I Saw What You Did (1988) (TV)

... aka: I Saw What You Did... and I Know Who You Are!

Directed by:
Fred Walton

While this is usually brushed off as a lesser remake of William Castle's 1965 film of the same name starring John Ireland and Joan Crawford, both are actually adaptations of the 1964 novel Out of the Dark by Ursula Curtiss. Curtiss, a New Mexico native and the daughter of mystery novelist Helen Reilly, was an award-winning author of 23 novels starting in the late 40s. To my knowledge the only other book of hers that was turned into a feature film was The Forbidden Garden, which was the basis for the highly enjoyable What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969). Director Walton likely got this particular gig thanks to the success of the now-famous When a Stranger Calls (1979), another film involving the theme of telephone terror, that was based on a short he did in 1977 called The Sitter. He'd not only go on to make a sequel to his most famous film (the better-than-expected When a Stranger Calls Back in 1993) but also the gimmicky slasher pseudo-spoof April Fool's Day (1986), which some people like but I'm not a fan of. Most of the rest of his work, including the pretty good cable suspense movie Trapped (1989), was made for television.

The stars are three young actresses of varying degrees of talent. First off, there's Shawnee Smith, who may not be a great actress but at least could be counted on to be likable at this early stage of her career. The same year she was in this she also played the female lead in the good but financially unsuccessful remake of The Blob and gave one of the better 80s 'Scream Queen' performance in that. Smith would go on to appear in many other horror films over the next few decades, most notably playing Amanda in the Saw series. Then there's Tammy Lauren, a former child actress and daughter of a talent agent whose career has mostly been relegated to TV. Years after playing imperiled teens in The Stepford Children (1987), THE PEOPLE ACROSS THE LAKE (1988) and this she turned up out of nowhere as the female lead in Wishmaster (1997); a rare theatrical release for her.

Last, and certainly least, we have Candace Cameron, who everyone knows from the terrible sitcom Full House. In this she's slightly less annoying than she was playing D.J. Tanner but that's pretty much all I have to go on with her. Hell, she may still be annoying but I wouldn't really know seeing how she's the self-righteous type and only stars in Christian and Hallmark TV Christmas movies that I'd never watch. Whoever said “Small blessings accumulate to be the most powerful” knew what they were talking about.

Kim Fielding (Smith), the teen daughter of a government consultant, is the smart, polite new girl at a California high school who's never had a boyfriend before (she'd only attended an all girl's school prior). Lisa Harris (Lauren), rebellious daughter of an overly-strict mother (Rosanna Huffman), sleeps through class, is sexually active, smokes weed and has big 80s hair. While these two seem unlikely friends, the sheltered, motherless Kim finds herself drawn to the experienced Lisa and uses her father (Alan Fudge) going out of town for the night as an opportunity to invite Lisa over to their secluded country home for dinner, where she'll also be babysitting her nightmare-plagued kid sister Julia (Cameron). Lisa's not initially interested until she realizes that would be the perfect opportunity to sneak her boyfriend Louis (Patrick O'Bryan) over so they'll have a place to mess around. After Louis flakes out and the girls get bored, they decide to prank call some random people out of the phone book, telling them “I saw what you did and I know who you are!” They end up picking the wrong person to call...

Adrian Lancer (Robert Carradine) is a music composer who's losing his mind. After making a weird video featuring clips of old Karloff and Lugosi movies set to “Mr. Sandman” he's fired from his studio job. Adrian gets a second blow when his insensitive girlfriend Robyn (Jo Anderson) refuses his marriage proposal. In a fit of rage, he kills her. He then loads the body up in the car, takes it out into the woods and attempts to bury it but is interrupted by a couple and has to leave with the body still in his trunk. Back at his apartment, he hallucinates blood oozing from his walls and his dead girlfriend showing up at the door and starts to become even more paranoid and unhinged as the girls call repeatedly with their “I saw what you did...” line. Adrian's brother Steven (David Carradine) shows up to spend the night and keeps picking up clues his sibling has lost it... again. As a child, Adrian had a thing for fire and even started one that killed his own parents.

After a few more phone calls, the girls decide to "borrow" the dad's prized sports car and actually go over to Adrian's place in the city. Once there, Kim pretends that the car broke down and asks Adrian to use his phone but accident blurts out his name and then leaves in a rush. She also leaves her purse with her driver's permit (and home address) behind. After bludgeoning his brother during a confrontation over bloody towels, Adrian grabs a gas can, hops in his car and decides to pay the girls a little visit...

I haven't seen the original in ages and I remember next to nothing about it so I can't compare these two movies right now. Though there's nothing flagrantly wrong with this version, there's little that's exemplary about it either. The acting is fine. The direction is fine. They do about all they can with TV movie limitations. What really saves the day is some unexpected subtext and interesting character arcs, especially in regards to the lead females. I found myself more invested in the girls' relationship and coming-of-age aspects than with any of the routine psycho stuff that was going on. I guess we can thank writer Cynthia Cidre for at least that much. I'm not sure any of that is present in either Castle's film or the book. There's also a simple but effective synth score from Dana Kaproff to help things along and some moody noir-ish cinematography from Woody Omens, who actually won an Emmy Award for his work here. The cast also includes Bo Brundin (THE HEADLESS EYES) and Susan Kellermann (Elvira, Mistress of the Dark) as teachers.

