Product Details

• Actors: Ellen Burstyn, Meg Tilly, Paxton Whitehead, Alastair Duncan, Romy Rosemont
• Directors: Ed Kaplan
• Writers: Jane Stanton Hitchcock, Jim Wheat, John Gay, Ken Wheat
• Producers: Brent Shields, David A. Rosemont, Richard Welsh
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Hallmark
• VHS Release Date: August 20, 1996
• Run Time: 95 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6303466443
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #298,202 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Suspense story, October 25, 2009

By 

K. Cooper (Phila. area) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Primal Secrets (DVD)

In this movie, Meg Tilly plays a struggling young artist who is hired by an extremely wealthy widow, Ellen Burstyn, to paint a large ballroom. What appears to be a dream job gradually turns into anything but as Burstyn's character's manipulative and bizarre behavior emerges. Barnard Hughes plays a friend of Tilly in a relatively small character part but the movie is almost entirely centered on Tilly and Burstyn.

Both actresses are very good in their parts, espcially Tilly. Like many suspense movies, this one will have many moments when the viewer asks "Why doesn't she just leave?". This is an entertaining movie, not a great one and it will certainly fans please fans of Meg Tilly as she is onscreen almost every moment of the movie.

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars mommie richest, August 10, 2001

By 

Peter Shelley "petershelley" (Sydney, New South Wales Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Primal Secrets [VHS] (VHS Tape)

There isnt a moment of truth in this hokey Hallmark TVM directed by Ed Kaplan. The teleplay takes bits from Rebecca and Vertigo with Ellen Burstyn as a Long Island millionairess who commissions Meg Tilly to paint a mural in her tomb-like ballroom. With Burstyns 16 year old daugher having died mysteriously on the night of her debutante ball and Tillys mother estranged to her and also dead, it isnt long before Tilly is wearing the daughters clothes and sleeping in her bed. The treatments Barbara Cartland/Harlequin level of reality is underlined by the awful music score by Allyn Ferguson, the discovery of a portrait that reveals Tilly to be identical to the daughter ("we're kindred spirits"), Tilly's body double for the drawing and painting long shots, the English butler who stands to attention in the room at meal times, and the dead daughters boyfriend out of D H Lawrence who describes the daughter (named Cassandra!) as "like the air after a thunderstorm". All this reads as if it could be played as a parody of something like Reversal of Fortune where the rarified existence of the rich allows for a world of artiface, though clearly that is not the intention. The teleplay by John Gay and Jim & Ken Wheat, based on the novel by Jane Stanton Hitchcock, has such pearls as Burstyn's "Bringing this room back to life is bringing me back to life too", Burstyn as described by the butler "She doesn't know the boundaries of her own strength", and Barnard Hughes as a friend of Tilly's advising her to stay on when she has doubts - "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater". The last one makes a valid point by saying that the artist in history has had to endure the agenda of their patrons, but Tilly's objection to the loss of her own identity is ironic as Tilly is such a reticent performer. You can also guess that, based on Burstyn's controlling tendencies - she sees Tilly as her "creation" and hovers - Cassandra had her problems too. If Tilly's friendship with Hughes isn't believable, Burstyn is the bigger problem. Given that she entered Long Island society from marrying a wealthy man accounting for her obvious lack of rich lady manners, the two monologues she has about the death of Cassandra reveal her limited dramatic range. Since neither Burstyn or Tilly are the kind of actors who bring a wealth of personality to their roles - Burstyn is stuck in Actors Studio technique via TV acting - their casting comes across as second choice compromises, though perhaps no actor could redeem this kind of stale material to begin with. At one point Burstyn tells Tilly there are no photos of Cassandra, because Burstyn's husband has burned them all before shooting himself. Sunny von Bulow didn't even die and she made the newspapers. This household had 2 deaths presumably in quick succession, so you would think Tilly could easily find a picture of Cassandra in the archives of the local newspapers. Funny how that never occurs to her, but then that's a different TVM.