The Death and Life of Nancy Eaton

This movie was soooo good. Remarkably, I saw it accidentally. The movie, "Deadly Friends" with Kristy Swanson from 1986 was supposed to air, which I had already seen, so from the beginning, I knew there was a programming error. I watched and watched and watched waiting to see if they would say the real name of the movie, but Oxygen actually stated on the screen, "Now, Deadly Friends." So I had to find the name of one of the characters and google them to find out about this movie. I was amazed and saddened to find out that is was a true story. I'm glad I was going to watch a repeat of that awful movie, "Deadly Friends" or I would have never seen this. As far as the death penalty if he was in the States, I guess it depends on which state he was in. Texas? He's a goner.

Nancy Eaton, a department store heiress, was murdered by what should have been one of her best friends. This very excellent film dramatizes the events that led up to her brutal murder. Her murderer should have been taken more seriously by the various medical establishments, and he was not. It goes to show how a dangerously sick person was mishandled by both the medical community and (most importantly) his parents. Alice Krige is wonderful as Nancy's mother, but Brendan Fletcher is the real star here as Andrew, poor Nancy's murderer. Fletcher is an up-and-coming actor in Canada that I hope will be given more leading roles, because quite brutally he is the real deal. He can inject terror and cause us to feel sympathy for his character at the same time. I just wish the guy would be given a movie with some sort of happy ending for his character, 'cause he usually gets killed or does something horribly tragic. No matter here: he's terrific. This film also shows that capital punishment isn't the only solution: I'm almost certain that if these events happened in the U.S. poor Andrew would most certainly be on death row somewhere. Please see this movie: its making its rounds on the Oxygen network which is the place I saw it.

I too saw this movie by accident while I was waiting for a computer program to load...was hooked 5 minutes into and ended staying up until 3am watching it. Being Canadian I felt a little closer to it as I vaguely remember it but grew up with the name EATON.

I only wish I could watch it again and see the beginning that I didn't get to concentrate on.

I found it to be dark and disturbing with a certain innocence....if that makes any sense.

The acting ranged from fair to very good with Andrew, Nancy and Nancy's mother acting very well.

23 year old Nancy Eaton was a member of the prominent Eaton family, most famous for Timothy Eaton - the 19th century merchant who founded the Eaton's Department store chain that dominated Canadian retail for a century. In 1985 she was raped and murdered by a friend - Andrew Leyshon-Hughes, the son of another prominent Canadian family who had become like a little brother to Nancy. The movie depicts the lives of both - as Nancy starts to claim some independence after the break up of her parent's marriage when she was a child and as Andrew descends farther and farther into mental illness. The version of the movie I saw was called "Deadly Friends." I think that's a more appropriate title than "The Death And Life of Nancy eaton," because the story was as much if not more about Leyshon-Hughes than it was about Nancy. Andrew was essentially a psychopath, often out of control and violent even toward his own parents, who became afraid of him and kicked him out. Nancy became one of the few people who didn't shut him out. Doctors disagreed about Andrew's diagnosis and about how he should be treated. He spent periods of time in various institutions - all to no avail, and always, finally, coming back to Nancy, his only lifeline. This was a very interesting look at mental illness and how the system can fail, and it also offered a glimpse of life inside two prominent families, so there was a little bit of a voyeuristic tinge to this.

Nancy's rape and murder was very violent and very bloody. She was stabbed 21 times by Andrew before he raped her and left her to die, and to the credit of those who made the movie none of this was graphically depicted. The movie really was more about Andrew's illness than Andrew's crime. The last scenes of the movie were powerful. In almost a dream sequence Andrew finally confronts what he did to Nancy, and there's also a bit of the story of Nancy's mother and how she tried to cope with her daughter's death. I thought the performances throughout this movie were quite good and believable - especially from Brendan Fletcher as the troubled Andrew . I was a little baffled when the movie on occasion used some very primitive animation as background - especially during scenes that depicted the Eaton and Leyshon-Hughes families spending time at neighbouring summer homes in the Muskoka Region - and I wasn't really sure what wa sbeing accomplished with that device or what the point of it was.

But that's a relatively minor quibble. Overall, this was a very good movie - probably one of the better made for TV Canadian movies I've come across - and there's not a great deal in it that could be criticized. (8/10)

I think that more movies should be made like this. There are a lot of people out there that have problems and they don't know it or they know it but don't get help. and something bad happens and nothing gets done about it except a slap on the hand because they are mental ill. this movie really hit home for me, but in my case in turned out for the good instead of the bad which could of happened if i did not get out of the relationship. In Nancy's case she was just trying to be a good friend trying to help him and it turned out for the worse because he could not deal with the fact that she did feel the sane way about him as he felt for her. and that lead him to kill her. it could of been a different story if he would of got help.