Review of Dark Horse (1992) by Robert B — 03 Aug 2013

Dark Horse (David Hemmings, 1992).

Poor David Hemmings and Tab Hunter. It seemed that at one point, both of these previously-formidable actors were in desperate need of money, which led to them collaborating on this mess of a movie (Hunter wrote the script). I can't be certain this was a Lifetime Original Movie-if so, it was one of the very first-but if it wasn't, this has to be one of the movies from which Lifetime grabbed their formula.

The movie starts off promisingly enough. Dad (St. Elsewhere's Ed Begley Jr.) and daughter Allison (Dutch's Ari Meyers) move from Los Angeles to the middle of nowhere. Allison hates it, falls in with the wrong crowd, and ends up getting arrested and having to do community service at a horse farm for the underprivileged run by Susan Hadley (Ginger Snaps' Mimi Rogers). Of course, dad and Susan are attracted to one another, and Allison bonds with Jet, a racehorse who won't let anyone else ride him. But oh, it doesn't stop there. You can't just leave it at that, you have to throw all sorts of other stupidities in the way, but then we'd be getting into spoiler territory.

It just gets dumber, dumber, dumber, with no hope whatever of redemption. You know it's going to keep getting dumber; the only question is how far Hunter is willing to go to try and pull the viewer's strings. All the way, it turns out; I can't imagine the stupid getting worse than this. *.