I originally meant to write about the 1985 creature feature Ghoulies, which answered the question on America’s lips at the time: “what if Gremlins looked like garbage?” and serves as the screen debut for Mariska Hargitay. It’s terrible, a “horror-comedy” that instead means “cheap looking and irritating”. Then life interceded in a manner I thought not possible, which compelled me to delay Ghoulies in favor of something more current, so to speak. The leaked tape and the accusations against Stephen Collins gives me an opportunity to discuss a very important subset of monsters: real monsters. Diddlers are the worst monsters of all, because they’re figures of revulsion. No one romanticizes Gary Glitter for a reason. Take the difference between Robert Englund’s Freddy and Jackie Earl Haley’s Freddy for instance. The former killed children, had a lot of wild one-liners, we embraced him. He had his own CD, a Saturday morning kids show, action figures, and he received a sizable amount of votes in the 1992 election under the stage name “Ross Perot”. Englund will be buried in a sweater, the hat and his little claw hand. Jackie Earle Haley’s version molested children and in the dream realm went about killing them while making unsettling, disgusting sexualized comments. I was done when he made Rooney Mara wear her childhood clothes. People hated the movie and there’s yet to be a sequel to that iteration of the franchise. America collectively stood up and rejected turning child molestation into kitsch. I’m going somewhere with this. Stephen Collins, before these allegations, the most I knew of him was he wrote a couple of erotic thrillers and starred in a schlocky NBC TV movie that unfortunately gains resonance now. Oh, if only people paid attention to NBC alarmism instead of reducing everything to Seinfeld references! Maybe someone could’ve stopped him, just like how if just one person picked up Candid Camera: The Art of Photographing Boys by Jeffrey Jones the “unpleasantness” wouldn’t come out of nowhere. The Babysitter’s Seduction: be prepared to feel gross.

This looks like a fake Seinfeld movie poster.

20 year old Keri Russell plays 18 year old Michelle, a babysitter for some rich white people. Their occupation? Being white. Their passion? Being white. A little after the beginning, the wife is found dead and white, seemingly of self-inflicted gunshot to the temple, the whitest of entry points for suicide. With the wife out of the way, though, there’s opportunity for Stephen Collins to upgrade to Felicity. At this point the major unrealistic element is Keri Russell is a bit old for him. Like, she has pubic hair and everything. Nevertheless, she becomes the caretaker of the children whose names I don’t remember whose names the film doesn’t give a shit about and grows closer with Stephen Collins in his time of mourning his age appropriate wife. A major problem with The Babysitter’s Seduction is the passivity of Michelle; for the most part, she lets things happen to her, and accepts when her actions are rejected. For instance, she tries to quit about 35 minutes in, to which Collins responds “as for quitting, I won’t allow it”. Well, that’s settled! If the employer refuses your quitting, you’ve just gotta keep on. It’s not unexpected things turn sexual considering their first interaction is him asking her if she’s a senior and the second is the cheesy “my father is Mr. _____, call me Bill”. “Hey, you’re 18, right? If I ask if you’re underage and you are you have to say it!” I’m not blaming the victim per se, but she shouldn’t be this goddamn oblivious.

EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

I like how The Babysitter’s Seduction tries to be a real person movie and doesn’t succeed. Dimensional supporting characters indicate the main characters exist in a fully realized world. Despite having only a couple of scenes to them, Videodrome characters like Barry Convex and Bianca O’Blivion are much more sketched in terms of emotions and perspectives than anybody in this pile of shit. I can’t determine who anybody is, why they are what they are, and if any of them turned out to be a Martian dildo monster machine I’d not be bemused. Collins’ and Felicity’s relationship deepens, from makeout in the closet of all of the dead wife’s things to sleeping together. Michelle just goes with it, no matter what happens. It’s less a scandalous, creepy love affair and more Keri Russell giving up on being a student of High School State University through passivity and indifference. Don’t get me wrong: it’s still creepy. There is a moment where Stephen Collins, who’s made little girls touch his penis, caresses parts of Keri Russell’s boob NBC allows to air. The Babysitter’s Seduction is very open that they’re fucking. We don’t really know what the kids think of the situation, because they’re talked about more than seen and don’t figure into the plot at all. Of course, you’d have to be a real Stephen Collins to want children in your smut.

