• Directed by Jim Wynorski
• Written by William C. Martell
• Starring
  • Marc Singer
  • Shannon Tweed
  • Johnny Williams
  • Julie Strain
  • Wings Hauser
• Produced by Andrew Stevens
• Executive produced by Ashok Amritraj

In this particular cinematic ghetto, what you see above amounts to an all-star cast and crew. Which sounds like a good thing, right? Unfortunately, there’s no more guarantee that a group of household names (in my household, anyway) will automatically produce a good film on a low budget than there is with a summer blockbuster pricetag.

In this case, we’ve got a set-up for heady suspense. Peter Sharky (Marc Singer) is a Securities & Exchange Commission investigator, looking into the case of one Leland Duvall (Wings Hauser), a corporate CEO whose company is currently being hit with a wrongful death suit over a hundred-plus fires caused by the company’s faulty electric blankets. (Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever heard this one before in a suspense flick.) But that’s not why Sharky’s nosing around; it seems there’s also $70 million mysteriously “missing” from corporate coffers, and the smell of embezzlement is in the air.

Shannon Tweed? Pritty.

So to kick off our story, Sharky shows up at Duvall’s house, meets his stunning wife Carla (Shannon Tweed — and let me say right here that I find Tweed such an attractive woman, even fully clothed, that I cannot wholly begrudge any film that puts her in my field of vision for a goodly proportion of the running time), and overhears a bit of an argument between Duvall and his VP Richard Jordan (Jay Richardson, working for a weekend). Oh, and he also meets Jordan’s girlfriend Linda (Julie Strain — and the fact that I find Strain much less appealing than Tweed probably lowers my fanboy-cred, doesn’t it?).

And we then get about ten minutes of crammed in exposition and twists, to wit: Duvall did embezzle the $70 million, though he’s willing to blame it on Jordan if Jordan doesn’t back off; Jordan and Linda stage an argument in order to leave Linda behind at the house and give her an occasion to nose around and find out where Duvall stashed the money; and Duvall and Linda are also having an an affair — because why pay Julie Strain to be on the set if you’re going to keep her clothed right?

All of which we know but Sharky doesn’t, because his idea of investigation seems to be to show up and let Duvall know he’s under investigation, then wander around a bit. He wanders into the police station, and after talking about his investigation, gets himself temporarily partnered with homicide cop Marv Riker (Johnny Williams, bit-part fat man supreme). Although I couldn’t figure out why a homicide cop was so hot to get to work on an embezzlement case, which is the only criminal charge involved here (you recall, wrongful death suits are civil cases, and even a criminal negligence charge still wouldn’t concern homicide).

“You bet I’m tough! Growing up with a name like ‘Leland Duvall,’ I had to be tough!”

Homicide turns out to be the proper department, though, because that night at the Duvall house, shots ring out, and we see a shadowy scene of two ski-masked figures dumping a body into a car and the car over a cliff, ka-boom.

The car is identified as Duvall’s. Since Sharky’s investigation is ongoing, he’s around when Carla comes in to identify the badly charred body. He’s also the one who takes her home afterward, and tries gently to continue his investigation (assuming, quite reasonably, that the person who offed Duvall would be the same one who took the money). Of course, Carla is also prime subject number one, as soon as the autopsy confirms that Duvall was shot dead before the car exploded.

From here, Sharky and Riker team up from twelve-hour shifts surveilling Carla, hoping to find a clue one way or another. They don’t have enough for a search warrant, but they do manage to get permission to bug the house, which gives them long shifts of sitting in their cars on the curb, listening to headphones, and watching as the mourning widow keeps changing her clothes in front of the open upstairs balcony window.

Shannon Tweed and Julie Strain in the same movie, and this is the only girl/girl scene we get?

Let’s see — attractive widow who may be the murderer… What are the odds that she and Sharky start getting it on? (A hell of a lot better chance than fat Riker has, right?)

Naturally, because she’s under investigation, Sharky has to keep his “involvement” under wraps, which is especially hard with bugs all over the house (good thing Carla takes him for the “strong silent” type, especially the “silent” part). But as he uncovers evidence for or against Carla’s guilt, he naturally muddies the waters, since he’s finding it at times and in ways in which he’s not supposed to have access to the premises. And anyway — does he want her to be the guilty party?

Which is, of course, the general premise of half of the “erotic thriller” videos on the Drama section of the video store (the other half all somehow involving strippers, or policewomen undercover as strippers). Which is not, in and of itself, an indictment — it is, after all an dramatic premise, involving desire and trust as opposing impulses.

But for it to work, it’s got to be presented competently. Which this one isn’t.

Good cop, bad cop. (Though neither is a particularly good cop, really…)

I was smart enough to get ahold of Bill Martell (the only crewmember I’m personally acquainted with) far enough ahead of time that he could make comments that I could incorporate into this review, and I’ll let his complete reply stand as a unit. But here are the things that stuck out for me, independent of Bill’s info:

- Marc Singer is either hideously miscast, or was instructed to perform as if he were hideously miscast. I can buy Singer in a natty suit — maybe as a neat-as-a-pin hitman badass. But as a squeaky-clean white-collar securities investigator? He doesn’t seem comfortable in his own skin, much less his conservative two-piece.

- The plot, as it appears in the final product, is lumpy. There’s that whole section of twists in the first ten minutes, a similar set of twists in the last ten minutes, and in between the investigation just sorta lopes along, punctuated by sex scenes.

Once again: Shannon Tweed? Pritty. (Marc Singer? Not so much.)

