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The Lifetime Original Movie Death of a Cheerleader, also released under the title A Friend to Die For, was one of the most popular TV movies ever released by the cable network when it came out in 1995 and it remains a cult favorite today. Viewers really wanted to see sweet Kellie Martin from Life Goes On murder sneering Tori Spelling from Beverly Hills 90210.

The movie is a fictionalized spin on the real-life murder of high school cheerleader Kirsten Costas by her Miramonte High School classmate Bernadette Protti in Orinda, California, in 1984.

In the movie Angela Delvecchio (Martin) is a teen from a family of modest means who tests the patience of her best friend by uttering solemn vows to become a cheerleader and yearbook editor. The person who has the life she wants is Stacy Lockwood (Spelling), a rich kid who leads her pack of friends by dispensing withering insults to their social inferiors. The main target of her abuse is Monica Whitley, a sullen goth played by Kathryn Morris. I know Morris well from the TV series Cold Case but didn’t recognize her at all in this movie.

Angela manages to score an invitation to a class ski trip, where her secondhand gear and outfit are ridiculed by Stacy. Things get worse when Stacy tears into Monica, who doesn’t look at all like someone planning to ski. Because Angela plays peacemaker she’s left behind when the group hits the slopes.

There’s a running theme of pressuring kids to succeed exemplified by every cheesy utterance from Terry O’Quinn, who chews the scenery as the high school principal. He extols excellence and showers praise on Stacey, including some skeevy comments on how good she looks, while wannabe Angela stands right there yearning for his regard.

After failing to be chosen as a cheerleader or yearbook editor, Angela makes a last-ditch effort to become Stacey’s friend, sneaks out with the family car and contrives a fake school-related invite so she can pick up Stacy and take her to a party (which hews close to the real crime). This scheme fails before they even get there when Stacy exits the car and walks to a house seeking help, calling Angela desperate and weird.

After a random parent drives Stacey home, Angela follows and her mind is roiled by thoughts of the ridicule she will face at school. The murder is committed with a knife left in the car to cut vegetables. Angela’s older sister has been constantly chopping them in the preceding scenes, as if taking a knife and cucumber with you on a drive is a normal thing to do.

With no mystery about who killed Stacey, the movie spends a long time on Angela trying to get away with murder, because nobody saw her with the victim or knew the party plot. Police don’t check Angela’s alibi of being a babysitter that night.

Martin’s open, expressive face and likability are perversely appealing in this movie. Angela is hard to dislike even after we see her stab somebody five times outside their front door. Spelling’s character is never given a redeeming quality in the movie. She’s always reducing outcasts to tears with insults and reveling in her own superiority. Her only joy is inflicting pain on others.

Given that this is based on a real murder, it is pretty sad that Death of a Cheerleader shows absolutely no sympathy for the victim. Even in death the best that is said of her is that her meanness was no justification for taking her life. Angela has a weeping Catholic mother played ably by Valerie Harper and two longtime friends anguished over her capture and incarceration. Though she confessed, she is sentenced as a minor and gets no more than seven years.

Despite the lack of a coherent moral viewpoint on murder, this movie works as a character study of a teen driven to a heinous crime by her failure to climb the social ladder in high school. Martin did a lot of Lifetime movies, usually as a much better human being, and is always watchable. When tears form in those expressive eyes it is like a Margaret Keane painting.

This is a Lifetime movie to show someone who is mystified by their appeal. Sometimes you just want to see a sweet-faced girl not get away with murder.

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