This debuted on CBS TV May 1988 and continues to pop up on TV from time to time but was never released on home video here in the US. Other countries like Australia and the UK did get a VHS release. The one distributed by the Aussie label CIC Video was titled I Saw What You Did... and I Know Who You Are! As of right now, this hasn't officially been released on DVD either. The discs currently for sale (like the one from Twisted Danger) are unsanctioned bootlegs.

★★1/2

Dan Oniroku: Bikyoshi jigokuzeme (1985)

... aka: Beautiful Teacher in Torture Hell

Directed by:
Masahito Segawa

Noriko Saotome (Ran Masaki) arrives at a remote village via train to start a new job as a school teacher. A fellow teacher named Saeko (Izumi Shima), who Noriko knows from her past, picks her up at the station and the two head down a country road. They're ambushed by three young delinquents who block their path and plan on raping them. However, what they don't count on is Noriko being an expert fencer. She's able to get her hands on her weapon (a traditional kendo bamboo sword) and knocks two of the guys out. Saeko isn't so lucky and gets dragged off and raped before Noriko is able to save her. The next day, something even stranger occurs when Noriko is lured into an exhibit room by student Yuki (Saori Mizuno), the school director's meek granddaughter, and someone behind her knocks her out. When she comes to, Yuki denies taking her to the room or anyone even hitting her yet Noriko has unexplained rope burns around both of her wrists.

Saeko, curiously untraumatized by the previous attack, takes Noriko home with her to rest, where we learn Noriko may have had an affair with Saeko's former fiance, who died while trying to save her from drowning. Later that night, Noriko stumbles upon Saeko having kinky sex with the school's grubby janitor Morita (Nobutaka Masutomi). The following day, the janitor comes to her with an envelope containing compromising photos of Noriko nude and tied up, taken while she was unconscious. She questions Yuki to try to get to the bottom of things and is told she was forced to do it by the delinquents in town; the same ones who'd raped Saeko and tried to rape her. And they want to meet Noriko in the school's gymnasium later that night. Feeling she has no other choice, Noriko agrees.

When she arrives at the gym, Noriko finds Yuki tied up and being threatened with a knife. She's forced to strip off all her clothes except for padding to have a fencing duel. Though she easily wins the match, they're not done with her yet. She's violated with a fencing sword and then gets gang raped. One of the guys videotapes it all. What unfolds after that is a conspiracy by a number of people in the village helping out a powerful man (Hiroshi Nawa) who gets off on breaking strong and prideful women. Noriko finds herself bound and being held prisoner in the man's home, where she's subjected to all manner of torture inflicted upon her by “the lowest, most reprehensible man” her captor could find. That includes rape, candle wax, being submerged in a water tank, genital torture with a vibrator and rope, aphrodisiac overdose and a disgusting bit with enemas.

I'm not very well versed on these S&M / torture pinku eiga films. From what I've heard, they get a lot nastier and more graphic than this one. So while this may not be pushing any real boundaries content-wise, I do know that it's not so common for sleazy movies to have such good cinematography and lighting. The acting is also pretty good and the plot, while nothing too complex, is adequate with a decent build-up to all the torture stuff. Similar bondage movies made in the U.S. and Europe during this time were usually shot on videotape and stuck in the adult sections of video stores despite many of them actually being soft-core. Those can't even come close to competing with something like this with real production values. While this type of film doesn't particularly appeal to me, I can still appreciate a well-made movie, which this is, about pretty much anything. The running time is just 67 minutes, which also helps prevent this from becoming too repetitive and monotonous.

Leading lady Masaki is nice to look at and nude throughout, though seeing how this is Japanese, all frontal nudity is blocked, obscured or blurred. She's also not a bad actress, so I'm surprised she only starred in a few more films: Flower and Snake 4: White Uniform Rope Slave and Snake and Whip (1986). Her co-star Shima was far more prolific with dozens of starring roles and had been acting in similar films since the late 70s. Like many other films of this type, this was based on a novel by Oniroku Dan. Dan (real name: Yukihiko Kuroiwa) was a former translator and junior high school English teacher who found fame with his novel Flower and Snake, which became a hit movie in 1974 and was followed by countless sequels as well as several reboots. During his career, he scripted a number of films and penned over 200 S&M novels. Since Nikkatsu bought the film rights to his books, many were adapted for the screen.

There was an early VHS distributed by Asian Cult Cinema and then a 2006 DVD released by Geneon, though their release had no English option. This is now available remastered and subbed through several other companies and is easy to find.

★★1/2