Category Archives: 80’s Movies

Killer Workout (1987)

Posted on October 26, 2014 | Leave a comment

killer workout 3

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 0 out of 10

4-Word Review: Safety pins aren’t safe.

Years earlier a woman is badly burned during a tanning salon mishap. Now her sister Rhonda (Marcia Karr) is running a fitness center where the women are systematically being killed off. Could the two be in some way connected? Detective Morgan (David James Campbell) thinks so and will stop at nothing to get the truth out of his main suspect even if it means resorting to unethical methods.

This cliché ridden formulaic late 80’s slasher has achieved some cult status simply for its mind numbing stupidity. The film’s most ridiculous aspect is that the killer murders his victims with a SAFETY PIN! That’s right a safety pin that is a little bit larger than your typical one, but not by much. Some of the victims go down after being stabbed by it only a couple of times and in one instance it manages to somehow go through a man’s skull!

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You have to wonder why no one on the cast or crew alerted the director to how stupid this was, or who even came up with the insane idea, but it does to some degree ponder the imagination and the only thing one goes away thinking about afterwards.

There are a lot of shots of female derrieres in thong bikinis, which normally for most male viewers is a good thing and certainly something that the producers thought would be enough to hide its otherwise lame production values, but it isn’t. Only for those who get a kick out of cheesy 80’s fashions and attitudes of which there is plenty.

My Rating: 0 out of 10

Alternate Title: Aerobicide

Released: April 16, 1987

Runtime: 1Hour 25Minutes

Rated R

Director: Mark A. Prior

Studio: Shapiro Entertainment

Available: VHS

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Posted in 80's Movies, Horror, Low Budget, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Slasher/Gore

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Wolfen (1981)

Posted on October 20, 2014 | Leave a comment

wolfen 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Wolves on the attack.

Dewey Wilson (Albert Finney) is assigned to investigate a particularly savage attack that occurred in Battery Park in New York City where a real estate magnate and his wife and bodyguard where gruesomely killed by some mysterious being that the police initially peg as a terrorist act. As Wilson investigates further and in talking with some experts he comes to the opinion that it may be wolves that killed them, but not the everyday wolf instead they are ghostly spirits intent on protecting their sacred ground. As the body count continues Wilson tries unorthodox methods to understand and stop these strange animals that remain invisible and elusive to the human eye.

For a horror film, which is based on the novel by Whitley Streiber, it has a refreshingly different approach to the material making it seem more like a modern-day drama and character study. Director Michael Wadleigh nicely captures the ambience and attitude of the city. The authentic feel and multi-dimensional lead character helps make the story more compelling. The use of showing things from the wolves’ point-of-view that gets captured through a unique colored lens is initially captivating and creepy.

Unfortunately the film does the P.O.V. thing too often, which eventually becomes redundant and boring. The genteel tone does not create enough tension and the film is barely ever suspenseful. There is one good decapitation scene, but otherwise the gore and special effects are minimal. The runtime is too long and the pacing could have been better. A good horror film or even a thriller needs a good scary image of the threat at hand to hold onto and create the fear for the viewer, but we are never shown the wolves at all until the very end. I did like the one part where the Diane Venora character goes roaming around an abandoned church and almost gets attacked by one of the wolves whose red eyes we see, but I wanted to see more of this since it was the only time I got even slightly frightened.

Finney is an odd choice for the lead. Simply because he has a reputation as being a great actor does not mean he is perfect for every role and having a grizzled New York cop speak with a British accent is off-putting. He is also too old and his relationship with a female cop that is clearly 20 years younger looks weird. I did like Edward James Olmos who takes off his clothes at one point and effectively acts like a real wolf and the scene where he has a menacing conversation with Finney while high on top of a bridge is memorable.

Spoiler Alert!!

My biggest beef comes with the ending in which Finney finds himself surrounded by the wolves and in an attempt to appease them smashes the model of the construction site that was going to be built on their sacred ground, which satisfies them enough to leave him alone and go away, but it came off as corny, farfetched and anti-climactic to me. It also makes the wolves who the viewer has feared throughout the film suddenly look like the ‘good guy’  and thus stripping all the ‘horror’ from this supposed thriller and makes sitting through it a pointless waste of time.

