good back-story, and good acting

Don't Believe the Hype

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

That Eric Brown, what a lucky dude. First in Private Lessons with Sylvia Kristel and then in They're Playing With Fire with Sybil Danning the boy is doing well with the cougars.However other than those titillating sex scenes there's not much to recommend either film. Danning seduces Brown but that's at the behest of her husband Andrew Prine. They're both tired of sitting around and waiting for his mother and grandmother to die. They want Brown to break in and just scare the two women so they might sell the old mansion and give them some of the loot.But then some hooded individual comes along and murders the two women and hides the bodies. A few more deaths follow before we learn the truth. If it weren't for Sybil Danning's body and those two weapons of mass destruction she has interest would be minimal here. If that's your thing go for it.

Eric Brown became famous for about a week and half back in the 80s thanks to an appearance in the Sylvia Kristel comedy Private Lessons, where he plays a student who gets involved with his much older French tutor. Here he plays a student who gets involved with the much older wife of his English professor. Such acting range this kid had! Anyway, the two of them sneak around behind the prof's back for the first third of the movie and then the producers must have realized that there was no plot going on, and so bodies start showing up for no reason and the cops focus on the kid, also for no reason. Seriously, this is one truly brain dead attempt at writing either a murder thriller or an erotic melodrama, but not both, since it never manages to be both at the same time. The performances are just as bad as the script, with Eric Brown looking lost and amateurish, movie veteran Andrew Prine (who plays the prof) looking embarrassed, and Sybil Danning looking once again like a great chest with no acting talent attached, which continued to be true over her long and stinky career. She and Eric have less on-screen chemistry than Greg Evigan had with his chimp co-star in B.J. and the Bear. The whodunnit solution, when it comes, makes much LESS sense than usual for a bad 80s killer thriller, and we grade most of those on a curve already. In addition to crappy dramatics, bad plotting and mind-craggling dialog, the pacing is sluggish, plus the look is cheap and sometimes even grainy. When you find yourself wondering whether the producers were even willing to pay for new film stock or did they buy leftovers, you know you are not in the hands of anybody soon to be named president of the Screen Director's Guild. This is just bad. Not fun bad, not so bad it's funny, just plain old who made this incompetent crap bad. Avoid at all costs.

Since her start in the late 1960's, Sybil Danning has been called upon to use her sensuality and statuesque physique to bail out many a "B" movie. No exception here, as the stunning Danning plays a college professor/seductress. The victim is gullible Eric Brown (who's acting abilities resemble those of a 4th grader). The highlight of this movie is the seduction of Brown by Danning in the yacht. Great camerawork and Danning's sensuality in her strip give a scorching rating to a scene that will be relived in the minds of red-blooded males. Her other sex scenes were Brown are equally erotic but that is as good as it gets with this movie. The plot is predictable and the suspense...well...is just not there. A must for all Danning fans though, so you can drool at the sensual charms of this erotic goddess who seems to have saved the face of many an aspiring "B" movie director with her presence.

The statuesque Sybil Danning dominates this rather poor film of murder and intrigue.Who could not be impressed at the skilful way she manipulates one of her students, played by Eric Brown onto her luxury cruiser in order to overwhelm him in a way only she can manage.Ultimately, Miss Danning is the only good thing in this film as the poorly scripted plot spirals out of control. It fails to convince in almost every department of a thriller.