We all remember that classic 1996 TV movie "She Woke Up Pregnant."
OK, so maybe we don't remember it, but how could we ever forget the title, which was as hokey as the film?ABC billed the film as "a contemporary drama," about a woman (Michele Greene) with two children and a loving and faithful husband who watches her family slowly fall apart after she finds out she is pregnant - and her husband is not the father.
To further complicate matters, the woman has no memory of who the father could be.
"She Woke Up Pregnant" was sort of a laughable example of the women-in-jeopardy movies that have glutted the networks during the past few seasons.
The good news: Fewer films of this genre will be on the 1997-98 network schedules.
The bad news: The shift seems to be toward thriller-disaster projects.
Actually, there will be fewer TV movies, period.
NBC has eliminated its Monday-night schedule in favor of comedies, while CBS has dumped its Tuesday-night films, going instead with hour-long dramas.
(However, ABC has added a weekly movie - the two-hour "Wonderful World of Disney" on Saturdays at 6 p.m.)
So the major movie battleground will be 8 p.m. Sunday, when ABC, CBS and NBC battle Fox's "The X-Files" for viewers.
As of now, NBC looks to be the leader in the genre, with more than a dozen "thrillers" either in development or in production. NBC found strong audience acceptance last season with such apocalyptic thrillers as "Asteroid" and "Robin Cook's Invasion."
The peacock network will be stuffed with everything from nuclear disasters to reborn Frankenstein and Dracula monsters.
As for ABC, it has "Medusa's Child," a four-hour doomsday thriller based on the J. Nance novel. (Remember "Pandora's Box" on NBC two seasons ago?) Five people are aboard a cargo plane that carries a fully armed nuclear bomb set to go off within hours - a device that could wipe out not only Washington, D.C., but every computer on the continent.
ABC also will offer "Future Sport," starring Wesley Snipes as the greatest athlete in the world, competing in a game in which the fate of the world may depend on his winning.
"Peter Benchley's Creature" (based on his novel "White Shark") is a four-hour ABC tale about a family locked in a battle for survival against a horrifying new breed of amphibious predator. An adaptation of "The Beast," also a Benchley novel, scored high ratings on NBC two years ago.
CBS, whose movie lineup during the past two seasons has become gentler, mainly because of its Hallmark Hall of Fame productions, certainly isn't ignoring the thrill business. One major project is an adaptation of the Ken Follett cloning novel "The Third Twin."
Coming up early in the fall on CBS is "Final Descent," a movie treat for all you frequent fliers.
"Final Descent," starring Robert Urich and Annette OToole, will take viewers aboard the terrifying flight of a jumbo jet that can't land after a midair collision with a prop plane.
The networks also will offer numerous "ripped-from-today's-headlines" epics.
CBS, for example, will air a film based on the Alex Kelly rape case in Connecticut and has bought Marcia Clark's best-seller, "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt," to develop a movie.
ABC has commissioned a script based on the recent killing spree attributed to Andrew Cunanan and another script about the Heaven's Gate suicide cult. The network also has a series of crimes-of-passion films, which, undoubtedly, will contain a few women-in-jeopardy angles.
ABC also may have the honor of producing the most bizarre TV biography of the fall season - "Bad as I Wanna Be," an adaptation of the expletive-filled autobiography by publicity hound Dennis Rodman, who also dabbles in a career with the Chicago Bulls. Rodman will not star in the film but will add running commentary.
No matter what the movie trend, there will always be an "evil" Susan Lucci movie on the prime-time schedule. The daytime icon from "All My Children" will star in "Blood on Her Hands," portraying a woman who, according to ABC, "no man can resist." ABC says she's "a dazzling femme fatale and first-class manipulator of men" who entices her lover to kill her husband and then coerces her lover's lawyer into framing him for the murder.
I can hardly wait for the ABC movie in which Lucci's character wakes up pregnant with an Emmy in each hand.