Inner Sanctum

This turned out to be a corny, well shot, artistically lit, and very entertaining film. Certainly worth tracking down for Tanya Roberts fans.

Jennifer Reed (Valerie Wildman) tries to kill herself haunted by suspicions of her husband Baxter (Joseph Bottoms)'s infidelity. She falls down the stairs instead leaving her paralyzed. She suffers her husband's anger. He is having an affair with co-worker Anna Rawlins (Margaux Hemingway). He hires live-in nurse Lynn Foster (Tanya Roberts) who is suspected of killing before.

This is pretty bad and cheesy. It's got the prerequisite cheesy sex scenes. The story tries to be a Hitchcockian thriller. It does it really really badly. There are way too many dream sequences. The acting ranges from passable to pretty bad. I guess it could be worst.

I haven't seen a film with Margaux Hemingway for awhile and now remember that she talks just like Carol Channing in need of a voice coach. Tanya Roberts is not much better. Tanya seems to be saying "tough stuff" in a monotone so often her dialog sounds dubbed from reading off screen. The film seems to aim for violent kills and eroticism every five minutes and can't decide which flavor it wants to dish out more of, each very badly. Some of the lines are so mechanical it makes you laugh at the wrong time. The wording of the voice overs is a bit artificial at times. It makes me glad people have finally grown tired of imitating Basic Instinct with dozens of movies like it.

Very poor film, thin plot with even thinner acting. What is Tanya Roberts doing in a film like this. Paranoid woman attempts suicide, fails, tries again, fails again, is subject of attempted murder, survives again and outlives most of the other cast. Standard stuff for a soft porn movie, which this film is bad at too. Lots of Boobs and grinding, but about as erotic as a wet sock. Given the choice between this film and an australian soap, watch the film, otherwise get a life.

The actors in this laughable, straight-to-video erotic "thriller" seem to be in a competition for booby prizes. It's really hard for the viewer to decide who gives the worst performance: the stunningly untalented Tanya Roberts, the irritating and unnatural Timothy Bottoms or the amazingly unattractive, horribly miscast Margaux Hemingway ? The script tries to hold our interest by continuously adding twists and doublecrosses, but the poor acting and the amateurish direction doom this suspesnseless film. All it has going for it are some hot sex scenes with Roberts. (*)