• Produced and directed by Mansour Pouormand
• Written by Barbara Bishop
• Starring
  • Dona Adams
  • David Clover
  • John Dagnen

An interesting little hybrid here — an independently made slasher flick which, while not original, shows an overabundance of compentence.

Policewoman Lisa Ryder (Dona Adams) is promoted to Detective through the machinations of the mayor, who’s desperately trying to get ahead in the polls for the upcoming election, and set to work with an experienced detective on some prostitute murders while the former partner gets planted at a desk. Tension abounds in the department, to be accentuated when the murders continue, the mayor threatens the police chief, and Ryder becomes involved with a peripherally-involved contact who may be a suspect.

The bad points:

- Adams, who has no other screen credits, is a definite hottie, but her voice is annoying and she can’t act. She also has an annoying habit of smirking in any scene where it could be conceivably appropriate. Add to that her character’s naivete (which I’m sure was supposed to be endearing, but which turned out to be disturbingly implausible), and she becomes the movie’s weak link.

- The supposed on-screen chemistry between Ryder and photographer Michael Walker never amount to anything much; the nude scene seems shoehorned in, and her declarations of love hold as much weight as lines overheard in a high school drama.

- We start with a scene in which police pepper a suspect with over-penetrating bullets — never a good sign.

- I HATE cars that don’t start for any good reason. HATE ‘em.

- The police have a nasty habit of flashing gruesome crime scene photos at unsuspecting interviewees.

The good points:

- I think it was shot on video, then filmlooked; it had many of the visual cues of each medium, but not blatantly. How is this a good point? It means somebody found a good way to save money. The rest of the production — actors, sets & locations, lighting, music — was at minimum professional (equal to what you’d see in, say, a New Horizons horror/thriller); if anything, this video was an experiment to see if a good production could be made on filmlooked video. It worked well.

- Tight script, with no big slow parts in the middle.

- Several red herrings as to the killer’s identity (for our benefit; the police spend most of the movie without a suspect); I spent most of the movie thinking I had it figured out, and then had my assumptions pulled out from under me. (It was done well, too — a 3-second scene almost at the end that said, “Oh, by the way, we know who you think it is because we set you up, but you’re wrong.”)

- Ryder’s partner’s got a bladder infection. It’s a nifty little device that removes him from the scene often (to find the men’s room), allowing her to be alone with suspects.

All in all, an acceptable little murder thriller. If we could just rerecord all of Adams’ dialog…

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 9
• breasts: 4
• explosions: 0
• dream sequences: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0