It’s another Melissa Joan Hart Month review here at B-Movie Enema!

By 2008, our lovely leading lady was married, a mom, and no longer Sabrina the Teenage Witch. For the most part, she was exploring other interests while still doing some TV work in guest appearances, like on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and in TV movies like 2007’s Holiday in Handcuffs. The latter, I suspect, started the work she did with ABC Family on cable and later led to lots of other holiday-themed TV movies. It also probably led to her being cast in 2009 on the main ABC network competition, Dancing with the Stars.

I digress. As part of her more grown-up roles that came after her work as Sabrina Spellman, we have the movie that is getting reviewed this week, 2009’s Nine Dead. Nine Dead was filmed over a few weeks in the summer of 2008. Hart is playing an Assistant District Attorney and has ditched her usual blonde locks for darker hair because she has a dark secret. In fact, everyone in this movie has some dark and serious shit to deal with. After the completion of filming, the movie kind of sat around until New Line Cinema would pick up the distribution rights and get this movie out on DVD and streaming.

There aren’t a lot of trivia or details that exist out there online for the movie, but there are a few things that do come to mind. It’s very clear this movie is one of those 2000s flicks that played off the popularity of the Saw franchise. While the details are obviously different. But it’s pretty obvious where this movie is taking inspiration from. For one, you have a dingy room where people are locked up or chained up. You have a deadly serious guy who has these people locked up in that dingy room to figure out why they are the object of his diabolical schemes. The trailer tells us that he has nine seemingly random people captured, and it’s up to the kidnapped victims to figure out what it is about them, specifically, that led to them being in this situation. Every ten minutes, if they haven’t figured out why they are all here, he kills one of them until either they figure this shit out or they are all dead. Again, some details are different between Nine Dead and Saw, but they share a lot of the same DNA. You have dingy rooms, people kidnapped and held against their will, and diabolical scheming. Cool.

One of the producers of Nine Dead is Paula Hart. If that name doesn’t sound familiar, then… uh… I mean, it’s right there. Paula is Melissa’s mother. Going back to the 1996 TV movie pilot for Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Paula has largely been involved in much of what Melissa has done in one way or another, with a few reasonable exceptions. For example, this is the only movie I’ve covered this month that she had a hand in. The other flicks I chose are either movies that Melissa worked on prior to her most famous work as Sabrina, or were roles in movies that were either major productions beyond what Paula and Melissa’s Hartbreak Films production company could do, or were roles Melissa specifically auditioned for.

I’m not necessarily saying that one is the reason why the other has work in the entertainment field, but I will say that, generally, if you find one of the Hart girls involved in something (Melissa, Paula, or Emily, the younger sibling to Melissa), at least another Hart would be nearby. That said… The Harts often work as a family unit. Paula and Melissa have done a lot together over the last 30 years, especially now that Melissa has taken a larger role with Hartbreak Films. Emily voiced Sabrina, while Melissa voiced Aunts Hilda and Zelda, on Sabrina: The Animated Series, also produced by Hartbreak Films. So, yeah it’s often a family affair when it comes to the Harts. And that ranges from the more kid-friendly stuff like Sabrina all the way up to the more R-rated stuff like Nine Dead.

Alright, so let’s get this penultimate chapter in Melissa Joan Hart Month locked in so I can talk about what goes down here.

The credits play out while an unseen guy is making plans that include measuring things, loading guns, checking a taser, etc. We then go to Las Vegas, where a real jerkass named Sully runs a strip club. He’s abducted. The next guy abducted is a police officer named Dean Jackson. His partner, who also has to be tased when the abduction happens, is Daniel Baldwin. Surprise double up on the Baldwin front this month. We transition to the next guy we see taken, Coogan, a rapist pedophile, but before he is kidnapped, he hears a news report where there have actually been four kidnappings recently, so I’m gonna guess there are a few people we didn’t see get nabbed. But we do see our most important character get kidnapped. Melissa Joan Hart is playing Assistant District Attorney Kelley Murphy.

Kelley mentioned a priest who was also kidnapped, and she’s not entirely certain of whether other disappearances in other towns and cities are related, but here we are.

In all, nine people have been kidnapped. The aforementioned people, strip club owner Sully, police officer Jackson, rapist pedophile Coogan, and Assistant D.A. Kelley Murphy are joined by five more people. We have Christian, a petty criminal, Leon, a guy who sells guns illegally, Father Francis, the priest that Kelley just mentioned in the previous scene, Eddie, a health insurance guy, and Nhung Chan, the owner of a Chinese store. We’ll soon learn that Chan does not know English.

A masked man comes in and lays out the rules. There is a very specific reason why these exact nine people have been brought here. It is up to them to figure out the mystery of what that reason is. Every ten minutes, he will return to the room. Then, he will ask for the answer to the mystery. If they cannot solve the mystery, one of them dies. If they do solve the mystery, he will release whoever is still alive, he will call the authorities to pick them up, and he will confess to any and all crimes he has committed this evening and before.

