Desperate for Love
Tags: murder

Plot synopsis:
Alex Cutler and Cliff Petrie are 17-year-old teens who have been close friends since they were young. Alex is the most popular guy in school, with a promising future, while Cliff is an introverted teen who has never had a girlfriend. Lily Becker, an attractive cheerleader who is very popular despite the fact that she is known for being promiscuous, has been dating Alex for a while and is planning to marry him after graduation. Alex's father, however, feels that he should go to university and points out to him that Lily comes from a different environment. Moreover, he and Lily's father, the town's notorious low life hunter, are sworn enemies. Always doing what his father tells him to, he breaks off his relationship with Lily, which shocks and upsets her.
Feeling depressed, she looks for comfort at Cliff, who she knows has a secret crush on her. Initially, Cliff does not respond to her flirtations, thinking that she might still love Alex. However, they soon find out that they have a lot in common. They both feel as if they are worth nothing and that they will never have a successful career. Lily confides in him that she is upset that she is often treated as trash and that men desire her, until she gives in. Knowing that he thinks very highly of her, Lily seduces Cliff and even plans on marrying him. When Alex finds out, he responds furiously, immediately ending his friendship with Cliff. He soon regrets having broken up with her and they soon reconcile. When Lily breaks the news to Cliff that she and Alex are a couple again, he is crushed.
One month later, Alex and Cliff befriend each other again. Alex promised Lily to elope with her, but in the end, he is too afraid to commit himself to her and she is eventually stood up. Crushed, she returns home in tears, which angers her father, who already wasn't fond of Alex. In a mad rage, he grabs his rifle and goes into the woods. Meanwhile, Alex and Cliff are hunting in the same woods as well. The next day, Alex is reported to be missing. Crushed, Lily again finds comfort with Cliff, who she thinks killed Alex out of love for her. Always wanting to be loved by someone, she feels attracted to him, rather than being angry at him. However, she soon gives him in to the police, with the claim that he murdered Alex. After Alex's funeral, Cliff is arrested by the police.
Two years later, the murder trial against Cliff is fully in progress. Lily claims that Cliff admitted to her that he killed Alex out of love for her. Cliff's attorney interrogates her, trying to prove that she is a promiscuous and untrustworthy girl. He claims that Cliff could not kill someone out of love for Lily, because, according to him, there was no love between them. In an emotional testimony, Lily admits that she was not in love with Cliff, but that he loved her very much. Cliff feels that he no longer can co-operate with the trial and is voluntarily found guilty for murdering Alex. He is sentenced to jail for eight years, but is released on parole after four years, in October 1988.

Review: $0.88 and worth every penny.
although i am not a big fan of either Christian Slater or Brian Bloom i found this movie as okay as one could say about any other made-for-TV movie.
there were too many times where i felt like i was left hanging, too much i had to add to the story to have it make sense and DID HE DO IT OR DID HE NOT?
if he loved Lily enough to go to jail for murder, did he love her enough to commit murder?????
i guess i and others asking the same question will never know.
i got this movie out of a $0.88 bin and it was worth every penny, if i had paid $0.99 then that would be a whole new story!!!!
it's a good movie to watch when you don't really feel like watching a movie, you don't want to concentrate on a story line, and you could even be happy calling it an early night and passing out on the couch.
i would recommend it to those with great patience and little opinion..
I stumbled onto this while channel surfing and after sampling a few minutes I didn't want to turn it off.
The all-too-familiar love triangle theme is played out with two best friends in high school, torn apart by sultry sexpot and fellow classmate Lily, who'll do anything (and any one) to get her out of this hick town.
She bounces back and forth between confident jock Alex and his shy pal Cliff, who's always there to pick up the pieces when Alex lets her down.
In spite of the strain Lily puts on their friendship the 2 boys manage to hang through it all - until Alex disappears after a hunting trip with Cliff.
When Alex's body is found the police pick up Cliff immediately, as the love triangle was no secret to anyone.
Before Cliff's arrest Lily had tried desperately to get him to confess, but to no avail.
While almost everything points to Cliff as the culprit, Lily's father should also have been under suspicion, for he had threatened Alex to keep him away from Lily and he's also no slouch with a rifle.As the shooting was never shown, everyone's in the dark when the murder trial begins, including the audience.
Lily's betrayal of gullible Cliff on the witness stand seams to be sealing his fate when he throws his hat in the ring for her yet again and decides to plead guilty to manslaughter to save Lily from further grueling cross-examination on the witness stand.
His gallantry earns him 8 years in prison and left me wondering what about the ballistics evidence?
The bullet(s) in Alex' body should have pointed to the culprit as the one who's rifle matched the bullets, but such trifles are never mentioned.
Thus we never find out for sure who killed Alex, but at least the producers were kind enough to show the terms of Cliff's sentence in the screen credits at the end.
And now that the movie's over, who killed Alex?
I'm still wondering.The actors are quite competent and here's a chance to see a very young Christian Slater before he became famous.
