The Perfect Tenant

The title is a dead giveaway, obviously this guy is anything but the perfect tenant, in fact he is a psychopath hellbent on revenge. The film begins with a nine year old boy witnessing his father's suicide. Fast forward and it soon becomes clear why the old man took his own life, and what his son wants. The plot is fairly straightforward but it does get a bit complicated until we realise his sister is working with him undercover in a manner of speaking. After locating the woman they hold responsible for Daddy topping himself, their plan is to murder her father, disguising his death as a heart attack, fleece her of the life insurance money, and then, well, you know what is supposed to come next.

The best laid plans of mice and psychos don't always go like clockwork, and this one has a few problems to contend with en route, including a crazy girlfriend who turns up unannounced making a scene, and his sister not having the stomach to go through with their plan, in reality his plan.

"The Perfect Tenant" isn't a bad film, but bad guy Maxwell Caulfield is so creepy as Danny you have to wonder if any woman in her right mind would let him through the front door, much less rent him an apartment.

This one has flaws for sure. The writing is lazy and lackluster. Note how almost all of the characters use the line "What's up?" and "No problem." This includes the young Jessica in the flashback. It's also nauseous how Jessica calls her dad her "best friend" and Laura calls her and her mom "friends." With the poor writing also comes some cheap, campy gems from Caulfield. First, when Holliman says jokingly about his daughter "she is evil!" and Caulfield replies "I know." Then, when Holliman says to his daughter "I'm not dead yet. Tell her, Brian." This sets up Caulfield for a smirking "He's not dead......yet." Quality laughs.

The daughter Laura also has a strange taste in males. The goofy boyfriend is a riot , and nobody is sorry when he gets shot. But also, at the beginning, she tells her mom "I can't belieeeeve you broke up with Frank. He was sooooo cooooool." This is referring to the biggest straight-laced stiff in the whole movie....the emasculated ex who keeps trying to crawl back to Jessica. Also, Laura slowly walking to the closet when she has no idea that Caulfield is hiding in there was a completely unnecessary thing; bad directing.

All that being said, this is enjoyable and has no down time at all. Caulfield carries the movie with his funny lines and tone throughout. I add this to my Christmas films and watch every year since it does have to do with Christmas.

Jessica Michaels (Linda Purl) rents her guesthouse to Daniel Winters (Maxwell Caulfield), unaware that he is is the son of the school teacher who molested her as a child. Daniel has been in a psychiatric institution (the reason for his commitment and his method of release are unexplained) and is set on avenging the father that hanged himself before he could be charged.

As an associate producer, Purl possibly influences director Doug Campbell in giving her two slow motion admiration shots - Daniel's first look at her, and her memory as she passe her former school in a car. Purl lends her strong presence and has enough technique to put a spin on the ordinary lines she is given. In one scene Daniel hugs her and the combination of neuroses says more than anything else that Campbell can muster.

The teleplay by Jim Vines, M Todd Bonin and Campbell, based on a story by Mark Castaldo, is lightweight, though it does have 2 funny lines. When Jessica sees that Daniel's book collection is stamped with the name of the psychiatric institution, her daughter quips `I hear it's not easy to turn pages in a straitjacket', and fellow former inmate Rachel (Tracy Nelson) says to Daniel after he tries to strangle her `I know this is only a temporary situation for us'. The appearance of Daniel's sister in the narrative prefigures the conclusion, though his one controlling way of treating her sets up an expectation which is not fulfilled.

Campbell seems more interested in creating a horror movie than a psychological study. He dwells sadistically on Daniel's killing of the former tenant and attack on Rachel, and uses an appropriately unsubtle music score by Richard Bowers. In spite of Nelson's quirkiness being under-used, Campbell does defy expectations with her entrance in the way she uses Daniel's gun, gets a laugh from the cartoon chase Daniel has with someone tracking him, and provides a cut from the boy seeing his hanged father to the boy's eyes becoming Daniel's in close-up. Caulfield may not be convincing as a traumatised person, even given he may have been released because he is thought to be better or at least on medication. Presumably he is cast because of his fading pretty boy looks, though Campbell does allows him to parody Purl's anguish in the climax.

"The Perfect Tenant" is a taut, well-constructed little TV thriller with Maxwell Caufield slipping once again into the role of a steely psychopath. Blue-eyed, impossibly photogenic Caufield makes for such an unexpected villain that you can't help but delight in all the havoc he wreaks. There's some genuinely nasty stuff here that wouldn't make it into a similar production today: we get a forced potassium chloride injection, a staged recreation of a Christmas suicide, and some pretty intense trauma flashbacks. I was surprised several times by the approach this film took: it packs up enough fake-outs and feints to keep any made-for-TV thriller addict satisfied.

I appreciated that all the major twists were largely out of the way by the halfway point, allowing us to revel in the mayhem rather than waiting for a big reveal. "The Perfect Tenant" is solid stuff, although one would be advised to check out Caufield in the terrific "Mind Games" first. That movie also features him as a family-disrupting psychopath, but with more of a darkly subversive bent.

"The Perfect Tennant" can perhaps best adequately be summarized as a run-of-the mill thriller. While it is not unwatchable, it is not particularly good either and it contributes nothing to the genre

Most of the actors perform their roles well. Maxwell Caulfield does a good job in portraying a psychotic and cold-blooded individual haunted by memories of his childhood and determined to act upon his beliefs. Earl Holliman is also excellent and very convincing as Jessica's father and gives a great deal of depth and dimension to his character –even though it is a relatively minor one in the whole scheme of the movie. Tracey Nelson does a fine job in her role as a mental patient who is being used and manipulated by Caulfield The actress who plays Caulfield's character's sister also improves in her acting toward the end of the movie.

But unfortunately Linda Purl does not perform well in her role as one of the major characters. She appears much too stiff and wooden and lacks the depth and the emotion required to be a success in that particular character role. The same is true of the actress who plays her daughter.

In all fairness to the actors and actresses, however, they are not given a very good script to work from. The dialogue is quite often clichéd and tedious and some of the one-liners are so melodramatic and over the top that they are absolutely hilarious. The whole plot is predictable if you're a fan of the genre and you can more or less guess what will happen long before it unfolds. And the first part of the movie is disjointed and confusing and hard to follow Probably due to the performance of Caulfield and the supporting cast against all the odds, this movie is not as bad as it could be. But there are much better movies in this genre –"The Hand that Rocks the Cradle" comes to mind