Sounds easy, right?

Well, no one actually knows each other. Kelley is the first to try to solve the mystery by asking a few questions and trying to get everyone focused. Leon doesn’t believe this guy will actually do what he says. He thinks the guy is a cop. He thinks cops rounded up a bunch of suspected criminals to scare them into confessing their crimes. Coogan, the rapist pedophile, who is played very fey by Lawrence Turner (and that’s not exactly great), tells a story of someone he knew who got rounded up, ended up in a room like this, and ended up getting beaten by cops to the point that he never walked the same again…

Though the way he told the story makes it sound like it wasn’t a beating the guy took… if you know what I mean.

However, after Eddie says to Father Francis that the worst possible crime is child molestation, Coogan does pipe up to reveal that was his crime. But he is also astute enough to tell the others that whatever “crime” the rest of them committed that is worthy of receiving the death penalty needs to be uncovered. They better act quick because the clock is literally ticking.

They each begin to introduce themselves. Jackson does not reveal that he is a cop, even after Kelley asks if he would like to add anything, seeing how they both work in law enforcement. Kelley says she has definitely made enemies, but people are tasked to keep up with parolees who might want to come after cops or members of the District Attorney’s office. Christian knows Sully. They did business in the past. Sully is not just a strip club owner; he’s also a loan shark and connected with the mob. Christian was a petty crook, but now bartends.

Coogan reminds everyone that no one has asked Chan anything. They discover she doesn’t speak English. Well, after Leon taunts her with some racist stuff, she reveals she knows one specific word she fires back specifically at Leon.

Coogan still believes this is a setup. Jackson reveals he is a cop, and he knows this is not a setup of any kind. The masked guy comes back in and asks why they are there. Kelley asks for more time, but knowing they do not have his answer, the kidnapper pulls out a gun, walks up to Christian, whispers the answer into his ear, and as Christian claims there is no possible way he would have known that, the kidnapper shoots him.

The timer is reset. Before closing the door, the kidnapper reminds them they have another ten minutes to not just answer the question, but also Christian’s reason as well.

Coogan reveals he spent five years in prison, but not for child molestation. He was convicted of Grand Theft Auto because no one could find the body of the child he raped. The priest never harmed anyone. Leon doesn’t kill, but he steals, and he sells guns he steals from others. Coogan realizes that at least two pairs of people know each other – Jackson and Kelley know each other, and Christian knew Sully.

Jackson and Kelley press Eddie about what his deal is. He works in the insurance game. His brother was sick, and he fudged some stuff with the insurance company to get him covered for a highly experimental procedure. Kelley reveals she and Jackson had an affair. That led to Jackson’s wife catching them and a divorce. However, there isn’t anything about that connected to anyone else.

In these first couple of ten-minute rounds, the biggest issue working against the survivors is that they are too busy picking on each other and yelling back and forth to focus on their connections. Some, like Leon, are too self-centered to help figure out the mystery. He asks Sully to break his hand so he can slip his handcuff. On his way out, he tells Kelley he doesn’t give a shit about any of them and he’s in it for himself.

Buuuut he doesn’t get far.

At first, it seems as though Leon is going to get the upper hand and grab a gun from the kidnapper, but it is empty. He shoots Leon with another gun and brings him back to the room. This is also the time for him to ask, once again, why they are here. They don’t have an answer, so the kidnapper approaches Coogan. He tells the pedo the reason. Coogan agrees that why they are there sure is a sound reason for this guy to be mad, and attempts to attack the kidnapper, but is shot dead.

On the way out, the kidnapper says that the first two were random, but next time, Leon will be the next to die.

While Leon decides to check out and make peace with the fact that he is the next to die, the old Chinese lady has an epiphany. The last time she saw Kelley, she wore glasses. That was years ago, but it dislodges a memory within the Assistant D.A. Early in Kelley’s career, Chan’s store was robbed by Wade Greeley. Greeley was just some loser punk. She prosecuted the crime and sent him away to San Quentin. Mrs. Chan’s positive ID of Greeley was the key to his arrest and conviction.

Jackson arrested Wade Greeley. Eddie comes up with a timeline, but there are still some questions. Father Francis seems to be a little standoffish about not knowing anything about Greeley or any of this crime stuff. What’s Eddie’s connection? How does Sully fit into this stuff? However, Leon is connected. He killed a partner of his over a disagreement. He sold the rest of his guns and stuff to… Christian.

The kidnapper returns to kill Leon. He does so because there is no full story as to why all nine of them were there. After Leon is dragged out, and the timer restarts, Father Francis says he knows why he is in the room, as well as one other person. Someone confessed something to Father Francis, but he can’t reveal it to them and betray the confidence of the confession. This pisses Sully off. While Father Francis disagrees, Sully puts the deaths of the others on his head because he wouldn’t reveal anything he knew before.

