Ah… the 90s. Man, what a decade, right? Fuckin’ grunge music. Fuckin’ video stores. Fuckin’ Arnold Schwarzenegger is kicking ass all over the place. Cheers was followed by Seinfeld. I attended and graduated high school in the first half of that decade where it’s totally fair I peaked in life. I dunno… I’m sure there were other cool things going on.

One other thing that happened in the 90s was this movie that’s about to get the ol’ review treatment here at B-Movie Enema. 1994’s A Brilliant Disguise was a movie I vividly remember seeing in my days as a video store clerk in the mid to late 90s. I think it’s stark white cover with our lead character Michelle’s sunglasses reflecting some stuff, her black scarf, and her ruby red lips that were very easy to stand out on a shelf. It is certainly a movie that seems to be coming in the wake of the breakout 1992 smash hit Basic Instinct.

Erotic thrillers have been around for a bit, definitely if you think about movies like Body Heat, Body Double, Dressed to Kill, Fatal Attraction, and more. The genre, and the style that often spiced things up, were kind of the mature genre that titillated and frightened married couples who didn’t get into slashers but definitely liked looking at someone like Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas and feeling their naughty bits tremble on date night before ultimately going home and falling asleep while trying to pull out the sexy lingerie that’s collected dust for the past several years. But with Basic Instinct, the genre was back, it was a big deal, and a whole bunch of movies started immediately trying to get in on the piles of cash these sexy little murder tales could bring from cable (especially on late-night Cinemax and Showtime), video, and ticket sales. If there is something that I can say is the closest thing to “exploitation” in the 90s, it would be these erotic thrillers.

To be honest, you’d think a guy in his teens during this era would be a big fan of these movies. After all, they were always on late at night on premium channels and, at the video store, they were not pornographic so it was not impossible for a guy under the age of 18 to rent a movie like that… as long as you were ballsy enough to walk up to the counter after walking to the video store (because you aren’t even old enough to drive yet) and place that new Shannon Tweed flick onto the counter and not freak out inside that the guy behind the counter thinks you’re just renting this to crank one out into your favorite sock. Where was I? Oh, yeah. I was not that big of a fan this genre. Mostly because they were cheap and almost all seemed to have the same plots. Pretty girl seduces a guy with power or standing or money and one of them is crazy and there’s a knife or something. To me, at the time, it was kind of a boring genre.

On the surface, A Brilliant Disguise seems closer to the films that were attempting to seriously copy the success of Basic Instinct. In this movie, you have Corbin Bernsen playing a relatively important supporting role. Michelle is played by Lysette Anthony, who we saw previously in Krull. After that film’s release, she appeared in several Bryan Adams videos. The year after this, she’d be in movies like Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde and Dracula: Dead and Loving It. While she never had a massive career, she was always this exceptionally pretty girl who seemingly should have hit big.

But you should have noticed that I said “On the surface” this movie was “attempting to seriously copy the success” of Basic Instinct, right? Well, Corbin Bernsen has never seen a low-budget role he wouldn’t take. Lysette Anthony never got over the hill to be a leading lady. The leading man in this movie is played by Tony Denison. Denison appeared in a lot of things but was never really a leading man himself despite having appeared in 40 episodes of Crime Story before this movie and, after the movie, over 100 episodes of The Closer.

The writer and director of A Brilliant Disguise is Nick Vallelonga. He’s much more famous today, but, in 1994, this was his first directorial job. Prior to the movie, he had appeared in movies, mostly as a tough. As a kid, he was in The Godfather, but he later appeared in movies like The Pope of Greenwich Village, Prizzi’s Honor, and Goodfellas. You might notice a theme in these movies. They are all crime dramas. Yeah, you look at him and you can see he’s definitely a “tough guy” type to play in crime flicks. But later, he came to be known for something else.

