Forever under-acclaimed slender, green-eyed, button cute blonde actress Annn Dusenberry, who got terrorized by Bruce the mechanical shark in "Jaws 2," gives a typically animated, engaging and on the money performance as Robyn Wallace, a sweet, struggling, down on her luck actress who's having a tremendously hard time snagging that frustratingly elusive big breakthrough part. Robyn's heretofore rotten luck changes for the better when independent film producer Gail Strickland hires her to play an insane, institutionalized wealthy heiress in a movie. The flick abruptly folds after one day's worth of shooting. Robyn finds out from the wealthy heiress' faithful, despondent husband (marvelously portrayed by the always super Bruce Davison) that the woman she played in the film is still alive (Robyn was told she was dead) and that she has inadvertently become seriously involved in an intricate and diabolical plot to acquire the heiress' considerable inheritance.
Cleverly written and sharply directed by the constantly up to snuff Jim and Ken Wheat (the same brotherly film-making duo who later gave us the bang-up horror anthology winner "After Midnight," plus co-wrote the scripts for both the superior slasher item "Silent Scream" and the terrific sci-fi/horror dilly "Pitch-Black"), further enhanced by Robert Erbinger's crisply proficient cinematography, Marc Donahue's effectively spooky'n'shuddery synthesizer score, and a bracingly bravura hanging an in elevator shaft murder set piece, this deliciously convoluted and thoroughly absorbing nerve-rattling corker really makes the grade as a smartly crafted and adroitly executed Hitchcockian suspense thriller. Dusenberry simply shines in an all-too-rare substantial lead, receiving excellent support from Clu Gulager as a sinister, manipulative psychiatrist, Terence Knox as Robyn's earnest, supportive screenwriter boyfriend, Bert Remsen as Robyn's nice, gregarious agent, and the ubiquitous Dick Miller as a sleazeball B-pic producer who fires Robyn on the set of his latest crassly exploitative schlocky zombie fright feature when she refuses to show some skin ("Money honey," Miller growls to Robyn after she asks him why she should disrobe on screen, "T**s sell tickets!"). Compelling, exciting and briskly paced, this enormously entertaining and underrated overlooked little sleeper is well worth seeing and hugely worthy of rediscovery.
Cleverly written and sharply directed by the constantly up to snuff Jim and Ken Wheat (the same brotherly film-making duo who later gave us the bang-up horror anthology winner "After Midnight," plus co-wrote the scripts for both the superior slasher item "Silent Scream" and the terrific sci-fi/horror dilly "Pitch-Black"), further enhanced by Robert Erbinger's crisply proficient cinematography, Marc Donahue's effectively spooky'n'shuddery synthesizer score, and a bracingly bravura hanging an in elevator shaft murder set piece, this deliciously convoluted and thoroughly absorbing nerve-rattling corker really makes the grade as a smartly crafted and adroitly executed Hitchcockian suspense thriller. Dusenberry simply shines in an all-too-rare substantial lead, receiving excellent support from Clu Gulager as a sinister, manipulative psychiatrist, Terence Knox as Robyn's earnest, supportive screenwriter boyfriend, Bert Remsen as Robyn's nice, gregarious agent, and the ubiquitous Dick Miller as a sleazeball B-pic producer who fires Robyn on the set of his latest crassly exploitative schlocky zombie fright feature when she refuses to show some skin ("Money honey," Miller growls to Robyn after she asks him why she should disrobe on screen, "T**s sell tickets!"). Compelling, exciting and briskly paced, this enormously entertaining and underrated overlooked little sleeper is well worth seeing and hugely worthy of rediscovery.