"Flowers in the Attic" will always be V.C. Andrews' most famous novel, for good reason. A generation of 1980s girls sank into its pulpy pages, reading about poor Cathy, Christopher, Carrie and Cory trapped in an attic by a psychotic mother and grandmother. The recent Lifetime movie version kept all the juicy moments, from arsenic-powdered doughnuts to the notorious brother-sister incest.
But can its lesser-known sequel, "Petals on the Wind," which airs Monday at 9 p.m. on Lifetime, live up to the first fountain of craziness? You bet your murdered pet mouse it can. Fans of the book series will note that the TV movie is very different from the book, but we're honestly not sure that matters. Crazy is as crazy does. This is the kind of TV movie where you open a bottle of wine, invite your most sarcastic pals over and pull your best "Mystery Science Theater" impersonation talking back to the TV. Here are six moments that will have you hooting especially loudly. (Spoilers ahead.)
1. Sibling sex
You only have to wait 20 minutes for Chris and Cathy to make like Cersei and Jaime. But later in the movie, it gets juicier, when the brother and sister are making out right before his wedding and, well ... here comes the bride.
2. Broken glass in ballerina's toe shoe
Cathy is a ballerina because short of a fairy princess, there was no finer career for the young girl readers of V.C. Andrews' naughty books. But when another dancer usurps the Juliet role that we all know should be Cathy's, her feet pay the price. (Readers will recall this doesn't happen in the book, but it's weird enough that it could have.)
3. Carrie gets locked in the school attic
Little Carrie lost her twin in the first book, and never stopped getting the short end of the stick. While Cathy studies ballet and Chris medicine, Carrie gets sent to a hellish girls' school where her beloved doll ends up in a noose and she ends up once again trapped in an attic. It doesn't get much better for Carrie — see No. 5 below.
4. Hey! I'm pregnant! Hey! You're dead!
The movie version of "Petals" combines or invents plenty of scenes, but perhaps the biggest one is when a character gets fatally smacked in a car accident just as another character (you can figure out who) announces her pregnancy. Even "The Young & the Restless" was never quite this soapy.
5. Rat-poison doughnuts return
Hello, powdered-sugar doughnuts coated with arsenic. We remember you from the first book and hey, here you are again, just as deadly and delicious.
6. Party pregnancy reveal
Well, wouldn't you want revenge on the creepy mother who locked you in an attic for years? So how about crashing her Christmas party dressed as her younger self, and announcing that you're pregnant by her husband? Merry Christmas, everybody! If you and your friends can't "Mystery Science" your way through this scene, you just aren't trying.
7. And the big bloody conclusion ...
Let's wrap it up, folks! What soap-opera cliches haven't we tried yet? How about a huge fire, an insane-asylum scene and a sunny California happy ending — OR IS IT? There's three more books in this series, and Andrews has about 20 more series after this one.
"Petals on the Wind" airs Monday at 9 p.m. on Lifetime.