In 2018, he co-wrote and co-produced Green Book starring Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali. Ali would win his second straight Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the movie. Okay, I haven’t seen the movie. It didn’t exactly appeal to me. That said, it was hard to not run in movie circles and be unaware of the controversy around the depictions of some characters, the implications of a sort of “white savior” angle the movie took, and how a very important character in the movie, namely Ali’s Don Shirley, was written and portrayed without input from the man’s family. That’s all not great. Still, it didn’t hurt Ali winning his Oscar, or Vallelonga winning Oscars for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay, both of which he shared with director Peter Farrelly… the guy who often made movies I DID like because they were all mostly dick and fart joke type movies.

Anyway, Vallelonga hadn’t done too much by way of writing, directing, or producing since Green Book, but he still made appearances in movies. But… Let’s put all that aside. Let’s dig into A Brilliant Disguise to see his directorial debut, probably get a little drooly over Lysette Anthony, and titillate our titties at some 90s erotic thriller business.

Welp, right out of the gate, the movie fails. Instead of coming out strong with Bruce Springsteen’s “Brilliant Disguise” (a brilliant song I might add), the movie comes out with some soft jazz. It’s only vaguely sexy sax jazz but I’m sure they could’ve paid some money for that Springsteen song or paid someone to cover it or something. You’re already starting with a deduction, movie.

After the credits, we’re taken inside a local bar where one guy is celebrating getting his client, a baseball player, a new deal worth a bunch of money per year. His friend is celebrating a big newspaper article. A third guy comes in to meet them for dinner. By the way, the agent guy, Brian, is our director, Vallelonga. He’s in the foreground of the above picture. The friend who came to meet them is Andy (Denison). The other two guys is Jimmy, a journalist and the third white guy, and Bill, the black fella.

Before they leave to go to get dinner, Andy gets a call from, presumably, his girlfriend, Marlene, who is pissed he’s not where she is right now. Apparently, there was some other thing he was supposed to do. Pissed off, she tells him to forget about it (seriously, this movie oozes with “fuhgetabautit” New Yorker charisma), and to stay with his friends. I’m gonna guess this will only help Lysette Anthony get her claws into Andy if he’s got a nagging girlfriend that he already doesn’t want to hang out with back home.

The four friends decide to go to a French restaurant for dinner. They come in like a bunch of assholes and make a scene about the place being fruity, the maitre d’ has an attitude, and so on. Then, Andy spots a beautiful blonde getting seated. He pays off the maitre d’ to find out who she is and if she’s a regular. He learns that she comes in every Tuesday around 10:30pm, she’s always alone, she always sits at the same table, and she always buys a $165 bottle of champagne.

Also, she might be married to a guy named Bill, has a daughter named Chelsea, and is thinking about running for President.

I kid, but Lysette Anthony is bringing some strong young Hilary Clinton vibes. Anyway, Andy’s mind is stuck on the girl. The following Tuesday, he is at the French restaurant and waits for her to arrive as usual. I’m assuming she’s a little late this time because he’s about to give up just when she comes in. He has the maitre d’ place the bottle of champagne she always orders on his tab.

This works to break the ice as she invites Andy over to her table. She introduces herself as Michelle and she says that it’s not every day a famous sports writer buys her a bottle of champagne revealing that she knows who he is and she reads his column every morning. You know how she proves it for anyone out there who dares gatekeep her? She says the Lakers are gonna be fine and they just need to rebuild. But, a-ha! They’re in New York City! Why would this goomba write about the Lakers when he should be focused on bitching about the Knicks?

She is clearly a… fake… sports page… reader…

With a very fetching grin and British accent!

For a guy who thinks it’s kinda gay to eat at a French restaurant, he kind of lays all his cards onto the table for this woman by saying he hasn’t stopped thinking about her since he saw her. He also wrote some fluffy piece about going to the ballpark to watch baseball and so forth. I guess he’s a goomba with a heart of gold. (Spoiler alert, Andy is not a goomba with a heart of gold, but actually an idiot who is kind of a jerkoff to his friends as this movie plays out.)

