The
Seduction (1982)
Picture: B-
Sound: C+ Extras: B Film: C+
Guilty pleasures don't get much guiltier than 1982's The Seduction, a glossy, but
ridiculously contrived potboiler made before the term "stalking"
became well known. But even the lack of laws on the books regarding
stalking when the film was made doesn't totally excuse its absence of
logic. Nevertheless, there's plenty of unintentional camp value to
be enjoyed in this one.
Then a hot sex symbol from her role on the network television
series Flamingo Road,
The Seduction marked
the first (and last) big-screen starring vehicle for blonde bombshell Morgan
Fairchild. She plays a Los Angeles news anchorwoman named Jamie Douglas,
who begins getting stalked by a secret admirer named Derek (Andrew
Stevens), a photographer who somehow has enough money to live above her in a
house on the same hill in an affluent section of Southern California.
Derek is a lovestruck Peeping Tom who regularly spies on Jamie and
snaps pictures of her by pointing his camera with a telescopic lens down the
hill while she's doing things like swimming nude in her pool. He
then becomes bolder and begins to violate her personal space by showing up at
her workplace and home, which alarms Jamie and her reporter boyfriend (Michael
Sarrazin). The delusional Derek just won't take "no"
for an answer.
But when the boyfriend goes to an L.A. police
detective he knows, the detective simply tells him that Derek hasn't
broken any laws and that he's powerless to do anything. This cop, played
by the late Vince Edwards, may very well be the most
frustratingly slow to act law-enforcement officer in movie
history. We're expected to believe, from how the cynical cop rationalizes
it, that he's powerless to lift a finger to help a local TV celebrity, who's
dating a newspaper reporter acquaintance to boot. I'd hate to be
an ordinary crime victim in this guy's precinct.
The Seduction works on the level of an exploitation movie,
and the performances by Fairchild and Stevens are actually pretty good. It's just the script conveniently forgets
certain important details about the world its characters inhabit. For
instance, how does Derek afford to live in such an
upscale neighborhood? Is the Edwards character the only cop in L.A.
with the power to do anything? Why isn't
there any security at the station where Jamie works? And how can a
stranger such as Derek walk around the newsroom without ever being noticed?
Because this is a movie that's sparse on details, we see
that Derek works at a photography studio, which he either manages or
owns. But whatever his duties may be there, he lets his female assistant
handle all his work while he's off stalking Jamie all hours of the day.
The female assistant is also a blonde who's not as beautiful as Jamie but
certainly isn't unattractive. She has an obvious crush on Derek, but
he continually rejects her because he's convinced he has a relationship with
Jamie.
The Seduction is an attractively photographed, brightly
colored film that looks more expensive than the $2 million it cost to
make. That makes some of the sloppy
direction and editing in the final reel all the more noticeable. Two
cuts, one involving the continuity of a woman walking down a hill and the
other involving a climactic gunshot, are especially awkward.
But in spite of all these shortcomings, The Seduction still somehow manages
to entertain. Part of its appeal, I think, has to do with the
psychological battle of wills that develops between two impossibly
attractive people, and how the woman eventually turns the tables
in a film from an era where we weren't used to seeing
women fight back on screen -- this was long before the days of
acrobatic female action heroes as tough as any man.
I also think another reason the film succeeds in spite of itself
is because Fairchild has a strong screen presence and projects an
unexpected amount of intelligence (as she does in real life) in a movie
that's obviously more interested in her great body. And Stevens (now
mainly a film producer) is well cast and convincing as a psycho (not unlike a
Ted Bundy) whose good looks and neat appearance never makes
anyone suspect (at first glance) that he's anything less than perfectly
normal. Stevens (the son of Stella Stevens) never got
enough credit for his intense performances in films like this and The Fury.
Anchor Bay's new DVD edition of The Seduction is another refreshingly
thorough treatment of a fun B movie. The picture is presented
in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen and the sound is Dolby Digital Mono.
But for a DVD that is not labeled a special edition, there
are more extras included here than on many releases which are
called "special editions" by bigger companies. There's a
feature-length audio commentary with producers Irwin Yablans (Halloween) and Bruce Cohn Curtis (Dreamscape), who collaborated the
previous year on the horror film Hell
Night with Linda Blair, and writer-director David
Schmoeller. Also included is the theatrical trailer, and three
featurettes, one of which includes a recently recorded group interview with
Yablans, Curtis, Schmoeller and supporting players Colleen Camp, who plays
Jamie's mouthy friend and neighbor in the film, and Kevin Brophy,
who plays a jocular co-worker of Jamie's. However, the
principal actors (Fairchild, Stevens or Sarrazin) are noticeably absent from
the retrospective interviews, possibly not wanting to reminisce about
a film that was heavily bashed by most critics upon its initial
release. In many ways, however, The Seduction represents what's known as "a
good bad movie."
On a historical note, The
Seduction was the last film distributed by Avco Embassy
Pictures before Norman Lear bought the company and it became Embassy Pictures
for its remaining years. Bette Davis was also reportedly a fan of Morgan
Fairchild's performance and the film itself, possibly because Fairchild
played an ultimately strong female protagonist in a movie with that
old-school gloss.
- Chuck O'Leary
