The Last Song (TV Movie 1980) Poster

(1980 TV Movie)

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6/10
Buried Secrets
sol121825 May 2005
**SPOILERS** Movie about a Love Canal like town, Landry Texas, thats about to explode with long buried toxins seeping out of the ground and effecting everyone there, man and animal alike,through the water supply as well as the air itself.

After a young boy was found dead at the bottom of a shaft on the Buckhurst Industries site the owners of the company went all out to prevent the truth from coming out. The Buckhurst bigwigs going to meet in secret at a hotel room in L.A to plan their next move are spied on and their talk tape recorded by electricians Mike Newman and his partner Doug, Dale Robinette & Kane Holiday.

Thinking that their getting the goods on some guy cheating on his wife, for a defective agency that they have a contract with, the two electricians instead overhear a plan by the businessmen to cover up their unsavory actions over the years. They plan in having the entire town of Landry blown up by staging an accident for a tractor-trailer loaded with the deadly chemical agent 10-45T. The deadly chemical was a secret agent that was used by the US military in Vietnam and at the same time was buried in and around Landry by the truckload, as they drove by the Brockhurst factory site.

With dozens of people in the and around Landry starting to come down with fatal illnesses it's only a matter of time when it's discovered that that chemical was buried there and those responsible, Brockhurst Industries, will be sued into bankruptcy. The conspirators accidentally, through a glass of red wine where they can see the electricians laser, find out that there's some kind of laser device being beamed on the hotel room. The Brockhurst group then get two of their paid hit men out to find where the beam is coming from, and to shut up those responsible for it for good, and retrieve the audio tape.

After a half hour car chase through the city the hit men track down Mike and Doug to Mike's home where they murder Doug and, after a ferocious fight, finish off Mike but they can't find the incriminating tape of their boss' conversation at the hotel.

The Buckhurst gang now get after the late Mike Newman's wife singer Brooke Newman, Lynda Carter,who hid with her young daughter in terror from them in a closet and who they think has the tape. The fact is that Brooke does know about the tape but she doesn't know just where it is and it's a lot closer to her then to the hit men now looking for it.

Standered plot about corruption and murder in corporate America, circa 1980, with leggy and frisky, not to mention beautiful, Lynda Carter as singer housewife private investigator and now action hero, or heroine. Lynda not only plays detective to break the case wide open but also flies up and down the friendly, and unfriendly, skies of Texas with helicopter pilot Sid Pachanski, Ronny Fox. Lynda & Sid try to get the jump on the bad guys before they turn Lawery Texas, by causing a tractor-trailer truck loaded with the deadly 10-45T to explode, into what Chernobyl in the Ukraine turned out to be some six years later in 1986: uninhabitable.

Besides being the reluctant heroine, at first all Brooke wanted to do is get out of town with her young daughter, Brooke also had a chance to sing the title song "The Last Song" in the film.
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6/10
LOVE CANAL
nogodnomasters16 June 2019
Warning: Spoilers
This is a made for TV movie done in the era of "Love Canal." The film stars Lynda Carter who is a country and western singer. She tortures her child Abbey (Louanne) by making her wear a bad Dutch Boy haircut. Her husband Mike (Dale Robinette) is a private investigator who gets caught investigating the evil chemical company hiding a secret about the waste under the town of Landry, Texas.

When Mike drops out of the picture, Lynda Carter goes Erin Brockovich all over them!

The film quality is not good. I watched the film because it had Lyda Carter bound on the kitchen floor and a certain amount of era camp value from haircuts to cassette tapes. Lynda appears to lip syncs her songs, although she can actually sing. The corporation is clumsy and cliche in its operation, as is the film which made me shake my head at the stuff I used to watch and like. What really caught me off guard was that the mommy and daddy in this film were not divorced, separated, or had outside love interests. A real throw back. In one scene Ronny Cox coerces Lynda Carter to remove her sun glasses so he can see her eyes. Not exactly the way I would have written the scene. I had to laugh.

Most people today will not enjoy this dated film which has not stood the test of time.
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10/10
One of Lynda's Best
edw197627 June 2023
Warning: Spoilers
This movie, right on the heels of the non-renewal of "Wonder Woman," has Lynda Carter basically playing Diana Prince without the ability to spin into costume and perform heroics.

Despite having a hard time seeing Lynda in peril with no superhuman abilities (as a kid, I couldn't help but wonder why she didn't just spin and get the bad guys), Lynda was excellent in the lead role as a mother desperate to expose the people who murdered her husband and his colleague.

I suppose Lynda was trying not to be typecast (I mean, after being "Wonder Woman," where do you go?), but it was a little too soon after her iconic role to have her all helpless and hiding out, afraid for her and her daughter's lives. All that aside, it was a solid script with great acting, and has stood the test of time. Of course it's dated, but those of us who fondly remember the seventies (it was filmed in 1979), look back and wish we had more icons like Lynda on our screens today. Lynda was and will always be a star, born from a time when people had to have talent to be famous. Good on her.
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