Murder,

By Richard Zoglin

Getting tired of wholesome TV families? Sick of adorable, wisecracking children? Up to here with Cosby? Well, meet the Schreuder family. Mother is a divorced Manhattan social climber who badgers her young daughter into tears with trivial school lessons, locks her less favored son out of the house for days, and schemes to get money from her rich but miserly father in Utah. One summer she sends her two teenage boys, a pair of grungy rejects from the Dead End Kids, to stay with Gramps and steal his loot. But when he discovers the treachery and cuts off the flow of funds, Frances Schreuder orders one of her sons to murder him.

TV viewers will have ample opportunity to get to know the Schreuders in coming months. Next week CBS will air the two-part At Mother's Request, based on Jonathan Coleman's 1985 account of the murder of Salt Lake City Millionaire Franklin Bradshaw. Sometime this spring NBC will tell the same story in Nutcracker: Money, Madness, Murder, a six-hour mini-series drawn from Shana Alexander's book on the same subject. It was a game of TV chicken: the two networks had bought the rights to the competing books and neither wanted to give up the sensational story.

At Mother's Request (the second TV film to be launched but the first completed) is not merely about strange people, it is a strange TV drama. Shot on location in New York City and Utah and directed by Michael Tuchner, it has * a seedy, B-movie feel. The plot lurches fitfully, characters pop in and out with little explanation, and the story lacks context. Frances, for example, aspires to be a socialite, but we never see her mingling in society. This is a movie oddly short of extras.

But the absence of background or typical TV moralizing gives At Mother's Request its tabloid appeal. Quite simply, these people are too crazy to learn anything from. Frances is not merely an overdemanding mother but a near psychotic whose fevered outbursts ("How dare you mention Las Vegas in this house!") would be gag lines in any other TV show. Her "good" son Marc is fixated on movie cameras and tape recorders; Larry is convinced that nuclear war will break out before his college finals. The relationship between mother and sons has a creepy Oedipal ambiguity. Says Frances to Marc, ominously, as her murder plans start to jell: "You are the only man in the Schreuder family now."

As Frances, Stefanie Powers hits one note loud and often: she speaks nearly all her lines in a sort of loony, distracted haze. Though her performance lacks shadings, she creates a memorable monster. Doug McKeon and Corey Parker are at once scary and pathetic as her sons. E.G. Marshall, John Wood and Frances Sternhagen do nice turns in support.

What will Nutcracker bring? Most likely a more conventionally fleshed-out story. While At Mother's Request focuses mainly on the murder and subsequent investigation, the NBC version will provide a fuller portrait of Frances' life (Lee Remick will play the role). It may even try to make some psychological sense out of the whole sordid affair. But for sheer perversity, At Mother's Request will be hard to beat.