By Erin Free
In this regular column, we drag forgotten made-for-TV movies out of the vault and into the light. This week: the 1984 true life drama Victims For Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story, starring Therese Saldana, Adrian Zmed, Lelia Goldoni and Pierrino Mascarino.
There’s a small but fascinating subset of the big screen biopic in which the subject of said biopics actually play themselves, with the disparate likes of Howard Stern (Private Parts), Audie Murphy (To Hell And Back) and Muhammad Ali (The Greatest) all essaying their own stories cinematically. [For more examples of this, check out our story “And Starring As Themselves…”] The telemovie form has also played effectively with this concept, with such wildly varied projects as The Ann Jillian Story (1988), Call Me Anna, with Patty Duke (1990), and Tears And Laughter: The Joan And Melissa Rivers Story (1994), to name just a few.
Without question, one of the boldest and most shocking examples of a story subject playing themselves came with 1984’s searing biographical drama Victims For Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story, which tells the heartbreaking story of the eponymous actress. Saldana (who sadly passed away from pneumonia in 2016) was best known for her roles in the TV series The Commish, and as Joe Pesci’s wife in Martin Scorsese’s 1980 masterpiece Raging Bull, and was particularly charming in Unsung Auteur John Flynn’s underrated 1980 urban panic vigilante flick Defiance with Jan-Michael Vincent.
Tragically, Saldana was most famous, however, as the victim of a brutal attack by a relentless stalker. Deranged Scotsman Arthur Richard Jackson had become transfixed and obsessed with Saldana after seeing her in Raging Bull, and travelled all the way from Aberdeen to Los Angeles to track her down. Using a private investigator, Jackson obtained the phone number of Saldana’s mother, rang her posing as an assistant of Martin Scorsese’s with a job offer, and persuaded her to provide her daughter’s home address. Jackson then approached Saldana outside her home, and stabbed her repeatedly, nearly killing her.
There is something extraordinarily troubling and horrifyingly immediate about watching an actress literally reliving a sickening personal tragedy on screen (bizarrely, Saldana also starred as a stalking victim on an episode of the cop show Hunter based on her own case), and though the scene in question is obviously constructed to minimise its effect on Saldana as much as possible, to call such a scene triggering for the actress would be a major understatement.
There’s nothing exploitative about the manner in which director and Unsung Auteur Karen Arthur (a truly fascinating talent) handles the subject matter, but the telemovie takes on an air of chilling urgency as Theresa Saldana (whose performance is just as heartfelt and emotive as you would expect) realises she’s being stalked, way before the term had even truly entered the public lexicon. The fact that the audience knows exactly what is going to happen only makes the viewing experience even more difficult.
Saldana’s fear is palpable in these scenes, and when the actress is attacked by Jackson (frighteningly played by Australian-born Phillip English), the levels of audience discomfort are ratcheted up to near painful levels. It’s made infinitely more difficult to watch because of the horror of the attack itself. Jackson stabbed Saldana multiple times in the middle of a suburban street in broad daylight as onlookers stood by and did nothing to help. Saldana would certainly have been killed if not for the bravery of deliveryman Jeff Fenn (sensitively played by Kenneth Phillips), who ran from the top floor of a nearby apartment block to subdue the deranged Jackson and save the actress’s life.
Victims For Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story takes in not just the traumatised actress’s painful recovery from the attack, but also the battering effect it had on her relationship with her husband, Fred Feliciano (played by a miscast Adrian Zmed, a light, comedically talented actor not really up to the dramatic task here), a drug and alcohol counsellor who has trouble relating to his wife and his role in her life after the attack. While Theresa turns largely to her family (Lelia Goldoni and Pierrino Mascarino are excellent as her devastated, protective but clear-sighted parents) for support, Fred feels closed out, forming a second, less involving dramatic pillar of the film.
Theresa Saldana was one of the first high-profile victims of a stalker (disturbingly, notorious killer Robert John Bardo copied Jackson’s tracking methods when he stalked and eventually murdered young TV sitcom star Rebecca Schaeffer), and her treatment at the hands of the medical and legal professions is often staggeringly insensitive. A sickening scene in which Saldana’s horrific injuries are photographed for the purposes of the court has an almost David Lynch level of surreal trauma, while the lack of support and care she receives from various doctors and nurses is utterly infuriating.
Much needed uplift arrives, however, when Theresa realises that she finds solace by engaging with other victims of violent crime, and works together with a growing community of (largely) women to form the Victims For Victims organization, which participated in lobbying for the 1990 anti-stalking law and the 1994 Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, both of which came into being partly as a consequence of Saldana’s attack. Only the beginnings of Saldana’s victims’ advocacy are shown in the telemovie, but it ensures that proceedings close out on an appropriately defiant and fiery note.
A moving tribute to a strong-willed woman who survived unspeakable horror and used her experience to help others, Victims For Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story is a modest, quietly powerful piece of television whose salience and prescience is even more pronounced in today’s heightened era of cyber-stalking and online cruelty.
Availability: Victims For Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story is easy to source online, but it’s in decidedly ropey form.
If you enjoyed this review, check out our other vintage telemovies The Seduction Of Gina, Blue Murder, The Brotherhood Of Justice, The Wave, The California Kid, The Cracker Factory, Night Terror, Inmates: A Love Story, The Shadow Riders, CHiPs: Roller Disco, Dawn: Portrait Of A Teenage Runaway, Young Love, First Love, Escape From Bogen County, The Death Squad, Hit Lady, Brian’s Song, The Defiant Ones, A Cry For Help, Trilogy Of Terror, Policewoman Centerfold, Smash-Up On Interstate 5, Something Evil, Savage, A Step Out Of Line, The Boy In The Plastic Bubble, The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission, A Very Brady Christmas, The Gladiator, Elvis, The Rat Pack, Silent Victory: The Kitty O’Neil Story, Terror Among Us, The Hanged Man, Hardcase, Charlie’s Angels: Angels In Vegas, Vanishing Point, To Heal A Nation, Fugitive Among Us, To Kill A Cop, Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, Police Story: A Chance To Live, Murder On Flight 502, Moon Of The Wolf, The Secret Night Caller, Cotton Candy, And The Band Played On, Gargoyles, Death Car On The Freeway, Short Walk To Daylight, Trapped, Hotline, Killdozer, The Jericho Mile, Mongo’s Back In Town and Tribes.
