The Seduction

I know, I know... How can I call this blog Anchorwoman In Peril! and not include a review of the 1982 Morgan Fairchild masterpiece The Seduction? That’s like having a birthday cake without any candles on top... Sure, it’s sweet, it’s tasty and it fills you up, but where’s the sense of occasion? It’s just a vanilla sponge. And look, you’ve not even iced it properly! Can’t you get anything right?

I forgive you, anyway. This time. And, as a gesture of goodwill, here’s that long-overdue review of The Seduction, the queen of Anchorwoman In Peril movies and, um, bastard child of the slasher and erotica genres.

The first five minutes of The Seduction aren’t so much a blast from the past as they are a 15 megaton explosion of early-eighties kitsch. The music, the hair, the nails, even that typeface used for the opening credits... It’s like being raped by 1982. In the eyes. And the purpose behind all this malarkey? A few hazy Morgan Fairchild beaver-shots.

Now, don’t get me wrong; that may be your thing. And if it is, lucky you, because The Seduction isn’t just about telling a decent story, it’s about showing Morgan Fairchild in as many swimming pools, hot tubs and saunas as humanly possible. Seriously, she spends more time in the water in this film than the shark does in Jaws – and, by the end of it, even my skin was starting to go wrinkly.

Which isn’t to say that The Seduction doesn’t also tell a decent story. Fairchild stars as Jaime Douglas, the smokin’ hot anchorwoman of the Six O’Clock News on Channel Six. When she’s not busy reporting on a recent spate of local “Sweetheart Murders”, Jaime can most likely be found sharing a bath with her rather mismatched older boyfriend, Brandon (Michael Sarrazin). But it seems she’s also getting some attention of the unwanted kind – in the shape of a young fan called Derek (Andrew Stevens), who’s much more her own age but, sigh, also a psychotic stalker.

After Derek breaks into her home, frenziedly snapping photos of her whilst slapping her about with cries of “wet your lips!”, Jaime approaches Brandon’s cop buddy Captain Maxwell (Vince Edwards) for help. Surprisingly, however, Maxwell is adamant that, “as far as the law’s concerned, this guy really hasn’t committed a crime” (remind me not to move to Hollywood), and Jaime’s left with no option but to buy a gun, lock her doors, and hope that Michael Moore doesn’t decide to make a documentary about celebrity firearm-owners.

Cue one of the movie’s biggest cheat sequences wherein, following a ten-minute sequence of Jaime soaping her thighs in the tub (while creepy Derek spies on her from the closet) the telephone rings. But – oh, sweet mother of Dale Midkiff – there’s no one on the line! Now, by this point, we’ve become accustomed to Jaime receiving strange calls but, since her stalker is clearly hiding nearby, we’re left wondering who placed this mysterious call. Does she have two stalkers? Does Derek have an early mobile phone that he uses to play the old “the calls are coming from inside the house” trick? Or is it all perhaps just another excuse to show Jaime wrapping herself provocatively in a towel?

No matter, because we’re heading towards The Seduction’s Live-On-Air Wig-Out scene. As fans of Anchorwoman In Peril movies will know, the heroine’s On-Air Wig-Out is the staple component of the genre, and this one’s a corker: Derek manages to sneak into the studio one evening and add a little page of his own to the Six O'Clock Report’s autocue script, resulting in Jaime reading out the words “Jaime, I’m watching you” in the middle of a report, before breaking down and whimpering, “He’s gonna kill me... Please help me... Please!”

Sadly, other than authorizing some time off work, no one really does do anything to help her, and it’s up to Jaime to sort things out for herself in a climax that involves the aforementioned shotgun and Jaime’s own top-secret weapon – her smouldering sexuality (or is that two weapons?). It’s in this last real that The Seduction finally bubbles over from tolerable pot-boiler to Fairchild-femme-fatale fever-pitch, bringing together all its subplots to a neat conclusion that neither cops out nor runs out of steam.

All the film really needs is a body count. Lord knows, there are enough peripheral characters to support a spot of pruning – from Jaime’s gay assistant (Kevin Brophy) to her best friend (Colleen Camp) – but the lack of nastiness detracts from the sense that Derek is actually dangerous. As a result, The Seduction never quite makes that step up from TV-movie level (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) to full-on shocker – a move that would have nudged it into the realm of the previous year’s Lauren Bacall vehicle, The Fan, which also concerned the then-hot topic of celebrity stalkers but thankfully required less nudity from its aging star.

Despite this flaw, your Anchorwoman In Peril education is NOT COMPLETE if you haven’t yet experienced The Seduction and its retro-fitted fabulousness. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200, and report directly to Morgan Fairchild’s hot tub.

Rating: 3/5

Trilogy of Murder

Don’t you just hate it when the new Karen Black movie you’ve bought turns out to be a compilation of clips from a Russian TV cop show? Or when the Russian TV cop show you’ve settled down to watch turns out to be a Karen Black movie? Or when the cop you’ve called turns out to be Karen Black in a rush? Or when—

Hang on, I’ve forgotten the point I was making, but it’s no wonder I’m confused. Trilogy of Murder, whose DVD cover promised a thrilling, three-part follow-up to Karen Black’s classic TV movie, Trilogy of Terror, turns out to be something else entirely... Something cobbled together from bits of an old TV show called Russkie v Gorode Angelov – or, to translate that into English, Russians in the City of Angels.

