Danger Touch

Kate Vernon comes off very well as a radio talk show host who wants to fulfill her own fantasies as well as give advice to her listeners.

Problem predictably develops when she involves herself in a situation with one of her callers that leads to a video tape and blackmail for the caller's not predictable reasons.

Lou Diamond Phillips does a pretty good job of directing but he miscast himself as the male lead. Otherwise this is far better than most of the genre and Ms. Vernon is awfully sexy.

Written, produced and directed by its star Lou Diamond Phillips, Dangerous Touch is an interesting debut for Mr. Phillips behind the camera. Certain parts of this film he did better than others, however.

Lou is a sexy career criminal who's trained his sites on lovely and voluptuous Kate Vernon who is a psychologist with a talk in radio show and a best seller. Kate's treating Max Gail a syndicate kingpin who is having issues.

Kate's a woman who loves sex with the joy of a Clinton era Mae West. She thinks she's found the man of her dreams when the mysterious Lou accosts and seduces her at a book signing. But he's all the time setting her up for blackmail, he wants her help to kill Max Gail by pressing on his neuroses so that he'll do it himself or his syndicate partners will out of fear that Gail will talk.

Lou's at his best directing what falls this side of a soft core porn film. The sight of a nude Kate Vernon is certainly enough to stir the young men in the audience.

Unfortunately the premise that she will be hurt by the exposure of her private sex life just doesn't ring true. Vernon's character is not Laura Schlessinger or someone who might work for Dr. James Dobson, someone who'd really be hurt by such a scandal. She comes across as a woman with a real healthy appetite for the erotic and exotic. Knowing that what happens in the end just doesn't make any sense.

Still Lou Diamond Phillips as director and star has nothing to be ashamed of. But he should have asked me about the script.

Here's another one of these low-grade, almost soft-porn type movies. Hey, I gave it shot hoping it would be a good, suspenseful crime film. In reality, however - at least the first half of the film - it turned out to be just an excuse for Kate Vernon to show off her face, body and to have sex. Hey, I enjoyed looking at her but really, folks, this is Grade D material.

The dialog in that first huor was so bad I had a difficult time caring about the rest of the movie. I don't even remember if I finished it. Lou Diamond Phillips was an actor who started off with promise but seemed to make nothing but these kind of second-rate movies.

Lou Diamond Phillips in an erotic thriller?!?! I think he'd be one of the last people just about anyone would think of appearing in this particular film genre, except apparently for Lou Diamond Phillips himself, who not only wrote the script but sat in the director's chair. As you might expect, the sex scenes involving him are pretty silly, not just for the fact that he uses an obvious body double on several occasions. Other faults with the movie include that it goes on for too long. Still, while the movie may overstay its welcome, I can't honestly say that the movie became boring at any moment. I was curious enough to stay until the very end. Also, while this is a low budget movie, Phillips crafts the movie in a way to make the production values acceptable. If it comes on cable during a slow night, you could do a lot worse.

Not as bad as all that. The film had more plot than a lot of such offerings. Yes, it is a sign of Lou Diamond Phillips' narcissism, but hey, if you get to write, star in, and direct, why not. I thought Kate Vernon seemed a bit young to be so successful, but they did need a hottie for the role. And after so many years of triple-D mounds of silicone on-screen, it was refreshing to see Ms. Vernon proudly baring beautiful, but normal-sized boobies on film. Some people seem to thank that LDP mis-cast himself in this, but I think that the biggest casting goof was Max Gail as the mob boss. He still exudes the air of earnest goofiness that I remember from when he played Wojciehowicz on Barney Miller. I suppose that even Lou Diamond Phillips could see that, and there must be more to the casting that I am missing. Deliberate irony? In any case it backfired. But really although this film is far, far from great, it isn't that bad. Doesn't deserve a 2.4 rating.