Hard Evidence (1994)

 

Director: Jan Egleson

Screenplay: Richard Rashke

Cast: Kate Jackson as Sandra Clayton; John Shea as Tommy Marchant; Terry O'Quinn as Wiley; Beth Broderick as Melissa Brewer; Jennifer Guthrie as Beth Tyler; Rand Courtney as Shane Clayton; Megan Gallacher as Shannon; Gustave Johnson as Agent Curtis; Dean Stockwell as Commissioner Sam Caldwell

Ephemeral Waves

 

There is an entire world of made-for-TV cinema, including true crime dramas and melodramas, and this is my tentative toe dip into that out of curiosity. They are something many are probably aware of, but who talks of them? Baring infamous or acclaimed examples, they are something to consider as more people and distributors look back at them with interest, finding the ones of virtue even if during the DVD area, a film like Hard Evidence were being released in the United Kingdom. The American Genre Film Archive (AGFA) toe dipped into this area too, specifically with their licensing of films owned by Multicon, allowing theatrical screenings in the United States to be booked for a film like Death of a Cheerleader (1994)¹, a film based on the real-life murder of Kirsten Costas. Hard Evidence, originally called Justice in a Small Town, would never become a cult film in truth. Starting off explaining itself as based on a real tale, but with the names changed, this is a tale set in Georgia involving corruption in their Labour Department, one which will combine crime, romance, thriller and the struggles of being a single mother together into one film. Whilst sadly not in the film as much as one would hope for, Dean Stockwell is the corrupt commissioner Sam Caldwell, which is great casting.

More surprising is Beth Broderick, who I remember as the wisest of the aunts from Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996-2002), a Melissa Joan Hart sitcom for young teens I used to watch as a kid. There are many potential surprises with this area of cinema, such as surprise appearances from actors outside their usual territory, and whilst Hard Evidence did not live up to what one would hope, the one image I will have is this figure from childhood nostalgia playing a seductive Southern Belle, one who in the office is the figure who helps acquire new female employees for to send to parties and for men to have sex with like a brothel Madame. That was a surprise.

Not a lot can be further elaborated on Hard Evidence, as this is one of those story driven films which are solidly made, but honestly do not stick out in anything. It is fascinating to watch in terms of how, reflecting back, a film tackling political corruption in the 2010s onwards would have people on multiple sides of the political spectrum arguing for it, toeither praise it for its bravery or challenge it for being liberal propaganda, whilst there is a TV film from the nineties here which has its entire set in this subject. It does not even wait to get to this point, set up with single mother Sandra Clayton, played by Kate Jackson, immediately starting work as a secretary where everything is openly rotten. Her immediate boss if a slime ball that has new female staff hired by Melissa Brewer, played by Broderick, just to blackmail into sexual favours to keep their jobs, forces staff to also pay for a new car for Stockwell's birthday, and is even involving in drug smuggling. This film does emphasise a paradox with many media - lifestyle magazines, TV movies - which do not explicitly tackle adult subjects onscreen but still are obsessed with true crime, corruption, or subjects like domestic violence and murder, a vicarious nature to this work even if moralising which this film does admittedly get into when it becomes more genre in its plotting with supposed real life events. There is one scene, I would suspect was not in the TV broadcast, in Hard Evidence which is done entirely seriously, and we will get to, which is incredible strong whilst being tastefully done, but the same applies here. It eventually becomes quaint, in spite of itself, ending on a wedding with a group photo and charming music over the screen as if this had been a melodrama and only that.

That scene, of a prelude to a female employee being raped by a corrupt upper class man she is forced to be with, involving nudity, is a surprise, as it is very explicit in content and context, the catalyst for Sandra to start digging up dirt on her bosses with Tommy Marchant (John Shea), a male member of staff fully involved with the shadier side but sick of it, falling for Sandra at the same time he wants too to whistle blow the corruption.

The film onwards is a pot boiler which is ultimately just average in the sense that it is interesting to watch, but after the experience was ultimately passing time, not feeling the weight of the material. Scored to a surprising southern rock score, this juggles a lot in hindsight, which makes the okay nature actually detraction. Romance is there with the leads, as they gather evidence and both, he more so, are threatened by being found out. There is domestic drama as her teenage son hates his mother being out for work, then eventually learns of her goal to bring down Stockwell and supporting her when the tension and danger grows. And there is thriller in how, when a FBI employee appears, mistaken for an assassin, eventually the lead pair has ominous threats over the phone and trying wire tapping to deal with. This is a lot to work with, not just for entertainment but just a subject, but it skims past it all in the end.

That this is even about political corruption this casually depicted is odd nowadays decades later to revisit. No one bats an eye with a film like this having came out once ago, set in the South, suggesting political corruption at any level, whether it is a good film or not. Probably the one thing to say of this film is that its images of political corrupt are neutered as merely corrupt figures, without addressing the cause of such figures existentially, something which jars when discussing these subjects, especially sexual harassment and violence in real cases of corrupt male figures, in real life. That is likely the reason this film exists and probably no one bats an eye to it. This film still exists in a wholesome moralisation in the end, in spite of the one uncomfortable sequence which shocks in actually showing sexual violence, a character as much allowed to exist herself without the ramifications fully depicted and she, in truth, being fully fleshed out as a human being who can even overcome such a horrible event. Dramatically this is dry and merely okay, one which does not stand out. Instead, this the curious film to witness off the beaten path, effectively of the mainstream even if most have never even heard of it, one whose inertness in itself causes one to ponder like this.

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1) For AGFA, it is definitely in mind to the film Death of a Cheerleader being sold as a cult film, with the description, in their theatrical film catalog, of it being "a mean-girl melodrama with campy charm".