And Karen’s barely in it! More on that later, when I launch into a thrilling, three-part discussion of Trilogy of Murder but, for now, let’s marvel at the fact that the cast of Russians in the City of Angels also included, at various points during its twelve-episode run, Eric Roberts, Sean Young, Erik Estrada and Gary Busey. Why none of these managed to make it into Trilogy of Murder I can’t fathom, although the Roberts and Estrada episodes were merged into movie called Border Blues. The upshot of all this is that there’s still seven episodes yet to be shoehorned into cheapo compilation movies, at least one of which I’ll no doubt unsuspectingly purchase under the impression I’m onto an undiscovered sequel to the Sean Young classic, A Kiss Before Dying. *Sigh*

The evil mastermind behind this whole, er, crappy-movie-market-saturating masterplan is one Rodion Nahapetov, who not only created the original Russian TV show but also takes writing and directing credit for Trilogy of Murder, plays the film’s main character, and also contributed the heart-wrenching song that plays over the closing credits. Join in if you know the words: Loneliness is gone, tomorrow is our song, my heart is singing for all it knows...

My own heart sank when Trilogy of Murder opened with a dizzying montage of cheesy clips from Russians in the City of Angels (some of which, in retrospect, may possibly have featured Erik Estrada, I’m not sure). A voiceover introduces our hero, Andrei Somov, a former police officer and “expert in Russian crime” now working for the LAPD. He has two crime-busting buddies called Sommers (played by Lane Davies of Santa Barbara) and McMillan (Pat Battistini), and this Unlikely Trio® will be our friends for the next 98 minutes. This is where the vodka comes in handy.


But hold that thought and put down that bottle! It’s time for Trilogy of Murder: Part One – or, to give it its proper title, Case #741b3: The Ring. Bet you didn’t know that’s how they label their files down at the LAPD, did you? Fun and educational, that’s me. Anyhowzers, the only way I can really describe what it’s like to sit through “The Ring” is by asking you to imagine switching on an episode of CSI halfway through, then somehow managing to watch the remainder backwards and in Russian. Oh, and I forgot to mention that you also have a hangover. And the picture’s fuzzy.

“The Ring” appears to tell the story of a murdered schoolgirl and some missing jewellery, although it doesn’t help that it’s told in flashback – which, since we’re already within an anthology movie, technically counts as a flashback-within-a-flashback within a crappy film edited from random episodes of a TV show. I don’t know... I found it all a bit hard to follow, but I did enjoy the scene where a man wearing an apron emblazoned with a giant Russian doll offers the opinion: “I love my potatoes over-fried and well-salted”. You just don’t get much more Russian than that. The ending’s a bit of a disappointment, though: I’m sure real life is full of cases where the guilty parties escape justice, but to have them suddenly emigrate to Russia while the cops on the case all head down to the bar is a little inconclusive in my book.


Time for Case #113c2: The Stalker, my favourite of the three tales. Why? Because it’s an Anchorwoman In Peril story – not a particularly great one, I admit, but I’m a pushover for anything involving glamorous TV news ladies pursued by psychotic stalkers.

That’s what’s happening to anchorwoman Nadejda Petrovskava, who works at LA’s smallest – and I suspect only – Russian TV station. Nadejda presents a segment called “Sunny Days”, which counterbalances all that depressing Russian news with some light-hearted human interest stuff. Or, at least, it would be light-hearted if poor Nadejda weren’t being terrorized by the aforementioned stalker, who’s making her life a misery by doing such horrible things as leaving bunches of flowers on her dressing table. The rest of the plot is pure AIP melodrama, but I loved the scene where the TV studio is unexpectedly plunged in darkness and a terrified Nadejda picks up her cell phone and calls the operator(!).

After “The Stalker” is apprehended (there’s no escape to the motherland for this sicko) it’s time for Trilogy of Murder: Part the Third, entitled Case #332 (int’l): The Surgery. You see, where the international cases are concerned, the LAPD are only up to case number 332, and don’t have to use any letters or anything. (Keep on learning there – you never know when you might need this stuff.)

We begin with a Shock Cut to Karen Black. Yes, THE Karen Black! She IS in it, after all. And when I say “Shock Cut”, I mean SHOCK CUT! It’s like something out of Gremlins 2:


Karen’s slap-bang in the middle of a song which, judging by the lyrics, was also written by Rodion Nahapetov, and goes: “Love is for meee and love is for youuuuuu... and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and YOU!”

Cue much confused but polite applause and, assuming this isn’t an extract from one of Karen Black’s drunken home videos, she’s playing Detective Sommers’ wife, who’s angry at being stood up at her own anniversary party and threatening to file for divorce. Somov manages to cheer her up by suggesting a holiday – to world-renowned capital of fun, Moscow – and so it’s time for a quick montage of our three detectives (plus Karen) laughing and giggling and walking past the Kremlin, having a wonderful time. Oh, almost forgot, there’s also a crime to solve, this time involving arson, insurance fraud, and a little girl who needs a life-saving operation.

So there you go... Trilogy of Murder. It’s not really a trilogy, it’s not related to Trilogy of Terror, and it’s not very good. Don’t watch it if you’re a fan of anthology movies because chopping up TV episodes and sticking them together does not an anthology movie make. And don’t watch it if you’re a fan of Karen Black, either, because she’s only in it for a minute and a half. In fact, I can’t really think of a reason why anyone would want to watch it. That’ll teach me for rummaging round in the bargain bin at Tesco. Pass the over-fried potatoes, please.

Rating: 2/5

Trilogy of WTF?

Damn you, DVD bargain bin! You appeal to my basest instincts on the way out of the supermarket, forcing me to paw through every last wretched title until my frozen peas have defrosted and my Ben & Jerry’s melted! Yes, I know you’re reading this, evil sales bin... A pox upon thee!

