Blind Faith

When I was in ninth grade (1997-98), my spanish teacher told us about an incident in Bass River, New Jersey, in which a man set up the murder of his wife while en route to their home in Toms River, NJ after visiting Atlantic City. The man was having an affair with the Assistant Principal of a high school, and he arranged with her to make the killing of his wife possible. Now, I'll tell you how local this story really is. My former high school (graduated in 2001), Pinelands Regional High School, was where this principal worked. In 1984, she was arrested on school grounds for the killing of her lover's wife. Bass River Twp. (Burlington Co. border)is less than a mile from my house (southwest Ocean Co.), and I know the campground where she was killed (Bass River State Park). My Spanish teacher witnessed this woman getting arrested at my old school. The thing is, they changed the name of the school to protect it.

I just saw this movie on Sunday, and I realized how eerily local it was. The family lives in an affluent section of Toms River (I think North TR is the most affluent), and Robert Marshall is accused of having a hand in killing his wife, Maria. The movie is about the aftermath, and what the three Marshall boys, Chris, Robbie, and John Marshall go through.

What really amazes me is that this film is as local as it gets. I live about 35-40 minutes from Toms River, but I was only 2 when this incident happened, and not living in the area (I moved to Ocean County in 1985). The fact that this was centered around a principal at my own school was unbelievable, and the fact that my teacher told the story is beyond words.

While this movie was a typical movie of the week, the acting was decent, and the story was played out well. This was a famous story at my school, and I'm glad I knew about it before I saw this. If you catch this on Lifetime, I highly recommend it, especially to south Jerseyans like me, as it is local, and everyone knows almost nothing happens in south Jersey.

Actually, I found this movie to be very good. Granted, it was long but on a snowy Saturday afternoon it was very entertaining. I say this because I think the acting was excellent. Robert Urich did a fantastic job as the self-centered father. The casting for all the characters was also very good It was intriguing how the whole story unfolded and kept me very interested. Also, I thought it was very important to show how the mother's death (and their father's possible involvement)effected the sons. It is one thing to deal with the death of your mother but to then have your father implicated in her death was done meticulously. The interaction among the three brothers was very interesting. I would definitely recommend this movie.

This is a well-acted and absorbing drama, with appealing and talented actors. The piano soundtrack by Laurence Rosenthal was absolutely beautiful -- poignant and evocative. Robert Urich was very good as the weak and self-absorbed husband, and everybody in the movie was watchable, really. To me, the most tragic thing about the aftermath of Maria Marshall's murder was that her sons couldn't even look back on happy memories for comfort. In one scene, the boys are watching some old home movies of their parents and themselves when they were just toddlers. Their mother is laughing and playing with them in the swimming pool, while the father is roughhousing with them and laughing into the camera. But these sweet scenes are fractured by the knowledge that the mother they loved so much was murdered by their father, and they can no longer watch them with a normal feeling of nostalgia, or look back in sentimental memory at their family life.

I have seen this TV movie twice - and even though it seemed a little dragged out - I thought that the three sons were wonderful - not just as the sons and their reactions to their father - but all of CD) whatever, and he starts mouthing the words, and then recalls being in a car with his (now dead) mother, and she joins in the song and they spend a special time together. I loved the song, but I do not know who sings it or who wrote it, and would like get it. It's "hook" is 'Its a long way home". Can anyone help me on this? It is by a group I think and is on an album, but I couldn't catch the name from the TV movie.

Thanks.

I'll admit, I haven't seen Blind Faith since it first aired on television 22 years ago and my memory of this 1990 movie is a little blurry. But it did impact me enough at age 15 so that to this day anytime I hear the song "Take the Long Way Home" I am reminded of a scene from the movie (still clear as day in my mind), where the 1979 Supertramp hit plays on the car radio while a bubbly Joanna Kerns drives one of her sons home. It's one of the sweetest scenes in the movie, which fans of Robert Ullrich, Ms. Kerns, true-crime stories, and New Jersey history should enjoy if they're in the mood for a vintage TV movie. The acting is top-notch, the characters likable and memorable, and the plot is intriguing (even gripping, given the fact that it's based on a true story). However, like most films of this genre—TV movies—it does require the right day and state of mind to fully appreciate and enjoy.