End of Spoiler Alert!!

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: July 24, 1981

Runtime: 1Hour 55Minutes

Rated R

Director: Michael Wadleigh

Studio: Orion Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Horror, Movies Based on Novels, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with Nudity, Police Drama

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Terror Train (1980)

Posted on October 13, 2014 | 1 comment

terror train 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Killer wears different disguises.

Some frat boys decide to play a nasty prank on a vulnerable student named Kenny Hampson (Derek McKinnon) which causes him to have a mental breakdown and be sent away. Now, three years later the same group of college kids gets together on a train for a raucous New Year’s Eve costume party. The problem is so does a mysterious killer who after killing each of his victims puts on the disguise that they were wearing making it impossible to track him.

Supposedly the idea for the film is the brainstorm of executive producer Daniel Grodnik who after seeing both Halloween and Silver Streak woke up one night with the inspiration of combining the two films and making a slasher movie aboard a train.  I admit when I first saw this film many years ago I thought it was pretty cool, but now upon second viewing it seems formulaic and predictable. It takes too long to get going with the first hour spent focusing on the doings of stereotypically jaded college kids who aren’t very appealing. The scares are few with the only real intense part coming at the end when the Jaimie Lee Curtis character locks herself in a cage and the killer tries desperately to get into it. The gore is also sparse and not impressive including a decapitated head that doesn’t look anything like the victim’s.

There is also a lot of glaring loopholes including having the killer murder someone inside one of the train’s cramped bathrooms and then managing to clean up all the blood, which would have taken a lot of time seeing how much there was of it, and then carting off the dead body without anyone noticing. During the climactic sequence Curtis’s character stabs the psycho in his eye, but later when the killer gets unmasked his eye and face look fine without any indication of scratches or cuts.

Curtis is a fine actress, but her presence did nothing but remind me of Halloween and they would have been better off casting someone else. Ben Johnson, who is technically listed as the star, adds some much needed stature and it is nice having a middle-aged character not portrayed as a clueless out-of-touch drip like they usually are in these types of films. Hart Bochner looks and acts like the perfect caricature of a smart-ass frat boy and its fun seeing him turn from cocky and arrogant at the beginning to desperate and frightened at the end. Magician David Copperfield is on hand essentially playing himself and some of his magic tricks are the most interesting part of the movie.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: October 3, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 37Minutes

Rated R

Director: Roger Spottiswoode

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, College Life, Horror, Movies with a train setting, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Slasher/Gore

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The Hearse (1980)

Posted on October 8, 2014 | Leave a comment

the hearse 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Haunted by a hearse.

Jane (Trish Van Devere) is recuperating from a nervous breakdown and decides to move away from the bustle of big city life into a home left to her from her recently deceased aunt, which is situated in a small town. Unfortunately things do not go smoothly. The townspeople are reticent to Jane’s presence and weird things begin to occur including a mysterious big, black hearse that appears late at night and seemingly intent on running Jane over.

I remember I first heard of this film when it was shown on Showtime during the early 80’s as part of their ‘After Hours’ films, which typically amounted to soft core sex flicks and gory horror. However, this film was only rate PG, which always made me wonder how ‘adult’ or scary could it really be.

To some degree this fares slightly better than the usual low budget horror flick at least at the beginning. There are some nice on-location shots of the San Francisco bay area and the main character is likable enough. The production values are decent and the story, as thin as it is, has a certain intriguing quality to it.

Van Devere makes for a strong female protagonist as she is quite practical and doesn’t allow herself to scare easily and seeing a female character that is confident and poised and not used simply as a sex object especially in these types of films is a refreshing change. After a while though I started to think that the character became a little too stubborn as there were so many bad things that started to occur that I think I would have left and not come back and the fact that she stays past when most other people wouldn’t makes her seem a bit irrational.

