|
The thematic braiding of vision and grisliness is at once stated, the camera doubles as a photographer's lens as his nature studies yield to a corpse washing up in the swamp. "The Miami Strangler," a belt for his victims and a blade for any intruders, as demonstrated with a barmaid and her boyfriend. (The bloke watches Shock Waves on TV until his noggin lands inside a fish tank courtesy of a meat cleaver.) The newscaster (Lauren Tewes) is particularly unsettled by the murders and notices a suspicious lug (John DiSanti) in the apartment tower across from hers, "you should be able to see each other." DiSanti's uncanny resemblance to Raymond Burr in Rear Window is indicative of Ken Wiederhorn's luxuriant Hitchcockian renderings, with seaminess and inquiry melded in vivid expressions of voyeuristic fear. Sneaking into her neighbor's flat in search of evidence, the heroine must dangle off the balcony against vibrant Atlantic blues when he suddenly comes home. "How does it feel to have the tables turned?" she taunts him over the phone, though her attorney beau (Peter DuPre) sees little of incriminating value. ("So maybe he's a slob," he shrugs when told of the suspect's stained shirt after a busy night of killing.) Above all, there's the reporter's sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh), turned blind, deaf and mute by a traumatic childhood event and eyed rapaciously by the maniac. "Nobody's really safe. You know that." Chimes from a cuckoo clock figure in the mystery, DiSanti's baleful mug blurred by the frosted glass of his victim's shower stall is a Gerhard Richter effect. Wait Until Dark. The Miracle Worker and Broken Blossoms are brought to bear on the climax, anchored by Leigh's poignancy before a mirror with bloodied hand and regained faculties. With Gwen Lewis, Kitty Lunn, Timothy Hawkins, and Ted Richert.
--- Fernando F. Croce |