`Shattered Mind' Takes Viewer On Emotional Ride

----------------------------------------------------------------- "Shattered Mind," "NBC Monday Night Movie," 9 p.m., KING-TV. ----------------------------------------------------------------- There's nothing to bring attention to an actress - or better for showing off her talents - than to play a person with multiple-personality disorder: Think Joanne Woodward and "The Three Faces of Eve." Think Sally Field and "Sybil."

Heather Locklear is attempting to join that select group when she stars in "Shattered Mind," the "NBC Monday Night Movie" on KING-TV and one more movie "inspired by a true story."

Locklear plays Suzy, married and the mother of two children, whose other persona include Ginger, a prostitute; Bonnie, a terrified child, and D.J., a tough male teenager. Even when she's being herself, Suzy, a lower middle class housewife, she has more than her share of troubles, since she's quixotic, menacing and suicidal, at least part of the time.

Locklear, best known for playing wicked, conniving Amanda on Fox's "Melrose Place," certainly gives the role the old college try. Looking completely unglamorous with little makeup and a chopped off hairstyle, it's only the familiar voice that reminds you you're watching sexy Heather Locklear. And that the performance comes off as well as it does shouldn't be too much of a surprise since she also did long stints in two completely different roles in pre-"Melrose" days - as teen sex tease Sammy Jo on the long-running "Dynasty" and as no-nonsense Officer Stacy Sheridan on "T.J. Hooker."

But Locklear is fighting an uphill battle in "Shattered Mind," getting very little help from Thomas Baum's script or the direction of Stephen Gyllenhaal . One must admit, however, that they've taken a novel approach.

In both "Three Faces of Eve" and "Sybil," the viewer remains outside, observing the various roles that the actress is playing. Baum and Gyllenhaal have attempted to put us inside Locklear's character's mind. As she switches from one personality to another, from one explosive situation to another, often in the same scene, it's like being inside Suzy's mind, which is similar to a distorted hall of mirrors.

Suzy may start out a scene being one character in one situation and then in seconds be somewhere else, doing and feeling something completely different. Certainly multiple-personality disorder has to be terrifyingly disorienting for the person experiencing it. But thrusting the viewer into the same situation eventually becomes confusing, sometimes even annoying. Our minds are still rational and we're trying to follow what's happening to Suzy. Thrusting us smack dab into her world might have worked had it been used more sparingly.

It also results in a movie that is less a linear story of what happened to Suzy than a jumble of snapshots of Suzy's life. As the film jumps from scene to scene, sometimes with no connecting bridges, the rational mind starts wanting more explanations. Why is it, for instance, that Suzy's blue-collar husband, sympathetically played by Brett Cullen, takes forever to tumble as to what's wrong with his wife. She's in so much trouble so often during the course of the film that you wonder why no one else is noticing and trying to do something about it.

That familiar ploy, the abusive father, is once more to blame, although there are more hints than facts, and when the film finally gets to the interesting point where she's going to receive some kind of help, the film stops.

I don't think Locklear needs to count on an Emmy or Oscar for "Shattered Mind" but the pity is that if she'd received better support from the scripter and director, she's good enough that she just might have pulled it off.

`HOSTILE ADVANCES' IS COMPELLING STORY ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Hostile Advances: The Kerry Ellison Story," 9 p.m. Monday, Lifetime. -----------------------------------------------------------------

While TV movies about the subject of sexual harassment are nothing new, this has the added virtue of being true - and the story of a woman who was something of a pioneer in this area.

Kerry Ellison's case began in 1986 when a fellow worker in the IRS office where both were employed began to pay more attention to her than she wished. Unlike most TV movies about harassment, in which the victim is being stalked in dark alleys and the threat of rape and physical violence hovers about, Ellison's harassment tended more toward unwelcome notes, phone calls, unwanted attention, plus the fact that the man was already married. When Ellison asked her boss and fellow workers to intercede with him for her, it had little effect.

Eventually Ellison brought a suit against the man, which was at first dismissed - until she appealed and a U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the lower court's dismissal. But while the new verdict was something of a triumph - and changed the standards by which harassment was measured - it still had taken an eight-year fight.

Rena Sofer, who stars in ABC's "General Hospital," gives a sympathetic performance as Kerry Ellison, while Victor Garber is perfect as the menacing co-worker, all charm and concern and reasonableness on the surface but who, underneath it all, is really a sleazebag. A fine supporting cast is headed by Karen Allen. Layce Garner's script is a straightforward telling of Ellison's story, matched by Allan Kroeker's no-nonsense direction.