Empty Cradle

Kate Jackson plays a nurse from hell who, determined to hold onto her detestable boyfriend Frank, and after months faking pregnancy with a pillow, steals another woman's baby. Since Frank (who's married, by the way, and lives with his wife) wanted a boy, and the stolen baby is a girl, she sets her sights on another mother. This leads to a gruesome murder. That part of the story foreshadows a real-life incident that took place just recently, when a woman was murdered and her fetus torn from her body.

The main focus of the story, though, is on the bereft mother of the girl baby, played by Lori Loughlin, who knows darn well her baby wasn't stillborn and also knows that the assertion of the hospital (thanks to a little computer touch-up by Jackson) that she was on drugs isn't true either. Loughlin risks her marriage and takes a lot of criticism in an attempt to find out what happened to her baby.

This isn't an unusual story - in TV movies, women have been stealing other women's babies for years. This is still an interesting film where one truly empathizes with Loughlin, wants to see her vindicated, and can't get over how completely nuts Jackson is. Kate Jackson has always been a good actress, and she won't disappoint you in this. Loughlin is poignant as the determined mother. Look for Eriq LaSalle before ER as a police detective.