A WRAP-UP OF THE REST OF THE WEEK’S NEW AND NOTEWORTHY FILMS
Perry Mason: The Case of the Desperate Deception (NBC, Sunday at 9 p.m.), a new TV movie, finds Mason (Raymond Burr) defending a Marine accused of killing a Nazi war criminal in Paris. Yvette Mimieux guest stars.
The 1980 Sphinx (KCOP, Monday at 8 p.m.) is a notable waste of time for Lesley-Anne Down, Frank Langella, John Gielgud and all others aboard. Its plot takes a young, distinguished Egyptologist (Down) to Cairo, where she falls in love with Langella, an Egyptian director of antiquities for UNESCO. Down behaves with more pluck than Nancy Drew, but when she plunges repeatedly into situations that would give a fully equipped SWAT team pause, credibility is truly belied.
Directed by John Berry, Sister, Sister (KCOP, Tuesday at 8 p.m., again on Saturday at 5 p.m.) is a 1979 TV movie written by Maya Angelou and starring Diahann Carroll, Rosalind Cash and Irene Cara as volatile siblings. Even though the drama is not Angelou at her best, the cast is uniformly superior and makes the film worth seeing.
The Karen Carpenter Story (CBS, Tuesday at 9 p.m.) is a surprisingly candid 1989 TV movie biography of the late pop star, who emerges as far more complex and enigmatic than her bland image ever suggested. Cynthia Gibb is superb as Karen, as is Louise Fletcher as her mother.
The 1981 Hard Country (KTLA, Friday at 8 p.m.) is “Urban Cowboy†minus pretensions and plus a feminist point of view. The result is a refreshing, modest entertainment, as raucous as it is thoughtful. Kim Basinger plays a directory assistance operator who begins to re-evaluate her life (with chain-link factory worker Jan-Michael Vincent) when she’s visited by her high school friend, now a successful country and western singer (Tanya Tucker).
William Wyler’s 1938 Jezebel (KTLA, Saturday at 8 p.m.) brought Bette Davis an Oscar as a bitchy Southern belle, a kind of compensation for not getting to play Scarlett OU Hara (because she refused to accept Errol Flynn as Rhett Butler); alas, Ernest Haller’s gleaming black-and-white images have been colorized. Written by David Newman and Robert Benton (RBonnie and Clydeâ€) and directed by Joseph Mankiewicz.
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