Fine performances by Robert Urich and Gwyneth Paltrow highlight this fine 1993 film.Some may declare that the film eventually becomes uneven. It starts out with Urich, an unbelievable disciplinarian, with his 4 daughters. This quickly dissolves as 2 daughters marry rather beneath them. Urich is soon discovered having an affair with a woman, and he also has a propensity for taking out insurance policies on his sons-in-law. I don't have to say with this all leads to.This is the story of a dysfunctional family in crisis with the patriarch quite a devil. It just proves what desperate circumstances can lead a man to.

This was the first and only movie I had ever worked on as an extra, which is why I had to watch it. As a "newbie" I was unaware that extras weren't supposed to talk to the "Talent". I couldn't help it, and because the director asked me to do some stand-in work for setting up shots when Mr. Urich wasn't on set, I got to hang around and gab with Shelly Fabres and catch a little more of what goes into making a movie...It must've been 90*and felt like 100, in Atlanta that summer. It was overwhelming to watch how hard everyone worked on their trade, the seriousness and intensity, something very few outsiders get to experience. The movie review doesn't do the film justice as it is filled with unbelievable surprises and twists and was based on a true story about a very "sick" guy in Louisiana...Worth watching again!!!

The late Robert Urich might have become an actor of substance and quality (and, perhaps, a great dramatic resource) if he hadn't spent so much of his time on TV shows and in sub-standard TV movies. This quasi-camp melodrama, an adaptation of Carol Donahue and Shirley Hall's book "Deadly Relations: A True Story of Murder in a Suburban Family", wobbles unsteadily between fruity soap opera and suburban horror, with a laughable music score that flares up like Nino Rota's "Godfather Theme" whenever director Bill Condon needs the tension to escalate. Seems a well-to-do war vet and family man discovers the best way to make money is to take out insurance policies on certain family members and then collect the rewards after unfortunate fates befall them. The cast (which includes Shelley Fabares, Gwyneth Paltrow and Matthew Perry) try their best, but the tone of the movie is perpetually off, the narrative is confusing (with time racing along and secondary characters coming and going), and there's so little sympathy for the victims that when Paltrow finally decides to take her domineering papa to court and is shown a bloody photo of a murdered loved one, she hardly seems affected. The inter-relationships between Urich's four daughters doesn't satisfy either, and their conversations about whether or not their father is a murderer are so blasé that the concluding events are far from suspenseful. Urich passed away in real-life far too soon, yet these types of B-minus movies didn't leave him with much of an acting legacy; his central performance (sweating and stammering one minute and coolly unapologetic the next) is a colorful one but it makes no emotional sense--and neither does the film.

I haven't seen the movie, but decided to research it after spending the day and talking about it with my grandmother, Barbara Fagot Mathews. So whoever did "research" to find out if it is a true story... here's the newspaper article: http://www.geocities.com/murder_stories3/carol_donahue1.htmlBy the way, he was my grandmother's first cousin. She knew him very well as a child, but after a serious fight between Leonard his once inseparable cousin (her brother, my great uncle), they stopped talking to that side of the family.Apparently I have to have 10 lines to comment, so now I will babble. Was the movie any good? Maybe I'll try to get a copy of it.