The Skating Rink
(1975, U.S.) color 45 minutes
With: Stewart Petersen (Tucker 'Tuck' Holland Faraday), Rance Howard (Myron Faraday), Devon Ericson (Lilly Degley), Betty Beaird (Ida Faraday), Jerry Dexter (Pete Degley), Cindy Eilbacher (Elva Grimes), Billy Bowles (Tom), Tara Talboy (Karen Faraday), Robert Clotworthy (Clete), Sparky Marcus (Tuck as a Young Boy), Molly Dodd (Mrs. Bayliss), Patricia Stevens (Tuck's Mother)
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SYNOPSIS (from the DVD): Living on a poor farm in the South, Tuck Faraday struggles with the insecurity caused by his stutter. Tuck's father does the best he can with his meager farm, a new wife, and Tuck's two brothers, who are lazy as sin. Tuck is fascinated as he watches a deserted factory being transformed into an ice skating rink and is elated when Pete offers him a chance to learn how to ice skate. When the rink opens, Tuck's abilities on the ice surprise everyone, including his father, who celebrates Tuck's accomplishments and his potential to overcome his insecurities.
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THE SKATING RINK is a stark and powerful drama, possibly one of the darkest and most adult of the After School Specials. We open with a veritable nightmare, as we witness a child lost in a thunderstorm. It turns out to be a flashback to an actual near-death childhood experience suffered by our hero, Tuck (well-played by newcomer Stewart Petersen).
Somewhere in rural America, a large family of red-blooded ignorant hicks live a poor and somewhat desperate life. Tuck is the golden boy, sweet, sensitive and broken. His stuttering and shyness make him the brunt of jokes from his cruel siblings, and the bane of his dumb father's existence. Tuck's adopted mother, kind but dumb as wood, is the only family member who respects and champions Tucker's life.
Luckily, an outsider named Pete (played by an affable Jerry Dexter) is building a skating rink in the middle of Nowhere, U.S.A., and he takes poor Tuck under his wing. Pete's motivations are obscure, although he was apparantly a former skating champ brought down by injury. Thus, phsyical disability helps physical disability, and Pete can achieve greatness again through his new "vessel".
Tucker gravitates immediately towards ice-skating as a way to express himself both creatively and non-verbally, sharing a freedom he never felt before, as well as the thrill of physical activity-as-emotional expression.
Yet Tucker's home life remains ennervating. In a titillating, yet almost unbearably cruel scene, a teenage sexpot (Cindy Eilbacher) walks with Tucker after school, flirting and teasing shamelessly. Tucker dares hope for a second that elusive beauty might really accept him, after all. Tucker dares make a pass at the brazen hussy, and she recoils. Alas, the dreamy sequence turns out to be just another cruel trick by his classmates, but this does not diminish its intense erotic impact. Told in an idyliic style, with the key moment unraveling in extreme close-up, this amazing scene has all the emotional intensity of a adolescent's wet dream, and is a real shocker.
Enter Pete's young and wounded new wife Lilly (an indelible performance by Devon Ericson). A battered orphan, Lilly appears right on time to save Tucker's wounded ego from the failures of before. The erotic stimulation Tucker gets from dancing with Lilly, having in effect a surrogate relationship with this vibrant young woman, puts Tucker in a better place emotionally, and his mental and physical progress is extraordinary.
We soon learn that Lilly, like Tucker, had ben abused and rejected by family, and like Tucker, was prone to self-pity. Pete lectures his two charges and states that courage, vision and hard work are the only antedotes to the corroding nature of self-pity, which he considers not only a curse, but a sin.
"The Ice Palace" finally opens, promising entertainment but offering so much more to the well-meaning but ignorant community. They come en masse, simultaneously bewildered but mesmerized by the beautiful skating. The healing carnival offers enlightenment and lessons in personal evolution to the recalcitrant townsfolk.
Tucker, of course, is the star of the show, and as he dances with his beautiful, wounded partner, he heals himself, his partner, and the entire community in one fell swoop. We then share a brief yet touching reconciliation twixt father and son. In the end, one might be tempted to call this inspirational fable a fairy tale, so dramatic is everyone's growth, yet its realistic underpinnings conspire to make this yet another engaging high drama in the classic tradition. THE SKATING RINK is yet another example of the TV-Movie genre at the top of its form.
DVD availability: Brentwood BCI Eclipse
Produced for television
Original air date: 02/05/1975
Martin Tahse Productions / American Broadcasting Company
"After School Specials"
Story: Mildred Lee (from her novel)
Screenplay: Bob Rodgers
Music by Glenn Paxton
Cinematography by Robert E. Collins
Produced by Fred W. Bennett, Martin Tahse
Directed by Larry Elikann
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