So Michelle apparently is an artist. He asks if there was a guy for her but she is quite happy being single. After all, there are a lot of “crazies” out there that make things dangerous to get back into the dating scene. He says that he is currently seeing someone but it’s not going anywhere… especially now. He drives her home and tries asking her out again, but she kind of shuts him down flat by saying she’s having a one-woman show at an art gallery and he can reach her there. When she goes inside, her paintings become rather inquisitive about where she was, who she met, and what he’s like.

We finally get to the most 90s thing about this movie… Corbin Bernsen. He plays Dr. Martin. I am assuming that he’s Michelle’s therapist. She tells him about meeting a man and that she really likes him. He says something about how it’s been five years since she’s been with a guy. He’s also curious about if she’s heard from “them” which I assume are voices in her head that look like her paintings talking to her when she came home from dinner. He’s very adamant that she tell him if they have come back or if they are being heard. That said, she tells him that she’s not felt this way about a man before, and he thinks he and his very special patient come a long way over the years.

Also, that look Lysette Anthony is going for above? That’s some peek 90s-pretty-lady and I am here for it. Seriously, I’m kind of into crazy chicks. They keep things fun? Dangerous? Sexy? Eh… I would wager my life for that. Why not? It’s not like I’ve got much to lose.

I also like that Corbin Bernsen is supposedly a doctor who gasses her up and gets real complimentary of her, but also looks like this in this movie…

I’m not sure I’d like my therapist to be a chain-smoking, weirdo vest-wearin’, Lex Luthor-esque guy who knows all my secrets. I’m serious… Corbin Bernsen does not exactly have the best track record in movies for being a good guy. He’s smarmy as hell. He always comes off as the guy scheming for himself before anyone else. Shiiiit. If his character in Major League was my therapist, I wouldn’t trust him. Actually, that doesn’t make any sense. That guy shouldn’t be my therapist. If I knew that guy, I wouldn’t trust him to carry my mitt to the dugout for fear he’d, I dunno, steal it or try to fuck it or something.

My point is Corbin Bernsen is a therapist in this movie and I’m not sure anyone should trust that. He is also playing a key part in that profession in this type of movie. In the 90s, psycho-therapy was on the rise. It often played into a lot of erotic thrillers for the psycho-sexual nature of someone bearing everything to another person. More often than not, it was a female patient and a male therapist. It was so much a thing in the 90s, and so fetishized, that Bruce Willis had a whole erotic thriller of his own that very same year, Color of Night, in which he played a therapist with a patient with some seriously off-kilter psych-sexual issues.

Apparently, Andy and Michelle’s relationship has not exactly progressed as much as she led onto Dr. Martin about by making it sound like she’s known him for a long time. I thought she said that she’s been seeing Andy for a while, but that seems not to really be accurate. He sends her flowers at the gallery. That elicits a call from her to thank him and to say no one has ever done that for her before. He can’t believe that but it doesn’t really matter because he asks her out for dinner with his friends. She accepts. When she shows up at the paper where he writes, they shake hands and he carefully kisses her on the cheek. But then things get pretty promising when he gives her the full tour of the paper. In the printing room, she starts making out with him, nibbles him on the lip, and then pulls him off to the side to show him she does have a very very kinky side.

I said she nibbled his lip, right? Well, she starts pushing him away from her, then pulling him in by his tie. Then she slaps him. The next time she goes in for a slap, he blocks it. He pulls her in for some more kissing and then they fuck against the printing machine. When they arrive at the restaurant, she makes a passing move on the valet, but then she gets weak on her feet and asks, “When did we get here?”

Inside, he introduces Michelle to Bill, Jimmy, and Brian. They all stand up as they enter which pisses Bill’s fiance and Brian’s girlfriend off. Bill’s fiance, Barbara (played by Beverly Johnson who was a fairly recognizable face at this time), threatens to call Marlene to say Andy’s cheating on her. Just then, Michelle comes into the bathroom and starts to act strange like she’s going to pass out. When Barbara tries helping her, Michelle says she thinks Barbara is so pretty and tries kissing her. Barbara storms out and demands Bill take her home immediately. When Michelle gets back to the table, Brian’s girlfriend attacks her to ask what happened between her and Barbara. This makes her want to leave immediately too after Michelle says she has no idea what she’s talking about.

