Blackmail

Lucinda's husband Gene ignores her, except when he wants sex. And sex with Gene is a chore, not a pleasure. Scott gives Lucinda what she wants. One day, an envelope with naughty photos of Lucinda and Scott arrives at Lucinda's house, with a request for thousands of dollars made up of words put together from various sources as in a ransom note. Scott has a business partner named Charlene; their business is not exactly what Lucinda would have expected.

This movie has lots of great plot twists and the occasional car chase, as well as steamy sex. Mac Davis, normally a good guy, manages to be deliciously evil but still likable after his character makes a career change. He starts out as a friendly, knowledgeable lingerie salesman who waits on Lucinda, but he manages to get involved in other areas of Lucinda's life.

Later, the movie gets violent, and the ending is not pleasant, and certainly not what I expected. The plot twists are interesting, and if nothing else, this film is worth seeing just for Davis' performance.

This made-for-cable TV movie is nothing extra special but it was a decent story filled with a ton of twists in the last half of the100 minutes. Near the end, there were so many twists it would make your head spin. With all the "stretches" that brought with it, it was too much. It lost credibility and cohesion in the last 15 minutes by overdoing all those surprises.

Even though it has a no-name cast, a B-film feel to it, it was still well-acted and all the characters were interesting. It even had a few sexy scenes in there which helped give it the "R" rating.

Not a bad film and worth a look, especially if you are one who likes surprises.

If you are at all curious about seeing this movie, I shall do you a big favor and convey the entire movie in just two sentences.

Woman A is married but cheating with Man A, who blackmails her in cooperation with Woman B. Man B then blackmails Man A and Woman B.

Don't worry, I didnt spoil the ending for you - because there isn't one.

All in all an agonizing way to kill 2 hours.

Two words: "Body Armour". BLEH!

This film begins with a beautiful woman by the name os "Lucinda Sullivan" (Susan Blakely) who is married to a wealthy man named "Gene Sullivan" (John Saxon) but feels no great love for him. So to spice up her life she begins having an affair with a younger man named "Scott Mayfield" (Dale Midkiff). What she doesn't know is that somebody has apparently collected enough damaging evidence to blackmail the two of them and whoever it is definitely means business. To make matters even more complicated, a mysterious stranger known simply as "Norm" (Mac Davis) suddenly appears on the scene with an agenda of his own and it directly involves all of the people just mentioned. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a pretty good mystery film of sorts which included several twists and turns along the way. I especially liked the performance of Mac Davis who played his part quite well. Likewise, having an attractive actress like Susan Blakely certainly didn't hurt the scenery in any way either. In any case, although this wasn't a great film by any means, it still managed to keep my attention for the most part and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.

A noir-ish attempt with a betrayal-and-treason plot that seems straight out of a Jim Thompson novel. Unfortunately, the directing is below average, unable to create any atmosphere of feeling. Somebody like John Dahl or Stephen Frears would have been better suited.