Shannon Tweed was the reigning queen of the erotic thriller in the 90's and the object of many a young man's desire. This flick was made just before her dominance of the b-movie market and it is easy to see why it is not remembered as one of the classic Tweed flicks. Aside from briefly baring her breasts and having a very quick shower during the opening credits, she doesn't have a lot to do in this low-budget action movie that takes place almost entirely in an abandoned building.

Michael Pare (Streets of Fire) stars as Jeff, a cop who finds his ex-wife (Tweed) has been kidnapped by a mafioso-type who is holding her in a downtown warehouse. The plot is more complicated than it needs to be as we discover that Tweed's new hubby, Eric, is actually a loser who screwed over the mob and has been given a new identity. Why he would choose to live in the same city as the people he ratted out is beyond me and we also learn that his former wife (who he has not divorced) is the sister of the kingpin he betrayed. This puts Eric at odds with both Jeff and the mob and he spends most of the movie getting abused by one or the other. While I didn't feel terribly sorry for him, I did take note of the fact that he didn't have any fun throughout the movie other than the first few minutes. Most of the flick involves Pare running around the building killing henchmen or going up and down the side of the building using a piece of window-washer scaffolding that is miraculously silent. The grand finale consists of an uninspired rescue attempt as Tweed is chained in the air and threatened to be killed.

My main issue with this flick was the fact that it tried to employ one of those clever "climax at the beginning tricks" but ended up revealing too much thus destroying all suspense. We learned in the first few minutes that Susan was Jeff's ex-wife and also that Eric gave Jeff his blessing to take her back. By telling us this at the beginning, it made all the bickering between Eric and Jeff throughout the film a moot point as we knew that Jeff was going to end up with the girl when all was said and done. Sure, I was a little curious as to how they got in that predicament but by revealing this much so quickly, there was no suspense by the time we got to what should have been an intense part of the story.

Another problem with the flick was that the main henchman bad guy lost all his edge when he began a series of awkward lewd gestures towards Susan when he was left alone with her in a service elevator. His strange tongue movements looked more like a pre-teen trying to emulate Gene Simmons than those of a crass and threatening potential rapist. From this point forward, these silly mouth gestures were all I could think of when this guy was onscreen making him more of a comic buffoon than the badass he was intended to be. Things got even worse when some of his menacing gun-shooting scenes were executed in slow motion. I am not sure what the director's intention was with doing this but it did not work...at all.

The most interesting thing about this movie was that a few of the cast members ended up having semi-successful careers. Danny Trejo (who genre fans will know from a variety of Robert Rodriguez movies) played a bad guy named Spider who couldn't keep his shirt on. The buff henchwoman was played by Raye Hollitt who fans of "American Gladiators" will know as Zap. She is also famous for a Playboy spread as well as a humorous scene in the John Ritter vehicle Skin Deep. Robert Pucci, who played Eric, went on to write The Corruptor starring Chow Yun-Fat and Mark Wahlberg. Director William Sachs had previously done The Incredible Melting Man and Galaxina. On a final note, I don't know why Michael Pare ended up being trapped in direct-to-video land as he seemed like he should have been a big star. Maybe it was the haircut. (Josh Pasnak, 9/28/08)

Directed By: William Sachs.
Written By: Jim Byrnes.

Starring: Michael Pare, Shannon Tweed, Bobby Di Cicco, Robert Pucci.