Hannah Sussman | Through the Shattered Lens

A group of college students all live in a California apartment complex that’s owned by Jake Mondello (Gianni Russo), who also owns a restaurant and sponsors a beach volleyball team. From the description that I read of the movie’s plot, I thought there would be a lot more beach volleyball and, from the title, I thought there would be a lot more thrills. Turns out I was wrong on both counts.

It’s pretty obvious that this was a pilot for a tv show that was inspired by Melrose Place. A lot of characters are introduced and they’re all shallow but pretty. Just like with Melrose Place, everyone has a drama and everyone has someone that they like but who they can’t tell about their feelings. Casper Van Dein is the most recognizable person in the cast. He plays a rich boy who likes to play volleyball and who falls for a poor girl. Other characters include Jacqueline Collen as a former volleyball star who is going back to college and who is being stalked by her ex (Jack Scalia), Catherine Lazo as the med student who loses her scholarship, and Ria Pavia as an abrasive science student who falls in love with her new roommate (Mushond Lee), even though he’s gay. Ernie Reyes, Jr. plays Koji, who is a computer nerd who says stuff like, “I just got a new CD-rom game.” He’s so good with computers that the police turn to him to help track phone calls and match finger prints. Denise Richards appears for two seconds and smiles at Casper. Gianni Russo is the worst actor in the movie but everyone loves Jake because Russo also wrote the script.

This was largely plotless and pointless. Casper was nice to look at but I didn’t care about any of the characters. There is a big beach volleyball game at the end but it only lasts for a few minutes and it was impossible to tell who was winning. One important character is taken out by a kill shot but no one notices. Watching the movie made me hate both the beach and volleyball.

11 models have been murdered in Los Angeles and Margo (Kimberly Stevens) fears that she could be next. She’s been receiving threatening notes and feels as if someone is watching her and her boyfriend, Bill (Michael Phenicie). She hires a private detective (Mark Derwin) to protect her but it might be too late because Homer (Corey Feldman), the man who has been sending her the notes, has already enrolled in the same acting class of Margo. After Bill turns up dead, Homer is assigned to be Margo’s new scene partner. Is Homer moving in for the kill or is someone else responsible for the murders?

This mix of erotic thriller and horror was one of those movies that used to show up on a late night Cinemax in the 90s, where it could be watched by teenagers who kept one eye on the screen and one eye looking out for their parents. Corey Feldman starred in a lot of these films and in this one, he gives a twitchy and occasionally funny performance as the nerdy Homer. Homer is the most obvious stalker imaginable and it’s hard to believe that Margo, who is so concerned about being stalked that she’s hired a private detective, would not look at Homer and immediately realize that he was the culprit. Feldman overacts but he at least provides the film with the energy that is missing from the performances of Kimberly Stevens and Mark Derwin. Even better is the performance of Brion James as the autocratic and pretentious acting teacher. Watching him, I got the feeling that James probably could have based his performance on any number of Hollywood acting coaches.