TYG in her teen years was a big fan of V.C. Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic novel and its sequels. Recently she bought a four-film set of the Lifetime adaptations and we watched the first film for a date.
In FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC (2014), Heather Graham plays Corrine Dollanger, a young mom in the 1950s, happy with her four kids, her successful white-collar husband and their comfortable suburban lifestyle … and then her husband dies. As Corrine explains to her kids, the Dollangers were living way beyond their means; now the only financial hope is to move across country with the kids to the creepy Southern Gothic mansion Corrine once called home.
This proves a bad idea. Corrine’s plan is to win back her father’s love, despite the disapproval of monstrous mom Ellen Burstyn; trouble is, the Dollanger parents were actually committing incest (niece/uncle — though the age difference was slight) — and Corrine will have zero chance of getting written back into the will if her father learns they had kids. The kids are locked up in the attic, only for a little while — and two years later they’re still there. I’ve got to admit this brew was better than I expected; while I’ve no great urge to read the book, I can see why it became a hit (I haven’t even mentioned the older children ending up incestuous). “Take off your blouse and show your children what I did when you disobeyed.”
PETALS IN THE WIND (2014) is much less Gothic and much less interesting. The three surviving Dollanger children, having escaped confinement, now cope with love, school bullying, abusive boyfriends and career aspirations while Mom and Grandmom finally have it out with each other. The main distinction in this dysfunctional family drama is iZOMBIE’s Rose McIvery stepping into the older sister’s role. “I much prefer sound effects.”
I caught the remaining two movies, IF THERE BE THORNS and SEEDS OF YESTERDAY (both 2015) while TYG watched them, but they were just a talking lamp. The two older kids now have a family of their own but when Corinne shows up, the younger son learns the truth about his roots … by and large, these were both closer to soap opera and a lot less distinctive.
PREDATOR: Killer of Killers (2025) is an animated film following Prey in setting its stories in the past. Predators take on a Viking woman and her son, two feuding samurai brothers and a Latino pilot in WW II, then the protagonists of all three segments get thawed out of suspended animation for an arena battle on the Predator homeworld. It’s fun, but nowhere near as cool as Prey was. “The leaves on a tree grow side by side — but when they fall, they fall alone.”
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