Mind Games

Pretty good film for your typical family in trouble suspense / thriller. Family goes to the country to bond, meets a traveling guy ( Caulfield ) with lots of advice, befriend him and take him into confidence. Caulfield decides to use the family as his own personal psych experiment and dad ( Albert ) has to try and save his family from a lunatic. Worth a rental.

My review was written in August 1989 after watching the movie on CBS/Fox video cassette.

Though briefly receiving film fest exposure and wet coast bookings in March, MGM/UA's "Mind Games" is a small-scale psychological thriller that will play better on tv.

A piece for four actors (there is no supporting cast), Bob Yari's pic follows the traditional format of an appealing but dangerous stranger disrupting a family. Maxwell Caulfield, (previously effective a a heavy in "The Boys Next Door"), is Eric, a psych student who attaches himself to Edward Albert and Shawn Weatherly, who are traveling in the Southwest i theri rec vehicle with 10-year-old Matt Norero.

Caulfield, as part of a self-assigned psych project, manipulates the threesome, working on the son first (with discreet overtones of homosexuality), then the adults. Tension among the characters is dissipated when the film turns to unconvincing melodrama.

Caulfield is a commanding presence here, even when the script has him reveal too much of his ulterior motives. Weatherly is dramatic and provides needed sex appeal, while Albert is saddled with an underwritten part as the weak husband. Newcomer Norero gives a subtle reading of the kid's part.

With good technical contributions, Yari keeps the pot boiling up to a point. Ambitious finale tries for an open-ended effect, but lacks credibility.

This little movie is touted as a thriller of sorts. Sadly, there are very few thrills to be had here. The script is really clunky and the dialogue is excruciating. There are only four actors in the whole movie and, other than the boy, they are not unknown actors. None are big stars, but they are not unknowns. Based on their performances here, they deserve to be. The young boy is the best of the bunch, and he is no great shakes. Maxwell Caulfield deserves a special mention. He has to be one of the most irritating, unappealing actors I have ever come across. I'm not going to say give this movie a miss, but don't get your expectations too high.

A cracking thriller, but awful casting. The boy is great, and acts superbly - but the main problem is that the two male characters look almost exactly alike (both off the standard issue handsome-male-actor shelf), so that it was often difficult to know which of the two one was looking at. Some thought should have been given to this. And the female lead was (visually at least) another 'blonde-film-star' clone. And would parents in real life have let their small son go overnight camping in the forest with a man they had just met? Otherwise, a good watch.

The plot to this film is the generic "family in peril" type of movie that was all the rage back in the day. An unhappily married couple and their 10 year old son go on vacation in their camper. The boy wanders off one day and comes across a shirtless man in the woods playing a flute. Well...he does what any boy in this situation would do. He befriends the guy and brings him back to the camper to join his family for dinner.

So does this stranger turn out to be a psycho? You betcha! That doesn't seem to bother the boy's parents and soon the stranger is invited to tag along on their family vacation. You already know what's going to happen because it's the same as what ALWAYS happens in this type of film. The stranger sleeps with the unhappy wife. Then he decides that the father needs to depart from the land of the living.

There is no nudity, very little violence and a whole bucketful of predictable boredom. I'd recommend watching "Cape Fear" again if you want to see a much better film of this type. 2/10