Very disappointing...

Sick Product of a Sick System

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

"Betsy Frieze" (Heather Locklear) is a young executive-in-training who finally wins a very coveted promotion within her corporation. When she gets to her new office she finds a new executive assistant named "Norma" (Linda Purl) who has replaced the previous secretary who mysteriously vanished. However, things aren't going as smoothly as Betsy had thought they would because her constant work at the office eventually leads to a breakup with her boyfriend "Victor" (James Acheson). She also has a boss named "Charles Stella" (Edward Albert) who is furious that Betsy won't sleep with him. And then things get really bad. At any rate, rather than disclose any more of the film and risk ruining it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this was a pretty good made-for-television movie. Of course, being that it was made for a television audience it doesn't have any nudity or graphic violence that might accompany a film with this specific subject matter. But Heather Locklear and Linda Purl both put on fine performances in any case. Both of them also look quite attractive too. All things considered then I rate this movie as slightly above average.

Plain-and simple: this is a made-for-TV ripoff of the film, "Single White Female." It has a few things going for it that SWF didn't have, but overall but is a cheesy chick flick that would only play on something like the Lifetime Network.What it has going for it are two beautiful women in Heather Locklear and Linda Purl (of the early days of TV's "Matlock"). That, and the fact that the whole family could watch this as there is no profanity or nudity, which you certainly can't say of SWF. Nonetheless, this "version," if you will, lacks suspense and the element of danger, concentrating more on romance and women is the business world. Yawn.

Heather Locklear and Linda Purl star in this interesting, suspenseful and stylish film about betrayal and extreme competition. I watched this on TV and found it was an above average made-for-television movie that held my interest till the very end of it. Locklear's character may have been miscast, yet she still plays her part to perfection. And Purl is amazing as the psycho secretary that plagues Locklear's character.Overall, I'd give this 3.5/5 stars. Good viewing, but just needs a little plot-fixing. I love the end sequence with the crystal paperweight. I actually found it creepy for some reason.

Norma Suffield (Linda Purl) is the personal assistant to Betsy Freize (Heather Locklear), the `first female executive in the history of the Orpheus Capital Corporation'. However Norma appears to have killed Holly Anthony who was to be Betsy's assistant, since Norma is desperate to be in the company's executive program, though it is said she `has the right attitude but not the right stuff'. She forms a fixation on Betsy, copying her wardrobe, her hairstyle, dating her boyfriend Victor Keaton (James Acheson) who of course thinks Betsy works too much, and even using Betsy's toothbrush (ick!). Although lit deliberately unflatteringly, Purl adds some odd touches to Norma - at one point imitating Locklear's intonation and vanity - and demonstrating schizophrenic behavior, without any awareness. When Victor tells her `I think I need a little bit of space' Purl's `What?' is a laugh of derision and disbelief. Locklear's emotional breakdowns reveal the lack of depth she has compared to Purl's displays of anger, notably when she snuffs out large candles with her hands. The teleplay by Dan Gurskis and Brian Ross makes Betsy unintentionally patronising, by having her include the commas and full stops in her dictated letters. Orpheus is a company who stoops to employ the sleazy smirking Charles Stellar (Edward Albert) who tells Betsy `If you want to survive here without your pantyhose down, you better pull ‘em up'. The dialogue ranges from oblique with Detective Gordon (Gary Bisig) investigating Holly's murder `Right now I don't think anything. That just means I have to think everything', to witty when Gordon asks Betsy `The competition for upward mobility is fairly cutthroat, isn't it' and she replies `Yes, but not literally'. Director Arthur Allan Seidelman seems to have his own kind of fixation - closeups of shoes, the kind that female corporate players wear that accompany short skirts and long legs. However he he does have a talent for cross-cutting between two different emotional states. If the slow motion he uses for Norma's knifing someone seems like a means of covering up Purl's inability to perform the act convincingly, and the titled camera-work to tell us Norma is irrevocably unbalanced by the climax a little too obvious, there is an amusing edit from the discovery of the dead Holly in the stationary cupboard by Betsy to Norma in bed with Victor.