Embers of Dread: Delving into the Haunting True Story of David (1988) – A TV Movie Review from ABC!
In Rosemary’s Baby there is a moment that often resonates with the audience, which is when Rosemary asserts “This isn’t a dream. This is really happening!” It’s the moment she realizes she is being raped by the Devil (or is it really her husband voluntarily possessed by the Devil?) In any event, the principle of fear being scarier when it’s “really happening” I feel applies aptly to several “based on a true story” films that I found particularly dark and hopeless, that I now want to share with you all — the made for TV movie David from 1988.
Referenced as a dramatization of Marie Rothenberg’s account of the events surrounding the burning and survival of her son, David Rothenberg.
We see young David’s side profile in silhouette against a sunburnt red-colored background. Lullaby music can be heard, distorting menacingly. This is so wrong, disturbing, and exploitative even in the motif.
Bernadette Peters (The Jerk, Annie) is Marie Rothenberg. Matthew Lawrence (Mrs. Doubtfire, Tales from the Darkside — another movie worth reviewing) plays the eponymous role of David. We see him in a photograph in sunburnt red filter, with a picture lovingly in his father’s arms, played by the ever-insane looking John Glover (Gremlins 2: A New Batch and In the Mouth of Madness — yet another movie worth reviewing!)
The light synth music fades. The sunburnt red fades to normal hue as David wakes up for a normal day before getting ready for school. We see a close-up on a low flame on the gas stove. Oh, how you tease, Mr. Director.
Son and Mother get to school and, ominous synth music, there’s the father staring at them through a chain-link fence just perfectly calm poker-faced which belies so many horrible things so subtly. It’s as if he is holding back all his crazy behind a wall of razor thin sanity. Like he could do anything. John Glover. He’s solid! Points go to him for the greasy unkempt hair blowing in the breeze.
Marie explains she might marry her boyfriend John who’s a policeman. John is scheduled to be with David. But David’s father, “Charlie,” appears, and Marie makes no time for him. “Why don’t you let him have a little fun?” Charlie insists.
She insists in the opposite direction that John, the boyfriend, has dibs on David’s time. The father, Charlie, says “David’s my son. He belongs to me.” David agrees to his mother’s chagrin: “Yeah, I belong to you!” He’s so innocent.
David jumps on his father’s back and they seem perfectly happy together. Ride ’em horsey. Okay. “Let me in, let me in.” the father says as he goofily bangs on the door, way too deep into the child’s play. Overcompensating in some desperate way.
“Someone has to make the money around here.” Marie says at one point. “You always throw that in my face, to try to take David away from me.” Charlie retorts. Marie replies, “Every time you don’t get what you want you act like a baby. You’re worse than David.” Don’t hold back lady. Tell him how you really feel. Women can hurt a man’s pride alright. It’s mental castration, which makes me wonder how he fooled her to have a kid with her in the beginning. She probably liked bossing him around and she liked that at first, I bet. Hand in glove.
Finally she barbs him deeply: “If I get married to John and we move away what are you gonna do?”
That freaks him out. She’s lighting his fuse right now.
“Everything’s John! What about me?” He really did treat her like a mother it sounds like, and not a wife. He is sounding awful wimpy here. I don’t know who’s worse (yet…)
Charlie oddly waits for John at the police station steps like an absolute homeless mental case. Pained and red faced he ambushes that “John” on the station steps. John is the dad from the original Wonder Years (to completely date myself).
“I’m losing David. I need your help.” Charlie confides to John. Charlie convinces him to give him David for the weekend if it’s so important to him but to leave Marie alone and make this transition easier on all of them. Then to prove he’s a good father he says he bought a beeper and special number he can call him anytime. So funny. Waste of money and doesn’t prove anything other than total obsession.
John condescendingly tells Charlie to grow up and act like a father and work it out with Marie. Charlie really is a pathetic, clinging, volatile, man-child. Great acting. So cringey! So craven. John Glover just nails this character to the wall. Then to offset it he plays over the top nicely with David. High energy!
“You always have so much fun with him you make me feel like nothing.” Marie confides. Interesting admission.
John and Marie have a romantic moment consoling each other on patiently tolerating Charlie not leaving them alone soon enough.
Charlie sits with a single rose awaiting Marie at some random dinner meeting, presumably to discuss David. “Just like old times.” Charlie pitches that he’s got a new job, tells her everything she wants to hear. Primarily that he’ll have less time with David in the future… so he wants a full week with him before his new job starts! Sneaky plan. And the new job is right around the corner from David’s school. Plus, she can have more time with John!!! She reluctantly agrees of course.
