| Genre: | Drama |
| Director: | Robert Michael Lewis |
| Starring: | Tom Atkins Diane Ladd Doug McKeon Helen Hunt Diana Scarwid |
| Music: | Bruce Broughton |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Executive Producer: | Arthur Fellows Terry Keegan |
| Producer: | Lew Hunter |
| Editor: | Les Green |
| Location: | William S. Hart High School in Newhall, Santa Clarita, California |
| Cinematography: | Joseph Biroc |
| Runtime: | 96 minutes |
| Company: | Fellows-Keegan Company Lorimar Television |
| Network: | CBS |
Desperate Lives is a 1982 American made-for-television drama film about drug use in a high school. The film has a very strong anti-drug message.
The Cameron family seems, on the surface, to be the perfect family, but things are not as they seem. Their two teenage children, Scott and Sandy, fall in with the wrong crowds at their high school and eventually become involved with drug experimentation. Sandy, after ingesting angel dust made by her boyfriend in the school's chemistry lab, jumps through a glass window of the school (purposely cutting her arms with the cut glass in the process) and is subsequently paralyzed from the fall.
A caring idealistic guidance counselor, Eileen Phillips, sees the problem that is going on in the school and, after other tragic incidents involving two other students (one of which involves Scott and his girlfriend smoking drugs and crashing their car off a cliff) and when no one else on the staff is willing to do anything about it, takes the steps to deal with and confront the problem. The aftermath of this tragedy makes Scott and Sandy's parents realize that even their "perfect" kids can be affected by drugs, especially after Scott has a violent reaction and goes into the hospital.
At a school assembly, Eileen storms in and confronts the students about the increasing drug use, sending a message to the crowd about the effects of what the drug problem is doing to the kids and the tragedies that resulted because of it.
Desperate Lives was released on DVD on April 21, 2010.
When hosting a 1994 episode of Saturday Night Live as the star of Mad About You, Helen Hunt showed clips of her earlier acting career during her opening monologue, including the scene from Desperate Lives where her character jumps out the window.[1]
A Keyboard Cat video featuring clips from the film was uploaded to YouTube in 2009. However, it was later taken down for copyright reasons, because the video also contained the music video for "You Make My Dreams" by Hall & Oates.[2] [3]