However, when Michelle gets home, she discovers her lingerie that she doesn’t remember putting on and she goes into one of her fits.

Alright, so let’s cut to the chase here because this movie is going to basically hinge upon whether or not this personality shift in Michelle actually works or not, and, boy… I’m not sure. Okay, so Michelle apparently has what would have been known back then as a split personality. It seems as though this is triggered by feelings of love or sexual desire. At least, that seems to be the case. Michelle becoming interested in Andy has created this shift in which she feels a physical pain in her gut and she kind of has what I can only describe as fits.

She starts talking in a weird “scary” voice. It seems as though this version of Michelle is a total nymphomaniac and is almost consumed by desire. She acts aggressively. She wants to basically fuck anything that moves. And she seemingly works independently from sweet, classy Michelle. When the nympho Michelle (who I will refer to now as Nymphchelle) dresses in a particular way or acts upon that desire to fuck anything that moves, sweet Michelle (who I will refer to now as Sweechelle) has zero memory of it. The first indication of this was Nymphchelle was aggressive and hungry for that diiiick at the paper, and when they arrived at the restaurant, Sweechelle had no idea when or how they got there.

On the surface, I guess this makes for a possible sexy thriller of sorts. Nymphchelle is still a very attractive Lysette Anthony who really likes to fuck. That’s enticing. Sweechelle is still a very attractive Lysette Anthony that you want to introduce to your friends and parents and buy a puppy together and go rollicking through meadows with. It’s like a version of the Jekyll and Hyde story, right? Except here, it’s the sweet girl that all manly men want vs. the aggressive sexpot that people fantasize about but might emasculate you.

And that kind of brings up two glaring issues in the first act of this movie. The first is Brian and his friends are not particularly likable. Look, I’m a man’s man. I go to any swanky bar and I’m drowning in pussy. I smoke cigars by the fuckin’ fistfuls, okay? I can’t keep the ladies off me or my sweet car and the pounds of cash I carry with me at all times. I don’t really like these guys. They are the typical New Yorker knuckleheads who I just don’t have anything in common with.

On the other side of this, Lysette Anthony’s “transformations” between Sweechelle and Nymphchelle are kind of laughable. No, not laughable. Scratch that. They are very poorly acted. I feel like there’s a way to do this, but maybe it’s Nick Vallelonga’s inexperience as a director that makes this go off the rails or a not very clearly defined script about what should happen or maybe it is Anthony herself that can’t carry the transformation. It’s probably all three if I’m being honest. It makes for very silly stuff that is neither interesting nor sexy. If it was at least compelling, then you got me, movie. I’m bought in. But this… this is silly. It comes off as totally unserious. That’s not even approaching the subject of the mental health element that it’s trying to portray.

But that’s not all! There’s a third personality that is more like an immature little girl. We’ll call her Kidchelle. Kidchelle doesn’t want Sweechelle to meet men because all they want is sex. But then again Nymphchelle wants the sex. I feel like most of the battles going on in her mind are between the kid and the hyper-sexual versions of herself. Either way, it’s a lot. It’s a lot of Lysette Anthony fighting herself and going waaaay over the top, but not in cool, arm-wrestling-kinds of ways.

Alright, so because this is a movie about guys gettin’ ladies, we gotta have the scene in which the guys are playing basketball and talkin’ about chicks, man. Andy and Bill are playing basketball and Bill wants to talk about the other night. Andy says that Barbara was acting like a spoiled brat. Bill says what happened in the bathroom between Michelle and Barbara, but Andy doesn’t believe it. Andy says nothing is going to come between him and Michelle. Bill says that Michelle is messing with his mind and she’s weird.