If I had a penny for every time I’ve been hijacked thusly by my local supermarket’s £1 DVD bargain bin, well... I’d have at least 98 pence. Unfortunately, that’s not quite enough to buy any of the bargain DVDs in it (two more visits to go!) but, then, nobody ever said life was fair. If it were, I’d find more actual bargains in that bin, rather than 20,000 copies of a badly animated version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Yesterday, however, I found something worth a whole trolley-full of sloppy ice cream. I found a mystery... A mystery called Trilogy of Murder! Here it is on my cappuccino shag pile:

Remember Trilogy of Terror, the 1975 TV movie starring Karen Black as three different heroines of three different stories, culminating in an unforgettable battle with a deadly Zuni fetish doll? Of course you do! Well, Trilogy of Murder features ole Karen in three more tales, this time centred on murder, rather than terror... I mean, I don’t know which is worse – murder or terror – but a trilogy of either is bound to be pretty shocking.

Even more shocking is the fact that I can’t find Trilogy of Murder on the IMDb. What is this, people? 1996?! That just doesn’t happen anymore. Anyway, thanks to some sterling Nancy Drew detective work on the part of Amanda By Night, AiP can point you in the direction of a full trailer for this apparently extremely obscure Russian-American co-production. Go Amanda!

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Karen Black appears in all three segments à la Trilogy of Terror, but this disappointment is counterbalanced by the fact that story #2 is a genuine Anchorwoman In Peril mini-movie! Just read this:

“When an alluring television news anchor is pursued by a relentless, resourceful stalker, she has no alternative but to turn to Somov, Sommer and McMillan to restore her life to normal...”

Um... Somov, Sommer and Whatsit...? Yeah, I’m just tuning out all the stuff I don’t understand to concentrate on the key phrases “alluring television news anchor” and “relentless, resourceful stalker”.

Thank you, DVD bargain bin!

Monster

Hola mi chicos! Yes, Anchorwoman In Peril! is on vacation again, and this time it’s not even an enforced “vacation” – like when I moved home and lost my internet connection, or that other time when I was forced to leave the country until those pesky charges were dropped. This time it really is a holiday. I really am sitting here in sunny Spain in a not-so-sunny internet café, marvelling at the hellish temperatures and the fact that they actually have the internet in Spain. Yes, really... it’s in colour and everything!

Anyway, between all the sangria and bullfighting (oh, the scrapes I get into when I’ve had a couple of pitchers-full!) I have of course had time to watch a few movies – because, as we all know, cheesy horror never has a holiday. And what DVD was so exciting that I just had to take a break from the beach to view it? Was it perhaps the copy of hot new Spanish shocker [Rec] I picked up in Barcelona?

Or the DVD of Tentacles – with irremovable Spanish subtitles, natch – that I just couldn’t leave sitting on the shelf in Salou?

No! It was one of the latest “mockbusters” from rip-off specialists The Asylum, called simply Monster and clearly somewhat reminiscent of a certain cinema release entitled Cloverfield.

How did this unlikely mishmash end up in my portable DVD player, you ask? Well, firstly, it qualifies as a genuine Anchorwoman In Peril movie... or, to be exact, an Anchorwomen In Peril movie, because plotwise it’s all about two spunky American filmmakers shooting a documentary about global warming in Tokyo who find themselves at the epicentre of a fully-fledged monster attack – just like in Destroy All Monsters! Yes, it’s been ages since I’ve reviewed a proper AIP movie and I need to get back to my roots.

Secondly, I thought it best to watch this one while my critical faculties were down... and, with this heat, boy, are they down! It was kinda lucky, too, because I’m not sure I would’ve made it right the way through Monster without hitting fast-forward had it not been for the fact that I’d collapsed from heat exhaustion on one side of the hotel room and the portable DVD player’s little portable remote was on the other.

So, anyway, the best way of describing Monster is by comparing it to its obvious inspiration:

● Cloverfield is a mock-home video purporting to show the experiences of a small band of friends trapped amongst the rubble when a giant monster attacks New York. The film utilizes clever special effects and neat pacing to tell a riveting story.

● Monster is an actual home video showing the experiences of two young actresses handed a camcorder and told to run about in the car park of a Chinese restaurant. The film utilizes limited special effects and much padding to create a long section in the middle where nothing happens.

...Oh, forgive me; I’m actually being a bit harsh here. I blame the unforgiving climate. I’ve actually seen three Asylum movies recently (the others being Invasion: The Beginning and I Am Omega) and this one definitely had the best acting and production values... although actually being intentionally shot on cheap video must’ve worked in its favour because, during the first half at least, I found myself somewhat sucked into the drama of witnessing the fall of Tokyo from the perspective of two amateur filmmakers (and by this I mean the film’s camera-wielding main characters, not directors Eric Forsberg and Erik Estenberg). After all, who hasn’t seen Tokyo brought down by a rubber Godzilla at some point in their movie-watching life? But it’s a fun novelty seeing it presented as amateur handycam footage. Well, unless you’ve seen Cloverfield already.

If a new take on the Godzilla genre is what you’re after, may I point you in the general direction of South Korea’s The Host, a startling, witty and far more innovative film. But if you should find yourself in Spain with only a DVD of Monster accidentally left in your player, you’re not in for a total washout. As I mentioned previously, lead actresses Sarah Lynch and Erin Sullivan really aren’t bad in their “switch off the camera!”-screaming roles, and I also liked the movie’s one original idea: namely the suggestion that the monster is some form of mythical retribution against American interference. (In fact, I had hoped the screenwriters might’ve run with this element and given us some marauding Japanese citizens out for the blood of our American tourists, but the angle unfortunately goes mostly unexplored.)

Anyway, time for me to go and locate that stray remote and, seeing as I’m supposed to be on holiday, go and do something unequivocally and authentically Spanish – like learn to flamenco dance. Or watch [Rec].

