Combine
a team of veteran B-movie makers with a talented cast and solid production
values, and you've got an entertaining, but unexceptional killer-female
mystery.
Professional
women (Fatal Attraction), babysitters (The Hand That Rocks the Cradle),
roommates (Single White Female), secretaries (The Temp), and teen aged
girls (The Crush) have had their turn. Given the inherent misogyny of the
genre, it's surprising that ex-wives had to wait so long.
Yancy
Butler plays the title role to a fare-thee-well. She also brings a welcome
tongue-in-cheek humor to her wild-eyed psycho babe, Diedre Kenyon.
It
seems that years ago, Diedre and David (Nick Mancuso) had a tempestuous
marriage marked by rough sex and drug use. But he saw the light and cleaned
himself up. She had to be institutionalized. Now he's a successful architect
with a new wife Molly (Suzy Amis) and five-year-old son. Diedre has gone
off her medication and wants her old life back.
Director
Mark L. Lester (Truck Stop Women, Showdown in Little Tokyo) keeps the pot
boiling nicely. That's a very good thing, because if the pace slowed for
one moment, viewers might start asking questions that writers Larry Cohen
and John Lutz don't worry about. Their story, based on Lutz's novel, depends
on several illogical motivations and reactions, and, when not following
the killer babe formula, it blunders into some huge holes.
Given
viewers' limited expectations of low budget thrillers, it is acceptable
to leave one murder victim unaccounted for at the end of a movie. But to
have two central characters killed without anyone (including the cops!)
noticing? That's just sloppy.