Wait… Is she? I’ve not really seen anything that indicates to me that Andy’s obsessed with Michelle in any significant way that is out of the ordinary. Sure, he took an instant interest in her, but, understand, she is really pretty. Of course, he was curious about her upon first look because that’s how things are done. You see a hot chick eating alone in a French restaurant, you must go ask about her and then show up on her usual night and wait for her. Don’t you people know how to score with chicks?

But it kind of feels like we’re either missing something from Andy’s character or we’re missing a few scenes of Andy ignoring his friends in favor of Michelle. That would have only been a few extra minutes added to the movie. Hell, to reveal that Andy is obsessive at times, that could just be dialog. There was a scene right after Andy and crew first saw Michelle in which everyone BUT Andy was talking about how classy and hot she was. Why not just have Andy obsessing over her right then instead of Jimmy driving the conversation?

Whatever, it looks like Andy decides to go see his old girlfriend to tell her they are Splitsville. What we end up with is a nontage, a montage that isn’t. It’s a photoshoot in the middle of the movie so you can have sexy girls dancing together in sexy outfits. We get a really loud song playing but I think we’re also supposed to have dialogue in the scene but we can’t hear it over the music. That tells me either no one cared or the audio got fucked up and they kept blasting the song. Still. It’s a nontage.

So, I hate to harp on this, but character motivation and background are horribly missing in this movie. That leads to us not knowing how we should feel about anyone or anything. The only time we saw Andy’s girlfriend, Marlene, she was yelling at him about not being present for something she had going on. Andy may have still been in the wrong for forgetting, but we’re supposed to think Andy is a good guy and she’s an asshole. But he’s also kind of not because he seems smug and smarmy and doesn’t care about the thing. Okay, he offered to show up, but she said no and he didn’t. Afterward, he didn’t bother showing up anyway. If we had some other exposure to Marlene, Barbara, and the other girl whose name I forget so I’m just gonna call her Debbie, we’d have some concept of them looking out for Andy’s better interests.

Instead, what do we get? Marlene only interacts with Andy by yelling at him (that’s in two different scenes I might add). Andy’s friends’ girlfriends are kind of uppity toward him and instantaneously hating on Michelle. After Michelle shows up at the weekly softball game all these people play at, Barbara wants to tear Michelle’s fucking tits off. The only thing about Barbara getting violently angry at Michelle’s presence I don’t know for sure is whether or not she wants to tear them titties off because Michelle made a pass at her or because she came between Andy and her friend Marlene.

See? I don’t know these people’s motivations! Right now, I just think that Andy has puppy love for the very cute and classy Michelle and he doesn’t know something is not right with her. I don’t believe he’s obsessed with her in a way that would make ALL his friends so fucking pissed off at him and her by extension. Jimmy is not pissed. He’s just there vibing.

Back to this softball game thing… When Barbara saw that Michelle was there, she got violently angry at Andy. She then tells him that, dun dun dunnnnn, he’s no longer going to be the best man at her and Bill’s wedding. And! It was Bill’s idea. Bill does not speak a word of dialogue in this moment. She has Marlene as her maid of honor and there’s no way she’s going to let anything or anyone upset her big day! Andy may be Bill’s friend, but Barbara reminds everyone that she is going to be Bill’s wife and that supersedes everything.

Again… These characters are paper-fucking-thin, man. Barbara is mad that her friend is heartbroken. She wants to fight Michelle. She is acting territorial around her man. Basically, this is the “it’s her or us, Andy” moment and we have no reason to really understand the line drawn or who wants to draw the line or why Andy makes his decision or how he makes his decision. This movie has too many characters to try to juggle and develop but doesn’t want to do the legwork. Barbara is just going to be a possessive femoid who is most definitely not into girl-girl shit, goddammit!

