After watching Electric Dreams as a pre-pubescent boy I was smitten with Virginia Madsen. It was a one-sided love affair I'd continue to have from her nude scenes in 1988's Gotham right up to her lead role in Candyman. That's why it was such a shock to me that, when discussing favourite 80s movies when growing up, a female friend mentioned Fire with Fire to me. What's this? A Madsen film I'd never heard of? Hell, I've even watched Zombie High!

In the most basic "forbidden teen love" kind of way, Fire with Fire delivers its by-the-book plotting (it took four people to write this, really?) and contains way more longing glances, dopey declarations of love, and Craig Sheffer than anyone should have to deal with. This isn't to say it's a bad movie, it's merely just a silly, somewhat dated effort that spends most of its time being a sappy romantic soap opera before trying to inject in some really poor attempts at minor thrills in the finale.

When spending the afternoon playing a "Most Dangerous Game" type of activity with his fellow inmates at the fairly lax prison camp they're all assigned to Joe (Sheffer) stumbles across a pretty blonde girl in the woods who's floating in the lake taking photographs of herself. Intrigued by her, he soon crosses paths with her when they go into town for a showing of the newest Friday the 13th movie and she's there with a friend. After exchanging a whole bunch of those longing glances I mentioned above, they go their separate ways but are struck with that "love at first sight" bug that's so common in films such as these.

The girl's name is Lisa (Madsen) and she's a student at the nearby religious private school. In order to try and see Joe again she suggests to the nuns in charge that they should show charity and invite the guys from the camp down for a dance. They agree and soon we're struggling through scenes filled with so-so comedy, a lot of 80s songs, some vacuous small talk between the two soon-to-be lovers which leads to them interlocking their fingers during a slow dance, and an awkwardly amusing goodbye moment.

By now there's no turning back and the rest of Fire with Fire consists of them sneaking around to try and be together until they're caught making out in a crypt at the cemetery where Joe's been doing work detail thus bringing forth the finale with its fleeing lovers, unreasonable authorities, and a cabin going up in flames.

Sheffer, who spent most of the 90s starring in bland low-budget fare, isn't quite able to pull off the whole rebellious angle and doesn't really have a lot of chemistry with Madsen who's pretty adorable despite being trapped in a one-dimensional role and still looks good twenty-five-years later. For the pointless trivia lovers amongst you it's worth noting they both went on to star in film versions of Clive Barker's work with Nightbreed and Candyman respectively. Jeffrey Jay Cohen gets to be the comic relief as Joe's geeky pal Myron and Jon Polito does a pretty good job as the mean-spirited main guard Duchard. I knew I'd seen Penelope Sudrow (who plays classmate Stephanie) before but wasn't sure where only to discover after that she'd been the character in a Nightmare on Elm Street 3 who received her introduction to "prime time" by being rammed, headfirst, into a TV set.

I suppose if I were a teenage girl when this first came out I'd be fully and utterly in love with this, and just glancing at the movie's IMDB page shows me there's quite a few who were, but I'm of the male persuasion and was much too busy watching ninjas, psycho killers, and bare breasts to bother with this ultimately passable time. This isn't to say I was above watching these types of movies back then because I'll readily admit to enjoying almost all of the John Hughes ones as well as such schmaltzy romantic comedies like Secret Admirer and Can't Buy Me Love - I just don't think Fire with Fire deserves to be in the same class as those. (Chris Hartley, 7/8/10)

Directed By: Duncan Gibbins.
Written By: Bill Phillips, Waren Skaaren, Paul Boorstin, Sharon Boorstin.

Starring: Virginia Madsen, Craig Sheffer, Kate Reid, Jeffrey Jay Cohen.