Rating: 2/5

New Year’s Evil

Wow, now here’s a slasher movie from the golden age of 1980 that fills me with that fuzzy feeling... How fuzzy exactly? Well, when I tried to take screen caps for you, the image quality was so fuzzy that it somehow bunged up my hard drive with all its... fuzz, and caused it to crash. So, instead, I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with a rough approximation of New Year’s Evil’s general fuzziness, as performed by an American Fuzz Lop rabbit:


Thanks, Mr Fluff. And, since New Year’s Evil has yet to be released on DVD, this is probably the kind of picture quality you’ll encounter if you manage to get hold of a copy (mine came from eBay)... although something in me suspects it’s never going to be a movie that gets a digital remastering. And, to be honest, it’s no great loss, either. Even the rabbit agrees.

If I were a proper blogger, I’d probably be reviewing this on New Year’s Eve or something (y’know, like when I reviewed the Christmas-themed Silent Night, Deadly Night on, er, January 6th). Why? Because it’s a “holiday slasher” in the grand tradition of Halloween, Friday the 13th and friends, using its chosen date as a hook on which to hang the horror. Or, in this case, lack of.

As Justin Kerswell points out at Hysteria Lives!, it’s hard to describe the plot of New Year’s Evil without inadvertently making it sound much better than it actually is. Arriving early in the 80s slasher cycle, it taps into the Laura Mars trend of casting middle-aged women as media personalities stalked by psychos (see also A Stranger Is Watching, Visiting Hours, The Fan etc). Here, it’s music show presenter Blaze (played by Roz Kelly) who’s hosting a New Year special of Hollywood Hotline, an über-cheesy showcase for some really middle-of-the-road punk rock. (One particularly edgy song is called “Dumb Blondes” but, due to the slightly dodgy audio, I was convinced they were singing “Don Knotts”... Now there’s a new-wave rock classic in the making!)

During the show, Blaze receives a phone call from a man calling himself “Evil” – or, to be strictly accurate, “EEEEEEvil” – who calmly outlines his intention to kill an innocent woman every time the clock strikes midnight across the various time zones of America. That’s right... as New Year arrives in New York, a-killin’ he’ll be, and the same goes for Chicago, Aspen and, eventually, at the TV studio in L.A., where Evil has plans for Blaze herself...

I unfortunately misunderstood this as a plan to carry out each murder in its related time zone, leading to all kinds of unfulfilled expectations of Evil hopping on private jets and flying breathlessly between crime scenes, but this was sadly not to be. Instead, he sticks to the rather skanky-looking back streets of Hollywood – although, thanks to the intervention of a gang of vengeful bikers when he accidentally runs over one of their number, it’s not all uneventful.

Throw in a subplot involving Blaze’s grown-up actor son – who’s bitter, twisted and sitting in a hotel room watching the show with a red stocking over his head – and you have what sounds like a pretty fun gimmick-slasher. Unfortunately, it’s mostly just dull. The fact that our final girl, Blaze, is such a self-absorbed and unappealing personality really doesn’t help – so much so that, by the time Evil catches up with her, I was half-hoping he’d finish her off before she had time to introduce another dismal punk band. But no... just more bad songs, a dash of blood here and there, and the sinking feeling of a decent premise being completely squandered.

That said, there are scenes that work, my favourite being a marginally tense sequence that starts with Evil seducing a girl in a nightclub with the promise of a “command performance at Erik Estrada’s house” and ends with him smothering her so violently that his fake moustache comes seriously unstuck. Luckily, she does last long enough to deliver the classic line: “When a girl doesn’t have a date on New Year’s Eve, she’s in Shit City!” Quite.

There’s also a Friday the 13th-esque soundtrack, consisting of a whispered “hahh-hahh-hahh” during the suspense scenes, sometimes elevated to an all-out sneezing sound that leads to a few confusing moments as you wonder if someone hiding in a nearby closet has accidentally revealed themselves. And, speaking of revealing themselves, the revelation of the killer is quite effective – although less so his motives. When asked by Blaze why he did it, he snaps back, “I’m fed up!”... By the end of New Year’s Evil, so was I.

Rating: 2/5

And finally...

You don’t get much more “anchorwoman in peril” than the news footage on this nifty official website put together for tomorrow’s UK release of Diary of the Dead. I’ve loved all four of George Romero’s Dead movies so far and, if the snippets I’ve seen of the latest are anything to go by, things are looking fifth-time lucky too. See you after the weekend when I’ll know for sure!

Don't Answer the Phone!

“Give me a mould of that breast... I want to take some tooth impressions.”

That little quote – from a detective examining the body of a murdered woman – should give you some idea of the level that Don’t Answer the Phone! is pitched at. It’s cheap, sleazy and probably misogynistic, but not quite what you’d call depraved, thanks to some decent performances and a touch of black humour.

Above all, the film has personality... This personality may be a hulking Vietnam vet who spends most of the film talking to his reflection and strangling beautiful women, but personality it is nevertheless. His name is Kirk Smith and he looks like this:

Kirk (played by Nicholas Worth) is terrorising the streets of Hollywood, using his job as a photographer to talk his way into aspiring models’ homes, snap a few shots and then strangle them to death. When he’s out not strangling, he likes to lift weights while sweatily assuring himself “I’m all man”. And, when he’s not doing that, he likes to phone in to the radio show of psychiatrist Dr. Lindsay Gale (Flo Gerrish) in the guise of his heavily accented alter-ego, Ramón.

