Thy Neighbor's Wife

What we have here is a dumbed down, (seemingly) made for TV, version of the nineties thriller 'The Hand That Rocks the Cradle'. The main reason I saw this, aside from the fact I seem to have something of a penchant for stupid and rather dull thrillers, is the fact that it stars Kari Wuhrer. Her name might not mean a lot to a lot of people, but she's about the closest thing we've got a B-movie queen nowadays (although she really does need to get a better agent!). As mentioned, the plot pretty much rips off The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, although this time there is a different reason for revenge and the unfortunate woman at the centre has a different affliction. Wuhrer plays a woman upset after her husband killed himself due to his work colleagues. She takes it upon herself to get revenge, killing a couple of them, before posing as a maid for another. She worms her way into the family through each of the different members, all the while plotting her sweet revenge.

The thing that makes this film fun is the fact that it's completely ridiculous! The acting is terrible, and there are several sequences that are just far too convenient and/or don't make any sense at all! The film is directed by Jim Wynorski, who made Chopping Mall in 1986 before going to make a load of made for video crap, like this film. Some of the soft porn from his other films has made it into this one, and while we don't get to see much; there are plenty of breasts on display to keep things interesting. Kari Wuhrer gives by far the best performance and single handily makes the movie worth watching. She's always nice to look at, which cant really be said for the overall experience of watching this movie; but it is nice to see Re-Animator's Barbara Crampton on screen again. The plot is fairly standard stuff and although there is some attempt to build the characters, it is all a bit hard to care about. It doesn't take a genius to work out what will happen in the end, but there's plenty of laughs (for wrong reasons, mostly) on the way and while this is pretty crap, it's nice, gentle viewing and I did rather enjoy wasting time on it.

Not much of a thriller to me, this movie was very hard to understand. Anna Stewart is the wife of a business man who just lost his job to a woman from the Garrett family. Anna's husband later dies in a car accident and Anna avenges his death. She kills her husband's old boss, and then heads to the Garrett home. Anna kills the housekeeper and then takes on the housekeeper's job. What happens afterwards is very hard to understand, Anna has sex with the men in the family and slowly kills the mother of the Garrett family. This is one of the strangest movies I have ever seen. I don't recommend you watch this movie unless you want to see a lot of nudity, if you do want to watch a movie similar to this one, I would recommend that you watch Basic Instinct. Don't waste time with this so called thriller.

The box looked vaguely enticing. A revenge thriller. Well, it wasn't. It was a sorry collection of scenes cobbled together in a fashion that paid, no more than, lip service to the concept of a story line. The only thing that kept my attention was the realization (which came about 20 minutes in) that every female character in the film was going to get her kit off at some stage. Unfortunately, whilst this does happen, these scenes are interspersed between far too much "drama". Having said that, I still think this video would be far more appropriately placed behind the beaded curtain (at the local video store) than out with the serious movies.

...you know you've just got a direct-to-video stinker. The storyline has been done before (woman attempts to get even with family she feels killed her husband), and has been done better. At least with Shannon Tweed's "Scorned" it didn't take itself too seriously so it made the film enjoyable. This is pretty much dreck from the word "Action!" The male actors in this aren't good at all. Seth Adams Jones who plays David gives perhaps the worst "emotion" scene in film history when he talks to his father about how he should've been stricter. Melissa Stone adds the single worst sex scene in film history as well. While her dolt boyfriend is screwing her on top of their freezer, she just lays there with a straight, hurry-up-and-get-this-scene-over-with-so-I-can-put-my-shirt-back-on face that totally kills whatever eroticism the scene could have.

The other sex scenes aren't much better. Wuhrer can't even be bothered to take her panties off for her scene. Crampton has to use a body double so blatant I wondered why they even bothered with this scene. In the end, Wuhrer's character wins and she drives off into the sunset. There are much better Wuhrer movies, skip over this one.

Thy Neighbor's Wife otherwise known as Poison, otherwise known as Midnight Vendetta, otherwise known as Sex Attraction (For some reason) is a US made thriller starring Kari Wuhrer.

She stars as a woman gone mad after her husbands suicide, she becomes the house keeper for the family of woman she feels is responsible and through a series of mind games and manipulations aims on tearing them apart from the inside.

Trouble is we've seen this plot before, and we've seen it done a lot better.

Wuhrer is someone I consider to be a poor actress who contributes little beyond looking the part. Here she demonstrates that yet again and adds to the fairly high T&A levels.

It's generic, it's standard stuff and though it's not entirely terrible it's certainly take your brain out level entertainment.

The Good:

I'm a simple man, I see boobs I click like

The Bad:

Weak plot

Certain parts simply don't make much sense

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Your father didn't do it like that!