Crime & Passion

With a flashback format that pointlessly rivals MOMENTO in complexity, CRIME & PASSION is a terrible cable programmer, recommended only for the loyal fans of beautiful stars Lauren Hays and Nikki Fritz.

Fritz and LoriDawn Messuri kidnap Hays, who is actually grateful at breaking free of her hateful (& incestuous) gangster dad, very poorly played by Wally Waggert. Hit man Brad Bartram is sent to retrieve Hays, and much of the film concerns the double crossing and changing alliances among the three girls plus Brad. Lesbian trysts are the main event.

Writer-director Gary Dean Orona is obviously more comfortable with short-form vignettes than making feature films; he reunited with star Hays more successfully in the 2002 cable series "Hotel Erotica", where she would intro and narrate 26-minute segments. Here he has handed her atrocious voice-over narration with such awful clunkers as "They found the kink in his armor" and "I knew danger lied ahead". Even the character names include such ludicrous (and hard to enunciate with a straight face) roles as "That Girl" and "Burger Boy". I kid you not.

Let's face it, Orona is no Joe Mankiewicz.