Regular visitors to Anchorwoman In Peril! will know I’m prone to widening the definition of “anchorwoman” to include great characters like Lauren Hutton’s TV director in Someone’s Watching Me! or Jodie Foster’s radio talk-show host in The Brave One. I think we can also squeeze in Don’t Answer the Phone’s Lindsay Gale here. Not because she’s particularly memorable (she isn’t), and not because Gerrish plays her particularly well (she doesn’t), but mainly because she shouts at her patients and makes them cry. And that makes me laugh. A lot!

A typical session goes along these lines:

Dr. L: Are the drugs more important than your parents, Lisa?
Drug addict: Mmm.
Dr. L: Say it, Lisa! Tell your mommy the drugs are more important than her!
Drug addict: The drugs are more important than you, Mom.
Dr. L: Louder!
Drug addict: The drugs are more important than you, Mom!
Dr. L: Louder! Shout it, Lisa!
Drug addict: THE DRUGS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOU, MOM!!!!
(Lisa has a breakdown and starts sobbing)
Dr. L: There, now you can help yourself. That’s a major breakthrough, Lisa.

Unfortunately, the therapy doesn’t quite pay off, and a later scene finds Lisa threatening to jump from the top of a high building – but that’s drugs for you. You should probably just say no, unless you want to end up being yelled at by a radio psychiatrist too.


Another reason I think Don’t Answer the Phone! qualifies as an Anchorwoman In Peril movie is because it covers one of the classic AIP bases so well – namely, the Live-On-Air Wig-Out scene. I’ve already mentioned that Kirk regularly phones in to Lindsay’s radio programme – something that she manages to take in good humour – but matters get a little out of control when Kirk encourages a prostitute to call the show, and then promptly strangles her live on air. Cue lots of muffled grunting, people screaming, producers trying to pull the plug, and Lindsay eventually marching down to the police station with a handful of “terrifying tapes” to hand in. Frasier was never this much fun!

There’s also a sly vein of humour running through the film’s attempts to explain its killer’s psychosis – typified by the moment when an expert advises the police that “a scientific description of the strangler’s type would be a paranoid obsessive compulsive psychotic schizophrenic” (!). And then there’s Kirk’s own explanations, blurted out to his victims or directed at himself in the mirror, including: “I never had enough faith in myself”, “I went to see the wrong doctors”, “I loved my puppy but I strangled him”, and “Well, Dad, are you proud of me now? Do I measure up?”. Ultimately, Kirk’s motives are impossible to identify: they don’t make sense; they’re a parody of serial killer profiles... Simply put, the guy’s just nuts.

Despite its silliness, Don’t Answer the Phone! is also undeniably nasty at times. The murder sequences dwell on the pain and suffering of the exclusively female victims, while simultaneously trying to mix in a few titillating nudie-shots. Not the best way to endear yourself to a wide audience... but then Don’t Answer the Phone! was never going to appeal to one.

Rating: 2/5

Eyewitness

It’s easy to write about a bad film. The wisecracks, the insults… they just seem to flow. The same goes for the so-bad-they’re-good films – perhaps the easiest of all to waffle about. Slightly more difficult is describing the genuinely good films. There’s a niggling desire to somehow do the film justice, but the passion is at least there and the praise comes easily enough. Even the mediocre flicks offer a little of something either way to dig into. But how do you write about the movies filled with good stuff but which, for some barely definable reason, just don’t quite work? That’s a hard one. And that’s Eyewitness.

I took an interest in this 1981 thriller after learning that: (a) it’s an Anchorwoman In Peril movie; (b) Sigourney Weaver’s in it; (c) Sigourney Weaver plays the Anchorwoman In Peril in it; and (d) watching it would mean I could stop making this list. As it turned out, however: (a) it’s not really much of an Anchorwoman In Peril movie; (b) it’s not really a thriller; (c) it’s actually rather a strange film; and (d) I’ve got some sort of list-making problem today.

Eyewitness is filled with elements competing for your attention but, if you manage to isolate any one of these, you’ll find it is itself made up of at least two conflicting parts. Our main character, for instance, is janitor Darryl Deever (William Hurt). He seems likeable enough but he’s also incredibly cocky. We watch as he discovers the aftermath of a murder in his building, but we’re never quite sure whether we can trust his version of events. He’s infatuated with TV news personality Tony Sokolow (Sigourney Weaver) and, upon meeting her at the crime scene, leads her on by suggesting he knows more about the case than he actually does. As well as presenting the news, Tony is a concert pianist. And she’s also dating an older man (Christopher Plummer) who’s also involved in sneaking Jews out of Russia.

You might not be surprised to learn that all this is the result of scriptwriter Steve Tesich combining two scripts that were going nowhere into one story. The result is one script that, for a long time, feels like it’s going nowhere. It soon becomes clear that Tesich is far more interested in creating characters – and tweezing them like struggling flies into a web of tangled relationships – than giving them anything straightforward to do. Hence, clouding the picture are Darryl’s friend Aldo (James Woods) who may or may not be the killer and is forcing Darryl into a relationship with his sister; Darryl’s parents; Tony’s parents; Aldo’s parents; two cops (one of whom is a young Morgan Freeman) shadowing the characters’ actions; and a mysterious, dark-haired woman... I honestly wouldn’t have been surprised if Darryl’s dishwasher had been struck by lightning, developed a personality, and demanded a subplot of its own.

Frustratingly, amongst the melee are three standout action sequences that really demonstrate where director Peter Yates’ strengths lie. These scenes – a motorbike chase, a dog attack, and the film’s horse-trampling climax – are absolute dynamite, the plums in the pudding and the visceral jolts of suspense that the film really needs.

Despite tying up its central mystery, Eyewitness ultimately remains bafflingly opaque. Even its title is ambiguous, since Hurt isn’t really an eyewitness to the crime at all. It’s understandable that the studio pushed for an alternative to the script’s horrible original title, The Janitor Can’t Dance. But you can’t help thinking it actually would’ve suited the film more.

