Hello friends! Here we are, for the last time, earnestly engaging with camp. We are earnestly engaging with something that so steadfastly refuses to be earnestly engaged with that when James Franco made a remake of it (in 2016, when we were letting James Franco just, do things, do whatever), he put lesbian vampires in it. Although I have not seen the remake, I can assure you: MOTHER, MAY I SLEEP WITH DANGER? does not need lesbian vampires! So for this, the last Don’t Threaten Me With a Good Lifetime I will ever write1, let’s talk about this stone cold classic. (Content warnings for stalking, domestic abuse, murder, anorexia, and a helicopter skiing accident [!!]. Also, I am leaving all my jokes on the field, this is too long for email, click up top, thanks!)
We meet the first doomed teen in this movie when she gets dropped off at her house by a boy driving an open-top Jeep. The blonde teen, whose name is Erin, immediately calls a friend to tell her that oh my god Kevin Shane just dropped her off! You can tell he’s dreamy in the 1990s because he has two first names. Her Kevin Shane reverie (or, keverie) is interrupted by another boy at her door though. The clearly inferior Billy Jones has brought her a ring and a teddy bear and a lot of grim men’s entitlement. Erin does not wish to kiss Billy Jones, or keep the poems he wrote her on her wall, or “snuggle” him, as he suggests. She tries to kick him out and Billy loses it, screaming that he’s sorry he doesn’t “drive a four by”2 like KEVIN SHANE and then he beats this girl to death with a cutting board in the kitchen. It is swift and shocking and horrible! Billy sweeps up some broken plates and loose rotini and then scoops Erin up and tosses her in the trunk.
Okay anyway, let’s meet Tori Spelling! Here her name is Laurel. She’s a college gal and she’s not gonna let anybody push her around, I bet! She’s got opinions about Daisy Miller and she jogs a lot and she turns down a date with a nice boy named Jackson because she’s very busy, she’s seeing someone, and also she has sworn off going out with guys in bands. He protests that it shouldn’t count because his band is bad and he has a review to prove it. Huge bass player energy from Jackson. Laurel continues jogging all the way to track practice, where her coach tells her that she’s been overtraining and dropping weight and she’s worried about her, especially considering that Laurel’s mother contacted her about Laurel having an eating disorder. Laurel quits the track team right then and there, so perhaps now she has time to go see Jackson’s terrible band? Well, I guess she has time to go see her mom and bitch at her for being concerned for her welfare. Also, she needed to do laundry. Laurel’s mom, Jessica, tells her she’ll keep her nose out of her business if Laurel fuckin chills out a little, man, good lord. Take a breath, Laurel. Laurel insists that she’s fine, and she’s seeing a great guy, maybe she’ll bring him down to Seattle next time she comes to visit.
And now it’s next time she comes to visit! Jessica and Laurel arrange some takeout on the table while they await Laurel’s new boyfriend, who went to pick up some flowers. Laurel shows her mom a ring on her left ring finger with a shiny clear rock on it that the boyfriend gave her, and nobody acts like this is obviously an engagement ring? But it’s…not an engagement ring? It is a solitaire diamond (or “diamond”) on a plain band on her left ring finger, and any tabloid writer worth their Getty Images subscription would describe Laurel as “seemingly engaged.” But I guess not? Anyway Laurel’s boyfriend arrives and guess what it’s Billy from the cutting board thing, except he’s calling himself Kevin Shane now. He needs that two first names juice.
Kevin (we’re just going to call him Kevin mostly) is a charming-ish young man in a suit, and he’s in med school, but he also has a motorcycle instead of a car, so Jessica isn’t as taken by him as you might expect a parent would be. He earnestly explains that he wants to be a doctor to really help people, and his dad was on the board of Careshare, which seems to be like, what it sounds like. And with Laurel doing journalism, she can join him in those war zones or whatever and they can always be together. That is certainly, a plan. And he’s not tied here because his parents died (!) in a helicopter accident (!!) while skiing in Austria (!!!) when the whole side of the mountain came down (!!!!)!!!!! Wow what an easily checkable lie! But Laurel seems to believe it, even if her mom doesn’t really.
