Some of my fondest memories of growing up with my sisters are watching melodramatic, over-the-top made-for-TV movies. We relished any movie of the week starring Tori Spelling, and the more sensational the better. Most of the movies were commissioned by NBC as a Movie of the Week before they made a pulpy movie to Lifetime, to be played repetitively during the weekend’s daylight hours.

The Scholars editors love these films too, and it’s with great joy that we highlight Lifetime and Hallmark’s pantheon with a classic, the 1996 classic No One Would Tell starring still-child stars Candace Cameron Bure and Fred Savage. (Regrettably, like many of these classics, No One Would Tell is inspired by the murder of 14-year-old Amy Carnevale.)

Savage is the abusive, jealous, steroid-dependent Bobby; Cameron is smart, beloved Stacy. Bobby is possessive and controlling, and eventually murders Stacy, who of course, is later found dead in a lake. In a trial presided over by Sally Jesse Raphael, their friends admit they all knew Bobby was abusive (at least one girl blames Stacy for her own death!)

Here’s a highlight reel someone uploaded to YouTube:

Bobby’s a real good wrestler, so he better be more careful about getting caught beating his girlfriend, because the school needs him!

Rusty, from Lifetime, Wow! (a hilarious, authoritative research on this genre) calls No One Would Tell, “a perfect example of 1990’s teensploitation.” The audience score from Rotten Tomatoes is a solid 73 percent (regrettably, there is no Tomatometer score); Netflix has it at 3.7 stars. Lo, we may not be so lucky for our next made-for-TV film.

No One Would Tell airs tomorrow at noon and again Thursday, March 17, at 8 a.m.