The atmosphere is minimal and the scares are almost non-existent and depend almost completely on a few doors slamming and windows bursting open for no reason. Moments of intruders breaking into the home and shots of their feet silently creeping up the stairs starts to become redundant and dull. A dream-like funeral sequence can’t save what is otherwise a slow moving plot. The ‘secret’ behind the hearse’s presence isn’t very imaginative and the film borrows too many elements from other cheesy haunted house films without adding anything unique or distinctive in the process.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: June 5, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 39Minutes

Rated PG

Director: George Bowers

Studio: Crown International Pictures

Available: DVD (Drive-In Cult Classics Vol. 2)

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Posted in 80's Movies, Ghost Story, Horror, Movies with a rural setting

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Bells (1982)

Posted on October 6, 2014 | Leave a comment

bells 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Don’t answer the phone.

People are being killed throughout the city of Toronto by simply answering the phone. Apparently someone has come up with a device that can create a massive electronic blast that can go through the phone lines and kill anyone listening on the other end. The blast is so strong that it can even melt the receiver. Nat Bridger (Richard Chamberlain) who is a professor at a local college decides to take matters into his own hands and investigate on his own after one of his students is killed and the police seem to do nothing about it.

Initially I found this idea to be intriguing and original, but unfortunately it throws credibility completely out the window. Had it worked more with the idea of sending some loud noise at an extremely high decibel over the phone, which would then blow out the person’s ear drum, or something of that nature then I might have bought into it. Instead it has some sort of unexplained blast that literally makes the person at the other end blow off of their seat and fly backwards crashing into walls and windows, which seems utterly ridiculous and cartoonish. The film also offers no scientific explanation to how this device was created or done, which makes it farfetched and pointless.

Chamberlain’s one-dimensional acting doesn’t help and his presence in the lead role is quite generic as he plays a character that shows the street smarts and fighting ability of a seasoned cop instead of that of a college professor making things even more unrealistic. John Houseman gets a rather thankless supporting role as Chamberlain’s mentor and is pretty much wasted except for a bit where he disrupts a guided tour through a phone company which proves mildly amusing.

The technology is horribly dated making the entire thing a relic of a bygone era and irrelevant to today’s audiences.  The climatic sequence dealing with Chamberlain’s attempts to keep the bad guy on the phone while the police try to trace the number is highly clichéd and more boring than intense. Director Michael Anderson’s attempts to jazz things up a bit by photographing phones in intimidating ways with ominous music playing in the background comes off as unintentionally funny instead of scary.

This Canadian made thriller was originally released under the title above and ran for 95 minutes, but the Warner Home Video version, which was released in 1998 and goes under the title of Murder by Phone was trimmed by 15 minutes. The version reviewed here is from the original release although the film is so silly that watching the shorter cut might be preferred simply because it would mean less time wasted.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Alternate Title: Murder by Phone

Released: May 11, 1982

Runtime: 1Hour 35Minutes

Rated R

Director: Michael Anderson

Studio: Canadian Film Development Corporation

Available: VHS (as Murder by Phone)

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Posted in 80's Movies, Foreign Films, Horror, Low Budget, Movies from Canada, Mystery, Obscure Movies

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True Stories (1986)

Posted on September 29, 2014 | Leave a comment

true stories

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Eccentric people of Texas.

David Byrne the founder member of the influential Talking Heads rock group tries his hand at filmmaking, which to date has been his only directorial foray of a feature film and not including two documentaries that he did in the late 80’s and early 90’s. This film centers on weird characters that were inspired from tabloid magazine stories and the list of eccentric people include The Lazy Woman (Swoosie Kurtz) who is so rich that she never needs to get out of bed and has a wide array of servants or robotic hands to help her do everything. There is also John Goodman as a single man desperately seeking a mate, Jo Harvey Allen as a chronic lying woman and Alix Elias as The Cute Woman.

The film starts out with promise. Byrne focuses on interesting symmetrical designs and colors. I also liked how every other shot seems to focus on the vast flat emptiness of the Texas landscape as well as showing rows and rows of steel sheds something that no other filmmaker would think of doing, which helps give this a unique vision. The humor is consistently offbeat and amusing with my favorite moment coming during a fashion show where the runway models are shown to wear increasingly more outlandish outfits all to the excitement of an enthusiastic audience. Byrne’s parody of driving his car in front of a blue screen is also quite funny.