NO STOP TRYING TO AGE KERI RUSSELL DOWN

There’s no ambiguity at play, because The Babysitter’s Seduction regards ambiguity the same way Stalin regarded Ukraine’s concerns. It becomes clear that Stephen Collins killed his wife and staged it as a suicide. It helps that these dumbass Florida cops are the predecessors of the Keystone Light drinkers who gave George Zimmerman a pass before the liberal media got pissed off. Tobin Bell (movie monster, real-life more than adequate tipper) is a personal friend of Collins, so when he’s fed information that Michelle’s stealing dead wife’s clothing and jewelry he takes it at face value and doesn’t realize it’s Stephen Collins setting up a shoddy alternate theory for the crime. The other, Clair Huxtable, is marginally more effective at her job, but the cops remain well behind the plot. At a run time of around 91 minutes, you’d be surprised by how little plot this has. So it becomes apparent Collins is terrible at his job of covering up a murder, when the extramarital affair his wife was having walks into the precinct/beach house. Everyone’s inept at everything, leading to scenes of the affair guy trying to 1996 hack Collins’ computer under the ruse of interviewing for the caretaker position. When Stephen Collins kills the guy, you’re not shocked by the brutality (we know he’s dead because there’s ketchup jizzed on a flashlight), you’re shocked the bullet didn’t ricochet and activate a mousetrap hung from the ceiling, causing some hilarious happenstance accompanied by sound effects. I will say Collins’ line “she was high maintenance, look at you, you’re strictly chump change” is pretty great. Remind me to use that when I’m about to kill my dead wife who I killed’s lover, okay?

The wife’s lover has the same stupid face as Governor Scott Walker. Ugh… NO, RONNIE! YOU CAN’T DERAIL THE ARTICLE TO COMPLAIN ABOUT THAT DIPSHIT! ANOTHER TIME, SON

Stephen Collins’ plan is two-fold: kill anyone who could claim the dead wife wanted to leave him and indicate to the cops that Keri Russell is a viable suspect in dead wife who is dead’s death. It amounts to him telling Tobin Bell Keri Russell started wearing dead wife’s clothes and stealing her jewelry, which Tobin Bell believes wholeheartedly. He’s got sort of a one-sided homo vibe for Stephen Collins. Given how freely the cops give up information they gleaned from a witness to other witnesses, Collins should know spreading lies will fuck him over almost immediately. The thing I like the most about The Babysitter’s Seduction is how it fails to comprehend the ramifications of an 18 year old high schooler fucking a 40something titan of industry and not really hiding it. Like, Michelle’s one friend’s idea of admonishment is telling her to “stop expecting me and everybody else to get excited about it”. Fine, have your creepy relationship, but we’re not throwing you a goddamn party! Her mom returns a piece of jewelry that she judges is much too expensive and possibly indicative of an unhealthy relationship between her daughter and a man whose wife died under mysterious circumstances, but that’s pretty much it. It’s like this began as an anti-smoking PSA TV movie, then the plot changed but the reactions to Michelle’s behavior didn’t.

Stephen Collins is a magnate in the babyhat business, which should’ve been the first hint something was askew.

In what I like to call “undoing by car phone”, Michelle determines the thuddingly obvious. Stephen Collins was only using her as jail cover, and when that became untenable he’s gonna have to kill her and frame her. Think of it as a reverse Swimfan, which is fitting because one of the two things we learn about Michelle over the course of the film that she’s a swimmer. The direction on The Babysitter’s Seduction will fucking let you know when important information is being imparted, to the point that I was surprised there wasn’t a flashback to when she said she is a swimmer 70 minutes ago. So of course she escapes Stephen Collins by jumping off a roof into the pool! Finally, those PSAT swimming drills come in handy. Much like in real life, Collins makes for a convincing villain. Michelle asks “Why are you doing this to me?” and he chillingly responds “why not?”. I’d say he’s the better person in this movie, because he sexes someone who’s legal and does so for the sole purpose of diverting police suspicions. In reality, he molests kids for the love of the game. Remember that bit on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where Frank theorizes his character might be banging dudes who are babies? 100% accurate. Jesus. In another bit of Chekhov’s Bad Plotting, Keri Russell repeats a trick seen earlier in which she impersonates a dead body in a pool. It gives her just enough time to bash up Stephen Collins and leave him too weak to go roasting some pigs. That’s where the film ends, with him alive but in police custody, setting up a The Babysitter’s Seduction 2: Revenge of the Fallen that is sadly unlikely to come to pass.

A foreshadowing of Jigsaw developing lung cancer before the Saw movies. Also, Tobin Bell looks like Christopher Walken partially melted in the sun.

Owing to its 1996 NBC TV movie status, it’s not as disgusting and “erotic” as Poison Ivy or any of the other films in the spate of 90s films about older men banging teenagers while professing a feminist message or themes. It’s still fucking uncomfortable to watch, but its feminist bonafides are questionable despite being written by two women who never had any other credits on IMDB. Any message the movie contains is muddled and incomprehensible. Don’t babysit? If you do babysit, make sure it’s not a widower who gives you a car he just gave to his wife as a birthday gift before she killed herself? Don’t, aka look at all available options that disrupt your status quo, for better or worse, and don’t do them? (This is the lesson implicit in 79% of all female-focused stories.) Poorly acted and with a couple backlot sets, The Babysitter’s Seduction is worth a look mostly because it’s adorable to see the incapable try to make what they think is a real person movie for real people. People more interested in “quality” will be better off watching Videodrome. I don’t care if you’ve seen it before. SEE IT AGAIN.