Customer Reviews

Deadly Surveillance [VHS]

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Canadian cutie Susan Almgren, Mike Ironside
(finally we see him in a good guy role) and
vet Dave Carradine (what little we see of him!)
come off best in this modest budgeted Cops and
Crooks drama-actioner. Drug Dealer Carlos has a
heap of stash stored in a drawer in his swankie
apartment he shares with escaped mental patient
Almgren, who is addicted to Men(,of all things).

He doesn't know of here past which Ironside and
Carradine uncover. Lots of decent plot twists
and Ironside steals the show (not always the
case with leads in this kind of film). The rest
of supporting cast is fine as well. Sort of like
the Carradine / Nick Corri / Madeline Stowe film
Tropical Snow, only this time Carradine is Police
Lt.! See it, enjoy it (there is some pretty good
humour shown by Irondside and his two partners)
and don't take it too seriously!

Detective partners with a metropolitan police department, played by Michael Ironside and Vlasta Vrana in this Canadian work made for cable television, answer a burglary-in-progress call, uncovering more than a routine break-in and are tasked to return to the same apartment building for a narcotic stakeout. At the center of the scenario is a discovery by Rick Fender (Ironside) that his former partner, Eddie Nickels (Christopher Bondy), is romancing an attractive blond (Susan Almgren) who is residing in the targeted flat. The erstwhile mates, no longer friends due to a shared problem with a former girlfriend, are ordered to cooperate with each other by their supervising lieutenant (David Carradine - customarily wooden and in this film also saddled with a motheaten role). Ironside plays against type as someone with whom we may sympathize, as he attempts to conjoin the pieces of a puzzle which may implicate Rachel, the paramour of Nickels, in an apparent illegal drug syndicate. Bondy gives a nicely coloured performance as a lover lost in a sea of ambiguity, anxious that Rachel may in fact not be whom she appears, which is the idea behind Fender's growing cynicism. This is the first produced script by Hal Salwen, who later wrote and directed the remarkable DENISE CALLS UP, but there is little room here for Salwen's native wit, although what there is raises the work's appeal in several instances. Both the director and the scriptor apparently have sparse knowledge of universal law enforcement procedures, a crippling shortcoming for a film postulated upon treatment of a police investigation.