Battle of the Murder Movies

This gets confusing, so pay attention.

* High school teacher seduces naive student, then persuades him to murder her husband. That’s “A Murder in New Hampshire: The Pamela Smart Story” (CBS).

* Mature woman seduces naive 16-year-old, then persuades him to murder her husband. That’s “Stay the Night” (ABC).

* College student plots murder of mother and stepfather. That’s “Honor Thy Mother” (CBS).

* College student plots murder of mother and stepfather. That’s “Cruel Doubt” (NBC).

And so on and so on.

With viewers continuing to be attracted to the very horrors they fear and angrily condemn, it’s no wonder that prime-time movies have joined titillating tabloids in making television a near monolith of violent crime.

In this cynical milieu, everyone is bumping off everyone else. Hardly a sensational murder case goes uncovered, serial or otherwise. Cable’s TBS reran a 1986 miniseries on Ted Bundy Wednesday night, for example. And tiding you over until the inevitable Jeffrey Dahmer miniseries will be “To Catch a Killer,” a two-part account of John Wayne Gacy, slayer of 33 teens. Its airing on KTLA Channel 5 next month will symbolize the bloodletting of the May ratings sweeps.

You get the impression from TV that we are a society of sociopaths. So pervasive are its depictions of homicidal mania that at some point these congeal in your mind, becoming indistinguishable from one another. Undoubtedly, there’s a conspiracy to confuse.

For example, it seems no coincidence that CBS chose this week to rerun “Murder in New Hampshire”--its 1991 movie whose older-woman-turns-pliable-young-lover-into-killer theme echoes in “Stay the Night,” the intriguingly bizarre ABC two-parter premiering Sunday night. One may 1919246707l.

Meanwhile, “Honor Thy Mother,” a fascinating movie that also is airing Sunday, and the unpreviewed “Cruel Doubt,” airing next month, not only appear to be based on the same story--about murder in a dysfunctional family--they are.

This is not the first time that two networks have aired TV accounts of the same real-life murder in close proximity, but it may be the first time in such cases that one network has so blatantly tried to discredit the movie of another.

In its press packet on “Cruel Doubt,” NBC includes a sheet comparing its account of familial homicide with “Honor Thy Mother,” awkwardly attempting to cast cruel doubt on the CBS movie.

There’s a reason for NBC’s aggressiveness, for CBS hopes that its well-publicized telecasting of “Honor Thy Mother” in advance of NBC’s “Cruel Doubt” will cost the latter millions of potential viewers. How dastardly.

While affirming the absence of honor among networks clamoring for ratings, however, all of the above is unrelated to the merits of “Stay the Night” and “Honor Thy Mother” as docudramas based on separate true crimes. Both are highly worthy, and the misfortune for viewers is that they compete at 9 p.m. Sunday, with the two-part “Stay the Night” continuing at 9 p.m. Tuesday.

Both offer outstanding performances and fascinating character studies, their mysteries having less to do with the outcomes of their cases than with the motivations of their characters.

In “Stay the Night” (on ABC, Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42), flirty, platinum-blond, miniskirted Jimmie Sue Finger’s (Barbara Hershey) scandalous seduction of fresh-scrubbed, 16-year-old Mike Kettmann Jr. (Morgan Weisser) becomes the catalyst for her husband’s murder in their sleepy town. With his parents watching helplessly, the foolish teen-ager is sampled and consumed by the predatory Jimmie Sue as if he were a grape plucked from a vine.

Blanche Kettman (Jane Alexander) tells her son: “You were the loaded gun in her hand.” The police know that, too, but need his testimony to charge her. Playing the gallant lover, however, he enters prison stoically, denying the manipulative Jimmie Sue’s involvement in her husband’s slaying.

It’s Part 2 that’s steeped in enigma. In a sort of reprise of Bob Rafelson’s “Black Widow,” the resolute Blanche befriends Jimmie Sue seeking to betray her, only to fall under the intended victim’s spell herself. At least it seems so. What makes “Stay the Night” mysterious--and especially appealing, ironically--is the erratic behavior of its female characters, whose motivations at times seem unclear. It’s a rare case of inconsistency somehow being a strength.

Some of the swollen concluding scenes are not credible, and the ending is right out of “Black Widow,” except that the supposedly incriminating evidence doesn’t appear very incriminating. However, Dan Freudenberger’s script is fraught with interesting sexual tension, and Weisser, Hershey and Alexander perform superbly under Harry Winer’s direction.

The women--one playing a brassy predator, the other a conservative mother seeking to recapture her son--are an especially fine acting pair who alone are worth the time you will spend on “Stay the Night.”

The same applies to Sharon Gless--who says there are no good roles for females?--in “Honor Thy Mother” (on CBS, Channels 2 and 8).

Despite following a predictable path, “Honor Thy Mother” is an eerily compelling account of a North Carolina murder case that begins with Bonnie Von Stein (Gless) and her wealthy second husband being attacked by a masked intruder wielding a knife and a baseball bat as they sleep. She survives. Almost immediately, police discover evidence linking the slaying to her boozing, drug-hazed slug of a college-student son, Chris (William McNamara).

Director David Greene’s vision of this script by Richard DeLong Adams and Robert L. Freedman (based on the Jerry Bledsoe book “Blood Games”) is at times almost surreal. He effectively uses extreme close-ups to convey the drug-distorted perspectives of Chris and his friends. And McNamara is terrifyingly real as the weak, sniveling son who plots to murder the mother on whom he depends emotionally.

However, it’s the underplaying Gless--as an austere, sad character silently imploding and internalizing her despair--who drives this dark story. After hearing her son admit in court that he sought to have her killed, she and her daughter return home with him. Then, her face hardened into an emotionless gray mask, she slowly backs into a closet and closes the door. It’s a memorable moment in a memorable performance.

Whether this is matched by the account of the Von Steins in “Cruel Doubt”--drawn from the Joe McGinnis book of the same name--remains to be seen. Moreover, we don’t know which account is more truthful, or much about the accuracy of any of these crime docudramas.

By the time they fuse in our brains as a single splattering of blood and humanity, however, it may not make any difference.