Product Details

• Actors: Victoria Principal, Michael Prince, Guy Boyd, Alan Rachins, Grace Zabriskie
• Format: Color, EP, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Republic Pictures
• VHS Release Date: January 1, 1998
• Run Time: 96 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301358503
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #197,699 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you have ever felt like a trapped deer. . ., June 10, 1999

By 

William T. Mccullars "Tim" (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mistress [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Victoria Principal will mesmerize you with her compelling performance of [Leah]Rae Colton...the perfect mistress with an imperfect life. Her struggles with lonliness, rejection, and ultimately acceptance of her future will keep you rivited to the screen. Not since Lola Montes has a woman captured the screen with such a scarlett lust and determination! This is a must see for anyone who has ever felt like a deer hopelessly trapped in the lights of a demon vehicle.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Actress, Businesswoman, Geisha, September 7, 2004

By 

A TV-Movie Lover "A TV-Movie Lover" (Northridge, CA (USA)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mistress [VHS] (VHS Tape)

While having its campy moments--she couldn't keep a job in a plate shop?--the script by Joyce Eliason is solid and deeply analytical into the WHYs of Rae's ways.

Rae Colton is someone with big dreams and a big heart but rather naive and idealistic. She also apparently has an Electra Complex. At one point she tearfully recounts to a friend (Joanna Kerns) how she felt she needed to compete with her mother for her father's affection but, in the end, her mother won. This pattern is repeated when her lover Wyn (Don Murray) dies--and Rae is left not only emotionally distressed but financially devastated, and she even becomes a confirmed outsider among Wyn's widow and children, a family to which she ironically felt she belonged.

In an extremely vulnerable frame of mind--and even unable to properly mourn her partner's demise--Rae is forced to deal with the sobering realites of life that she'd never really confronted before. She searches for a place to fit in--a home where she belongs--and an identity not solely defined by men and beauty pageants. She may have won Miss This and Miss That but still refers to herself as "miscellaneous, mistake, misfit" and even "mistress."

Rae's mother (Grace Zabriskie) calls her daughter "the prettiest, the best" but has high expectations and fails to understand the difficulties of a "sweet, tender, loving human being" making it in a make-believe town. A simple country guy (Guy Boyd) canonizes her but drops her like a hot potato when he finds out she had been the Other Woman in a marriage.

Rae ultimately is able to secure her lifestyle but wishes that instead her heart had just exploded.

Victoria Principal may not give a flawless performance but she is convincing and multicolored in her portrayal. She seems to deeply understand the different phases Rae is going through. And she proves that she definitely has grown a lot as a performer since her early days on DALLAS. The script to MISTRESS is clever because it captures many different layers of Principal's personality. She's at once a goddess and helpless, a creature of comfort and a wounded deer, supremely female yet manipulative of male mandate.

There's even a bit of destiny in the role. Victoria Principal was born in Japan to American parents. And throughout this film her character is seeking to find her proper identity. She calls herself "an actress, "an Actress, Model, Whatever," "a misfit."

But she finally accepts fate when she is asked, "What are you?" near the end of the film. Her response is, "Your geisha." She is one who had been trained from girlhood to satisfy men's wishes.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wish It Were On DVD, March 11, 2007

By 

Desiree "Desiree" (Seattle, Washington) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mistress [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I saw this as a movie of the week and never forgot it. Victoria Principal is in fine form and the supporting cast is top notch. You will enjoy it, and though the movie came out about twenty years ago, it still holds up. Without giving away too much, the movie is heartbreaking and uncompromising.