Fremde Schatten

Pacific Heights is required viewing in all Apartment Management courses in San Diego County. It is a chilling tale of decent but uneducated and unprepared new owners with a dream unknowingly up against a seasoned player in the professional renter game. This viewing requirement is one of the tools used to introduce starry-eyed management newcomers to the harsh and not-so-easily apparent world of the sick, the dangerous and the sue-happy portion of the rental market who will try to get the management stripped of all their personal assets and possessions, fired and possibly jailed, who work diligently to get the owner's property away from him/her, and who have no objection to going down as long as they can take others with them. Great movie.

I saw this movie again recently, and I have to say that upon reconsideration I think this film is a bit underrated. There are a few deeper sociological issues being explored here that I perceive but are quite subtle in their appearance in the film.

It is a study about the law to some degree, and it has some critical things to say about the ability for one who knows the law and its loopholes and thus exploits others with tools that were originally intended to preserve civil society. Keaton plays a psycho, but one who is highly educated and quite adept at his craft of fraud and deceit.

Further, Modine's character is irrational, befuddled, and ultimately marginalized. I wonder if the director took some liberties with him (as this is a true story, I don't know everything about the real person he portrays) to bring out a few of his close-minded tendencies that may have contributed to the awful situation in which he finds himself. Obviously, there is the closet racism which keeps him from renting to a black man (this is thrown in the viewer's face later and is quite obvious), but there is also the way he perceives a man's role as the solver of problems and his wife as nothing more than a spectator.

That she ends up being the one to calmly and coolly affect a search for and investigate Keaton's character, assaults the traditional notions of a man's role as a protector. Her temperament is ultimately more appropriate for the solution to the problem, and I think it is no accident that the director portrays it in this way.

Pacific Heights works because of Michael Keaton. Pacific Heights is an underrated movie and has Michael Keaton playing a sinister role as the tenant from hell. Melanie Griffith and Mathew Modine play a yuppie San Francisco couple who rent out their sublet to others. Unfortunately Michael Keaton- a rich but shady customer enters the fray and immediately convinces them to let him stay. It's a psychological thriller with a nice setting. I suggest you go in with an open mind.

This is a carefully programmed yuppie nightmare, something to titillate the emotions betwixt the sushi and the creme de mint, something to remind the upwardly mobile that you have to keep your guard up at all times because there are animals out there waiting to take it all away from you.

Clever plot premise: Yuppie couple, stylishly unmarried, possibly for tax purposes, buy a painted lady in the Pacific Heights district of San Francisco, a Victorian fixer upper for $750,000. It's the 1980's and everybody is getting rich in California real estate. They are now in yuppie heaven since there are two rentals on the property which take care of $2300 of the $3700 monthly mortgage, which leaves them responsible for only $1400, which is less then they were paying before, and now they have a huge tax write-off and hopefully an appreciating property. Of course they are margined to the gills, but what can go wrong?

How about the tenant from hell? Forget about your wild parties and your late-with-the-rent dead beats. This guy (Michael Keaton as a slimy, upper crust psycho genius) doesn't even pay the deposit. He just moves in, squats, and our yuppie couple is helpless to get rid of him since by law he now has possession. He changes the locks, cultivates big ugly oriental cockroaches, and pounds away at all hours of the night, and chases off the other tenant. Seems he has done this before. Seems it is an elaborate scam to gain total possession of the entire property. Next to go are the owners.

Naturally the cops and the law seem to work for him, not our adorable couple. (This is a little fictional reality to further excite the passions of the audience, call it poetic license, since we all know that the tenant/landlord laws in California are written by and for the propertied class, as they are anywhere else, as is only right.)

But this is a morality play. Could it be that our yuppies are undeserving of their wealth and are easy prey in the econ jungle because of their naiveté? Could be. But as this is a modern morality tale, you can be sure that the woman, played with worrisome lines under her eyes by the ever adorable Melanie Griffith, will turn the tables and kick some male butt despite the handicap of having a not too bright boyfriend, who is easily manipulated by our villain into some rather stupid male behavior that makes things worse for our heroine. Incidentally, he is played with such annoying exactitude by Matthew Modine that I can hear the rednecks in the audience screaming: "Die yuppie scum!"

It should be noticed that the adversary of the yuppies is not your standard ghetto dweller, but a wayward member of the upper class, a fitting adversary in this yuppie trial by fire.

I'll let you guess who wins.

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)

An unusual choice for Michael Keaton to follow up his first "Batman" movie with him going from hero and to outright villain.

Plot In A Paragraph: Drake Goodman (Modine) and Patty Palmer (Griffith)an unmarried couple, purchase an expensive 19th-century house in the exclusive Pacific Heights neighbourhood. They rent one of the building's two first-floor apartments to the Watanabes, a kindly Japanese couple. Not long after, Carter Hayes (Keaton) visits to view the remaining vacant unit and immediately expresses a desire to move in. Hayes drives an expensive Porsche and carries large amounts of cash on him. He convinces Drake to waive the credit check in exchange for a list of personal references and an upfront payment of the first six months' rent, to be paid by wire transfer. Before any of that happens he moves in unannounced and refuses to leave.

Melanie Griffith whilst looking great is awful acting wise, and Matthew Modine had me questioning how this man forged a career as an actor. Some of my main annoyances came from his character, and I had my concerns that he may end up being the real psycho, but his performance really was dire.

It's Keaton as the villain of the piece, who shines and gives the movie it's best scenes. Tippi Hedren and Dan Hedaya have small roles and Beverley D'Angelo has an uncredited role as a former lover/business partner of Carter's. I'm not sure why she is uncredited though.