Katherine Sullivan, an acute agoraphobic, witnesses the murder of her husband and speaks with the investigating detective. Then both the body and the detective disappear. Katherine hires private investigator Jack Mize to figure out, only Mize isn’t so sure Katherine’s version of reality is the truth…
Bo Derek may always be worthy of the title of a “Perfect 10.” Unfortunately, this stinker of a film ranks as a perfect 1.
The acting was wooden, and the directorial emphasis on close-ups made the lackluster dialogue even less credible. It was never believable that Derek’s character of Mrs. Katherine Sullivan was suffering from agoraphobia when she uttered such lines as “sometimes I get so lonely” to her paramour.
Early in the film, Mrs. Sullivan’s husband Charles is murdered. But the entire death scene is called into question when no body is discovered, and the police officers who arrive on the scene are imposters.
Enter private investigator Jack Mize, a former attorney who graduated second in his class at Harvard Law School, then messed up when he succeeded in getting a killer acquitted. The murderer then went on a rampage, leading Jack to renounce the law. Yet, curiously, he seems to feel no remorse when he recalls his disgraceful conduct to Mrs. Sullivan as her new private eye, as well as her lover.
When Jack and Mrs. Sullivan begin an affair, there never seemed to be much passion between them. The attempt was made to get a feeling of claustrophobia in Mrs. Sullivan’s home to convey her agoraphobia through extreme close-ups. But the result was merely awkward compositional choices and clumsy cinematography.
The slow pacing and lack of development in the characters were more off-putting features of this film. It was never made clear whether the spider and the rats were the work of Mrs. Sullivan’s strange sister Sarah. But, alas, the sister apparently did not survive a fall down the stairwell to help tidy up the loose plot strands in this turkey of a film.