Goodman is a delight not only when he gets behind the microphone and sings ‘People Like Us’, but also his TV-ad looking for eligible women. Kurtz is quite funny too especially with her entranced look while watching banal and inane TV-shows. Spalding Gray adds a good presence and the scene where he tries to create the layout of a town while using food at a dinner table is great.

Unfortunately the film ends up being a misfire mainly because it has no real plot to speak of. The quirky ideas and goofy characters are wasted in a directionless movie that goes nowhere. Certain innovative touches like having a group of children coming out of an empty field to sing a song become confusing and pointless. Byrne’s own presence as an onscreen narrator quickly loses it welcome and eventually becomes annoying. It manages to come together a little during the last half-hour with some much needed cohesion, but it is not enough to save it.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: October 10, 1986

Runtime: 1Hour 30Minutes

Rated  PG

Director: David Byrne

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Movies that take place in Texas, Musical, Parody, Quirky

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The Trip to Bountiful (1985)

Posted on September 15, 2014 | 2 comments

the trip to bountiful 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Old lady goes home.

Carrie Watts (Geraldine Page) is an elderly woman living inside a cramped apartment with her grown son Ludie (John Heard) and his wife Jessie Mae (Carline Glynn) in Houston, Texas during the 1940’s. Carrie dreams of one day returning to her childhood home in the small town of Bountiful and ‘escaping’ from Jessie Mae who is overbearing and treats her like a child, but she lacks the transportation or funds. She secretly hides her government checks with the hopes of saving enough to take a train. When she finally makes it to the train station she finds there is no longer any stops to her old town, which is now essentially abandoned, but with the help of the local sheriff (Richard Bradford) he takes her there while Ludie and Jessie follow close behind determined to drag her back with them.

Peter Masterson’s directorial debut shows a great appreciation for Horton Foote’s script as it manages to stay true to the period and tone. I especially liked the part where Carrie describes the quietness of her childhood home while the camera slowly pans the yard and allows the viewer to essentially experience what she is talking about. The recreation of the ‘40s is on-target making you feel like you are living there yourself. Having some tunes of the era playing on a phonograph in the background is a great touch and it’s nice to hear a soundtrack that isn’t from the preverbal classic rock period.

Page shines in her Academy Award winning performance. She has played evil characters with such a relish for most of her career that it is nice seeing her portray a sweet old lady for once and do it so well. Her presence adds to every scene she is in and helps make them more interesting particularly with her conversation on the train with Thelma (Rebecca De Mornay) and the way she holds up everyone in line at the train station specifically two men standing behind her who in real life where her twin sons. She also manages to cry effectively with tears actually coming out of her eyes as opposed to De Mornay whose tearless attempts at it where so pathetic it seemed almost embarrassing.

Carlin is quite good in the snippy adversarial role and I was surprised she didn’t at least get a nomination for her efforts. Heard is solid as a sort of mediator and De Mornay is perfect for the part simply because her fresh youthful face makes a great contrast to Page’s worn one.

The on-location shooting adds a lot of flavor and helps to make this superior over its original stage version. The story itself is slow moving, but a wonderful character study on aging that at times manages to be dryly humorous, honest and sad, but never maudlin.

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My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: December 20, 1985

Runtime: 1Hour 48Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Peter Masterson

Studio: Island Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD

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Posted in 80's Movies, Academy Award Winners for Best Actress, Drama, Dry Humor, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies that take place in Texas

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Last Night at the Alamo (1983)

Posted on September 8, 2014 | 1 comment

last night at alamo

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Life at the bar.

It’s the last night of business for The Alamo bar in Houston, Texas. Some developers have purchased the land and plan on constructing a skyscraper on the site much to the dismay of the regular patrons. There’s Icabod (Steven Mattila) a wiry, creepy looking fellow who seems to bitch about everything and anything. There is also Claude (Lou Perryman) who has just been kicked out of his house by his wife and spends he majority of the night on the phone begging her to let him comeback as well as Cowboy (Sonny Carl Davis) who has big dreams of becoming a Hollywood star, but can’t seem able to hold down a job for any lengthy duration.