Back on campus, Laurel and Kevin canoodle and talk about their dead parents and it’s as weird as it sounds. Laurel’s dad died when she was little, after her parents got divorced anyway, and she doesn’t remember him. Kevin also allegedly doesn’t remember his parents even though I think he said the helicopter (!) skiing (!!) accident (!!!) was only a few years ago? Kevin did not develop object permanence until well into his teens and it was a real uphill climb for him. He points out that they don’t have most of their parents but at least they have each other, and Laurel brightly and weirdly says, “Right! And you will protect me from anyone and everything forever, right? Bye!” and sprints off to class. That’s what I say to my husband when I leave for work. It’s normal. Kevin watches Laurel leave and his hand twitches in a theoretically ominous fashion.
Laurel, who is definitely not overtraining and who is totally healthy thanks, returns to her dorm after a night jog, only to be confronted by Kevin, who wants to know why she wasn’t at the library like she said she’d be. She’s like, “because? I also needed to run? Were you having an emergency, were you about to bleed to death?” Yes actually he was, because being without Laurel is like bleeding to death. We have all acutely felt the sting of being without Tori Spelling. It’s awful: sharp and harsh like wasabi, like rubbing wasabi in a bleeding wound. Laurel doesn’t like this line of questioning, and shoves Kevin out of the room, she’ll call him Saturday, even though this seems like a million years of wasabi wounds to Kevin.
The next day, Laurel is doing jazzercise3 on the quad when a woman in a tuxedo (daring!) rides up on a bicycle and delivers her flowers from Kevin. Laurel is so jazzermoved by this display that she goes to his weird dark apartment where he is sleeping in the middle of the day to tell him how much the flowers meant to her. Kevin apologizes for being too intense at her dorm, it’s just that he has abandonment issues. Acknowledging your issues is the first and only step to fixing them. Laurel assures him that she doesn’t want to abandon him, she wants to get closer, and they make out.
Meanwhile, the real Kevin Shane is still in this movie! He is driving his four by down a back road in Washington and he calls a nearby motel to make a reservation on his cell phone. Kevin Shane has his own cellular phone? As if he could get any dreamier.
Fake Kevin overhears a message from Laurel’s mom offering to set her up with a nice law student she knows, if she’s not still with that weirdo with the motorcycle, and then the two lovebirds go on a…date? It consists of Kevin rubbing sunblock on Laurel’s back while she says maybe she doesn’t want to do “this chasing famines and plagues so he can cure people and she can write about it” thing. Well, says Kevin, they’re going to do that, and that settles that. The only class we’ve seen Laurel even mention is the Daisy Miller one, and someone else said she was good with languages and applying for a fellowship in China but she really does not actually seem busy at all. College seems so easy, I don’t know why everyone who went to it thinks they’re better than me. Now that Kevin has settled their entire future, he has another idea: Laurel should be blonde. She’s almost perfect, if she were blonde? Chef’s kiss. Laurel says her mom would flip, but she’s legally an adult, who cares what your mom thinks, Laurel. She immediately calls her mom from a pay phone to tell her she’s coming to visit, and she has a surprise. And then they visit! Kevin brings roses and Laurel brings her blonde head, and her mom is surprised, and that’s the whole scene.
Laurel, who allegedly never goes out, has gone out to a bar called the Coyote, perhaps to get over the shock of her evident missing time. Jackson from the shitty band is here too, and when he says hi to Laurel we realize that Kevin is also hitting up the Coyote tonight. Laurel somehow trips into Jackson’s arms when she tries to pick up the motorcycle helmet he drops, so Kevin goes outside and kicks over Jackson’s scooter. His hand is twitching again, you know what that means.
The real Kevin Shane, who would never beat up a perfectly innocent scooter, has been pulled over for speeding. He gets out of it because he’s a nice white boy who explains to the cop that he’s just really excited to get home after working in Alaska for a couple years. He’s enrolling in school again!
Hey, speaking of that, Fake Kevin is meeting with an admissions officer at the college who wants to know why there’s a guy named Kevin Shane applying here, with the exact same information and transcripts as him. “Kevin” asserts that it’s a very common name and also, he’s very handsome and normal, as you can see. The admissions officer is like, oh, yeah, no, totally.