Tammy Lauren is fetching and believable as the poor "white trash" girl who knows what she's got and how to use it to bring the hormones of teen-aged boys to a boil.
As Cliff's attorney for the defense puts it, she thinks she's been spending all her time looking for "L-O-V-E," when the operative word should be "S-E-X." The movies's final scene shows Lily, looking depressed and leaning against the mill where she lured the boys for those "love" trysts.
Now she must face her own fate as a pariah, still stuck in this future-less town, knowing she's ruined lives and families.
Clearly she's serving out her own sentence, but one feels it isn't long or harsh enough..
Amazing performances.
I am not a very big watcher of the Lifetime network, but the other night I caught this movie on and was instantly hooked.
I was born in a town very similar to the one in which the characters are engulfed and I found the performances and direction to be frighteningly accurate.
I had never heard of this movie and I was so impressed that Christian Slater could give such a believable performance.
I moved to Los Angeles California after high school and now I live in Washington, D.C. I studied film and theatre so I lost my small southern town dialect, but movies that can truly capture the essence of the the lifestyle that these people must endure never fails to amaze me.
I do not see it very often is a film, but "Desperate for Love" accomplished it magnificently..
terrible print, horrible editing, acting pretty good, plot interesting.
Paid less than the price of a rental for the DVD, but it was clearly printed from a VHS tape in mediocre condition.
The editing was brutal, but I'm not sure that it was the tape's fault, I think the software used to master the DVD was crap.
The result is a very chopped (jarring) feeling ...
I felt like the last 10 seconds of every major segment was lost.Anyway ...
the acting is quite good in my opinion.
Christian Slater gives a good account of himself, but it's another dark performance, which is his specialty.
The girl emotes well, as does the mother.
All in all, I found it easy to get and stay in the story.The plot is pretty standard, but since it is based on true events, it would be kind of hard to criticize on that anyway.
I have to say that I enjoyed it.
It is certainly worth the low price being charged these days, especially if you like Christian Slater..
An emotional thriller..
Desperate for love is the emotional thriller that will force the viewer to question every loyalty they have ever had in life.
While the cover for this movie claims that Cliff Petrie was "desperate for love" I personally believe that the true desperation was held within Lily Becker.
Cliff Petrie gives us one simple example of pure, unadulterated love.
Meanwhile Lilly Becker clearly displays fear, depression, and anxiety along with a cunning and seductive deception..
If you watch this movie, you have to be desperate!!!.
Christian Slater is Number 10 on my list of favorite actors, so I bet you're anticipating a splendid review of this movie.
First of all, it's a TV movie--which I didn't know before watching it--and I'm not part of the "Lifetime Movie of the Week" crowd.
I hardly consider anything that goes direct to network television (this excludes movies that goes direct to premium cable stations) actual "movies."  So this was a supreme cheese-fest for me.
Why it grabbed a 5.2 rating, which is high for a movie of this sort, is beyond comprehension.
This is one of those movies you have to go rooting for in the 99-cent bin, and please realize there's a logical reasons why those movies are priced 99 cents!
And may I add, the girl who plays Slater's love interest--I think her name's Tammy Lauren--is NOT an attractive woman!
He'd HAVE to be desperate if he wants to get with that girl.My advice to all those who appraise Christian Slater--DON'T GET SUCKED IN!!!
Use that 99 cents you're about to spend on this movie to add to the ten or so bucks you're about to spend on "Very Bad Things" or "Untamed Heart." 
Not Christian's best work.My score:  1 (out of 10).
An interesting Plot.
Okay, so the movie wasn't bad.
It had an interesting plot and the actors shined.
Christian Slater was excellent (was there ever a doubt?
The man is a genius) and so was the rest of the characters.
There was only one hole in the whole movie- the ending.
It was just too "cliff hanger-ish"  Sure, there was a definite outcome, but it didn't satisfy the viewer.
It is not an awful movie (not like that sad Notting Hill) but it was no Double Jeopardy either.
On a scale from 1-10 I would give it a 6.
I don't think it would be a COMPLETE waste of time to see it..
Getting Out of That Backwater.
Christian Slater and Brian Bloom are a couple of best southern high school buds.
But cheerleader Tammy Lauren gets between the two of them as if background getting between wouldn't be enough.Brian's the high school rich kid who's the star football player and of course gets all the girls in high school.
Christian is the kid from the wrong side of the tracks, he's the kind who will join the army just to get out of the place he is.
In fact if it wasn't for Tammy deciding that marriage was the way to get out of that backwater town they all come from, it's probably what Slater would have done.Brian goes missing and later Christian's arrested for the crime.
Both of these two are a couple of New York metropolitan area kids and they sound it.
Even actual location shooting can't cover up their New York speech pattern though they both valiantly attempt to sound like they're from Georgia.
Even giving allowances that this is a made for TV movie, it's still a pretty bad film.
Christian Slater's career was just getting going at this time on the big screen, how they talked him into this is a mystery.He should have done something to get out of doing this film..
Desperate for entertainment.
(spoilers).
