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Chicago Sun Times, 24 October 1986, Daniel Ruth
Easy Prey aptly describes anyone who'd watch it.
"Easy Prey", zero stars, Christopher wilder: Gerald McRaney, Tina Risico: Shawnee Smith. ABC Presents a made-for-TV movie, directed by Sandor Stern and written by John Carlen. Airs from 8 to 10pm Sunday. "Easy Prey" is a movie about a perverted, sadistic sexual deviate who abducts, tortures and rapes a trussed-up 16-year-old girl during a cross-country spree of killing young, attractive women.
ABC calls this entertainment. But there is a better term to describe this film that is unprintable in a newspaper. It's the kind of thing crowds at baseball games chant when upset by an umpire's ruling.
"Easy Prey," which will air from 8 to 10pm Sunday over [ABC], is an exploitive, titillating, base piece of slime that is more than just a moral embarrassment to ABC. It is a pox on the medium itself, a pathetic commentary on the low-lifes who inhabit network executives and trade on the fringes of society for the sake of ratings.
There is more integrity among the pimps of Times Square than the ABC executives who intend to inflict this barbaric film on the public.
Gerald McRaney stars (a loose term here) as Christopher Wilder, who actually went on a coast-to-coast spree of rape, torture and murder in April, 1984. Wilder, an Australian ne'er-do-well entrepreneur, race-car driver, photographer and killer, lured women in shopping malls to his car with promises of a modeling career, abducted them and then murdered his victims.
Wilder spared the life of one target, 16-year-old Tina Risico (played by Shawnee Smith). Wilder took Risico along on his rampage, repeatedly tying her up, raping her and torturing her. "Easy Prey" is the story of the Wilder-Risico relationship -- such as it was.
The film suggests that Risico managed to survive Wilder's dementia because she had been a rape victim earlier in life. Consequently, according to this version, when Wilder attacked her, she did not react as other victims and plead for her life. In meekly submitting to his brutality, according to the plot, she threw an emotional curve to her assailant, who thrived on the fear of his victims.
But this is not a study of a pathological killer, or the psychological gymnastics employed by his victim to survive a reign of terror. Instead, "Easy Prey" is two hours of crass exploitation, which defiles women while preying upon the sexual voyeurism of its audience.
It is also, like most similar films that describe themselves as "fact-based," inaccurate. "Fact-based" is a euphemism for "we don't have to stick to little details like the truth if it might get in the way of sexual titillation."
In reality, Risico was described by witnesses in the Wilder case a "chubby." Shawnee Smith looks as though she just stepped off the cover of Seventeen magazine. "Easy Prey" links Risico as an unwilling accomplice in one of Wilder's abductions, although some evidence suggests there may have been a second abduction in the case that is never alluded to in the film.
Wilder's eventual death in New Hampshire, after releasing Risico, involved a gun battle with two state highway patrolmen. In "Easy Prey," McRaney struggles with only one police officer. The film implies that Wilder's claims that he was a millionaire are false. In fact, he left behind a $1.8 million estate.
But, more importantly, "Easy Prey" is a film more appropriately confined to red-light district peep shows, rather than national television. It is a film without the merest socially redeeming value.
Last June, Bruce J. Sallan, then ABC's vice president for motion pictures for television and the man responsible for "Easy Prey," said the film was supposed to warn women not to get into cars with strangers. Not long afterward, Sallan departed ABC, so we can be thankful for small favors.
If ABC's intent was to warn women, the message could have been just as forcefully delivered through a series of public service messages, a news special or other avenues.
Instead, people like Christopher Wilder, Theodore Bundy and other psychopaths provide networks with the chance to peddle sexually violent, provocative and disturbing material for the sake of attracting eyeballs to the screen so products like soap and cars and beer can be sold.
Television is a medium of exploitation, manipulation and titillation. You'll never see a drama about the Greylord investigation, for example. Who cares about a television movie about a bunch of middle-aged morally-bankrupt judges usurping the judicial system when you can have Gerald McRaney slapping around, raping and tying up 16-year-old girls?
"Easy Prey" is vile television at its gutter-level worst.
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