Census Bloodbath: Sex Work-Life Balance

Year:
1984
Director:
Peter H. Hunt
Cast:
Barbara Carrera, Kim Cattrall, Debby Boone
Run Time:
1 hour 34 minutes

Plot: Sins of the Past follows a group of former sex workers who were part of a call girl cooperative that broke up when one of their number, Ellen Easton (Megan Gallagher), was murdered. Now it's 15 years later, none of them have aged a day, and they've settled into new, respectable lives. One by one, the girls are sent newspaper clippings about Ellen's death, then they in turn are killed. They think the killer is Ellen's abusive father, Ralph (Gene Dynarski), but in order to get to the bottom of the crime and keep their former lives secret (they almost all have high-stakes reasons to want to keep it quiet), they reunite in LA to try and track down the killer themselves.

The women in question are Terry Halloran (Barbara Carrera, fresh off her stint as a Bond girl in 1983's Never Say Never Again), their former leader who is now hilariously working at a temp agency providing young girls with very different types of jobs - she's also in the middle of a vicious custody battle; Paula Bennett (the Kim Cattrall, two years before Big Trouble in Little China, three years before Mannequin, and 14 years before Sex and the City), a pragmatic woman who got her medical license and is now fighting to turn her temporary job as the head of pediatrics into a permanent position; Clarissa Hope (Debby "Daughter of Pat" Boone), who has found God and now performs songs to support televangelist Rev. Donald Randolph (John Anderson, who played the used car dealer in Psycho); Maureen Warren (Tracy Reed), who is a wife and mother living in domestic bliss; and Patrice Cantwell (Kirstie Alley, whose closet is too full of skeletons for us to consider this movie one of them - also of the same year's Blind Date), a Hollywood actress who has fallen on hard times.

As Terry tries to rally the girls, she becomes the prime suspect and eventual love interest of Lieutenant Malovich (General Hospital mainstay Anthony Geary), who is gunning for a promotion and will do anything to figure out why bodies keep piling up whenever Terry's around. Oh, and he doesn't matter at all, but Paula has a horny coworker played by Matthew Faison, who is one of the corporate paintballers who die via triple decapitation in Jason Lives!

Analysis: TV movie slashers get a bad rap. Obviously, the idea of a genre whose foundational tenets are boobs and blood being subject to network censorship is a suspicious one. And sure, some of them are barrel-scraping piles of pond scum like Hotline or . However, there are quite a few exquisite little TV movie gems scattered throughout slasher history, like Fantasies or Dark Night of the Scarecrow. So I didn't walk into Sins of the Past feeling biased against the format, and I was well rewarded for my faith.

Of course it's not particularly good as a slasher. It has the bloodless, mostly offscreen deaths that I've come to expect from this sub-subgenre, and it doesn't even have the decency to imply that any of them were committed with a sharp weapon. However, just like Fantasies before it, it makes up for its deficits as a slasher by leaning in on being a soapy, Lifetime-y melodrama about women.

The scenes where the women alternately work together and at cross-purposes gives them all an exciting amount of agency as they're propelled through some extreme emotional twists and turns. Plus, the slasher mystery at the center of it is deliciously cozy - more about lounging on couches while discussing the clues rather than gumshoing their way around the problem.

The movie even ages kinda OK in its depiction of sex work. It mostly lands on "it's OK that you did it, because you regret it and you're not doing it anymore," which is kind of a cop-out, but it does allow these sex workers to be complete human beings with lives and flaws and strengths, respecting them even though they committed those sinful, wicked acts in their pasts. There's even a lovely scene where one of the women reveals her past with her current partner, whose immediate instinct is to shun her, but who ultimately comes to accept it.

And the cast is quite good, for the most part. Kirstie Alley is really quite terrific as an amoral diva (no comment), and Tracy Reed delivers a phenomenal monologue in the final third. Unfortunately, Barbara Carrera is not up to their standard. The Nicaraguan-American actress is a Gal Gadotian level of unprepared to deliver lines in English. She wends her way around her dialogue with a sense of blind panic that results in a completely vacant character, leaving a gaping void at the center of the movie.

[SPOILER ALERT, through the end of the review]

And we must talk about Kim Cattrall, of course. Although she does deliver a perfectly Samantha-esque line comparing marriage to sex work, she's confident and competent here rather than truly marvelous, which is a shame considering the fact that it's revealed that her character contributed two kills to the body count. Her final scene is solid, but it fails to deliver the Ghostface campiness that it could have had.

That said, as a whole, the third act (when everyone converges on one of the reverend's telecasts, which Clarissa refuses to back out of in spite of the fact that the killer is clearly planning to murder her there) is actually deliciously tense. Director Peter H. Hunt, who mostly takes a backseat elsewhere, finally stirs to life as he guides us through all the different pieces being set on the board.

Although I'm not saying the movie has nothing to offer artistically. There's exactly one good shot in the movie, of a slash of light revealing Maureen's eyes as she explores a dark Mission. 

Speaking of, there are a lot of real-life Southern California locations being used, which gives the whole thing a lived-in realism. All in all, in spite of Barbara Carrera's alarming limitations, Sins of the Past is a real nice warm bath of a movie, which is the highest-possible tier that a TV movie slasher could hope to reach.

Killer: Ralph Easton (Gene Dynarski) & (gasp) Paula Bennett (Kim Cattrall)

Final Girl: Terry Halloran (Barbara Carrera)

Best Kill: Oooh baby, watching the dummy playing Kim Cattrall falling from the catwalk at the end is why television exists!

Sign of the Times: The article that the girls are being sent has the hilarious headline "Dad Kills Prostie Daughter."

Scariest Moment: Terry is followed by an unknown man after Patrice's funeral.

Weirdest Moment: Ralph Easton takes aim to kill Clarissa with a rifle, but realizes he forgot to put his glasses on.

Champion Dialogue: “A meat cutter is drop-kicking pot roasts around the kitchen and demanding a tryout with The Raiders."

Body Count: 5; not including Amy (Mallie Jackson), whose offscreen death occurs during the time jump.

1. Ellen is killed offscreen.
2. Diane (Kristen Meadows) is struck by a car.
3. Patrice is killed offscreen.
4. Ralph Easton is shot by Lt. Malovich.
5. Paula falls from a great height.

TL;DR: Sins of the Past is charming TV movie slasher that blends women's picture melodrama with a cozy mystery vibe.

Rating: 7/10