Rating: 3/5

Exclusive

Tireless, that’s me, dear Anchorwoman In Peril! reader (and I wish you’d stop calling yourself that). I’ll search out any cheap obscure DVD in order to provide you with an incisive commentary on the merits – or not – of the film in question. So, when I remembered a film from my childhood that featured Suzanne Somers as a TV reporter stalked by a killer, I just knew it was my duty to seek it out... at any cost!

As it happened, that cost was £1.09 on Amazon (plus postage, mind) and the film was Exclusive, a 1992 TV movie riding on the coattails of Somers’ then-popularity in the sitcom Step by Step.

As Anchorwomen In Peril go, Marcy Howard (Somers) really is in peril. Barely a moment goes by when she’s not being crept up on by some sort of mysterious, shadowy figure. First it’s when she’s lying in bed, sleeping fitfully as a black-gloved intruder slips into the house, creeps up the stairs in the dark, hovers ominously above her, and... [camera pans up to face] False alarm – it’s just her husband, Reed (Michael Nouri)... Phew! He’s arrived home late, but there’s just enough time for a bit of nookie before Marcy heads off to work at the TV station.

Some time later, Marcy is working alone at the office when a black-clad stranger sneaks up behind her desk. She’s too busy typing to notice as he opens up a mysterious briefcase and… [camera pans up to face] False alarm – it’s just her co-worker Allen (Ed Begley Jr.)... Phew! Talk about suspense! Marcy’s not even being stalked by that killer yet, but her friends are doing a good enough job at skulking around and keeping her in a constant state of peril anyway!


So what about the actual stalker? Well, one night, Marcy’s at her desk when she receives an anonymous phone call telling her to go to the Blue Mood bar if she really wants a story. This is a stroke of luck, as the new station manager has been on her back recently, demanding higher ratings and reminding her that she used to be LA’s top investigative reporter. Of course, she also used to be an alcoholic and, in giving up the hard drinkin’, she also seems to have lost touch with the hard news.

When Marcy arrives at the Blue Mood bar, however, she won’t have to worry about forking out for an overpriced mineral water. Everyone’s been killed in a gruesome shotgun massacre – and she’s first on the scene with a camera crew. Marcy’s back in the big league and making the headlines herself... but at what cost? How long is it before the killer comes after her? And will she ever be able to get any work done without someone sneaking up on her?

Exclusive harks back to the days when, if you had a hot TV actress, a camera and Ed Begley Jr., then goddammit you had a movie. For much of the running time, it’s just that: Somers and Begley goof around in the studio; Somers and Begley argue about ratings; Somers and Begley follow a hot lead... And, occasionally, Michael Nouri pops up like a screensaver to protect your TV from the combined strength of all that blonde.

For an Anchorwoman In Peril movie, however, Exclusive is lacking in the requisite hysteria. Despite being a recently-divorced former alcoholic fighting off a murderous stalker (as well as the urge to down the odd bottle of vodka) Somers is pretty together and, as a result, it’s all a bit bland. Sure, there’s the usual investigating-strange-noises and receiving-strange-phonecall exploits, but we might as well be watching Somers in Three’s Company for all the suspense on offer. On the other hand, I was amused by Marcy’s “research”, which seems to consist entirely of clipping articles out of the daily papers... So much for being on the front line!

We do get a magnificent Live On Air wig-out in the second half, when Marcy is forced to report on her own attack at the hands of a man in a gimp mask, and turns into a comatose wreck in the middle of the nightly news...


And then there’s the moment when she’s driving along and takes her eyes off the road for a second to reach for her vodka bottle...


Unfortunately, such highlights are spread as thinly as the thrills, and Exclusive plods along to one of those climaxes where the gun goes off, the police break in, and you’re supposed to wonder which of the “bodies” will move first: Marcy or the killer. I didn’t hate it but, in the ten years since the initial Anchorwoman In Peril cycle, everyone seems to have forgotten how to make the formula fun.

Rating: 2/5

The Brave One

As slasher expert “Buzz” points out in what’s basically the definitive essay on the subject of Anchorwomen In Peril, one of the great pleasures of AIP movies is the moment when our heroine wigs out Live On Air. Whether it’s Lauren Tewes grabbing the limelight to urge viewers to rally against a killer in Eyes of a Stranger, or The Howling’s Dee Wallace proving the existence of werewolves by actually turning into one in the middle of the six o’clock news, it’s always the scene you’re waiting for – and the bit you’d kill to see in real life.

In The Brave One, Jodie Foster plays New York radio presenter Erica Bain, for whom this inevitable moment comes when, after witnessing her boyfriend’s murder at the hands of a street gang, she breaks down mid-show, leaving a minute of dead silence. But, this being an Oscar-winning actress we’re talking about here, she’s not lost for words for long, and is soon delivering a heartfelt monologue off the cuff and – more importantly – on the air. It’s classic Anchorwoman In Peril hysteria played with Academy Award credence. Naturally, I loved it.

The Brave One is first and foremost a vigilante movie. As well as soliloquising on her show, Jodie swaps her denim jacket for black leather, starts wearing make-up, and gives us a taste of her sharp-shooting, bad-ass side as New York’s newest bringer of justice (she’s also an ace at poker – see Maverick). After the aforementioned personal tragedy (that’s the boyfriend’s death, not Maverick) she decides to get herself a gun and go after the punks responsible, popping holes into a few other murderers, abusers and a subplot about a local gangster along the way. (Jodie also speaks fluent French... just see A Very Long Engagement if you don’t believe me.)

