Fatal Attraction
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Maniac, Flashdance and Fatal Attraction: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Picks
In late 1979, Joe Spinell was a successful character actor who had appeared in major films by Coppola, Friedkin, Scorsese and Mazursky, but he wanted to go beyond supporting work to make a name for himself as a horror icon. His friend William Lustig was a 24-year old movie fanatic who had directed a couple of adult films and was hungry to graduate to mainstream features. Joining forces with producer Andrew Garroni, Lustig and Spinell scraped together $48,000 and started making Maniac, an extremely unpleasant – and extremely effective – study of a psychotic loner on a killing spree. They […]
by Jim Hemphill on May 30, 2020 -
“Two Girls Coming into your House and Unleashing Havoc”: Eli Roth on Knock Knock
Eli Roth’s Knock Knock is to Fatal Attraction what that film was to Play Misty For Me: an homage that expands upon its source and intersects with the zeitgeist in immensely entertaining, provocative ways. Like both Attraction and Misty, Knock Knock is a cautionary tale and a male fantasy turned nightmare: Keanu Reeves plays a husband and father who, when left alone on Father’s Day, answers the door to find two gorgeous young women (Lorenza Izzo and Ana de Armas) stranded in the rain and looking for help. He invites them in and eventually succumbs to their erotic overtures, quickly […]
by Jim Hemphill on Oct 8, 2015
