Waste of time

How sad is this?

There are women in the film, but none has anything you could call a personality.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Susan's friend Nicole takes ill suddenly and has no medical insurance, so they swap identities, but then Nicole dies during surgery. With her bank accounts closed and fearing she may be implicated in manslaughter, Susan continues the pretence of being Nicole and tries to figure out what happened and how to get her life back.This is a good TV thriller, due to writer-producer-director Cohen's considerable skill as a scripter - for me, he always gets the balance just right between intriguing premise, plot development and plausibility, and this story is typically full of good ideas. What would happen if the authorities mistakenly thought you were dead ? How could you fake a blood-type on a patient-ID ? How could you assume someone else's identity ? As well as grappling with these ideas, Susan is also dealing with her own guilt and her new-found relations, including a half-brother with a closetful of secrets. The four leads are good and the story keeps you guessing in a pleasant way, although inevitably there's a little bit of a TV-movie sheen of blandness. If you've never heard of him, check out Cohen's rich body of work; his movies are all cheap and nutty, but highly original and caustic; my favourites are God Told Me To, Full Moon High and The Ambulance, but he's written many other good films (Best Seller, Guilty As Sin, etc). A minor work by a great writer-director.

So much of this film reminds me of a TV version of the Madonna/Roseanna Arquette movie: the shy conventional girl who swaps life and wardrobe with the sexy, messy hip party girl, the lanky young man who gets involved with her, etc. But it's actually more of a (mild) thriller and I thought the plot was pretty neat and well worked out. The lead character was sympathetic and the logic of why she didn't just go to the police (which so many movie heroines should) was good. I also liked how Crystal Bernard quite subtly kept hoisting down her very short skirts, just showing how uncomfortable her character felt in someone else's clothes. Unfortunately a lot of the reviews here and even the cast list give away a major plot twist; maybe I was just feeling dumb tonight, but I didn't guess it in advance and was glad I hadn't been spoiled - beware. Overall, a nice entertaining little movie to kill an hour or so with.

Larry Cohen has made some good films over the course his career. The films are mostly within the realms of the low budget horror sub-genre, but his films tend to be a cut above the norm. The likes of It's Alive and Maniac Cop stand up as the best films he's made to date. As his career moved on, however, it's evident that he didn't find it as easy to get work, hence this film; a made for TV thriller calling itself 'As Good as Dead'. No, it's not a description of the director's career at the time that this was made, but a thriller about a woman who, after loaning her insurance-less friend her medical insurance card, finds herself in trouble when said friend dies on the operating table. This puts our protagonist in a lot of trouble as she is, by all intents and purposes, dead to the world. However, it would seem that there's more to this story than meets the eye, and so she decides to take the identity of her dead friend while she gets to the bottom of the life-ruining riddle put in front of her.After about twenty minutes of boring character building (boring because the characters are boring), the film really starts and despite it's poor quality - and obvious TV fodder - production values, the film actually isn't that bad. It's rather routine, and although it's categorised as a 'thriller', the film low on shocks and thrills; but the plot moves nicely and engages you enough so that you care what's going to happen (which is more than what can be said for some highly acclaimed films). It's obvious throughout that the film was made for TV, and that's not a good thing as it gives it a very low quality feel. The acting isn't very good, but it's not terrible either. Crystal Bernard is fine at first, but as her character encounters change; she looks out of place. This is good on one hand, as that realistically expresses what her character would be like that situation; but on the other hand, it doesn't make for very good viewing as far as the audience is concerned. It's obvious that Judge Reinhold rates himself higher than he should be rated, and there's an underlying arrogance to his performance that shows that. Traci Lords doesn't get to do much, but as you'd expect for a porn star; she looks good doing it. On the whole, this isn't really worth seeing - but if you do catch it, at least it isn't awful.

I don't see the thrill in watching Crystal Bernard on screen. In this vehicle she impersonates a sex-pot. Her clothes alone, what there is of them, look like they shrunk on her in the wash. Her makeup is over the hill and she has this mop of hair that belongs in THE LION KING. Sorry, I just don't get it. Judge Reinhold has the male lead and I wonder why he did this loser. He's too good for this kind of trite written and directed by Larry Cohen. Then there's Traci Lords, the porn star which is why I wanted to watch it in the first place. However, she's only in the first part and sadly we are forced to watch Bernard the rest of the time. From 1-10 in TV movies I give it a 2.