It is a two-hour drive between Laurel’s mom’s place and whatever college they’re pretending to go to, but that doesn’t stop Laurel from being there like ALL the TIME. She argues with her mom about volunteering in Guatemala with Kevin this summer instead of doing a fellowship in China, because Kevin always says what’s the point of learning all these languages if people aren’t capable of real communication? Jessica tells Laurel this doesn’t sound like her, and Laurel is like, “well this is me now, get used to it baby.” So Jessica meets up with a friend who’s on the board of the charity Kevin said his dad was on, and his friend has never heard of anyone on the board dying in a helicopter skiing accident, and that is a thing you would remember.
Fake Kevin, assigned Billy at birth, calls a credit card company to figure out that Real Kevin reserved a room at a motel near Seattle, so he rides over to meet up with him. Kevins meeting Kevins, I hope it goes well for everyone. Kevin Shane does recognize Billy from high school, and he is a real condescending asshole to him. That poor girl from the first scene just did not have any good romantic options. Kevin tells Billy that when his family died he just packed his stuff and left town, and we are meant to believe that the helicopter skiing accident DID happen and listen, I’m sorry if I’m making light of helicopter skiing accidents, I’m sorry if you’ve been affected by a helicopter skiing accident, it is just, exactly the thing someone’s parents die from in a Lifetime movie. Anyway, once Kevin gets settled in his room and gets in the shower, Billy wallops him with a tire iron and leaves.
Laurel’s mom is trying to frost a cake with a wooden spoon and she might as well be using a tire iron. She tells Laurel that they need to talk about Kevin, like, how well does she really know him? Does she know, for instance, that his family was not wiped out when an Austrian mountain fell on them? Laurel is pissed off that her mom was snooping and declares that it’s fine actually that he lied about that, the problem is the snooping. Kevin calls Laurel while she’s still at what is apparently her grandma’s birthday party and tells her he has a surprise for her, but he’s also pretty busy burying Kevin in the woods and shoving his Jeep in a lake while he tells Laurel about the surprise. You’d think she’d hear the noise of a large vehicle schlooping into a lake and say “what the hell was that, where are you, what are you doing,” but cell phones didn’t sound very good then.
Surprise! Kevin brings Laurel to the cabin where he just disposed of a body. It looks nice! He got a great deal on it! Did…he…buy this cabin? Before or after he buried Real Kevin there? Unclear! It’s a nice spot but the cabin itself is pretty bare, and Laurel isn’t as thrilled as Kevin hoped she would be. She gingerly tells him that she feels like he’s pushing this, and it just feels really impulsive. Kevin can’t help it! I am struggling to write this in a way that properly conveys how deranged it is but he’s basically like “well it’s this (buying a cabin where I buried a guy) or I climb a tower with a gun! Haha you wouldn’t want that!” and Laurel is like “haha oh dear not that,” and she bats her eyes at him and they make out. This is what makes this movie a classic. Persona could never. Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles who?
Some time later, Laurel returns to the cabin from school, and Kevin is in the outdoor kitchen chopping cucumbers for a salad in a way that comports with a lie he told about being a sous chef in Aspen. She asks him if the phone at the cabin has been hooked up yet, and no it has not, and then Kevin cuts himself and knocks over the grill and dishes in a fury. He’s working his way up to Charles Whitman territory but he’s not there yet. Give it time.
Jessica, who is absolutely onto Kevin/Billy Kevin/Bevin, stakes out the motorcycle parking on campus because how else would she find this man? When Kevin finally shows up, she tells him she knows he’s lying to her daughter and also, where is her daughter? Kevin declares that Laurel listens to him now, and they’d both rather die than let Jessica get between them. On the one hand, this is very dramatic, but on the other hand, Laurel did dye her hair blonde. So.
