The Kiss

Pucker up and get ready to die. Teenager Amy (Meredith Salenger) just lost her mom to a freak accident. Her long lost Aunt Felice shows up five months after the death to help out. At First Amy is excited to meet Felice (Joanna Pacula) because she is a fashion model and seems hip. Then things get weird when strange accidents happen. There is a great escalator scene when Amy's friend Heather gets hurt.Amy and her dad start to fight over Felice's presence. Doesn't help that Amy's dad is sleeping with Felice. Amy tries to tell her dad and her neighbor Brenda(Mimi Kuzyk)but no one believes her that Felice had anything to do with the strange accidents. They think Amy just misses her mom. But Amy knows Felice has a secret. This is a fun film! Has a lot of gory scenes and a great cast. Mimi Kuzyk is great as Brenda who tries to help Amy.Watch it late at night with popcorn! It is sort of a supernatural reverse version of the Stepfather. I liked the soundtrack. It set the mood. death scenes are great. watch out for the worst puppet cat to ever grace the movies!

Amy (Meredith Salenger) finds her world turned upside down when her mother is killed in a freak accident. Soon her mother's estranged sister, fashion model Felice (Joanna Pacula), has moved in and begins working her way into the family, starting by seducing dad Jack (Nicholas Kilbertus). Naturally she has ulterior motives as she wants to pass on an ancient African curse via a slimy demon that must be passed from mouth-to-mouth. This Canadian chiller came out during a seemingly endless supply of evil demon women flicks (THE UNHOLY, NIGHT ANGEL, SPELLBINDER, THE GUARDIAN, SATAN'S PRINCESS) and does alright for what it is. You're not going to get a horror classic, but you do get bloody killings, a pulsating medical dummy, a drooling demon cat and Pacula performing rituals naked. The end is particularly over-the-top with the big showdown in the family's pool, complete with hedge trimmer stabbing and a barbecue propane tank flamethrower (only in the movies). Tri-Star barely released this in theaters in October 1988 in the United States, which is odd as they funded a special trailer for it that features a minute or so of "trailer only" footage.

Amy's (Meredith Salenger) mother has just died in a freak automobile accident. To make matters worse, an almost unknown Aunt named Felica (Joanna Pacula) shows up and takes a fancy to Amy's dad. That's when all of Amy's friends start to meet gruesome ends and Amy starts to find voodoo spells and other assorted items in Felica's stuff. It seems Amy is the next in line to get a fatal kiss from Felica.

Fast paced, often exciting & scary film features a fun premise, solid direction, terrific effects, plenty of sexual energy & atmosphere. Meredith Salenger is appealing and Joanna Pacula is flawless in a tailor made role that plays up to her exotic beauty and mysterious appearance. However, poor supporting performances by Mimi Kuzyk & Nicholas Kilbertus nearly ruin it.

Rated R; Graphic Violence, Nudity, Sexual Situations, and Profanity.

The Kiss (1988) - It's no wonder that Joanna Pacula was irritated at Meredith Salenger from almost start to finish in this movie.

She wasn't used to being the second-most attractive one in the room.

Ha ha... just kidding. They were equally attractive. But I can say without question that Joanna was the ugliest one in another way.

I'm talking evil personified.

This is a pretty intense horror story about curses, fatal kisses, endangered daughters and one of the dumbest dads in history.

In brief... Pacula plays Felice Dunbar, who as a child in the Belgian Congo is separated from her sister Hilary. She is victimized by an aunt who is into voodoo rituals involving a cursed talisman.

Auntie seals her niece's fate with a fatal and bloody kiss, killing herself and turning Felice into an undead kind of creature.

Many years alter, Felice, a successful (but still undead) model, tracks down her sister Hilary in New York. What she's really after is Hilary's daughter Amy (Meredith Salenger) and her husband Jack (Nicholas Kilbertus).

After Felice engineers the accidental (and gruesome) death of Hilary, she worms her way into Jack and Amy's life, with the intention of eventually planting a fatal kiss on Amy and sucking out her life essence.

Amy smells a rat almost from the get-go. But dad... hmmm...what an idiot. He falls for Felice hook, line, and sinker.

So who can save Amy? There are a few candidates, but Felice does a good job of eliminating them in voodoo-influenced and violent ways.

Pacula put in a performance worthy of Barbara Steele. That's a HIGH compliment, because no female actress (in my opinion) did evil better than Babs. Pacula's cold eyes, the snarl on her lips when she was angry with Amy, the devious passion with which she seduced brainless Jack, and the devilish delight when she was caressing the cursed talisman... just the perfect temptress.

Salenger was excellent as well. This kid has her wig on straight, and isn't afraid to face off with Felice - and her dad - in her valiant attempt to survive.

A very honorable mention should go to Mimi Kuzyk as Jack and Amy's neighbor Brenda. She is loving and caring and a fierce defender of Amy.

Finally? There's this black cat from hades that pops up from time to time and attacks people. It's so silly-looking... but I'd still feed it some Friskies.

Well, I didn't go into this film expecting anything great; I was really just hoping for a decent timewaster along the same lines as Wes Craven made for TV opus 'Summer of Fear', and that's more or less what I got; though it cant be said that this film isn't as good as Craven's. The film is a mix of two very basic and very common horror themes; namely, the insider who works their way into a family unit, and of course the idea of witchcraft. After the first fifteen minutes, I feared the worst because = the way that the plot is set up is very messy; and that's never a good sign in a simple film like this one! However, it soon settles down and once I got an idea of what to expect, I found that the film became easier to enjoy. The film starts with two sisters in 1963 that get split up. One of them goes off with a relative who passes onto her a strange curse via a kiss. We then cut to twenty five years later, and the other sister has died in a car accident; leaving her husband and daughter behind. Then onto the scene comes the cursed sister, who wants her niece to bear her curse...

It has to be said that this film could have been better if have handled by someone more adept, and if it had a better focus. The plot soon becomes predictable, and there are several things about it that don't make sense, and the film often veers off on a tangent with certain things that aren't really relevant. The Kiss seems to have taken a bit of influence from The Omen with regards to the way that the death scenes are carried out; mostly excessive and random, but also quite imaginative: the death scene on an escalator is well done...though the clues preceding it spoil the surprise. None of the characters are particularly interesting, which is a shame considering that the main one is a conniving witch. However, the film never becomes too boring. The special effects aren't over-used, but what we do get is generally quite realistic; the only exception to this rule being an aggressive cat, which looks like a stuffed toy. It all boils down to an exciting and explosive finale, which also happens to be the best ten minutes of the film. Overall, I won't be going round recommending this film to people; but there's worse ways to spend ninety minutes of your life.