Good lord, what a terribly boring made-for-TV movie this was!
I assume that all of the good reviews (of what few reviews their are to begin with) are from those who's nostalgic overload clouded good judgment because this certainly isn't anything I'd recommend to anyone was looking for entertainment.Based on a true story, Christian Slater, Brian Bloom, and Tammy Lauren play three high school friends in rural Georgia.
Bloom plays the pretty boy jock who's chances of moving out of the Georgia town are high since college prospects come naturally to a football talent.
Slater is socially inept and isn't likely to go anywhere.
Like his dad, he assumes that people expect his only mobility beyond their town will be the state pen.
And Lauren plays a naive teen who is desperate for the attention of Bloom's character.
We've seen this a billion times before (Promised Land was one of the more depressing versions, and mostly told as an outcome of this narrative).So, Bloom's parents don't like Lauren's crazy father and forbid him from seeing her, which I suppose is fine with him since she won't stop nagging him about getting married.
Meanwhile, Slater doesn't think that Bloom's character treats the girl (who he is secretly infatuated with) right and yada...yada...yada...you can figure out what he's on trial for murder (this being told in flashback format).Unfortunately, the characters are a bunch of self-important whino's, especially Lauren and Slater's characters.
And characters like that evoke little empathy in a story where they may be misunderstood kids or whatever, so then what's the point?
There is nothing remotely interesting, and very little social commentary to at least accompany the events.
Sure, I got lured into it because it was a late 80s Slater and Bloom team-up, but you'd be wise to avoid the eighty minutes or so of boredom and take my advice--skip it..
sad but true.
Considering this movie was made in 1989 and was made for tv as it relates a true story, I thought it was very touching in the sense that it just gets to you to see how much someone can love someone else and that this last one cannot even realize it.
Even worse, Lily didn't take that love seriously because she wast lost in her own little fantasy romance....
Pretty terrible.
I agree with the other user comment.
I just saw this movie today and it was horrific and incredibly boring.
Christian Slater's good looks and charm were not even enough to save this movie.
I'd rather clip my grandmother's toenails than watch this movie again..
I don't suppose that I would be considered a "Hick".
I was born in Oak Park, Illinois, I was brought up in Chicago.
Even still, calling this film a CRAZY HICK MOVIE was offensive.Now. I'm 22 now, so I was 10 when this movie was made.
I most likely saw it for the first in the early 1990's, and I still love it.
I watch it every chance I get.This movie had everything.
Suspense, Drama, Comedy.I thought that Brian Bloom played his Rich Boy role quite well.
He simply has those Rich Boy looks, he still has those gorgeous eyes that just make you shake your head.Anyway.
I am NO fan of Christian Slater's.
But he acted good in this movie.
The role he played, was annoying though.
Kinda made me want to puke.I don't know the Lead Female's name, but her name was Lily in the movie.
Lily is an outright FOOL.
I hated her.
She made me sick, sick, sick.
And sicker..
a crazy hick movie.
a crazy hick movie.
i'm a hardcore christian slater fan and i couldn't even watch this entire movie..
it's awful...
maybe i didn't like it because i'm not a small town white trash cow girl..
[at one point Christian Slater actually talks about how he can't do his "raising a bull" school assignment because his family needed money so they had to sell it]..
i bought the movie for $5 and i'm willing to give it to the first person who wants it..
i haven't even watched the whole thing..
i couldn't stand it..
What do you expect from an 80s TV movie?.
This old VHS tape was resurrected and dubbed to DVD (with little skill) because and only because Christian Slater's name has come to have commercial value.
Without his presence in this film, there is no DVD.
From the IMDb reviews I've read it seems unlikely anybody got rich on this threadbare scam.
Most reviewers here seem to have found their copies in 99c bins.
Slater is fine and so are the actors around him.
The person of greatest interest to me was actually Veronica Cartwright (who plays his mother).
I've seen the face (and those haunted eyes) before, although perhaps not so young-looking.
What really amazed me though was how many acting credits the woman has.
It looks like she didn't take many holidays during a peak 20 year period.
Seriously, have a look at her resume.
Can you name a lot of TV shows she HASN'T appeared in?
Just to use up my spoiler warning, let me point out the question many of you did: Who dun it?
Are we supposed to assume Christian did?
That was far from clear to me..
This movie I used for therapy purposes.
It was very helpful..
I use movies for therapy.
It is called cinema-therapy.
My interest went to Cliff immediately as one who loved no matter what.
At first it bothered me, and I felt he was stupid for allowing this girl to make a fool of him.
But the film forced me to step outside of my opinions and look at this character in a more objective manner.
Not until the end did I realize the depth and extent of his ability to love.
To take the "rap" for something one didn't do purely to save the feelings of the one you love is way up there in the greats for unconditional love.
It helped to expand my horizons by showing me that true love "IS" no matter what the world says.
It stands without shame.
It is free and pure.
What a gift for someone to love you like that!
Even more how wonderful to be that selfless and loving.
Somethings to ponder...