But anyway… Let me see if I have another complaint… Oh! Here we go. Andy takes Michelle back to her place, and she says maybe they shouldn’t see each other anymore because of this issue with his friends. He says they made their decisions and he’s made his. He wants Michelle, end of story. So they have this sex scene which starts off kind of steamy. I can’t say it isn’t totally unsexy whatsoever. These are two decent-looking people doing erotic, softcore stuff together. I can dig it. However, what causes this movie to lose me a bit is that, while this should be sexy, I’m kind of not there. I don’t really care. I’ve not been given much to work with to care. The sex scene at the newspaper was way sexier but was only to indicate to everyone that there’s this inner sex demon inside Michelle but it’s not enough to really tip Andy off that she’s cuckoo.

Now this scene, while it should be tender and sexy with the way it starts, does indicate that there is a problem. During the sexual happenings, Sweechelle turns into Kidchelle and starts screaming about telling daddy “no” and freaking out. Andy comforts her and this better be some confirmation to him that there is more to her than what he’s seen and that it could spell trouble for him. However, I do not have a great deal of confidence here because if there is one trait I know about Andy is that he seems to be somewhat stubborn and sort of naive… which is a very dangerous combination.

Michelle has another conversation with her other selves about her relationship with Andy. Again… It’s weird and over the top and makes it really hard to take these moments particularly serious. But what does come from this is Michelle is losing a little more control and starting to play with very sharp knives. Later that night, Michelle seemingly attacks Beverly and kills her by way of multiple stab wounds.

Now, I don’t want to be callous in saying this but I don’t really care that Barbara is killed and that her blood is all over her nice wedding dress that she just picked up for her big day. This is going to obviously create a bummer for Bill who we should care about because he’s Andy’s friend and Andy, ostensibly, is the guy we should care about above all. The problem is? I can’t care. No one has been crafted to be anyone to give two rat farts about.

After this, Michelle goes to Dr. Martin to ask what would happen if she started to lose control. He asks if her other personalities, which are named Christine, Brandy, and Baby Michelle, have attempted to speak to her. She asks what happens if they try to get in the way of the relationship with Andy. Dr. Martin says that would be pretty bad. He needs to know everything that’s going on because it’s clear her relationship with Andy is triggering deep concerns. He says if there is any indication that these personalities are returning, they will have to return Michelle to her “treatments” which she is quite fearful of.

Remember when I reviewed The Ward by John Carpenter? That dealt with a girl with multiple personalities. That was so much better. I’d like to watch that movie again. Can I just do that movie again?

So as we go into the final act of the movie, we’re also at a tender stage. Michelle is worried about her other selves starting to crop back up so she’s staying distant. Andy is going nuts because he can’t reach her. Andy and Brian at least make up and Andy is about to make up with Bill when they discover Bill is crying in a shower over Barbara being murdered. Marlene is wearing a miniskirt to Barbara’s funeral. It’s all sorts of feelings and deepness in the movie now.

Andy and Michelle are together at the funeral which pisses everyone off. Jimmy seemingly spots something that he gets curious about as Andy and Michelle are leaving the funeral. He comes to Michelle’s art show to talk to Andy. He is about to talk to Andy about how he is worried about his friend, but Dr. Martin interrupts to talk to Andy. Michelle is concerned about what they might be talking about. However, things take a turn when a sudden blackout shrouds everything in darkness.

Michelle decides this is the time to go down on Andy… in the gallery. She must be very good at head because in about 45 seconds Andy’s done. After she comes back up from going down, she suddenly freaks out and asks what time it is. She then passes out. Dr. Martin helps get her back to her apartment and helps her rest.

That’s when Dr. Martin explains that he was Michelle’s doctor since she was 13 years old. He explains Michelle had a traumatic experience when she was young. This caused her personality to split into four distinct personalities. Michelle is the primary one and it’s the one Andy fell in love with. Christine is the controlling one who also “happens to be a lesbian.” Brandy has no self-esteem. Baby Michelle is the fourth. Martin thought he was able to submerge the extra personalities five years ago, but since Andy has come along, the personalities are starting to re-emerge. Martin says they do not want to be eliminated. They may just do anything to stick around. He wants Andy to stop seeing Michelle. He says that Brandy and Christine will protect her from him and will likely strike out against him in violent ways. Andy agrees to walk away from the relationship. He just wants a couple days to figure out a way to tell her.

