The Sandra Bullock Files #4: The Preppie Murder (1989)
A look at an early TV Movie of the Week starring Sandra!
The Sandra Bullock Files is a series that looks at the films of Oscar-winning actress Sandra Bullock, all the way from her debut from 1987, to her two major 2018 releases, Ocean’s Eight and Bird Box.
Not every actress can get the start of someone like Meryl Streep. Her first film co-starred Jane Fonda, and her second film co-starred Robert De Niro. In just two years she had earned an Oscar nomination, followed by an Oscar win, for Kramer Vs. Kramer. By Streep’s fifth film, her gold star status was sealed, and she has gone on to enjoy one of the finest, most respected careers in Hollywood.
It didn’t really go that way for Sandra. It took her a good seven years and a long series of forgettable clunkers to start paving the way for a big career. When Streep was twenty-eight years old, she was filming The Deer Hunter. When Sandra was twenty-eight, she was filming… a porno! But more on that one later.
While Sandra had pretty big roles in Bionic Showdown and Who Shot Patakango?, she only appears in a few minutes of the TV movie, The Preppie Murder, which stars William Baldwin, Danny Aiello, and Lara Flynn Boyle, and tells the true story of a murder committed by Robert Chambers, a serial killer who plead guilty to manslaughter in the death of an eighteen-year-old girl.
Sandra makes a brief appearance in this one, her hair in a ponytail, her school vest making her appear younger than she was at the time. Her character of Stacy is a throwaway part, one she probably shot in a day or two. Not that it would have been worth Sandra’s time to be in more of this one; the TV movie was not well received. Debuting on ABC, and directed by John Herzfeld, The Preppie Murder is, unfortunately, another clunker in Sandra’s early career. In fact, she’s given so little to do here that there is no Best Scene or Best Line this time around.
Fun Facts
This film helped launch the careers of not just Sandra, but also William Baldwin, Lara Flynn Boyle, and Diedrich Bader, the latter of whom would go on to co-star with Sandra in Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabuous.
The lead detective in the real case, Mike Sheehan, makes a cameo appearance.
Chris Isaak provided the music for the soundtrack.
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Brian Rowe is an author, teacher, book devotee, and film fanatic. He received his MFA in Creative Writing and MA in English from the University of Nevada, Reno, and his BA in Film Production from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He writes young adult and middle grade suspense novels, many of which are available on his Amazon page, and is represented by Kortney Price of the Corvisiero Agency. He can be followed on Facebook and Twitter, and you can read more of his work on his Web Site and his Patreon page!