Back at the cabin, Laurel and Kevin eat crudité on the floor in front of the fireplace. Kevin is “““concerned””” that Laurel isn’t enjoying her dinner of raw vegetables and dip eaten on a dirty bare floor, especially since Laurel’s mom called to tell him about her eating disorder (she did not). Laurel is furious and wants to yell at her mom, but Kevin convinces her that that’s what Jessica wants. She’s just acting out for attention. Attention that rightfully belongs to Kevin! This is about Kevin and Laurel and their life together in this weird cabin, and nobody’s ever gonna ruin Laurel’s life (by helping her get treatment for anorexia) ever again! They make out, and it’s too much, I can hear it too much, no thank you.
In the morning, the sound of their smooches still echoing in my ears, Kevin disables Laurel’s car somehow and hides his motorcycle for good measure. Laurel walks two miles into town to find a payphone and calls Jackson, who lectures her about how she used to be fun4 but now Kevin owns her. He does agree to come pick her up on his little scooter though. Thanks Jackson. Laurel also calls the phone company and learns that Kevin never placed an order to have the phone hooked up at the cabin. The zoomers in the audience are going "but he has a cell phone?" but no, he should have a landline in the cabin. Jackson shows up to scoot Laurel away just as Kevin shows up to try to retrieve her. Too late! They're scooting!
Jessica is still snooping, visiting Kevin’s apartment, where she doesn’t find anything odd except a picture of Erin, the gal from the cutting board murder. Next she just whole-ass goes to Colorado because that’s where Kevin Shane is from. A detective tells her Kevin Shane doesn’t have any kind of a record, but his parents died from helicopter skiing too hard. Okay, well. On her way out, Jessica notices the same picture of Erin on a missing persons poster tacked to the bulletin board, and points it out to Detective Unger. She really thought a boy named Billy Jones did something to Erin, but she couldn’t prove it, Erin just disappeared. Jessica gives Unger her card, call anytime, call collect! And indeed, when she gets home she has a fax from the detective, this is really a tour of mid-1990s communications technology, containing Kevin Shane’s information. But that’s not the Kevin Shane she knows! Jessica calls Unger and asks for a photo of Billy Jones. You already know, Jessica.
Laurel is packing some dishes at the cabin (did Jackson take her back there??) when Kevin rolls up. He tells her her car is running and yeah she knows, doesn’t want to turn it off, she knows he fucked with it. They argue about how controlling he is and how Laurel wants to leave, and when Kevin turns away she shoves him down and runs to her car. He follows her (because literally all she did was shove him) and tells her wait wait wait I’ll make reservations at the “Carrot Castle” (???) and we’ll have a nice romantic dinner! Laurel just screams at him and drives away in her little shitbox. She could have had Carrot Castle!
The siren song of the Coyote (it goes “awoooo”) pulls Laurel back in and she meets Jackson there. A band named “Rymes with Orange” is playing and apparently this is a real band! It’s so real that they have a YouTube channel that is like 90% “we are a Canadian rock band fro the 1990s” and 10% “we were in MOTHER, MAY I SLEEP WITH DANGER? and we have uploaded the entire movie to prove it.” Which rocks, for my purposes. Thanks, Rymes with Orange! Your music is, ah, thanks! Okay, anyway, Kevin has followed Laurel to the bar, and he confronts Jackson in the men’s room, right at the urinal. “Man, take a hike,” says Jackson, refreshingly normal. Instead of taking a hike, Kevin bangs his head against the wall and leaves him on the floor, and that’s the last we see of Jackson, whose band at least has to be better than Rymes with Orange.
Kevin isn’t done though! He finds Laurel in the bar and asks her for one more chance pleaaaaaaaassssssse, it’s not like I just knocked a guy out in the bathroom. Laurel is like, fine, and they go outside, where he tells her, not for the first time, that he needs her, he doesn’t have a life without her in it. Laurel tells him that’s fine but she actually does have a life, she’s learning Chinese or whatever, and then Kevin beats up some random passers-by. Laurel rightly wanders off while he’s assaulting these unfortunates.
Meanwhile, back in the Centennial State5, Detective Unger is surveying a crime scene that is also the site of a new mini mall. They found a body there while they were building the mini mall, and Unger thinks it's her missing girl, Erin Meadows. This better not hold up the mini mall construction, the people of Smalltown, Colorado deserve a Coldwater Creek and a Sharper Image just like everyone else.
