CODE NAME: DANCER. [a/k/a HER SECRET LIFE]   Made-for-TV; Phoenix Entertainment, 1987. Kate Capshaw, Jeroen Krabbé, Gregory Sierra, Cliff De Young, Valerie Mahaffey. Directed by Buzz Kulik.

   You’ll have to be careful when you start hunting down a copy of this one. If it’s part of a double feature DVD, as the first one I happened to have watched was, there’s about four minutes missing just before the end. It sort of made sense, but not enough, and I had to find another DVD on eBay with just the one movie on it in order to have a sense of completion. If you know what I mean.

   Of course, you can live happily ever after if you never see this movie at all, and perhaps I should tell you something about it. Annie Goodwin (that’s Kate Capshaw), happily married – with pains taken to show her blissful suburban California life – gets a call from her former employer, the CIA, or someone who knows she worked for the CIA – that calls in a favor for a former colleague/superior who’s in trouble back in their old stomping grounds, Cuba.

   That’s the Dancer (Gregory Sierra). Faking an injury to her sister to explain her absence at home, Annie is back in business again, which involves a former lover, Malarin (Jeroen Krabbé), a man close to Castro – and man, I’m telling you the whole story. You can probably make one up as good as this one without trying too hard, or perhaps you might want to add something to this one, which is truthfully a little thin for its 94 minutes running time.

   Lots of flashbacks transpire, however – I think I can tell you that – and things don’t end all that well for everyone. It’s all very serious and dramatic with only a small amount of humor involved, and what there is centers around the plight of the hapless husband Paul (Cliff De Young) who’s left behind. The ending, in fact, is left open for a possible series to result from this, but it never happened.

   For Kate Capshaw, by the way, this movie was post- Indiana Jones and pre- Mrs. Steven Speilberg and was, all things considered, I’m sure, only a minor milestone in her career.

   And in case you were wondering, the first DVD cost me maybe a dime (bag day at the local library sale) and the second one only a dollar. For a dollar, it’s a keeper.