Best movie of this year hands down!

Excellent but underrated film

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This was Diana's first movie after Mommie Dearest, and it was fairly brave, at the time, for a TV movie. Yes, it's a bit of a mess, but it certainly deals with a messy subject -- one that can be dealt with any number of ways. When the students at an assembly, and Diana Scarwid goes around to their lockers with a shopping cart, it is an absolute scream. When she finally confronts the students, she is foaming with righteous anger and chews up the scenery like no other actress before her. When they burn all the contraband and the students begin to add their own stashes to the bonfire, Scarwid is victorious. GREAT performance in a campy movie...

This TV movie really shows how drugs will effect the lives of all who take it and the family members who lose someone to drugs. "Desperate Lives" has a great cast.Scott Cameron,played by Doug McKeon(On Golden Pond), is a kid who hangs around with kids who do drugs. Sandy Cameron, Scott's sister, Sandy,played by the beautiful Helen Hunt(Girls Just Want To Have Fun, Mr. Saturday Night, and Mad About You)is dating a boy named Steve, played by Grant Kramer(Hardbodies and The Young And The Restless), who is into drugs. Some of the high school kids have drug problems, nobody want to admit it, but a new councilor, Eileen Phillips, played superbly by Diana Scarwid(Mommy Dearest, Silkwood, and Extremities), can see that there is a problem with the kids with drugs.Scott's and and Sandy's mother and father, played by Diane Ladd(The Ghosts Of Mississippi) and Tom Atkins(Creepshow, Halloween III, and Lethal Weapon), think that they have the perfect family, they think that their kids can't get into drugs but later on, they realized they wrong.Steve gets Sandy to try a synthetic version of Angel Dust and she ends up going a little psychotic and injures herself bad. Things gets worse when a girl at the school named Julie Jordan, played by Michele Greene, dies cause of drugs. Scott goes for a ride with a friend named Susan,played by Tricia Cast(The Young And The Restless), they smoke a joint full of the Angel Dust and get into a wreck, and Susan dies. Scott is taken to the hospital, the doctor says he might recover or not. Scott later on remembers everything and goes spastic. Mr and Mrs Cameron realized how wrong they were about their kids not being effected by drugs.The school still doesn't see the drug problems they have at the school, Eileen Phillips, at a pep assembly, at the high school, makes the school wake up and see what is happening to the kids cause of drugs.This movie is super,the supporting cast is great.Clayton Rohner(Just One Of The Guys, Modern Girls, and G vs E)plays Monte.Mykelti Williamson(Streets Of Fire, Midnight Caller, and Con Air)as Jack.Art Hindle(Porky's 1 and 2, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, and The Octagon)plays Eileen's boyfriend, Stan.I give this movie 2 thumbs up and a 10/10 stars.

Desperate Lives is one of the first movies my family every recorded on our VCR. I was 6 years old when this movie first came out, and I am not sure how old I was when I watched this movie for the first time, but I continued to ask if I could watch it again and again. I continued to watch this movie into my junior high and high school years. This movie dealt hard with the drug topic and was very relevant for the times. I no longer own a copy of this movie, but would love to see it again. I think it is a great movie where parents or teachers could talk to their kids about drug abuse and their effects and peer pressure.Because it has been so many years since I have seen this movie, I did not realize that the counselor was Helen Hunt, but I do remember that I was always very impressed by her character.

I cannot believe that one comment I just read for this one, that this piece of junk is "powerful" and "realistic" - WHAT?! This utterly awful TV movie is pure, 100% hokum. I went to high school in the '80s, when this thing came out and this TV movie seems to have been made on another planet by aliens who had absolutely no contact with real teenagers. I wish I'd seen this then - I could have used the laughs. But at least it's acquired a thick patina of camp value over the years, what with its beyond-earnest, totally out of touch plot and dialogue. This is the "Reefer Madness" of the '80s. Helen Hunt's PCP suicide/freakout is a pee-in-your-pants crack-up. (I don't suppose they'll be showing that clip when she's up for the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, should that ever happen.)