The good news, though, is that none of the stuff I didn’t like was Bill’s fault. Remember: The screenwriter is the person least accountable for how bad a movie is, what with all the other people who muck with it before it hits your eyeballs. (Funny — if every director thinks he can do better than the writer, why doesn’t he just do the writing himself instead of hiring a writer to give him a script to “improve upon”?)

So without further ado, let’s see how this mess came to be. Per Bill (warning: SPOILERS AHEAD):

Victim of Desire began as a script called The Victim’s Wife which was supposed to be a theatrical. You see, Treacherous [one of Bill's earlier scripts --Nathan] was set up at Hemdale with Mickey Rourke (before he took a nose dive) and Brian Dennehy and a budget of $8 million. Everybody liked that script because it took place at a central location - it could be shot inexpensively with most of the budget going to cast. So I decided to write another one with a central location.

There’s this great 40s movie written by Dan Mainwaring called Roadblock about a cop who falls for a sexy crime suspect… and ends up covering up clues that lead to her in order to prolong his relationship. I really liked that idea - you love a woman so much you’ll let her get away with murder. So I added a touch of Stakeout and a portion of Sea of Love and came up with The Victim’s Wife. As I was finishing the first draft, Hemdale went bankrupt… Treacherous was a dead project and I had no one to sell The Vicitm’s Wife to.

Two years later, Treacherous is made with C. Thomas Howell and Adam Baldwin for $1.2 million. So I start looking at producers who make films at that budget range… I try to sell it at American Film Market.

At AFM I stumble onto a familiar name - Ashok Amritraj. He producer some Jean Claude Van Damme movies, and was now making erotic thrillers. But Ashok wasn’t listed in Hollywood Creative Directory, so I had no idea how to get a script to him. I decided to go down to the library and look through the phone books - found him listed in the white pages, called, pitched the script, and he asked to read it.

What I didn’t know is that another producer I had sent the script to had already given a copy to Ashok because he liked it. They’d read it, liked it, but didn’t want to work with the producer. So my script was kind of “pre-approved”.

As soon as I signed my contract, things went wrong. Something happened behind the scenes and the budget for Victim went from about $1.2 million down to $350k. I had to do a massive rewrite to take out locations, action scenes, and characters. The script would have been okay, but then they hired the director.

The director has a temper - he’s hard to work with. The director makes sex comedies - he doesn’t understand suspense or plot twists or dramatic situations. The director doesn’t care - he was reading the newspaper on the set instead of directing. I remember a conversation with the director about the scene in the script where our hero realizes that the woman he loves is the killer - this was the pivotal scene in the script… the director cut it.

I can’t blame everything on the director. Casting made changes in the script. When Julie Strain was cast as the lead suspect’s GF, they wanted more scenes with her. Naked scenes. The problem is - the character is supposed to be out of the country after page 15… so now the plot doesn’t work. I tried explaining this, but was told that nobody cares about plot holes, they care about cast.

When they cast Burt Gilliam (Flying Elvis) as the crime lab guy, I had to write 10 pages of material for him. They wanted to get their money’s worth. I wrote some great stuff - how he got his dog from the DEA: a retired drug sniffing dog. Turns out the dog is a drug addict. I managed to milk the story - keep it going - through every scene Burt was in . When they shot it, the crew had trouble not laughing. Well, it didn’t make it into the film. I wrote tons of pages for every semi-name they cast, none made it into the final cut. There are a bunch of Pete Spellos scenes that aren’t in the film (one featuring me as the dead guy he’s autopsying). The script was turning to crap! All of these pointless scenes!

And one scene got added by the director: Here I am cutting cast down to the nubs - removing secondary suspects so that it’s obvious who done it - and the director ADDS a speaking part. Some bimbo walking down the street who drops a steaming pile of exposition into the laps of the cops. Why did the director create this role? I think you can figure it out. I cut an important character from the script so that the director can screw a starlet!

Then they film this piece of crap. The director - for reasons that nobody knows - has Marc act like Jerry Lewis. When I wrote the script, I’m thinking Robert Mitchum. The director seems to think it’s a comedy! He doesn’t think it’s important to shoot clues, or suspense scenes, and he telegraphs all of the twists. At the screening I cringe throughout - this film sucks! But at AFM they sell it like crazy - all they care about is the cast!

One of the days I’m on set, someone breaks something and the director SCREAMS for someone to sweep it up RIGHT NOW! Everybody scrambles. One guy comes back with a broom, sweeps up the broken glass and makes sure there aren’t any hidden pieces people might cut themselves on… the guy with the broom was Marc Singer. The director said “I didn’t mean you, Marc.” Marc shrugged and said he was the first one to get to the broom. That’s Marc Singer in a nutshell - he was the star of the movie, but he was happy to help out on the set.

I call the movie Victim of Director. The original script was like Sea of Love, the finished film is like Jerry Lewis starring in a Night Eyes knock off. No matter how good the script is, it’s gonna get cheesed on the way to the screen.

- Bill

Given the behind-the-scenes horror stories that I hear from Bill and just about every other working screenwriter, I often find myself astounded that the movies in question, poor as they often are, turn out as watchable as they do.

Some Notable Totables:

(all taken from the R-rated version, though I doubt the count changes in the unrated version)

• body count: 4
• breasts: 4
• explosions: 1
• ominous thunderstorms: 1
• jocular coroners who eat around cadavers: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • Brad Blaisdell (”technician”) played “Yint” in the S9 episode “Honor Among Thieves”