Showing posts with label psycho-thriller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psycho-thriller. Show all posts
John Wesford (James Spader) works at a medical clinic in Los Angeles, which is currently besieged by a maniac who is reenacting the murders of Jack the Ripper exactly one hundred years after they originally occurred. Besides John, suspects include the strange shrink Dr. Battera (Robert Picardo), John's obnoxious boss Sidney Tannerson (Rod Loomis), his beefy co-worker Jack Pendler (Rex Ryon), and others. John comes across a murdered hooker named Denise (Danitza Kingsley), sees someone running from the scene, and then the movie does a 180 degree turn, with a new lead character turning up just as you're scratching your head at what's going on ... Spader and the other actors are fine, but Jack's Back substitutes a mid-movie twist for a solid plot, with the killer's motivations and logic unresolved, and the 100 Years Later Jack the Ripper premise pretty much goes nowhere. The BBC series Whitechapel: The Ripper Returns took the same idea years later and really ran with it. Cynthia Gibb plays Spader's co-worker and a potential love interest. This probably looked good on paper but it's sunk by its contrivances.
Verdict: Although there's some suspense of a minor kind, this is a Ripper movie you can live without. **.
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| David Mooney (Manzy) and Ruth Roman |
Social worker Ann Gentry (Anjanette Comer) is a widow who lives with her mother-in-law, Judith (Beatrice Manley). She asks to be assigned to the case of the Wadsworth family, who live in a big rundown house and live off the money given them by the state for the care of a member they call "Baby." Although he has the mind of an infant and sleeps in a crib, Baby (David Mooney/Manzy) is actually a grown man. Ann comes to believe that his problem isn't true retardation, but that for some reason his mother (Ruth Roman) is holding him back developmentally. In the meantime Baby is poked with an electric prod by his sadistic sister Alba (Suzanne Zenor); his other sister Germaine (Marianna Hill of The Astral Factor) takes off her clothes and climbs into the crib with him; and in an even more tasteless scene -- if that were possible -- his babysitter abuses him. But as awful as the Wadsworths may be, is it possible that Ann Gentry is even worse and has her own plans for Baby ...? The Baby is well-acted, especially by Mooney, but it is so exploitative of the mentally ill that it's rather hard to take at times. The movie gets points for originality, but little else. Even the plot twists are pretty sick. This is the kind of movie that does no one's career any good. Tod Andrews, who plays a doctor, was the star of From Hell It Came.
Verdict: Too repellent to be entertaining. For a more sensitive look at the mentally-challenged see A Child is Waiting. **.
The testimony of FBI psychologist Jack Gramm (Al Pacino of The Recruit) helped put away a fiendish killer, Jon Forster (Neal McDonough), who is about to be executed. Gramm then gets a call in which an unknown person tells him he only has 88 minutes to live, a number that has special significance to him. Gramm figures Forster is behind it all, but who is his ally outside of prison? One of Gramm's students? His teaching assistant, Kim (Alicia Witt of Urban Legend)? Her motorcycle-riding boyfriend? His secretary, Shelley (Amy Brenneman)? The movie, with its hints of dark deeds in the past, numerous twists and red herrings, reminds one of a giallo film by Italian director Dario Argento, but without the cinematic flourishes or sick violence. The performances are good, and the slick movie moves fast enough to keep you from dissecting what's going on too carefully. Whatever its flaws, 88 Minutes is quite entertaining.
Verdict: Pacino treading water. ***.
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| "Play Misty for me," says the lady on the phone |
Radio DJ Dave (Clint Eastwood) plays easy listening on the night shift, and he consistently gets calls from a woman who says "Play Misty for me." One night Dave meets a woman named Evelyn (Jessica Walter) at a bar and has a one-night stand with her. She not only turns out to be the lady who requests Misty, but she seems to think this one encounter means that she and Dave are in a "relationship." Things get worse when Dave sleeps with her a second time, and she acts as if they're engaged, showing up uninvited, expecting him to act like a significant other when all he wants to do is get away from her. In spite of this, Dave shows compassion after Evelyn's suicide attempt [a doctor friend risks his license by not reporting the incident, even though it would have forced Evelyn to get help], after which Evelyn is even more deeply "attached" to the man. If anything her behavior gets worse ... Play Misty for Me is an entertaining visualization of one man's Casual Sex Nightmare, and features a striking performance from Jessica Walter with an okay Eastwood pretty much along for the ride. Eastwood also directed the film, which is well-shot by Bruce Surtees. There's an exciting, if too brief, climax wherein Evelyn tries to butcher Dave; a sequence where she stabs repeatedly at his poor maid, Birdie (an amusing and sassy Clarice Taylor) is acceptable but hardly has the "Psycho-like editing" one critic attributed to it. Eastwood, as usual, whispers all of his lines [the way a woman would if she wants to sound slinky] in a way he assumes sounds masculine and sexy. Donna Mills [Curse of the Black Widow] plays his on-again/off-again girlfriend, Tobie. In this she is sweet and fresh-scrubbed; she later successfully reinvented herself as a devious sexpot for the show Knot's Landing. John Larch ["It's a Good Life" on Twilight Zone] and Irene Hervey [Honey West] have notable bits as, respectively, a cop who comes afoul of Evelyn, and a radio producer who wants to sign Dave to a great new contract until Evelyn interferes. Duke Everts plays Tobie's gay friend Jay Jay like a stereotype, and Don Siegel has his first acting part as a bartender. A romantic sequence to the strains of Roberta Flack's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" is effective, but a long sequence at a jazz festival just stops the picture dead. Although I haven't seen Fatal Attraction in a long time, I think this is a better picture.
Verdict: A zesty Walter makes this a pleasure. ***.