Cheryl Pollak in Betty (1997)

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The Wizard of Oz gets a modern facelift with this independent effort from writer/director Richard Murphy. Cheryl Pollak is “Betty”, a Julia Roberts-type actress who has a bit of a freak-out, believing that she doesn’t deserve the wealth and comfort she’s become accustomed to. She packs up and leaves Hollywood, shacking up in a small place in Palm Springs until she can figure things out. After ridding her pool of a pesky single leaf, Betty may have found her calling, confirmed after she quirkily dumps a bunch of fruit loops into the pool and scoops them out. Get the picture? She learns her way around the thriving pool maintenance business from a pool man (Stephen Gregory) and also has encounters with a door-to-door muscle cream salesman (Ron Perlman) and a delivery boy (Dan O’Donahue) while trying to avoid the Wicked Witch of the West, her manager/therapist amusingly named Crystal Ball (Holland Taylor).

Pollak has a face you’ll recognize (most likely from 1990’s Pump Up the Volume) and she’s always carried with her a kind of waifish sexiness that’s on full display in Betty. This is a clever little fable that has an equal amount of natural grace and the theatricality of back-and-forth banter. Some of the film’s humor, including ringing phones and a dead rabbit, goes over-the-top, but it all fits nicely into the fakery of the town that Betty is trying to escape from. Betty may not buy into the whole “there’s no place like home” philosophy, but her adventures with the pool man, salesman and delivery boy (aka the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion) do make her a better person and it’s one tornado trip you may enjoy as well.

Nudity Report: Pollak never strips down to the bare essentials, but spends a good amount of screen time in a black bikini.

IMDB Summary: IMDb voters score it 6.7 of 10.

Box Office: n/a (Straight-to-video)

DVD Info: The film is available from Vanguard on DVD.


Written by: Erik Childress