The film was shot in black-and-white on a measly budget of $25,000. The majority of it was done inside a place called The Old Barn, which was a popular neighborhood bar in Houston. The scenes where done during the day, so as not to interfere with the regular customers coming in during the evening. Kim Henkel who is best known for penning The Texas Chain Saw Massacre wrote the screenplay as well as appearing as a character named Lionel. Director Eagle Pennell appears briefly as Bo and his wife Peggy can be seen as Ginger.

What makes this film so interesting is the fact that nothing really happens. Instead it gets filled with a lot of rhetorical arguments, insignificant conversations and down-and-out characters much of what you’re likely to find on a regular night at any neighborhood bar across the country. The film takes the ‘Cheers’ format, but with more of a caustic, darker sense of humor. Although this minimalistic approach may sound boring it actually isn’t and in many ways is surprisingly engaging, refreshing and even daring.

The eclectic cast, many of whom were local performers who had not appeared in a film before, really helps. The Davis character who wears a big cowboy hat to cover up is balding head and goes to great lengths to try to save the bar even calling the state capitol in Austin for assistance only to find that there is nothing they can do because nobody ‘important’ had ever gone there is especially endearing. Perryman, who was tragically murdered in 2009, is quite amusing in his desperate attempts to reconcile with his wife and Mattila has his moments as well particularly when he decides to hold a conversation with a wall because he feels it’s more interesting than talking to his girlfriend.

Barflies young and old should appreciate this low budget gem as it hits the essence of bar life and those that frequent them head on while taking an offbeat approach that most Hollywood films wouldn’t dare to do. Henkel and Pennell reteamed 10 years later to create the similarly themed Doc’s Full Service about people who frequent a Texas service station.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: October 2, 1983

Runtime: 1Hour 21Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Eagle Pennell

Studio: Cinecom Pictures

Available: VHS

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black & White, Cult, Dry Humor, Low Budget, Movies that take place in Texas, Obscure Movies

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Eddie Macon’s Run (1983)

Posted on September 1, 2014 | Leave a comment

eddie macons run 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: He runs across Texas.

Each Monday during the month of September, in order to celebrate my impending move from Indianapolis to Austin, Texas, we will be reviewing an 80’s movie that takes place in Texas. We start with this film that is based on the James McLendon novel. Eddie Macon (John Schneider) is a young father wrongly accused of a crime who devises a plan to escape from prison and then run on foot from Hunstville to Laredo where he hopes to cross the Mexican border to freedom. The problem is dirty cop Carl (Kirk Douglas) who is holding a past grudge is determined not to let him do it and is hot-on-his-heals.

The film’s basic premise seems not only impractical, but wholly impossible. Per Mapquest the distance between Huntsville and Laredo is 385 miles and this man expects to somehow do it all on foot in only 4 days, which is ridiculous especially when his wife owns a car. Instead of having her drop off his backpack with all of his supplies at a certain strategic point why not have her waiting for him at that same spot with a car ready to whisk him off? The concept makes no sense. There is no reason why he has to do this all on foot and basic logistics of it are mind boggling.

I also had to a lesser extent issues with the Lee Purcell character that plays Jilly Buck. Eddie saves her from an attack by another man and then she helps him elude Carl with her connections through the governor that allows her to lead a rather privileged existence. I understood that she would want to help him a little since he helped her, but she goes far and beyond that and puts herself and her cushy lifestyle in jeopardy by doing it for a man that has clearly stated will stay faithful to his wife.

Schneider, who has too much of a boyish face, is quite weak in the lead with a performance that is dull and one-note.  The character is also painfully stupid as he doesn’t bother to pick-up his backpack that is sitting right at his feet and has everything he needs in it when he escapes from a house even though he had just grabbed a gun out of it only a few seconds earlier.

Douglas is by far the better actor and rightfully deserved the top billing. It is amazing how a man who has played so many good guys in his career could turn around and so easily play a bad guy with the same type of conviction, but he does and it is quite entertaining. His hairstyle looks terrible and almost like it’s a wig, but I think that was intentional as it gives him an appearance of being ugly, crazed and menacing all at the same time.

