Rating: **
Starring: Morgan Fairchild, Michael Sarrazin and Vince Edwards
Obsessed voyeurs. Damsel news reporters. In a film directed by David Schmoeller of Tourist Trap (1979), Crawlspace (1986) and Puppet Master (1989) fame. Cheese is going to be a thing in this so-called "erotic thriller", isn't it?
Morgan Fairchild leads as news anchor Jamie Douglas who becomes the obsession of her next door neighbor/stalker Derek, seen early in the movie spying on Jamie's nudie pool time with his camera. Suffering from erotomania, Derek believes Jamie is in love with him, thus prompting the creep to push his way into his neighbor's life more and more as days go by, escalating from creepy phone calls and sneaking into her house to take pictures of her, to stalking her in a mall and getting into brawls with Jamie's boyfriend Brandon.
Reporting to the incidents to the cops, Jamie is distraught to find out that they couldn't do much unless Derek commits a more serious crime, thus forcing our victim to eventually take matters to her own hands when the creep soon goes full murderer on her.
From what I can gather, The Seduction (1982) tries to feel like a sleazed-up Hitchcockian affair with stalker thrills and creeper chills being the main horrors Fairchild's character has to suffer through in a slow burn pace until the eventual climax wherein she turns the tables on her unhinged predator. It would have been a swell trail down your usual psycho-drama route but behind the glossy high-art production look is an execution that lacks a considerable punch, a linear story that hardly approached any new angles or taken any ingenious directions to set itself apart from any other low-brow stalker exploitation piece.
As majority of the plot is told through Jamie's perspective, Fairchild did try her best to sell her character through some solid acting and presence, but the thin characterization and hammed-up scripting, as well as the plentiful prolonged scenes of her being hot and naked while sleazily showering, bathing and/or swimming left her as shallowly memorable as an eye candy piece can get. The same can be said for Derek's actor Andrew Stevens whose psychotic character is a missed opportunity to explore, teasing us with a level of depth and intrigue as impotency and smitten co-workers were hinted in the story but it was all forgotten in favor of cheapening the villain with cliched bad guy movie psychology often used as a quick explanation regarding the mental illnesses. As in, he's evil because he's a few screw loose on the head and that's it.
It also doesn't help that for a thriller, a good amount of The Seduction's plotting seems a tad too easy to be considered intense or shocking as not only Derek easily finds opportunities to mess around with Jamie over and over again, but he suffers so very little consequences from doing them that it's no surprise he's not giving up. There's no strong conflict under the creeper's part so the horrors of the stalking is spoon-fed too much that it does make everything before the final act a bit tiring and redundant to sit through.
Fortunately, when the movie remembers to pick up, it does so with an appreciated cheesy gut as Jamie, who opposes fire arms as a character trait, brandishes a shotgun to chase, stalk and kill Derek after one too many stalking incidents finally breaks her. It's the kind of wild and trashy entertainment that sort of made the whole wait worth it, earning a couple of chuckles for how outrageous it is, and too some cheers as the film finally embraced the exploitative potential of its story.
All in all, The Seduction (1982) is a clumsy thriller that tries to aim high as a mature piece of work, only to be somehow saved from being a complete misfired glut thanks to its gaudier set-pieces. Not exactly a recommendable type, but if you fancy yourself a completist of 80s horror, or you just wanna see Morgan Fairchild get sudsy in a bathtub, then by all means check this out and hopefully you might like it. Hopefully.
Bodycount:
1 male gets a knife thrown to his back
1 male shot on the gut with a shotgun
Total: 2
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