Sully then starts a series of revelations. His biggest secret concerns how he got beat up at his own club by an old man who owed him money. To get back at this guy, he firebombed his business. He didn’t realize the old man lived above his business with his grandkids. He killed them all. Jackson then reveals that he and his partner, during the first year on the force after the Academy, beat the hell out of a kid who took a swing at his partner. They beat him so bad, they blinded him. Eddie reveals that, while he was not convicted due to a lack of evidence, he was accused of rape in college.

What it keeps coming back to, though, is the robbery for which Greeley was convicted. Father Francis says he knows way more about the robbery. Eddie figures out that someone in the room confessed to the actual robbery. And that is true… Christian confessed he robbed the liquor store. Father Francis wasn’t sure of anything until Chan brought up the robbery.

So… Here’s what the connections are that they have figured out to this point. Greeley was a punk loser, but Christian robbed the store. Because Greeley was a punk loser, he was arrested by Jackson. Mrs. Chan confused Greeley for Christian due to a concussion she suffered in the robbery, and fingered Greeley, which was what Kelley needed to get the conviction. Sully is involved because Christian owed him money, and the robbery was to pay him back. Father Francis is there because Christian confessed to the robbery and told no one what he knew. Leon must have been the source of the weapon that Christian used.

That still leaves exactly what Eddie and Coogan’s connections were.

The kidnapper returns to the room. Sully yells at him about how he’s had to recollect all the fucked up shit he ever did in his life, and it’s all over loaning a measly $5000 to some loser. He tells the kidnapper that he has no regrets over how he did business. He tells the kidnapper to kill him, but the kidnapper says it’s not his turn… It’s Eddie’s.

Father Francis jumps in front of the shot and dies. Jackson reminds the kidnapper that he can only take one person every ten minutes, and Father Francis’s death means he can’t shoot Eddie now. As the kidnapper drags Father Francis out of the room, Kelley pleads to just have a conversation with him. She keeps referring to him as Wade and tells him that she can make it right with him. There’s just one problem. He is not Wade Greeley.

Kelley and Eddie start to argue. She yells at him about how she still doesn’t know anything about him. Jackson joins in on this after Eddie says he doesn’t know much about Kelley or Jackson. Jackson and Kelley start going back and forth toward each other over their past affair. Before she can explain something further about their connection, the kidnapper returns. He asks, once again, why they are there. They don’t have an answer, so he hands Mrs. Chan a note in Chinese and shoots her. As a quick side note, if you know whatever dialect of Chinese the note is written in, it’s said that it reveals the answer to the mystery. That’s not so much clever (though it kind of is), but a good attention to accuracy and detail.

On his way out of the room, Kelley begs for her life, saying her child needs her. This does not sit well with the masked man. He berates her for using her child as a prop to plead for her life. He tells her that he knows her son gets picked up at school by her hired help, and she rarely spends time with him. He tells Jackson he should be pissed off too, revealing Jackson is the father of her son.

Eddie then goes back to what Kelley was talking about when the kidnapper came in. She explains that she was on a losing streak with her cases. She needed a win, no matter the cost. She had shaky evidence from Mr. Chan. She also knew that there were hair samples from Christian that needed to be switched out. So she used Jackson to get into the evidence locker to get rid of the hairs.

Kelley says that if the word gets out of that room, her whole life will be over. She might as well be dead because she will lose her job. She will be thrown in jail. She will never see her son again. No one really cares because she is definitely complicit in the others being killed, no matter how good or bad or guilty or innocent they were.

As Kelley tells Jackson that he is no father, Eddie has an idea. The kidnapper was clearly upset when Kelley used the name Wade Greeley, and he was especially pissed off when she tried to use her son as a shield for her own life. So, if this isn’t Wade, maybe it’s his father. Jackson then asks if anyone considered what happened to Wade after he went to prison. Eddie and Jackson realize that this is where Coogan and Eddie are now involved.

It’s very possible Wade and Coogan met in prison, but before they can follow that any further, the kidnapper comes in and kills Sully, and the ten-minute countdown begins again.

Jackson and Eddie wonder if all the stuff they ever did that wasn’t right is enough for them to accept that they should die. Kelley tells them they shouldn’t give up. She tells a story about how someone grabbed her to rape her in the back of his van. She found a bat in his van, and she used it to beat the guy to death. She went home, cleaned up, burned up the bat in her fireplace, and went on with her life.

But that used up half their time. So they have to work real fast to figure out the final pieces to the mystery. They think back to something Coogan said right before he was killed by the kidnapper… Something about being concerned about the splatter. Eddie wonders if Coogan had AIDS. Kelley is like, “Whoa, Eddie… What the fuck?”

