Doce Assassina

I just watched this one at broadcast.com.

It is an interesting movie, but not a very complete one. Like many low budget movies, the cinematography is poor. Scenes do not flow well, but seem to jump around. At times, things are overdone and at times they are way under done.

The acting is acceptable.

The movie also lacks is a logical plot. Things are not tied together well. Events just happen, without any logical sense.

The opening & ending scenes are quite intriguing, but unfortunately the rest of the movie falls short. It was a good idea, in theory, but it just doesn't deliver. Overall, slightly above average 6/10.

This movie seemed like a ripoff of "Single White Female" but it was made two years earlier. No prizes for guessing who ripped off from whom.

The two women were great. Their characters are likeable even if one of them is the killer.

The director has shown no mercy to the characters as the deaths were unexpected each time. Kudos to the killer's chosen method of disposing the bodies. Once even the police helped in moving the body. That was hilarious.

There is some nudity. Gore is minimal. The tension builds up as what seems like a simple kill becomes complicated and more kills are required. There is no unexpected twist in the end, which itself was unexpected.

I work in a video store, and I must have walked by this video hundreds of times before I noticed it. I almost wish I wouldn't have. The box said it was 'as suspenseful as Single White Female.' In reality it was about as suspenseful as a Bugs Bunny Cartoon. A rating of 4 at the most. The cinematography is poor, the storyline is boring and the acting is certainly no Oscar material. The most horrible part of the entire movie comes each time the main character (I have forgotten her name already) takes a victim. The sound effects are atrocious. The sound of a stabbing knife sounds more like someone slapping a plastic motel pillow. I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone in desire of a decent film.

This movie could easily be pegged as a South African/Canadian rip-off of "Single White Female" except it was made two years BEFORE the Hollywood thriller and the villain is not so much an obsessive stalker as a criminal psychopath along the lines of a female version of the Patricia Highsmith character "Tom Ripley". The rather implausible story involves a naive young woman (Embeth Davitz) moving into an apartment with a mousy roommate (Helene Udy), even though the latter is unemployed and she basically has to support this stranger. Luckily though, she has a good job at a bookstore, a handsome new boyfriend, and she's about to come into a lot of money. . .

Canadian beauty Helene Udy looks about as convincing as a shy, mousy wallflower as Jennifer Jason Leigh does in "Single White Female", and she's certainly not as good of actress as Leigh (but then few actresses are). She has glasses, stringy hair, and overalls, but all she really has to do is wash her hair, ditch her glasses, and take off her overalls (along with everything else) and she has no problem getting her roommate's boyfriend into bed. Still, this is one of Udy's meatier roles. Usually, she was relegated to playing a sexy young thing in dumbass Canuck-sploitation fare like "Pinball Summer", or the occasional bit part in superior Canadian horror flicks like "Pin". Davidtz is easily confused with another more famous statuesque actress of Afrikaner origins, Charlize Theron. She basically plays a rather dimwitted, sexy young thing in THIS movie, but would go on to meatier parts in Robert Altman's "The Gingerbread Man" and the recent indie favorite "Junebug".

The director Percival Ruben was responsible for the early 80's South African slasher/Cameron Mitchell film "The Demon", which is not good, but I think is rather unfairly maligned. This movie is about the same quality--it's not an undiscovered classic, but I'm not asking for my money back either.