TV Reviews : This Time the Lady Is the Psycho in ‘Personals’

So you saw “Sea of Love� but were a little disappointed that Ellen Barkin didn’t turn out to be a man-hatin’, pistol-packin’, foaming-at-the-mouth psycho lady from hell after all? In that case, the similarly themed “Personals,� a TV movie that debuted earlier this week and airs again Sunday at 7 p.m. on the USA Network, may better fulfill your expectations of what a woman in a thriller should be: It’s made clear from minute one that lovely, loony Jennifer O’Neill is indeed luring and picking off male victims through the classified ads.

Lest there be no mystery, O’Neill’s motivation for this homicidal spree does remain a little hazy--that is, until the final reel, when the scripters have her place a call to her psychiatrist’s answering machine, at which time she goes into a long, emotional monologue recalling the broken affair with a married man that let loose the bats in her belfry. That’s one way to handle exposition. (If only there had been answering machines in Shakespeare’s time--all those soliloquies wouldn’t have seemed so darned, you know, theatrical.)

O’Neill’s killing streak might go unabated had she not savagely knifed an undercover journalist who placed personal ads to write a story on loneliness. In lieu of much investigative interest from his paper or the police, his widow, Stephanie Zimbalist, turns sleuth; late in the teleplay, she finally goes to the trouble of looking up the ads he placed in order to take out a similar one. This leads to the amazingly illogical and twist-free climax in which Zimbalist ends up A Woman Alone, pursued by a knife-wielding, Terminator-like O’Neill.

The rules have been set down: If it’s starring Jennifer O’Neill, it’s probably a cheap Canadian production. O’Neill actually injects what spice this woefully humorless, by-the-numbers thriller has by occasionally donning a blond wig and push-up bra for that cheap, tawdry look Kathleen Turner had down in “Crimes of Passion.� She doesn’t do schizoid too well, however. Zimbalist virtually disappears into the bland Toronto scenery.

The two-hour time slot is as padded as the villain’s lingerie, and not with psychological subtext, either. Single white viewing audience seeks out.