It seems there’s no stopping this self-declared “supercunt” until a police detective (Terrence Howard) starts getting suspicious after hearing one of her more emotive radio broadcasts and spotting her at the scene when a couple of thugs are shot dead on the subway. Will he bring her down? How many more crooks and crims will she kill? And, as Jodie might say, “Excusez-moi, où est la café? Je voudrais un croque-monsieur, s’il vous plaît.”

I did say I loved the moment above when Erica waxes lyrical on the radio and, well, that’s true; I’m a sucker for that sort of shit. But The Brave One lays on the schmaltz quite heavily at times – none more so than whenever the Sad Theme Song appears on the soundtrack, as it does at various junctures. I’ve always considered director Neil Jordan a fairly edgy, dangerous kind of guy (I mean, look at the demented vigour with which he tried to kill the careers of Annette Bening and Robert Downey Jr. in 1999’s odd psycho-thriller, In Dreams) but there’s never any danger of us condemning Erica’s violent actions in this film, thanks to this kind of emotive thinking-for-us.

That said, Erica does plenty of thinking for herself. The Brave One is as much about how violence changes a person as it is about how good it looks in slow-motion, and Erica’s internal journey is one we follow every step of the way. Foster is riveting in the manner she always is, albeit to the point that I rarely thought of her as Erica Bain – more as Jodie Foster doing a radio show (“Why does Hollywood megastar Jodie Foster live in such a crappy apartment?” I actually wondered at one point).

I’m not sure how seriously I can take such upfront vigilantism as a subject for emotional drama – to be honest, I think I only connect with it as comic-book revenge fantasy, as in this year’s Kevin Bacon-starrer, Death Sentence – but The Brave One provides enough suspense thrills, cat-and-mousery and New York nastiness to remain gripping throughout its lengthy running time. Next time, however, I’d like to see Foster in something that isn’t about her being fucking amazing. Have you seen Flightplan? She also designs planes.

Rating: 3/5

Eyes of a Stranger

It's SHOCKtober! and the new horror DVDs are pouring out like so many gooey seeds from a smashed pumpkin. My favourite recent release has to be Warner's Twisted Terror Collection (from which I've already reviewed the excellent Someone's Watching Me!). Also included is another stalker-themed gem...

In the headlines tonight: Lauren Tewes, of seventies schedules stalwart The Love Boat, plays a bona fide Anchorwoman In Peril in Eyes of a Stranger! Ms Tewes (pronounced “Tweeze”) is Jane Harris (“Harreeze”?), a Miami newscaster who’s just sickened by a recent spate of rape-murders around the city. So sickened, in fact, that she keeps butting in on her co-anchor’s screen time to urge local women to call in and report any “odd encounters” that might relate to the crimes. (I think she even busts in on the weather at one point, forecasting a cold front of hatchet killings sweeping into the Dade County area.)

Meanwhile, one Miami waitress who hasn’t been keeping up with her current affairs is returning home to her empty apartment to find a window wide open, the phone ringing, and a scary voice on the line saying, “I know you’re not wearing a bra, Debbie” – to which she blurts back, “Who the fuck is there?”. Believe me, it’s never a good idea to use profanity when trying to calm down a potentially confrontational situation, and soon Debbie has become the killer’s latest victim, along with her visiting boyfriend who, after a nasty incident involving an oversized meat cleaver, ends up lying several feet away from his own head. Fuck!

Back at the Harris household, we meet Jane’s little sister, Tracy, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh. It’s a great early role for Leigh: as a deaf-blind mute she really has to emote to get those scenes across (and no lines to learn, either – score!). It turns out that Tracy has only been sensory-impaired since an incident in her childhood when a prank went wrong nasty man abducted her and did god knows what while Jane was off making out with a boy from school. So, really, it was all her older sister’s fault. No wonder she’s got such a chip on her shoulder about that killer rapist on the loose.

For now, anyway, the plot thrust is back with Jane, who’s spotted a creepy neighbour (John DiSanti) doing all kinds of creepy things... like disposing of a bloodstained shirt in the basement of the apartment block, and washing muddy marks off his car the day after a murder down at the beach. In an interesting twist, she starts stalking him, phoning him with “I saw what you did”-style accusations – and, unfortunately, not disguising her voice very well. How long will it be before he finds out who’s onto him? Has she inadvertently put her near-helpless sister at risk? And when will Tori Spelling remake this movie (please)?

All these questions – well, except the one about Tori Spelling – are answered in a wonderfully gruelling climax, wherein things are wrapped up neatly with the use of some of Tom Savini’s messy gore effects. Catch this on Warner’s newly restored DVD release, in fact, and you’ll be treated to some gushingly good bloodletting throughout (a particular bonus for UK viewers who’ve only ever had a BBFC-cut version of an already trimmed, R-rated American cut). Being at least as much Anchorwoman In Peril-focused as it is slasher, of course, the film isn’t outrageously gory, but director Ken Wiederhorn makes sure that what is there really sticks. Actually, while I’m thinking about it, I can’t name another straight-up Anchorwoman In Peril outing that’s quite as liberal with the red stuff as this. That’s got to be worthy of some sort of recognition, right?

Another pleasing characteristic of Eyes of a Stranger is the attention it pays to its murder set-pieces. These aren’t just random deaths chucked in to up the bodycount. Each slaughter sequence is played as its own little movie-within-a-movie, in which we get to know the characters involved, watch their terror increase as they realise how much danger they’re in, and then, finally... splat! Tomorrow’s news headline.

As chief anchorwoman, Tewes is pretty amusing, constantly refusing to move in with her boyfriend on the grounds that she has to look after her sister – yet constantly ditching Tracy to follow up bizarre murder-hunt clues (a cuckoo clock?!). Jamie Lee Jennifer-Jason-Leigh is also good value in what’s not quite her debut – although she does get an “Introducing” credit – and her climactic tussle with the killer is as thrilling as it is inevitable. While you couldn’t call Eyes of a Stranger essential horror viewing, it’s a treat to find it released on DVD. I’d rather go deaf-blind-mute than part with my copy!

