In the Cold of the Night (1990)

... aka: Blue Passion

... aka: Brividi nella notte (Chills in the Night)

... aka: Dessein meurtrier (Murderous Design)

... aka: Heißkalte Nächte (Hot Cold Nights)

... aka: Hyytävä yö (A Chilling Night)

... aka: I den iskalla natten (In the Icy Night)

... aka: Jéghideg éjszaka, forró lány (Hot Girl in the Ice Cold Night)

Directed by:

Nico Mastorakis

The two most important films when it comes to establishing the late night erotic thriller (which started dominating late night cable TV and video stores in the early 90s) were Fatal Attraction (1987) and Basic Instinct (1992), but some of the more interesting films in this category - like this one - were made in between those two benchmark films. The opening few scenes are dripping with 80s style, almost hilariously so, and I mean that in a complementary way, of course! We get a bikini modeling session utilizing neon, fog and spinning lights in a beach ball motif, a bad-joke-riddled sex scene on a glowing waterbed (?!) and a heavily stylized nightmare sequence shot using some kind of strange pixilation / thermography + fish eyed lens effect. That's all just a little taste of the life of muscular, blonde-haired, blue-eyed California stud fashion photographer cum pineapple pizza enthusiast Scott Bruin (Jeff Lester). Our nightmare-plagued Ken Doll is having terrifying visions of murdering a mysterious brunette over and over and over again. While the methods of murder always change, the location and the victim always stay the same. 

Scott's gotten to the point of having to have his best bud Phil (Brian Thompson), a Venice Beach bodybuilder, come over to make sure he stays in bed and isn't actually getting up in the middle of the night and harming anyone, plus visiting shrink Dr. Frieberg (David Soul), who basically tells him that dreams, regardless of how bad they may be, are still just dreams at the end of the day. Scott feels otherwise.

Because his murderous visions are so detailed and vivid, and feel so real, Scott begins to suspect the girl from his nightmares is real and that perhaps he's somehow been able to "intercept" a real killer's thoughts or intentions. He also believes a terrible motorcycle accident he had not long ago, that left him in intensive care for five weeks, may have triggered something in his brain and given him ESP abilities. His buddy brushes off his theory ("I think you and Brian De Palma should get together!") but things only seem to worsen. In the middle of a photo session, a fully-awake Scott has another of his disturbing visions, which up until now have only occurred during his sleep. Returning to the hospital, Scott's EKG results come back fine, so his psychiatrist prescribes him muscle relaxers and sends him on his way.

Just by chance (...or is it?), Scott happens to spot a man on the beach wearing a hand-painted t-shirt with a drawing of the exact woman he's been dreaming about. That leads to artist Rudy's (John Beck) beachfront clothing shop. Rudy claims to have no clue who the woman is, so Scott leaves his card just in case he remembers.

The following morning, after Scott's "date" with model Lena (Shannon Tweed), whom he's kinda-sorta seeing (it's mostly just sexual), the mystery dream woman shows up at his front door. She introduces herself as Kimberly Shawn (Adrianne Sachs, who was Miss Brazil in 1986) and she's wondering why he's been inquiring about her. Kimberly claims that Rudy is her overly-protective ex-husband. Scott doesn't divulge where he really knows her from and instead insists he saw her image and simply wanted to use her as a model. The two flirt over coffee, have lunch with her bird-fearing mother, Clara (played by Tippi Hedren... nyuk nyuk nyuk, get it?), and, before he knows it, she's getting into a black BMW with an unknown man and taking off. He will see her again, however, as she's left her motorcycle behind at his place.

Kimberly shows up to get her bike and invites Scott back to a luxurious 12 million dollar mansion she claims to be housesitting for a friend. It's the same place he's been dreaming about. Not deterred by any of that, Scott and Kimberly engage in an extended "foreplay" session that involves ludicrous yet hilarious "seductive" dialogue exchanges ("Maybe it's the sauce... maybe it's just the way I taste."), lingering sips of fine wine and sucking caviar off each other's fingers. As a saxophone obnoxiously blares on the soundtrack, the two get it on in the shower and then move to the bed, where he dumps a heart-shaped glass bowl full of marbles (!?!) all over her chest.