I am going to give this movie credit for something. Yes, I like looking at Lysette Anthony, but there’s something else that is fantastic – Corbin Bernsen. He knows exactly what he’s supposed to be doing in this movie. He’s always smoking. He has a particular way of speaking that almost sounds like he should be some weird Nazi scientist experimenting on people in World War II. He holds his cigarettes like he’s Andy Warhol. His hair is so slicked back that I think his scalp is about to tear right off his head. He’s fantastic in this. He’s explaining Michelle’s multiple personalities and his treatments and keeps saying things that he won’t reveal like the specifics of what shattered her personality or that his treatments, whatever they were, would be seen as unethical. I love this.

What were the treatments? Don’t know and don’t care! Bernsen’s performance is telling me all I need to know. What broke Michelle? Doesn’t fucking matter one bet! That’s because Bernsen is selling us that something bad happened and it’s all we need. This is actually decent exposition. It’s definitely something that the writers thought about and this entire scene was crafted with some care. It even ends with a great pullback from Andy with him standing over a bust she created of Andy.

Later, Michelle goes to Dr. Martin’s office and kills him. Meanwhile, Jimmy begins investigative work to find out more about Michelle’s history. Apparently, there are several news stories about Michelle’s family in 1975. The next day, Michelle goes to see Dr. Martin for a regular appointment only to learn he’s been murdered.

The best acting from Lysette Anthony in this movie happens as she walks away from the police tape after she was told Martin died. She just repeats “What have I done?” over and and over as she nearly breaks down crying. Meanwhile, this is intercut with Jimmy doing his research and as she collapses to the ground freaking out over Martin’s death that one of her personalities totally did, Jimmy finds what he was looking for.

Well, holy shit. We have a couple really good scenes back to back here in this movie. Too bad we’re in, like the 8th inning of the game and we’re behind 10-0. See what I did there? Andy’s a sports writer. Baseball is a sport. Eh.

What did Jimmy discover? Well, Michelle’s parents were killed with multiple stab wounds. Jimmy puts two and two together… Michelle’s parents were killed by stab wounds. Barbara was killed by stab wounds. Just wait… Dr. Martin! Thaaaaat’s right! Martin was also stabbed many times. Of course, because Andy’s only character trait is stubbornness so he’s a dumb idiot moron about this. Jimmy even says that Michelle likely can’t control her own actions. She was a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of her father. But now that’s killed two more people, it’s time to go to the police. Andy, after threatening to punch Jimmy to death (no, for real, he said that like a kid would on the playground during recess when someone took my Transformer away when I didn’t want to share… wait… uh… nevermind), knocks Jimmy over and goes to Michelle’s apartment where she’s… She’s doin’ great, everyone.

Michelle and Christine are fighting for control. Christine wants to kill Andy… Well, she says she would like to fuck him one more time before she kills him, but she’s gonna kill him. Michelle is mostly just a puddle of crying and goo. She’s going to be of no help to Andy.

And by being no help I mean that Christine is going to stab Andy in the back… literally. He begs to help Michelle and says that Martin was going to send her away. In fact, he even says the people she killed probably got what they deserved. He passes out and Jimmy comes in to help. He finds Andy on the floor and a completely whacked-out Michelle/Christine who keeps saying they are not going to go away. Jimmy says it’s not her fault, but they need to get her help so she doesn’t kill anyone anymore.

And… sigh… That’s when the big twist happens.

“She didn’t kill anyone…” Yeah. Andy was the killer. Well… I mean he killed Barbara. He killed Dr. Martin. He killed Jimmy. I guess he didn’t kill Michelle’s parents. He knew she was all kinds of goofy from the very beginning. So, to protect her, he killed those who didn’t like her.

That’s fucking stupid, man.

