Poison

Here we have another psycho-girl-on-the-rampage movie, this time portrayed by Mandy Schaffer. She is a seventeen-year-old who is fixated on her mother (Rosanna Arquette) and is never happy when a man comes between them. This time the man (Thomas Kretschman) is the brother of Arquette's business partner (Jurgen Prochnow, in a nice change from his usual creepy bad guy roles). Of course, Schaffer is soon bumping off anybody who gets suspicious or just plain gets in her way. There really is nothing new here, but Arquette is watchable in just about anything, and there's nothing wrong with the occasional cheap thrill, of which this movie provides plenty.

This movie is so bad, I knew how it ends right after this little girl killed the first person. Very bad acting very bad plot very bad movie

do yourself a favour and DON'T watch it 1/10

This can't be Mandy Schaffer's last film. Somebody, do something! :-(

Argh.

What little life this one might have had, the directing finished off. Don't blame the cast; they did OK. Even the winemaker's younger brother was pretty well done, and he didn't even get into the movie until halfway through. And please, please put Mandy in some more movies! She's too beautiful to bury her career at such a young age. Ya' breakin' my haht, heah....

Two specific criticisms, in case anyone cares (apparently nobody liked this movie very much). First, the way Traci kept popping up at just the right melodramatic moment, in order to see whatever she was supposed to see, and never got seen in return, was very annoying. Hollywood: please stop giving villains perfect timing luck which runs out exactly when the climax arrives. It's dumb. Write better scripts so you won't have to use that lame plot device any more. If your script isn't good enough to stand up without that, then don't produce it.

Second, Carmen wouldn't have fallen for that fake injury trick that Traci pulled. She already had Traci fingered. More bad writing/directing there.

I could trash this movie further but mercy forbids it. Actually I didn't hate it as much as the others seem to have. It just didn't have much of a reason for being made, unless it was purely a vehicle to show off the lovely Mandy. Oh, and to whoever didn't think she was sexy... the character wasn't very well written, but how can you say she wasn't sexy?!? One or the other of us needs glasses, and I don't think it's me.

MORE MANDY. (Not to be confused with "Moore, Mandy" -- although I'd like to see her again too. ;-)

P.S. Did I mention I hope Mandy makes me more movies? <:-D

A truly, truly dire Canadian-German co-production, the ever-wonderful Rosanna Arquette plays an actress whose teenage daughter redefines the term "problem child" - a few uears prior to the "action" the child murdered her father, and mum took the fall for the offspring. Now she's moved up to the Northwest US to start over, but her child still has a problem in that she's devoted to her mother. So devoted in fact that she kills anyone who might be seen as a threat to their bond.

Unfortunately Mandy Schaeffer (as the daughter) murders more than people - she delivers such a terrible performance that she also wipes out the movie, though the incoherent script, useless direction and appalling music (check out the saxophone the first time she displays her bikini-clad bod) don't help any; we're supposed to find her sexy and scary, but she fails on both counts. Almost completely unalluring and not even bad enough to be amusing (not to mention the fact that Arquette and Schaeffer don't really convince as mother and daughter), all condolences to Miss Arquette and Jurgen Prochnow, both of whom are worthy of far more than this, and both of whom (particularly Rosanna) are the only sane reasons for anyone to sit through this farrago.

One of the production companies is called Quality International Films - not since the three-hour "Love, Lies And Murder" (from Two Short Productions) has there been such a "You must be joking" credit.

Oh man. If you want to give your internal Crow T. Robot a real workout, this is the movie to pop into the ol' VCR. The potential for cut-up lines in this film is just endless.

(Minor spoilers ahead. Hey, do you really care if a film of this quality is "spoiled?") Traci is a girl with a problem. Psychology has developed names for it when a child develops a sexual crush on the opposite-sex parent. But this girl seems to have one for her same-sex one, and I don't think there's a term for that. It might be because her mother Dana is played by Rosanna Arquette, whose cute overbite, neo-flowerchild sexuality and luscious figure makes me forgive her any number of bad movies or unsympathetic characters. Here Dana is not only clueless to her daughter's conduct; she seems to be competing for the gold medal in the Olympic Indulgent Mother competition.

It's possible that Dana misses Traci's murderous streak because truth be told, Traci seems to have the criminal skills of a hamster. It's only because the script dictates so that she manages to pull off any kind of a body count.

A particularly hilarious note in this movie is the character of Carmen, a Mexican maid who is described by Dana as around so long she's like one of the family although she dresses in what the director thought would say, "I just fell off the tomato truck from Guadalajara." Carmen is so wise to Traci's scheming, she might also wear a sign saying, "Hey, I'm the Next Victim!" Sure enough, Traci confronts Carmen as Carmen is making her way back from Mass, and bops her with one of those slightly angled lug wrenches that car manufacturers put next to your spare as a bad joke. I rather suspect than in real life those things are as useless as a murder weapon as they are for changing a tire.

In another sequence, Arquette wears a flimsy dress to a vineyard, under cloudy skies, talking to the owner. Cut to her in another flimsy dress under sunny skies, talking to the owner's brother. Then cut to her wearing the first dress, in the first location, under cloudy skies - but it's supposed to be later. You get the picture. We're talking really bad directing.

As for skin, don't expect much, although Traci does own a nice couple of bikinis.

For those looking for a trash wallow, 8. For anybody else, 1/2.