A Major Disappointment

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Having established his admiration for the master with the Psycho-for-Dummies of "Funeral Home", here Fruet serves up Rear Window with a dash of Spellbound: jogging voyeur Kenneth Gilman falls in with comely psychiatrist Dayle Haddon, before his kink gets him caught up in all kinds of shady intrigue. Needless to say, the film doesn't benefit from the comparison. It's frustrating how they keep pulling us out of the characters' point of view with cheat flashbacks or overdoses of stupid detective, and the pacing and cinematography are both damagingly pedestrian. By the more, er, modest yardstick of Robert Lantos sex schlock, however, it succeeds pretty well; at times the voyeurism theme actually feels like something more than an excuse to show pretty women undressing, and Gilman and Haddon are genuinely appealing and show genuine chemistry. So it's almost tragic that the filmmakers had to boil it all down to a murderous ex-hooker who thinks that "all men are pimps" - not just a stupid device, but a shamefully irrelevant one, unless of course they're working a moral angle, something along the lines of 'being a deviant will get you killed,' which I could also live without.

This is one of those movies I taped off late-night HBO back in the day. I dunno, it was really adult and sexy when I was in junior high.Let's see, there was a cigarette butt in the shrubbery, fingerprints on a window, right? Set in Ontario it was, with a woman in red taking her panties off in a restaurant so her guy could give her a foot job under the table? And that guy was a jogger who threw out his sneakers after stepping in dog crap? Was that this movie? One of those with the blonde/brunette dichotomy? Would love to see it again sometime.Don't you hate? When people talk in an up inflection? Like they're asking a question? Like this? Don'tcha hate that?Anyway, this one lingers in my memory for some reason. It wasn't direct to video, since I definitely remember playing a nearby theater in '86, '87...or '88? This one theater (Budco/AMC Millside 3/4 in Delran, NJ) would often play random movie no other place would (THE DRIFTER, DOLLS and DEMONS cameoed there too, but not ANGUISH or BARFLY - they went to the AMC Marlton). No point, just filling up the 10-line minimum...

This film appears to be an after dark type of cable movie but has more to offer. It's a good rental if you want to escape to a world that exist in your town maybe even in your neighborhood that you would never be a part of. Unless you are up all night looking out the window at your neighbors.

Don't be fooled by the title, for this isn't another piece of direct-to-video sleaze. What you will find instead is a fun, fast-moving film that is admittedly silly, but so what? It's no classic to be sure, and certainly there are few (if any) surprises, but it's a fun movie that tries for laughs instead of thrills, and works as a result. Open your mind, and give "Bedroom Eyes" a look.