On B List of Movie Reviews
(For optimum viewing, adjust the zoom level of your browser to 125%.)
The Burning Bed (1984)
Rate:
9
Viewed:
11/20
11/20:
Based on the true story of Francine Hughes, The Burning Bed is a motion picture example of battered woman syndrome.
With that being said, it's not an easy watch, even for 75 million people when it was first aired on television in 1984. If
The Burning Bed was theatrically released instead, Farrah Fawcett should've gotten an Oscar, and it's the best
performance of her career. I'm not going to see a better description of an abused wife.
Sad to say, it happens across the country. When a battered wife reaches the breaking point, she usually kills her husband,
her kids, and/or herself because it's the only way to end the pain. In many cases, she ends up in prison for life, and
sometimes, it's an undeserved punishment after enduring years of spousal abuse.
People will say, "She should have left when given the chance," but they really don't get it. Emotional attachment is
the most overriding reason why the wife stays in the abusive relationship, preferring to see the good more than
bad in her husband and thinking they can drive out the latter in the long run through love.
The other reasons can be their kids' sake and lack of finances. It doesn't help, either, when the wife has no meaningful
support system to rely on, being enabled by relatives of either side to go back, sometimes because of religion. Most of all,
she's confused by what's the right thing to do, and victims like her are often uneducated to begin with.
Believe it or not, spousal abuse, which included rape, was something that police departments didn't care about back then. It
became the most underreported crime in the United States by the 70's. The Francine Hughes case changed everything which led
to the passage of the Violence Against Women Act a decade later which "established a national domestic violence hotline,
forced all states and jurisdictions to recognize and enforce victim protection orders, and provided funding for domestic
violence training for law enforcement officers, among other provisions."
I have to mention others for giving outstanding performances. If Paul Le Mat was likeable in American Graffiti,
well...forget about it when you see him in The Burning Bed; he's pure evil. Grace Zabriskie plays his character's
awful mother. I can't think it's easy for them to be these people. It's great job by Richard Masur for putting on a
serious face about these matters.
All in all, The Burning Bed shows why domestic violence never makes sense.