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 1974 suspense drama Hit Lady, starring Yvette Mimieux, Joseph Campanella, Clu Gulager and Dack Rambo.
The late Yvette Mimieux was a true underrated talent, a blonde, coquettish actress whose incredible good looks belied a regularly exercised taste for the unusual and daring. Almost like Tuesday Weld without the wildness and unrestrained sense of iconoclasm, this actress of French, German, English and Mexican heritage had a strangely ethereal quality, first glimpsed in her breakout role opposite the great Rod Taylor in the seminal 1960 sci-fi work The Time Machine. After that, Mimieux appeared in a long list of cult favourites, including 1960’s Where The Boys Are, 1968’s The Dark Of The Sun (again with Rod Taylor) and Three In The Attic (with Unsung Auteur Christoper Jones), 1973’s The Neptune Factor (directed by Unsung Auteur Jack Smight), 1976’s Jackson County Jail, 1979’s The Black Hole (directed by Unsung Auteur Gary Nelson), and 1981’s Circle Of Power (aka Brainwash).
Like so many actresses, the breadth of Mimieux’s talent and on-screen presence wasn’t met with the requisite abundance of roles they deserved. “The women that male screenwriters write are all one dimensional,” Mimieux told The LA Times. “They have no complexity in their lives. It’s all surface. There’s nothing to play. They’re either sex objects or vanilla pudding.” Way ahead of her time – and never really celebrated for it – Mimieux took matters into her own hands by writing screen roles for herself. With published journalistic pieces and short stories already to her credit, Mimieux penned a screenplay called Counterpoint on spec, and took it to the powerhouse producing team of Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg.
“It was the study of a woman, the difference between what she appears to be and what she is: appearance vs reality,” Mimieux told The LA Times. “The more I thought about the character, the more I wanted to play her. Here was the kind of nifty, multifaceted part I’d been looking for. So instead of a short story, I wrote it as a film. This character was not a good housewife or sex object. The character I wrote is like an onion, layers upon layers, multi-faceted, interesting, desirable, manipulative…it’s about what people are saying to each other and what they mean. I created a totally amoral creature who killed people like you’d swat a fly, with no remorse, no regret. That was a little too strong for the network, so they made me soften her.”
Despite the softening enforced by the network, the lead character of what would eventually be renamed Hit Lady is certainly no snowflake. Yvette Mimieux’s Angela De Vries is indeed a ruthless killer, a woman who uses her considerable feminine wiles to gain the trust and affections of her marks, and then kills them with an alarming lack of hesitation. It’s a bold script from Mimieux, uncompromising in its central characterisation, but also tempered with enough intelligence and style to make Angela De Vries engaging at every turn.
Solidly and sympathetically directed by one-time helmer Tracy Keenan Wynn (who had previously penned two acclaimed telemovies in 1970’s Tribes and 1972’s The Glass House, and a monster hit in the 1974 Burt Reynolds belter The Longest Yard), the highly compelling Hit Lady – which first aired on major US network ABC on October 8, 1974 – works against its slightly lurid title through its slow-burn approach to suspense and unpredictable narrative.
After meeting Angela in the middle of a mission to murder a seemingly affable and upstanding rancher (nicely played by character actor Keenan Wynn, the father of the film’s director), we learn that this beautiful, self-possessed young woman is in the employ of an agency led by Roarke (Clu Gulager), who pay her handsomely to knock off various marks, most of whom have at least one foot planted in the dangerous world of organised crime. Angela, however, wants out, and she informs the teasing, passive aggressive Roarke that her next mark will be her last. Angela is then assigned a hit on union leader Jeffrey Baine (Joseph Campanella), which will force the eponymous assassin to rethink her entire life, particularly with regard to her laidback, nice-guy boyfriend Doug Reynolds (Dack Rambo).
Though certainly melodramatic, Hit Lady is far more thoughtful and considered than its slightly salacious title and marketing materials would suggest. Mimieux’s script is deeply concerned with the duality of its lead character, and the manner in which she has been slowly, surely corrupted by the immorality of her line of work. Hit Lady also never takes the obvious route. While handsome, charismatic TV regular Joseph Campanella at first appears to be the decent man whose love will serve as a moral course-correct for Angela, that is quickly proven to not be the case. In this film, the central female character makes her own decisions, and she is not there to be rescued by a man. This plays out right up until Hit Lady’s surprising finale, which rings with a peculiar sense of satisfaction.
While all of the performances in Hit Lady are rock-solid (Campanella is great as the suitor, Clu Gulager injects just the right amount of oily desperation to his character, and Dack Rambo is all raw-boned charm as Angela’s in-the-dark photographer boyfriend), Yvette Mimieux is obviously the star of the show here. In a variety of stunning 1970s outfits (head scarves, bandannas, bikinis, ski wear and so on) designed by the legendary Nolan Miller (who would go on to create a shoulder-pad revolution with his costuming for the hugely popular 1980s TV series Dynasty), Mimieux looks amazing, and the actress/writer matches it with her layered performance. Mixing steely strength with a brittle vulnerability, Mimieux really impresses here.
Disappointingly, the talented Mimieux would only pen one more project (the 1984 telemovie Obsessive Love, in which she also starred) before her sad passing in 2022 at the age of eighty. Stylish, soulful, slick and entertaining, Hit Lady is just a stunning suggestion of what Yvette Mimieux could have achieved if she had been afforded the right opportunities.
Availability: Released on VHS and DVD in the decades since its release, Hit Lady is relatively easy to find online in a not-great but definitely watchable presentation.
If you enjoyed this review, check out our other vintage telemovies 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.
