At the expensive New York Gotham College is a grumpy, slightly disturbed maintenance man, John Doe who carries a grudge against the highly privileged. He storms up a plan to ransom the dean of $1 million, as he has planted a poisoned carton of ice cream (which the Gotham College owns stock in) at the dorm's tuck shop and if they don't pay. He won't let them find out where to find it. Unluckily Denise, a freshman buys the ice-cream and comes close to death. John then becomes obsessed with her, and tries to finish the job himself.
You could say this is one to pluck out of obscurity, or best left there. "Deadly Obsession" is a late 80's, low-cost psychotic semi-slasher vehicle that's not your usual stalk n slash item. From what I mean usual, it leans more towards the cop investigation trying to catch the killer in the same vein of "When A Stranger Calls (1979)", than providing just a random, bloody body count of weightless characters. Here there aren't many characters for the slaughter, but more so a suspenseful, moody and macabre cat and mouse game between the killer and his intended victim. His eyes are set on only one girl. It's a hard one to put together though. What starts off looking like its going to be a sleazy, gritty and raw film within the first half-hour, it then goes on to become something traditional and melodramatic in formula. Now here comes the most terrible aspect about it. The script! What a groaner with such lame and puerile dialogues. My ears were aching listening to some of this babble. Even throw in that gaudily overdone synthesizer music score. At times it was genuinely eerie or painfully manipulative. Jeno Hodi's direction was organically tight and made well of those foreboding plights of claustrophobic tension and growing fear. These were the chase scenes through dark, shadowy corridors, locker rooms, swimming pool and underground tunnels. Doco-like cinematography helped ground it. The deaths have a real nastiness to them, and offer some blood splatter, but not too extreme or overly creative. Hell some happen off-screen. Also don't threat as there's some T&A on show. Nothing surprising on the acting front. It's amateurish, but acceptable
to a point. Darnell Martin perfectly brings the right sort of innocence and terror to her role as Denise. Joe Paradise is uncannily, over-enthusiastic as the loony John Doe. He really gets into character! Jeff Iorio I found overbearing as the cop who's left to look over Denise and Martin Haber amusingly gruffs about as Lt. Walsh.
