Judy Garland came back to life again last night. Judy Davis channeled the slurring, unsteady-in-heels Judy she had created in the Garland biop, Me and My Shadows, and made her slush around again in an outrageous Mommie Dearest style performance.

At times screaming and breaking the furniture, at others all stricken tones and fake sincerity, Davis played real-life con-artist Sante Kimes who, with her son, exploded all over the tabloids in the late 90’s when she was convicted of strangling her socialite landlady.

The Lifetime-channel film, A Little Thing Called Murder, details the life and crimes (including three if not more murders) of Kimes and her youngest son, the two of then entangled in a sort of mental incest which the murders weirdly consummated. If the son had been gay, all this could have been worked out with a career in fashion design or runway modeling. Unfortunately, Kenny Kimes was straight, so it was guns, knives and snapped necks. By all accounts, the son was a charmer; and the mother, a busty, bubbly woman who turned heads in her plunging, cleavage-proud dresses. Both sit in prison now with no possibility of parole.

The film improves on Mary Tyler Moore’s first airing of this material (Like Mother, Like Son) by tracing the grandiose and twisted trajectory of Kimes’ life, playing much of it for laughs, and including the most recent turn in the case, the testimony of the son against the mother.

Unlike the grasping, one-note skulduggery of Moore, Davis plays the character with a loose Auntie Mame rakishness, even in the closing scenes when she sits in prison conning her bunkmates and new lawyers, promising them riches and fame and houses in Honolulu, while at the same time claiming she is a political prisoner, a victim of a corrupt police. This, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

As con women go, Sante Kimes had two rather staggering distinctions. The first was that she was a ringer for Liz Taylor: We see Judy Davis in big black exploding-artichoke wig and bright red lipstick throughout, coupled with the nervous seasick flutterings of Garland: Davis once again fulfilling her promise as the ultimate queer diva in this, the post Faye Dunaway era.

We watch Judy-Liz-Davis sashshay into a car dealership then drive off for a “test run,” only to be chased down by policemen a year later. “They said I could test if for as long as I liked,” she explains to the arresting office “Well, I haven’t finished yet.”

Davis does a wonderful quiver with her mouth when she drops her jaw in shock as she confronts the law, interlarding her lines with marvelous twitches and tremors, producing the same cocktail-high bewilderment her Garland showed when she was presented with hotel bills for lengthy stays and claimed there must be some mistake. “You see, I’m Judy Garland.” Translation: Everything is comped, asshole. (A stratospheric sense of entitlement now shared, we hear, by our own beloved Babs, La Streisand, who, no doubt, still has the first dollar she ever made — framed.)

Kimes’ other mind-bending distinction was that she was one of the two people ever convicted of slavery in the 20th century: Seems she had this little habit of locking the Mexican maids in their rooms — when she was not burning them with hot irons or braining them for leaving the bathroom floor sticky — a scene more than casually reminiscent of little Christina, big Joan, and a can of Dutch Cleanser being twacked over Christina’s head.

Our favorite moment comes after Davis slams a babysitter for telling her son the story of the boy who cried wolf. Her son has drawn an entirely wrong moral from the story. Mama sets him straight in the best bit of perverse dialog we’ve heard in a long time:

“The boy who cried wolf really was stupid,” is how mother explains it as she tucks sonny into bed. “That’s why nobody believed him when the wolf came. But a boy as smart as you — I know you could make people believe you! And you know what, people always believe your Mama. She’s so smart she can convince people there’s no wolf at all even when he’s howling at the door.”

“But, but …” Young Kenny is not quite convinced. He still thinks lying might be wrong, even dangerous. “What if the wolf gets in the door and tries to bite me.”

“Oh, don’t worry, ” Davis says with a throaty laugh and a dismissive wave of her hand. “We’ll just shoot the damn wolf.”

And that is exactly what mother and grown son do, in one way or another.

If you missed A Small Thing Called Murder, don’t fret. The good news is that it was on Lifetime. So it will be shown there for the rest of your lifetime.

Mama wouldn’t lie.