Scott begins basically living at the home, and the two fall deeper and deeper in love, yet his nightmares about killing her still haven't stopped. Sometimes he even wakes up in the process of actually strangling her. Fearing her life may be in danger, he gives her a gun and tells her to just shoot him if it ever happens again. Scott is also growing increasingly paranoid about Kimberly herself. He follows her to "work" and she ends up going to a mansion of whoever it is that owns that black BMW. Is she continuing her relationship with the man behind his back? And what role does Marc Singer's sinister tech guru (introduced at the eleventh hour) play in all of this?

Pilfering heavily from Hitchcock and (most especially) the already name-dropped De Palma, this throws mystery, noir, sci-fi, romance and conspiratorial thriller elements in a blender, adds a dash of Sex, Lies and Laserdisc, a pinch of Cronenberg and a splash of any grainy lo-fi found footage horror movie of your choice, and then purees it all into some incomprehensible clump of something or other. Through it all, one entirely accidental yet nonetheless fascinating question emerges: Just how far can shallow aesthetic pleasures go to ensure our filmgoing enjoyment?

Mastorakis backs himself in a corner with a self-aware yet muddled screenplay (co-written by Fred C. Perry) but lays on the pretty imagery so thick and heavy that he comes pretty damn close to eye candy-ing his way out of it. The luxury gated mansions where most of the film takes place, with their large swimming pools, expensive décor, flowing curtains, huge columns and neon accouterments, all look ready for a featured spread in Architectural Digest. And they all sit in front of beautiful, perfectly manicured lawns in front of beautiful, shimmering beaches in front of beautiful, picturesque sunsets. The two leads (who aren't so good at the acting part of their jobs, but you'll have that) and the models who frequent the studio are all tanned, toned, waxed, plucked, gelled, sprayed, coiffed and spit-shined to Hollywood perfection. And the whole movie is gorgeously photographed by Andreas Bellis, with terrific shot compositions and excellent lighting schemes used throughout. There's barely a moment that goes by where your eyes aren't transfixed by something.

For some reason, there are a ton of mostly-unsubtle film references in here. Friday the 13th and Jagged Edge are used as punchlines, and when Scott sits down to watch a couple of movies, he naturally throws on two earlier Mastorakis films; The Wind (1986) and Terminal Exposure (1987), and we get to see clips from each.

All of the name value stars on the payroll are only around briefly. Hedren and Beck have just one scene apiece, Soul has two (which is basically just one sitting-behind-a-desk scene split into two with a costume change) and Singer shows up at the very end looking goofy and confused (can't really blame him, though). Thompson, who was married to the director's daughter, Isabelle Mastorakis (also the executive producer), at the time, has a bit more screen time, as does Tweed, who plays a potentially interesting, free-spirited character but is underutilized. The cast also includes prolific character actor Jack Kehler (who just passed away a few weeks ago) as a wino, Shelley Michelle (a body double frequently used by Hollywood stars like Julia Roberts and Kim Basinger) and Melinda Armstrong as models, an uncredited Melissa Moore, who can be spotted as an extra during a party scene, and the director in a cameo.

Here in the U.S., this was unfairly slapped with an X rating despite not being all that sexually graphic and containing very little full nudity (there's quite a bit of T&A though) or violence. That was later converted over to an NC-17. The original Republic Pictures VHS was released in both R and NC-17 versions, with only one minute of footage missing from the former. Both cuts are nearly 2 hours long! In 2019, Vinegar Syndrome released an uncut, restored version to Blu-ray, which looks fantastic.

★★1/2

Surrogate, The (1984)

... aka: Blind Rage
... aka: Infidélité fatale (Fatal Infidelity)
... aka: Mielipuoliset murhat (Insane Massacre)
... aka: Schizophrenia
... aka: Split Person

Directed by:
Don Carmody

Pretty much anyone who grew up in the 90s into the early 2000s should be pretty familiar with the erotic thriller. After all, these things helped get many of us through puberty. They were playing every single night on cable channels like Showtime and Cinemax. They were filling up video store shelves; not that you could necessarily rent them if you were of a certain age, but they were there. Since 1980, North American soft erotica has become increasingly more explicit to where now it's about as close to hardcore as you can possibly get without actually being hardcore. In the 90s, the sex scenes were still mostly on the very soft side of things because these mainstream features had to cut it as actual movies with plots, production values  and attention paid to the photography, score, etc. After all, these had budgets and were shot on film, not on smart phones or with 200 dollar digital cameras like they do it today. These movies even had their own stars and many of these ladies became fairly well known and could sell a film all on their own. Nowadays, there really aren't soft or hardcore porn stars, at least not like there used to be. Skip back to the 80s and the sex scenes in soft-core were even less explicit than the 90s (or even the 1970s for that matter). Oftentimes in 80s erotic thrillers there wasn't even any sex at all, just a good amount of nudity, as is the case with this one.