Rating: 4/5

Someone’s Watching Me!

I first saw John Carpenter’s Someone’s Watching Me! as a teenager, when you could catch a TV movie on the box every night if you stayed up late enough. (These days, the late-night movies are all things I saw at the cinema in the late nineties – ouch!) All I really remembered of the film was a chilblains-inducing moment in which our heroine is talking on the phone alone in her apartment... when suddenly a black-clad figure dashes silently past in the background! Well, I must have found that pretty creepy to have remembered it all these years (not to mention put it in italics) so it was with some anticipation that I popped Warner’s new DVD – released as part of their fairly accurately titled Twisted Terror Collection – into the machine.

Let me tell you: the moment is there, it’s a doozy, and it doesn’t take long to get to it. Someone’s Watching Me! establishes its stalker theme right off the bat, as the camera glides the length of a telescope before disappearing right into its darkened lens (a truly evocative shot that seems to implicate the viewer as – lordy – both voyeur and victim). Speaking of victim, it’s attractive, endearingly gappy-toothed Leigh Michaels (Lauren Hutton) that the telescope of terror will soon be trained upon when, after taking up residence in an L.A. apartment, she finds herself at the mercy of an obsessed observer who tracks her every move and telephones her at all hours with whispered threats.


We first meet Leigh as she’s shown around the ultra-modern Arkham Tower building by a realtor who explains how every apartment is controlled by a computer that does things like sense the strength of the setting sun and adjust the room temperature accordingly. (Not bad for 1978, huh? My computer still won’t do that.) I found this idea creepy enough even without the added bonus of a leering psychopath, but Leigh’s a busy woman-in-peril TV director and probably hasn’t had chance to see Demon Seed yet. In any case, she’s pleased as punch with the place, and is soon all moved in.

As satisfied as she is with the evening climate control (a good thing, since she never closes the curtains) Leigh’s housewarming is soon marred by a string of vaguely threatening phone calls and mysterious gifts – first a mysterious telescope, then a mysterious orange bikini. Her new gay buddy Sophie (Adrienne Barbeau) tells her not to worry and takes her out for a meal but, even at the restaurant, it seems that Someone’s Watching Her, when a bottle of wine arrives compliments of a swiftly exiting stranger at the bar. As the mystery man’s attentions increase, Leigh becomes increasingly worried for her own safety, and Arkham Tower comes to seem less like an intelligently air-conditioned playground and more like a glass-walled prison of doom!

Someone’s Watching Me! is a wonderful blend of Hitchcockian stylings, 70s TV-movie terror and, thanks to the presence of a young John Carpenter in the director’s chair, early slasher movie technique. Carpenter is clearly intent on giving things a Hitchcock flavour: we open with a bombastic Bernard Herrman-esque score played over some ersatz Saul Bass credits (all parallel lines and sliding names), plus there’s the Rear Window-ish plotting, an overhead shot straight out of Psycho, and at least one reverse dolly zoom; it’s so stylishly slavish to the Master, I want to call it De Palmaian but can’t really spell it. This being only months prior to Carpenter’s cinematic breakthrough, everything also reeks of Halloween, including the strong female leads, occasional steadycam use, and faceless killer. Even the heroine’s name – Leigh (as in Jamie?) and surname Michaels (Myers?) – had me thinking of the slasher classic.


Leigh isn’t your average woman-in-peril, just as Someone’s Watching Me! isn’t your average woman-in-peril TV movie. She’s confident, independent and refuses to allow anyone to control her life, characteristics that Carpenter (who scripted as well as directed) establishes early on in a barroom scene where, after rebuffing the advances of several male admirers, Leigh calmly approaches a single man with the pickup line, “Hello! I’m Leigh Michaels!”. Later on, when things get even hairier, she’s not afraid to follow her stalker into a deserted basement, break into his apartment or, in a particularly ballsy move during the trapped-in-the-dark climax, demand that he come out of the shadows and show himself. As she rants to Sophie at one point, “How dare he invade my life!”.

While we’re on the subject of Sophie, what a refreshing character she is: not gay-for-a-few-wisecracks nor even seemingly attracted to gorgeous Leigh; she’s just a great best friend who also happens to be a lesbian. The fact is simply noted and they move on. In fact, of all the characters Leigh comes into contact with (I doubt she could pick her nose without someone coming on to her), Sophie is the least predatory and most positive. This may be a comment on the late-seventies theme of all men as potential rapists – here used to ominous effect when a male co-worker blindly ignores Leigh’s rebuttals by repeatedly asking her for a date – but also shines as one of the least showy, most affirmative portrayals of a gay character from the era. (William Friedkin simply wouldn’t have had a film if he’d represented gay men as matter-of-factly as this in Cruising two years later.)


In fact, there’s precious little to complain about in Someone’s Watching Me! I would’ve liked to see more of Leigh at work; she seems to spend less time there than talking to herself while alone (or is she?!) at her apartment but, since her job doesn’t have direct bearing on the plot, it’s justifiable. After all, she’s not technically a genuine Anchorwoman In Peril – being instead employed behind the scenes as the person who says “Fade in on camera three” during the news – but there’s more than enough woman, peril and indeed TV stuff here to justify the moniker. I’d even go so far as to say the film is absolute canon as the Anchorwoman In Peril genre goes... It’s certainly scary, thrilling and, er, glamorously seventies enough. Someone’s Watching Me, I’ll be watching you in future!

Rating: 4/5