There were NO indications that Andy was capable of any of this. Yet, I guess he loved Michelle so much, he was driven to murder… many times. I feel like this movie was written backward. They had the twist. “Okay, let’s have the killer be the love-addicted man trying to protect the mentally unstable woman who would typically be to blame for murder. Okay… I can kind of get behind that. Then, we’ll have a few good scenes that involve Corbin Bernsen (holy shit, we can get Bernsen in this movie? Fuck yeah!). We can have the guy’s buddy solve the mystery of the cuckoo chick. Nice nice nice… What else you got?

Um… Bullshit all over the place from here on out, boss. We have no idea how to connect all the dots to make this work.”

Anyway, Michelle, now realizing she must be the cause of Andy’s sudden insanity, takes the knife and kills herself as one final act of being in control over her own psyche and actions. There’s a stinger at the end in which Andy, returning to the French restaurant he met Michelle at, is trying to pick up a new girl to be obsessively in love with.

I have some questions… My main one is what happened after that night? Michelle is dead. So is Jimmy. Andy’s got a knife wound in his back, so I guess that could help him with an alibi to say he didn’t kill either of the other two people. Did he just pin it all on Michelle and walk away smelling like a Bronx asshole? I guess so. But what about Brian and Bill? You know, his other two friends who didn’t die? Did they continue to shun him for being with a crazy chick? Did they question anything? Did they support Andy as he dealt with the aftermath? Did he kill them? This, I feel, would be quite the large story in New York… Shit, it’s front page news EVERYWHERE.

Oh, whatever.

This movie was bad, man. I knew it was going to be kind of exploitation-y and would have a lot of sensational concepts because it was a 90s erotic(ish) thriller. I thought I’d at least get a rise out of seeing Lysette Anthony be sexy. I was moderately pleased with that. I wish she was better directed or given something better to do when her personalities were shifting around, but I liked the visuals. Bernsen was fantastic. No notes for him. He was, by far, the best thing in this movie. All four guys sucked. They were two-dimensional. All the women who were not Lysette Anthony also sucked. They were also two-dimensional.

Don’t think they weren’t two-dimensional characters all over this hunk of turd? Andy was a columnist for the sports page. Jimmy was a columnist and investigative journalist. Bill was a sportsball coach of some kind (not sure what, but he was black, so I think 90s mentality would say he coached basketball). Brian was a sports agent. All the guys had something to do with writing or sports. or both. All the women they were dating? Models. They were all fucking models. I know what you’re saying… “Geoff, writers don’t go out with models.” Oh yeah, well fuck you they do! I have dated no fewer than 27 models in the 10 years this blog has been in operation. That’s 2-7 motherfucker.

Nah, I’m just yankin’ your dick… All the women were models which boggles the mind that they dated these guys outside of possibly their money and possible fame. It sure as fuck wasn’t for the guys’ personalities. Shiiit. Michelle had four personalities and none of the extra ones wanted anything to do with any of them. Except for Barbara… Christine wanted to get up in that.

The biggest crime was that this movie had a small part for the incredibly lovely Devin DeVasquez who was in Society and we saw her in Guns some time back and I didn’t even talk about her aside from this quick shoutout. For shame, movie. For shaaaaame.

But for now, I’m done. I can finally put A Brilliant Disguise away. And, no, it never made up for not using the Springsteen song. Goddamn, this whole movie was suck. Tomorrow be sure to check out the latest episode of B-Movie Enema: The Series as we go south of the border for Santo and Blue Demon vs. the Monsters. If you like those classic luchador flicks, then I think you’ll be quite satisfied with that one. Then, next Friday, we kick off spooky month at B-Movie Enema. This Thursday marks the 10th anniversary of when I started the blog, which is hard to believe, but also lets you know that October is always a special month around these parts. This month I’m going hard exploitation for most of the movies I selected. We kick things off with one of the most important exploitation horror films ever made, Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left.

So, to prepare for a month of women-in-danger spooks, be sure to remember to repeat each and every week… “It’s only a movie!”