Ilusão Fatal

watch the first half of this movie and invent your own second half. it had so much promise.

mr. williams and ms. fairchild get it going with what seems to be an actual passion for their pairing and proximity. and why not? mr. colt 45 and ms. seduction were the hot and bother of their decade, and even if it would be a few more years before ms. sciorra and mr. snipes mixed it up in JUNGLE FEVER, the dams were ready to break. vanity fans will also not be disappointed. if you are souring from the aftertaste of lando calrissian in RETURN OF THE JEDI, this is good tonic. the best visuals of the movie are when mr. williams plants his lower body and delivers a punch. other action stars should study this, but alas, not everyone can move with the authoritative and accessible grace of billy dee.

ms. fairchild's fans will not like ms. fairchild in liza minelli hair, but she has her moments on screen and returns to familiar coiffure and stature soon enough. her moments make good excerpts, like cuttings from a magazine. ms. vanity, in contrast, flows more happily with the film's main stream.

the deadly illusion in this case is the illusion that mr. cohen had an ending to the film when he pitched the beginning. and no, neither this title nor its alternate title has anything to do with the story.

Billy Dee Williams plays Hamberger, the rogue private detective who gets the girl(s) and solves the case. You really don't need to know more, as this is the entire movie! Morgan Fairchild is still beautiful, even with the 80's big hair look. The plot line had initial promise - Hamberger is approached by an unknown person to kill that persons wife. This person and the wife both turn out to be other than advertised, but there the story started to lose my interest. Gratuitous sex and violence have always been par for the course in Hollywood of course. Here, the obvious intent to sell tickets with this fare, as well as - admittedly - one of the hottest actresses of the time, soured me.

Those of you who remember Morgan Fairchild in "Paper Dolls" as "Racine" will note how similar she is in this role. She's a beautiful model agency owner. Imagine that? What a stretch. She looks lovely behind the desk contemplating sexy bad girl deeds while tapping her glamour length nails on the fancy desk. It's been done before, many times. Vanity plays, lets face it, herself. She walks about in dazzling hot outfits, she looks beautiful, she's sassy in her double-entendre way. Unfortunately, those things aren't enough to invest a movie's worth of time to watch this stinker. I saw this movie at the Mann Chinese theatre in Hollywood. Even so, the theatre's historic aura wasn't enough to keep me happy to be there. I wanted to leave, but I stayed, hoping for something original to happen. I waited, and waited... There is no Vanity song performance in this movie, sadly. There is an illusion referred to in this movie, thus the title. I wasn't deceived, and I wasn't surprised. I remember the luster of Morgan Fairchild's image during the 80's. If you are a die hard Vanity or Morgan Fairchild fan, rent the movie to say you have. If not, don't bother with DUD-ly Illusion.

My review was written in October 1987 after a Midtown Manhattan screening.

"Deadly Illusion", formerly titled "Love You to Death", is a very entertaining tongue-in-cheek homage to film noir, spotlighting a charming, funny performance by lead Billy Dee Wiliams; Absence of exploitation values and a poverty row budget puts this effort at a disadvantage in today's action film market, however.

Writer-director Larry Cohen (he began helming this film but producers chose Willaim Tannen of "Flashpoint" to complete the direction) successfuly paid homage to the Edward G. Robinson style of gangster pic with his Fred Williamson-starrer "Black Caesar", and here harkens back to the lovable scoundrel personified (pre-"The Thin Man") by William Powell. Williams plays Hamberger, a detective with no license whose habit of causing accidental deaths is a career detriment (pic's body count is very high and a source of black humor).

He's hired by Dennis Hallahan to kill his wife. Williams accepts the $25,000 retainer, but goes to warn the wife, played by Morgan Fairchild in a black wig. She beds him and splits, but all hell breaks loose when the real wife is found murdered and Hallahan turns out to be an imposter (John Beck plays the real husband). While playing cat and mouse with his old buddy cop Joe Cortese, Williams finally tracks down a drugrunning ring set in the world of models, led by Fairchild (in her familiar blonde persona).

With very clever dialog by Cohen (including a throwaway line that predicts a stock market crash, not bad for a film shot last December), Williams excels at shtick mocking his pretty boy image. One funny scene has him crashing a fashion show and enjoying the fact that he's mistaken for Reggie Jackson. As his girlfriend, Vanity provides the requisite beauty and her acting is becoming more natural tan in her previous films, while Fairchild is delicious as the baddie with many a double entendre. Joe Spinell has a cute bit whipping out a gun and taking a hostage when the firearms license bureu won't honor his request for a permit.

Using hidden camera techniques and other evidence of guerrilla filmmaking, pic gives the ilusion of some scale, but too many scenes are static talkathons, reminiscent of quota quickies. It's the dialog and performances that carry the picture.

Lackluster thriller that fails to deliver on its promising premise. The film follows private detective Billy Dee Williams as he becomes embroiled in a complex web of murder and deception.

Despite a talented cast, including Morgan Fairchild and Vanity, the film's acting is subpar. The dialogue is clunky, and the characters' motivations are unclear. The plot twists and turns, but the surprises are predictable and lack impact.

One of the major problems with "Deadly Illusion" is its poor pacing. The film drags on for long stretches, with too much repetition and not enough tension. The action scenes are few and far between, and when they do arrive, they're poorly choreographed and lack excitement.

The film's attempts at style and glamour fall flat, with too much emphasis on Vanity's looks and not enough on her acting abilities. Morgan Fairchild fares slightly better, but her character is underdeveloped and lacks depth.

Overall, "Deadly Illusion" is a disappointing thriller that fails to deliver on its promise. With poor acting, a lackluster plot, and too much repetition, it's a film that's easily skippable.