But Eddie builds a new series of events. It begins with Christian borrowing money from Sully. He needs to pay it back so he buys a gun from Leon to rob Mrs. Chan’s store. Kelley pushes to get Wade Greeley convicted, and uses Mrs. Chan’s dubious identification of Greeley along with Jackson getting her into the evidence locker to make that happen, though Jackson was also the arresting officer. Father Francis learns through Christian’s confession that he was the actual robber, and says nothing. Wade is in prison where Coogan finds him, rapes him, and infects Wade with AIDS. That’s why Eddie is there too.

So… What’s the final piece? What’s Eddie’s part in all this? Well, he was studying pharmaceuticals and worked for a company that had an experimental drug to treat AIDS patients so they could live longer. Wade must have been an applicant. Eddie’s job was to reject applicants for any number of reasons – one of those being that Wade was a convict. He lived two years after being released from prison, and his father then exacted revenge for all that happened to his son.

The kidnapper comes in and reveals that it is, indeed, the reason they are all there.

He says that the only thing Wade is guilty for was coming into each of these nine people’s lives. Any one of them could have saved him from the fate he suffered. He says that when they all leave here, his life will be over. They will live, and hopefully will be haunted by the choices they’ve made in turning their backs on his son. He gives Kelley the keys to unlock herself and the other two. He says the police are already here, and he will be arrested soon.

I’ll admit, this movie hasn’t been that great. It’s not terrible. But it wasn’t great. Then the movie decides to fly all the way off the rails in the final minutes of the runtime. Kelley does not free the other two. She attacks the kidnapper, knocks him to the ground, shoots him with his gun. She tells Jackson and Eddie that no one can learn what she did. So, she shoots Eddie and then shoots Jackson.

Greeley reveals he’s wearing a bulletproof vest. He then tells her that “everybody’s been watching” and that they can now see the real Kelley Murphy. He asks what she will do now. She says that he has no idea what she’s capable of and shoots him in the head. She escapes as the police flood the building.

But not before dropping the gun with her fingerprints all over it and touching the wall every few feet, surely leaving her prints there too.

Alright, so there is something kind of compelling about Nine Dead. It’s like an advanced game of Clue. You have people who are all connected to a specific crime. If they just talk to one another, they will fairly quickly figure out how they are all connected. The kicker is the lady who cannot speak English. She’s the one who holds all the cards. The centerpiece that will connect all these other threads, if you will. This isn’t a bad idea. This is something that could be an exercise you do at work or a party game, like a murder mystery party or whatever.

Okay, so you have a decent start with that premise. With a premise that can be compelling enough, you can mostly look past the obvious cost-cutting when it comes to having the movie largely take place in a single room. Your mileage may vary on the characters. There are, ultimately, only ten characters in this. Seven and a half of those characters are not good people. But, you know what? You can maybe survive that too if you have a compelling enough script and performances, etc.

But… That ending. It’s terribly frustrating. Look, I’m not necessarily saying that Mel’s character has any reason not to be a piece of garbage lady. She is. She can be bad. Ultimately, everything that happened to that dude’s son is really all her fault. But she gets away with everything. Yeah, I guess you can have some head canon that says she will not be able to stay ahead of this, but there is a series of events that happen in the movie that telegraph how this movie will be sunk in the end.

First, after all this time of having Kelley slowly reveal herself to be a worse and worse person, she suddenly begs for her life by saying her son needs his mommy. Okay, not terrible if you handle it a slightly different way, but I’ll get to that later. Then, she tells a story about beating a potential rapist to death, and revealing that she will do anything to keep her nose clean, no matter how deep in the shit it gets. Then, she thinks only for herself and attacks the kidnapper before shooting her son’s father and poor Eddie, who is maybe the most innocent of all these poor sons of bitches in this movie. Then she escapes!

Again, I will give you any apocryphal explanation of what will happen next. I even commented on the fact that she left the gun with all her prints on it and how often she touches everything. But there are other ways you could reveal that Kelley is a super duper piece of shit. She could reveal that she lied about having a son. She could even do that callously. She could obfuscate until only she was left alive and then give the answer to the mystery. She could die. There are a million other things you could have done. Hell, you could have even let all three of the final survivors go, and you still have a piece of shit Assistant D.A.

Instead, she kills innocent people and escapes. What are we doing? This could have been a nice little thriller indie. Instead, it’s schlocky, not in the good way, and it turned sour in the final minutes.

It will get better. Next week, it’s the headlining movie of Melissa Joan Hart Month. Join me when I look at her 1999 marquee movie. It’s the movie that was meant to transition her from TV to the big screen during the height of her Sabrina fame. She’s also surrounded by recognizable folks too. It’s the movie that was originally known as Next to You, but became Drive Me Crazy.