At times it relies too heavily on old Texas stereotypes, which borders on making the whole thing come off as one giant cliché, but the scene where Eddie gets kidnapped by rednecks and taken into ranch home that is filled with pinball machines and terrorized is fun and has a nice mix of whacky characters and dark humor that the rest of the film should have had. The on-location shooting nicely brings out the dusty, barren landscape as well as a dazzling bird’s-eye shot of the San Antonio skyline.

Norton Buffalo’s moody soundtrack is a major plus, but the two songs sung by Schneider are terrible and just about ruin the whole thing. The film is passable enough to be an adequate time-filler for a slow evening, but don’t expect too much. This also mark’s the official film debut of John Goodman who appears with a mustache as Eddie’s corrupt boss as well as J.T. Walsh who has a brief bit as a bar patron.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: March 23, 1983

Runtime: 1Hour 35Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Jeff Kanew

Studio: Universal

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Movies Based on Novels, Movies that take place in Texas, Road Movies

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The Hotel New Hampshire (1984)

Posted on August 26, 2014 | 6 comments

the hotel new hampshire

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: A family of misfits.

Note: This review is part of the 1984 blog-a-thon series over at Forgotten Films.

Win Berry (Beau Bridges) is unhappy with his teaching job and feels he is not making enough money so he decides to start a hotel and make it a family venture. Tagging along with him is his mouthy daughter Frannie (Jodie Foster) who has an unhealthy lust for her brother John (Rob Lowe) and he in her as well as Frank (Paul McCrane) who is gay and Lily (Jennifer Dundas) who has stopped growing and unhappy with her short height. After many misadventures the business goes under so they move to Vienna, Austria and open up a new hotel and continue to get into a wide range of weird scenarios while also coming into contact with Susie (Nastassja Kinski) who likes to disguise herself as a bear and the blind, but quite wily Freud (Wallace Shawn).

The film, based on the John Irving novel who also co-wrote the screenplay, is something you are either going to like or hate. The narrative structure is quite odd and filled with goofy side-stories that have no connection to anything else. It’s similar to director Tony Richardson’s The Loved One, but that film at least had excellent satire that tied it all together while this thing gets nonsensical for no real reason. Mixing quirky humor with trenchant drama doesn’t work and certain plot twists like death of family members, sudden blindness and even gang rape become like throwaway pieces that are just glossed over and then soon forgotten. The superficial tone is annoying and the ‘lovably eccentric’ characters eventually become irritating.

Foster is outstanding as she plays the bratty, foul-mouthed, rebellious teen to an absolute tee. The lesbian scene where she goes to bed with Kinski and kisses her on the mouth is on an erotic level not bad. Kinski also shines with a similarly bitchy attitude, but I got real sick of constantly seeing her in that hideous bear outfit.  Dundas as the youngest female member has an adorable face, but delivers her lines in too much of a one-note way.

Lowe is surprisingly strong and his best moment comes with the facial expressions he gives at trying to lift a barbell that is too heavy. I also liked Mathew Modine being cast against type. Typically he plays the kind and gentle types, but here he’s a real nasty, callous guy who rapes Foster and then later shows up in the Vienna scenes in a dual role as an underground pornographer with a Hitler-like mustache.

Bridges is good, but his boyish face makes him look too young to be the father of the grown children. Wilford Brimley is also miscast as the grandfather as he was only seven years older than Bridges and had no gray hair, at least not on his head.

The scene where the Foster character has wild sex with her brother may be too much for some, but most likely those same viewers will have gotten turned off by it long before it even gets there. I admit it was getting on my nerves most of the way as well, but then strangely it ended up having a certain appeal, but only enough to give it a passable rating. Richardson’s direction is for the most part slick and the one things that saves it although with this thing personal taste will be one’s own barometer.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: March 9, 1984

Runtime: 1Hour 49Minutes

Rated R

Director: Tony Richardson

Studio: Orion Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Gay/Lesbian, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Quirky, Rape/Revenge

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