I just noticed he’s driving a beetle car in that same sunburnt red color. If only she had seen the motif signs, what poor David might have been spared!
John and Marie walk through Chinatown and to their right is a literal garbage can fire. The flames of the foreshadowing are getting higher! “I’ve had this funny feeling all day something is wrong.” she says. “I can’t explain it.” As they walk past a second flaming garbage can. Hint, hint.
The week together begins with David and Charlie. Child actor Matthew Lawrence as David is very cute and loveable. He’s talking with his father Charlie. When they talk it’s like two children talking to each other. “When Mommy gets angry, she gets…” and David makes the Psycho shower stabbing motion. Hmmm. A casual inside joke but telling.
Mama Marie calls. Charlie intentionally does not answer. And holy sheet Charlie takes David to real deal Disneyland California. But fake out. Not really. Just some cheap hotel “near Disneyland” and hang out around the gates outside. Damn. He is mentally deranged!
Marie is scared cause Charlie isn’t answering.
Rainy night. Charlie gets a motel room with a waterbed and an arcade in the motel. David loves it and forgets he didn’t get Disneyland for the moment. He then leaves David at the arcade and goes back to the hotel room. He takes out a picture of the three of them as a happy family. Obsessed much?!
Charlie and David eat takeout in the rainstorm. David’s upset because he wants to go to Disneyland but only gets the arcade. Metaphorically how Charlie perceives that he’s not getting the Disneyland version of his family, just the quarter insert arcade version. Punishing David with unfulfilled longing. It’s truly malignantly narcissistic and disgusting.
“I wanna talk to mommy now. I wanna go home!” David has tears in his eyes. Charlie is losing his feeble mind. “Don’t you want to stay here with Daddy?” Nope.
Marie has police break into Charlie’s apartment, and he left a note that he’s not coming back and he’s taking Charlie. APB is out for Charlie now.
Later, Charlie calls Marie at work, “He’s my son. I have rights.” He accidentally reveals he’s in another time zone.
She demands he return him and professes he’ll never see him again. Charlie pouts like a child at the news. “You’re always shouting at me. I was gonna give you another chance but not now.” He hangs up on her.
Charlie takes David to a store and innocuously buys some ominous flammable liquid in a metallic red tin tub. David asks again, “When can we go to Disneyland?”
Charlie offers David a sleeping pill. “No more people pulling over you. No more people fighting over you. No more hurts. No more.” The camera pans over to can of flammable liquid in a tin.
David is asleep and Charlie pours it all over his son and the waterbed. Monstrously he lights a match, throws it into David’s motel room… the room ignites… and explodes. Charlie just watches psychotically on as the motel burns with his son in it.
A telegram to Marie is a suicide note from Charles and states “David had an accident and is in the burn victim unit.”
Marie is demolished.
David is in bandages head to toe. Oh, what a hideous and cowardly crime! “Is your name David?” The doctors ask… David nods innocently while fully mummified in wraps. This is so bad.
Marie and John are brought to David through a mob of press. She’s at first in denial that it’s her son. But soon she breaks down and accepts it. She falls apart.
David’s Status from the doctor: 90% burned body. “He’s an open wound. Open to every infection if his kidneys don’t shutdown.” This is truly brutal and evil. I just see this as effective horror and not drama. The fact that it’s based on a true story just makes it all more vital and vivid to me. “In the next 48 hours your son will probably die.”
Then John pipes in “Maybe it’s better if…” “…if David dies?” Marie continues. “It’s not fair to him. All the scars and disfigurement. “Do you know what kind of life he’ll have ahead of him? He doesn’t deserve that.” John responds. John really knows how to sweet talk a woman.
Marie Rothenberg goes too… uh Church… okay. Wrong, “Rothenberg” got it. She begs God to kill David. “I want David to die.” she cries. Man, this is so dark.
Charlie calls the police posing as the fire department trying to find out how David is. This guy! Going for Dad of the Century here.
Marie proclaims “I’m helpless. He’s burned away. His face is gone! My baby’s gone! I want my baby!” She cries to John. John can’t do shit. What a piece of shit John is about all this. He’s just all like “Let him burn away, we can start a better family.” That’s the vibe he gives off.
Donations mount for David at the police station.