The biggest name in soft-core during the 90s boom was undoubtedly Shannon Tweed, who seemed to star in every other erotic thriller made that decade. Tweed was involved in beauty pageants and modeling in her native Canada before posing for Playboy magazine and becoming their Playmate of the Year in 1982. With her star on the rise, she landed a recurring gig on TV's prime time soap Falcon Crest and moved on to feature films (mostly B movies) and numerous TV guest spots from there. She stayed busy enough throughout the 80s that by the time she made a real name for herself in late night erotica, she was well into her 30s and continued in the genre well into her 40s. The Surrogate was one of her first major film roles and also the very first erotic thriller for the actress. Of course this kind of erotic isn't the erotic of the 90s and it certainly isn't the erotic of today. This is a psycho-thriller / mystery first and foremost that just happens to have some sexy scenes thrown in.

Too much boozing, late nights at work and other stresses and insecurities are taking their toll on Frank Waite (Art Hindle), a luxury car salesman, and his wife Lee (Tweed), who's living off of inherited riches. As far as sex is concerned, forget about it. The two haven't been intimate in quite some time because Frank's having a hard time with his hard time. Or as Lee so compassionately tells him “I'm ready and willing... when you're able!” Frank's anger starts boiling over not only at work but at home. He stabs his desk with a knife and screams at Lee, “I could break your God damn neck!” It's getting so bad that he's having rage-induced black out periods where he can't remember what he's done. All of that seems to coincide with a serial killer's murder spree being investigated by tired detective George Kyber (a very disinterested acting Michael Ironside). Someone's running around gouging out eyeballs and making victims look like pincushions and Frank just so happens to emerge from several of his black out episodes near the crimes scenes.

Frank's psychiatrist, Dr. Harriet Foreman (Marilyn Lightstone), has run plenty of physical tests but nothing is coming back that would explain Frank's extreme anger, so she chalks it up to Lee making him feeling inadequate and hands the frustrated husband the business card of one Anouk Van Derlin (Carole Laure), a sex surrogate / fantasist, to help them sort out their sex life. Anouk shows up at the Waite's one evening dressed in all black leather and manages to turn on both Frank and Lee with simple sex talk in her soothing French-accented voice and light touching, but the repressed Lee feels “dirty” after the experience and wants no more of it. Unfortunately, Anouk isn't quite done with them yet. While the wife's away, she shows up unannounced and uses her alone time with Frank to seduce him into some violent, kinky sex that makes a complete mess of their condo. She shows up again several more times to terrorize (and attempt to blackmail) the couple, but is she also the killer?

Another chief suspect is Lee's flamboyant best friend Eric, an antique dealer who's seen in full drag snooping around at many of the crime scenes and is referred to as a “lunatic faggot” by Frank, who hates that his wife spends so much time with him. Since Eric is played by Jim Bailey, a top female impersonator back in the day, we're also treated to such scenes as him dressing up as Bette Davis and stabbing a melon with a butcher knife. The cast also includes Gary Reineke as Frank's backstabbing lawyer friend, Barbara Law as one of Frank's flirty customers, Vlasta Vrana and Ron Lea. Jackie Burroughs also has a bizarre, amusing cameo as a kinky older lady who likes to dress up like a little schoolgirl and wants to get spanked with a giant lollipop (!)

Even though this is classed as an erotic thriller, the audience has to get their kicks mostly with sex talk and three Tweed nude scenes. Laure, a multi-talented beauty who not only acts (she's perhaps best known for the genuinely shocking SWEET MOVIE) but is also an award-winning writer and director and has a successful music career, has just one very brief topless scene. Though not as edgy now as it probably seemed back in 1984, this is competently made with good production values, has (mostly) passable acting and an OK mystery script (by the director and Robert Geoffrion) with some amusing dialogue and a pretty decent twist at the end. This is the only directorial credit for Carmody, who is now a major Hollywood producer, to date. He started out working on David Cronenberg movies.

This was shot in the winter of 1983 in Montreal under the title Blind Rage. The budget was around 1.5 million dollars. After its initial VHS release (on the Fox Hills label in the U.S. and on the Medusa label in the UK) and some TV airings, this one vanished for awhile until a Real 3-D version (!!) turned up on Amazon in 2012.

★★1/2