Oh, the 1990s. What a crappy decade that was.
The internet was just emerging, but wouldn’t actually be usable until after the turn of the century. No such thing as Netflix/streaming, no such thing as YouTube. What did we have? We had the neighborhood rental store, and we had HBO and Cinemax aka Skinemax, which were littered with these sex-crime-suspense-thrillers, basically American attempts at doing Euro-sleaze films. We Americans never really had the knack for them as did the Italians, though. American versions always came off feeling too much like soap operas. (Honorable mention of 1990s TNT, which showed all sorts of great, trashy action and horror and sci-fi flicks pretty much non-stop on the weekends.)
Sally Kirkland plays an aging bombshell in Hollywood. Getting older, but still getting acting parts. In the film she’s currently shooting, her big hunky boyfriend plays the male lead. But, she’s just a little bit too past her prime, so the producers hire a body double to play the sex scenes with the big hunky boyfriend. Sally thinks he’s being a little bit too enthusiastic about those scenes.
The story really is as simple as that. And they made an hour and a half movie about it. They try to make it a multi-layered thing with some complications in the middle. Something about a cop who has followed one of the characters down from SF to LA for one reason or another, exploding cars, car chases, gunfights. So I guess it’s more of a soap opera / action movie hybrid. Actors aren’t that good. Music is very ‘tv show’ style, 90s synthesizers style.
Anything good about this one? Ya. Not one, but a couple big plot twists at the end. It’s like a big ol’ chess game and a couple moves come from outta nowhere and change everything up. Too bad they waited until the very end of the movie for anything about it to get interesting. Because otherwise, this one is just fluff.
Couple familiar faces in this one- Anthony Franciosa (the author guy in Tenebre) and perennial bad guy Richard Lynch, who plays a good guy in this one.
B-movie Roundup 