Charlie is on the cusp of turning himself in after he keeps calling in to find out about his son, the police are hip to who he is now.
Meanwhile, Marie harasses the attending medical personnel trying to get them to talk to David. Treat him like semi-human. No dice. The lead nurse threatens to have her removed for interfering. The mother hangs a picture of her son over his emergency bed to shame them into treating him like a person.
Marie accuses John of not being able to look at David. And being weak for only taking off three weeks and not more. She sits with David’s bandaged body and sings to him “It’s a small world after all?” Terrible. She notices his ear is missing. Burnt completely off. Marie storms up to the doctor and asks “What happened to his ear? It fell off?” “Oh, that happens routinely to burn patients. The cartilage is brittle. It’s common that it just falls away.” He responds matter-of-factly. That’s much more info than I was expecting.
“Okay,” the doctor gets fed up with her. Big girl time. “We’ll have to remove David’s fingers as they’re dead to remove chance of infection.”
Now to an Interrogation room. Charlie is telling cops how everyone knows he was so good to David. Yeah. You’re a real hero. A towering inferno of virtue. He confesses he wanted to kill both David and himself in a way that couldn’t be identified so Marie would never know. But he grew a conscience when it came to himself. What a guy! But as an actor John Glover is creeping the shit out of me. Such good acting here. “It took me a long time to figure out Marie was the Devil… Can you keep me posted on how David’s doing?” Psychopathy in action.
Back to David. Progress! No more tubes. David speaks! “Hi Mommy.” “He was saving his first words for you mommy.” the nurse says. “Can I have some ice cream?” They laugh. Then David asks, “Where’s Daddy?” Oh man. This is intense!
Marie lies mercifully to the child. “Did he set that fire?” David asks. This is emotional torture. It really is. “Yes” his mother replies. “Why did daddy do this to me?”
Later they give him dolls of himself and his Daddy and him and is encouraged to act out his anger towards his father. This treatment is bonkers. They encourage him to pound the doll of his dad to let his anger out. “It’s okay Davie.” He gets more and more distraught. Marie walks out.
The whole point was to “let his anger go.” Okay doc! What kind of voodoo bullshit is that?!
Next, they de-bandage David.“Please Mommy. I want to see.” “You’re still Mommy’s little boy.” She responds reassuringly. “No. I look like a monster. I hate this.” Oh God. He’s a hideous freak.
They reassure him with future grafting he’ll look better and better as time goes on. She kisses David’s monster face. She wheelchairs him around singing ominously in chorus with David “It’s a small world after all.”
A normal mom and boy in the hospital protests, “Eww, look at that.” “Shhh!” says his mother.
David later gives a gift to a blind burn victim, a young girl.
He eats at a cafeteria with Mom. Silly looking goon. He enjoys some ice cream.
Next Marie testifies against David’s father, Charlie. Charlie is in the orange jump suit. Orange is the new sunburnt red.
Charlie in one last troll move asks for forgiveness the same way he forgives Marie and John. But the maximum sentence is issued. Fucking bullshit! Outrageous verdict (watch it on Tubi here).
What an absolute pitch midnight black film David is. If you want your heart ripped into a million little pieces, if that’s your thing, I full heartedly recommend David. 4 out of 5 stars.
A parade for David has Charlie watching on TV from jail. Do they have HBO? Then real pictures of the REAL David skateboarding and a card reads he loves ice cream and punk rock music. Rock on ya little punker! After this movie he changed his name to “Dave, Dave” to avoid the last name notoriety. David was a house music DJ, music producer, and rap musician! He died young at age 42, July 2018 from complications with pneumonia. R.I.P. David. I’m sure your music was fire!
David (1988)
AKA: David, uma História Real, Ντέιβιντ, Égető borzalom
Directed by: John Erman
Written by: Marie Rothenberg, Mel White, Stephanie Liss
Produced by: Donald March, John Erman
Cinematography by: Steve Yaconelli
Editing by: James Galloway
Music by: Marvin Hamlisch
Special Effects by: Gerald Quist, Michael Westmore
Cast: Bernadette Peters, John Glover, Dan Lauria, George Grizzard, Christopher Allport, Georgann Johnson, Jordan Charney, Matthew Lawrence
Year: 1988
Country: USA
Language: English
Colour: Colour
Runtime: 1h 36min
Studio: Donald March Productions, ITC Entertainment Group
Distributor: ABC
