She's not exactly Kathy Griffin, but Oscar winner Kathy Bates is still a long way from the often-gooey actresses of Lifetime.

Yet here she is, directing and starring in a movie for the network-for-women-who-like-to-see-other-women-go-through-sheer hell.

And while her character in "Ambulance Girl," which traces the midlife crisis of food writer Jane Stern -- who became an emergency medical technician in her early 50s -- does go through a certain amount of hell, her marriage to fellow foodie Michael Stern has not actually ended yet in homicide.

So what, I asked Bates, is the appeal of all those Lifetime movies where one or both members of a marriage end up dead?

"Oh, haven't we all fantasized about that?" she said, laughing.