Two years before the classic Jim Thompson movie "The Grifters" was released, Paul Thomas working for Vivid Video (sloppily misspelled "Vidio" in the copyright credit at the end of the movie) made this entertaining version of the noir tale, starring Barbara Dare as a femme fatale.
Rick Marx's efficient script is set in New York City, where Barb moves in down the hall from the married couple Tammy White and Tom Byron, and quickly bamboozles each of them separately as a prototypical homewrecker. Even when she makes mistakes, a slip of the tongue here, a too-obvious come-on there, the marks are easily duped, and between PT's direction and Rick's dialogue the viewer is completely in Barb's camp, watching her manipulate them with such determination. The victims both get hot sex out of the deal, but in just two weeks she's fleeced them and celebrates with her partners in crime, nicely played in small roles by Aja and Louis Paul.
PT has a small role himself, as Tom & Barbara's boss working in a film post-production house where Tom is an editor and Barb is a summer intern, supposedly headed back to college in the fall. Instead, she, Aja & Louis are headed west to execute their next con.
Barbara won a porn industry Best Actress award for this minor feature, but I thought Tammy's acting was superior -such phony awards of course are not based on acting but "sexual performance".
