LIFETIME SHAMES ITSELF WITH LUSTER DRAMA.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

LIFETIME'S teleflick about Andrew Luster, the Max Factor heir convicted in absentia in Santa Barbara this past January of 86 counts of rape and assorted other iniquitous crimes, had nearly finished production when the subject was captured by a bounty hunter in Mexico. The film was retitled - ``A Date With Darkness: The Trial and Capture of Andrew Luster'' - and a new ending was hastily tacked on.

One shudders to imagine what the original ending - when Luster was still on the loose - would have been like, coming as it would have at the conclusion of a dreary, borderline-incompetent piece of exploitative docudrama.

Despite the insidiousness of Luster's acts, ``A Date With Darkness'' is a shockingly tedious affair, slapped together as unimaginatively as possible. It opens with a gruesomely protracted yet punishingly dull sequence in which one of Luster's victims falls prey to his spiked drinks. When the young woman goes to the police with her story, she flashes back to many of the earlier scenes (which were shown, oh, maybe 15 minutes prior). When Luster is arrested and other women come forward, the same prosaic flashback style relates similar appalling stories. (The flashbacks continue into the court case.)

Precious little effort is made to give the women who came forth to testify against Luster any sort of characterizations beyond their victimization and a smattering of pseudo-inspirational resolve to tell their story. Likewise - and this is no doubt the film's greatest failing - there's no attempt whatsoever to understand Luster's disturbed psyche.

Here's a guy who was rich and charismatic enough to date virtually any woman he wanted, and yet he was driven to cruel, brutal domination of his victims. Why? The filmmakers have no clue (and frankly, don't seem very interested, either). As a result, Jason Gedrick's (``Boomtown'') performance is reduced to a series of imperious smirks.

Were the film before it not such a leaden bore (the whole film seems to play at a beat - or two, or three - too slow), Luster's capture might seem funny. A title card reading ``Puerto Vallarta'' is super-imposed over a close-up of a chicken scratching while mariachi music plays on the soundtrack. Luster sits at a taco stand on a waterfront that looks like Anywhere, U.S.A. when a bunch of vans pull up, guys pour out and subdue him. (It apparently didn't occur to the filmmakers that details on how he was tracked down might be mildly interesting.)

``A Date With Darkness'' is reprehensible in its utterly mundane approach and its exploitative themes, and diminishes the courage of the women who stepped forward to put an end to Luster's reign of terror. Nothing is worse than when hacks get ahold of material on which even the most deft hands must work diligently and prudently to avoid craven missteps, and the year has seen nothing worse than this movie, which manages to be simultaneously sordid and turgid.

David Kronke, [phone]

david.kronke(at)dailynews.com

A DATE WITH DARKNESS: THE TRIAL AND CAPTURE OF ANDREW LUSTER - One star

What: Docudrama on the trial of the Max Factor heir and serial rapist.

Where: Lifetime.

When: 9 and 11 tonight; also Friday and Aug. 24.

In a nutshell: Pure exploitation, done as tediously as humanly imaginable.