One of the most tragic things to have occurred in the realms of television nowadays comes with the loss of the TV movie. I know what you're probably thinking: "Are you nuts?! TV movies are horrible!" Generally speaking, that's true. When you pop a made-for-TV flick into your DVD player, there's a 99.9% chance that you've booked in for an evening of boredom: horrible acting, stagey camerawork, a plodding script, and fake-looking special effects. No wonder modern TV stations prefer to stick with sitcoms and reality shows. However, there is a .1% of TV flicks that defy all logic. Such movies don't quite measure up to the caliber of a feature film, of course: I mean, how good can your movie really end up being with such a small budget and all those TV executives breathing down your neck? If you're looking to burn an hour and a half, however, you could do a lot worse than checking out some of the better candidates. Here, we'll point out 10 made-for-TV gems that are absolutely worth your time. If we've left out any of your favorites, don't forget to tell us about them below...
10. The Wave (1981)
A solid story can make or break a movie. It doesn't matter how beautiful the film looks, how well it's acted, or how great the director is - if the story is flawed, the movie will fail. The opposite is also true; if a movie has a good story, we're willing to forgive sloppy filmmaking and acting. The latter is the case with The Wave. You might have seen this movie in school. I know I did; it's one of two "school movies" that I actually remember liking. The movie tells the true story of a classroom experiment gone wrong. Said experiment comes about when Ben Ross (Bruce Davison) tries to teach his high-school history class about the Nazi movement by forming a classroom Nazi party, which he calls The Wave.The Wave immediately becomes the most popular club in the school. Mr. Ross does nothing about it until other teachers start complaining. Ross decides to end The Wave through a melodramatic assembly that reveals The Wave's true leader. The acting is shoddy, you can see the ending coming from a mile away, and the film looks like it was directed by one of Mr. Ross's students, but the story is disturbing enough to make the film stay with you.
Alan Howell is a native of Southern California. He loves movies of any and all kinds, Hollywood, indie, and everywhere in between. He loves pizza, sitcoms, rock and pop music, surfing, baseball, reading, and girls (not necessarily in that order).