Laurel sneaks back into the cabin to get her stuff, but as she leaves, she is intercepted by Kevin, who is always here, he is always everywhere. He’s the panoptikevin. Kevin pleads with Laurel again, he has just realized that he needs professional help (yes) and he just never learned how to trust (okay). But they had some good times! Laurel does not care about the good times, but she does care way too much about the dishes she keeps trying to retrieve, just LEAVE the DISHES, are they the fuckin golden plates from the angel Moroni? She reluctantly accepts some rosé in a mason jar as an offer of friendship, but guess what, the rosé was drugged and now she’s unconscious. It is a good rule of thumb to treat all glasses of rosé as though they are drugged, like how in Florida you assume any body of water you can’t see the bottom of has an alligator in it.
Okay, now so many things start happening all on top of each other, and a bunch of them involve an auto club card, so bear with me. For the last time! The detective finally finds that picture of Billy Jones and faxes it to Jessica, who gasps, “that’s him! He’s a killer and he’s got my daughter!” like yes Jessica, we have watched you treading water here for 80 minutes. She goes to the local police with her story and they’re like “lol can’t help but good luck I guess.” On her way out, she manages to hit a spike strip in the parking lot (women drivers, am I right) and has to call roadside assistance. When a mechanic shows up, he asks her for ID because someone else has just used her road club information. That was Billy, who loaded Laurel into her car and then fucked with the car and then called the auto club people. I don’t quite grasp why but it’s not that important. What’s important is that Jessica gleans that Billy is taking Laurel to her own family’s cabin. Everyone in this movie has a cabin! Jackson has a cabin but it sucks.
Laurel wakes up in her cabin and decides she does not care for this being kidnapped thing one bit. Unfortunately, her car won’t start (maybe Kevin fucked with it and then had it towed to the cabin??) and Kevin (Billy?) is chasing her with a little hatchet. Jessica is racing to the cabin while Laurel runs into the woods, and when she arrives Bevin (Kelly? Killy?) hears her yelling for Laurel. Laurel is still running through the woods right next to the cabin, in plain view. I thought she ran faster than that. Billy tells Jessica she’s too late and knocks her out.
Kevin catches up with Laurel, who has traversed the extensive forest and is trying and failing to start a motorboat. The tense music really ramps up as she gets in a canoe instead and angrily paddles away. How cool do you think you would look angrily paddling a canoe? Ask yourself this before you criticize Tori Spelling paddling for her life. Jessica wakes up and runs toward the lake but not before Kevin somehow comes up under Laurel’s canoe and knocks her out of it. Laurel swims underwater all the way back to the dock and pulls herself up onto it even though she is wearing a chunky sweater and jeans that must weigh one thousand pounds. Jessica runs toward her and asks where Billy is, and Laurel is like, whomst. But then he’s here with his little axe again, and Jessica announces that this is Billy Jones, who killed a girl, and they just found her body, FYI. Billy doesn’t want to see Jessica right now actually, thanks. Laurel pushes her mother in front of her and sobs that she’s the one keeping them apart, she’s always loved Kevin, she believes in him. A bold gambit! Billevin asks if she means it and she’s like, yes, absolutely, for sure, and then whacks him into the water with an oar. Mother and daughter cling to each other and watch the lake for a minute but Billy doesn’t come up. It’s over! No need to call the police or have the lake dragged or anything, you took matters into your own hands and it’s definitely fine.
Well, I don’t know, actually, because then a sick guitar riff plays over a girl telling another girl she has a date with Preston tonight. He’s so dreamy! He’s in a band! And then Preston shows up and you guys: it’s Billy, but now he has a terrible goatee. This guy! The end, thanks for reading!
Maybe not the last thing that ever goes on this feed! Maybe it is! I don’t know!
Please tell me if you have ever heard someone call a 4x4 “a four by”???
When I googled this to make sure I was spelling it right, I found a clip from the Today show from last year informing me that “Jazzercise is making a comeback,” look out everybody
[citation needed]
Colorado. It’s Colorado.
I filled a jug with deadly spa water just so I could pour it out after I finished reading this