7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
lover/killer, August 20, 2001
This review is from: Dangerous Touch (Unrated) [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Lou Diamond Phillips cowrote and directed this "erotic thriller" which wants to be 9 ½ Weeks, and LDP's self-casting as a womaniser, providing himself with a full frontal nudity shot partially obscured by opaque glass in a shower stall, seems the ultimate in conceit. 9 ½ Weeks was bearable because of the presence of Kim Basinger, and here LDP casts a Basinger-look alike in Kate Vernon, but Vernon has none of Basinger's natural appeal, even when dressed in Donna Karan. As a psycho-analyst with a best seller entitled Guilty Pleasures, her own radio talk back show, and a private practice, Vernon is a success waiting to be de-pedestalled. So LDP takes the cue from her radio theme tune Sexual Healing and enscribes "I want you" in the copy of her book he shows her at a signing. As we have seen that Vernon has a secret uninhibited sex life, she soon jumps at LDP's advances, and they engage in risky sex - at a party, at a stranger's home, in the open. Vernon psychoanalyses LDP as a "hustler" yet still continues to see him, so when he demonstrates his "career criminal" behaviour by blackmailing her after a lesbian sex romp, the playfulness turns nasty. The problem that LDP never overcomes with this treatment is that he and Vernon are equally unsympathetic. Naturally we dislike him when he tells her things like he can "see right into your soul" but he also tries to hedge his bets by having himself harassed by mob thugs from his past, and Vernon is pushy about her own sexiness - she's far more attractive towards the end when she's not trying to be, and in one scene is styled to resemble Rita Hayworth in Gilda. The screenplay cowritten with Kurt Voss features 2 unintentional laughs with Vernon's "you need serious counselling" to LDP, Vernon's manager to Vernon "He's blackmailing you and he doesn't want your money?!", and the idea that one of Vernon's patients is a mob boss because of a guilt complex. What is inexplicable is the furore about the lesbian sex scene, which is pretty tame. LDP's pacing is snail like but he comes up with a noteworthy Hitchockian high camera angle as he walks the length of a swimming pool, and some snazzy edits - cross-cutting between his first seduction of Vernon and the playing of a violin, the darkened screen from his black jacket moving from one face to another, and Vernon's writhing in freeze frame to her in a photo shoot.
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