full dinner, blind her boyfriend, and plot an elaborate escape plan by picking up an escaped prisoner at just the right time.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that.

Throughout Scorned, there are a few probably filmed-in-one-day asides where we discover a heavily tattooed violent criminal is on the run (Checkhov's Law of Prisons in full force). Naturally, we're constantly waiting for him to show up at just the wrong time, a deus ex machina in a film that's already skirting any rules. The way Scorned works this into the main plot is even better than I could have imagined. 

As much as the "b*thces be crazy" subgenre pioneered by Lifetime can be insulting to women, Scorned manages to elevate it into something that might even be empowering. There are no boiled bunnies to be found here, even if there's a constant threat of little Bootsie drying off in the microwave. That's not Scorned's game: Sadie IS crazy, but she's not stupid, and there's something about her determination that's almost, dare I say it, admirable. Not all heroines wear capes: some of them just sport rainbow hair and spaghetti straps.

High Points

AnnaLynne McCord probably doesn't have the A-list career she initially dreamed of, but it's clear that she's become a genuinely interesting actress who makes a point of choosing roles where she can let loose. She's on fire in Scorned, and it's a damn beautiful thing to watch

Low Points

I actually love the yes-they-went-there ending, but if you sit back and try to put the details together, there are a LOT of holes in Sadie's plan

Lessons Learned

Girls put up with a lot of things before they lock you in

The key to making good tacos is cover up crappy meat with tons of spices

You know someone's a villain when she feeds a dog chili

Cigars are less likely to give you cancer than cigarettes, at least according to the Book of Zane

Rent/Bury/Buy

If you're a fan of fun trash, Scorned is an absolute delight. Get your fix on Amazon Prime now. 

2011's Honorary Golden Lifts Go To....

I have no idea what director/writer/producer Mark Jones looks like. Google image searching him (it’s a verb and I’m dealing with it) yields everything from this:

to this:

and all the way to this:

More importantly, I have absolutely no clue how tall this man may be, but based on his filmography, I have to assume he’s either under five feet or, more likely, the sole full heighter in a family of dwarfs (yes, i.e., Matthew McConaughy in Tiptoes). Because of this man, we have the following:

The Lucky Charms hating, pogo stick wielding, 4-leaf clover allergic Leprechaun

The puntastic baby eater that is Rumplestiltskin

Dummy, the wooden and weird youngest child of one messed up family of orphans in Triloquist

also, Two For the Brig, an episode of the animated series ALF

Clearly, this is a man who understands the power of Vertically Challenged Villains!, and hence, 2011’s Doll’s House Shortie of the Year Golden Lifts go to his mysterious feet. May the Leprechaun clean them with that signature smile. 

Maybe Rumplestiltskin Ate'th Your Baby

It was only a matter of time before a horror filmmaker decided to jump on one of Western civilization’s most gruesome fairy tales. For those who find the cannibalism and parental negligence of Hansel & Gretel too PG, the original Rumplestiltskin highlights fatherly irresponsibility and what may possibly be the very first black market (and black magic) baby ring. If that’s not enough, the story ends with a character literally being split in two and sucked underground for eternity.


The plot itself is enough to give kids of any time period nightmares, but sadly, Mark Jones’ 1995 interpretation doesn’t quite capture any of the horror inherent in fighting a greasy troll for your child’s life. One part Leprechaun, twenty percent reaction shots of babies, and oozing in bargain priced medieval puns, Rumplestiltskin is the type of cheese you eat once in its entirety and again only when starving or inebriated.


Quick Plot: Somewhere in Europe in the 1400s (I’m not being lazy; that’s what the title card said), an angry mob chases down the baby-swiping, inexplicably Bronx-accented title character to save the very clean tot he's been toting after granting a young mother's wish. Luckily, there's a fairly talented gypsy in the bunch. A few tosses of glitter and Rumplestiltskin is sent to carry out his next thousand years inside a jade sculpture.


Five hundred and ninety five years later, we learn that gypsies can’t do math or just have really bad curse warranties.


It’s “The Present Day” in LA, where the police are such sunny stereotypes that one jokes about donuts and his partner calls his pretty and pregnant wife Shelly (later Ivy from NBC’s Passions!). The terribly slow- motioned carjacking of a young mother widows our heroine, but a quick trip to an antique shop lifts her spirits with the purchase of a familiar statue that--through tears and a rhetorical wish--unleashes the nose-ring wearing Rumplestiltskin on Shelly, baby Johnny, and eventually, an Andrew Dice Clay-ish comedian with dreadful Zack Morris style and remarkable skill at driving a go-cart.

High Points
While nothing quite tops the terribly brilliant punning of Leprechaun(“This old Lep/He played one/ He played pogo on his lung” is a personal favorite), Rumplestiltskin’s brilliant addition of “‘th” to any verb does make me want to develop a potty mouth, if only for the opportunity to use “Fuck’th me" from here on in

Low Points
When you heavily feature a character as obnoxious as the goofy female best friend, you owe the audience a bigger death scene than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it neck break


On paper, the 87 minute running time sounds like a good idea, but when 20 of those final minutes are devoted to an extended chase with absolutely no tension or creativity, breaking the hour mark is just wrong


Lessons Learned
If the only thing that will curse you is another person saying your name out loud, it’s probably not a good idea to constantly refer to yourself in the third person

It doesn’t take long to master truck driving, even if your feet barely reach the pedals


Confirmed Lesson Learned From Sunnydale
When unable to identify a supernatural culprit in a public crime, authority figures will undoubtedly put the blame on PCP

Winning Line
Gypsy Antiques Dealer: It’s supposed to grant wishes.
Shelly: Oh, so you make wishes and they come true?


Stray Observation
Medieval Europe looked an awful lot like the historical reenactment about witch trials shown on the New York jury duty video

Rent/Bury/Buy

This may shock you, but Rumplestiltskin is a pretty ridiculous film. If you have any doubts, consider the following: upon commandeering a motorcycle, Rumplestiltskin proudly notes, “Made in America. My kind of chariot.” How, for example, does the 15th century Rumpy have any idea what America is if, according to the song I memorized in the 4th grade, Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue in Fourteen Hundred and Ninety Two? And when did he learn the offensiveness of giving the finger? If you think you will be bothered by such a question, avoid this movie. If you were far from amused by the Leprechaun’s third outing to Las Vegas, avoid this movie. If the temptation of a Duel-like road chase between a misogynist driving a go cart and a 600 year old troll driving a mack truck and spouting one-liners like “Let’s play’th tag,” then ....you get the point. This is a poor man’s Leprechaun made from imitation cheddar. It’s not good for you, but for the first few bites, it’s kind of hard to stop eating. Then you stop and hate yourself. Then you get hungry again and...man. Bad movies are a dangerous cycle.


Oh. And just in case it wasn't clear, did I mention this film is like:

Right down to the near identical poster art.