Night Fire is yet another 90s neo-noir starring Shannon Tweed.
In this one, Tweed plays Lydia. Lydia is a work-obsessed millionaire who is unhappily married to Barry (John Laughlin). Lydia and Barry’s sex life has come to a halt. Lydia wants romance. Barry wants to tie her up in bed and run a knife over her body. Even though they have retreated to an isolated ranch house to try to fix their marriage, Lydia simply cannot bring herself to leave her work behind.
One day, while Barry is attempting to drown Lydia in the hot top, two drifters suddenly show up and claim that they’re having car trouble. Cal (Martin Hewitt) and Gwen (Rochelle Swanson) are wild and uninhibited and everything that Lydia is not. Lydia is uncomfortable with the idea of them staying at the house while Barry just wants to watch the two of them have sex. Eventually, the expected mate swapping does occur but there’s a twist. Barry hired Cal and Gwen to show up at the ranch and help him turn on his wife. But it turns out that Barry has another, more sinister motive for wanting Cal and Gwen to spend the weekend.
Night Fire is typical of the type of films that used to show up on late night Cinemax. The plot is mostly just an excuse to get everyone naked and most viewers will be able to see the big twist coming from a mile away. From the very first scene, it’s obvious that Barry is not to be trusted.
On the plus side, Night Fire features one of Shannon Tweed’s best performances. Tweed, who has always been a better actress than most critics give her credit for being, gives a smart and believable performance as Lydia. The script often forces Lydia to do things that fly in the face of logic and it seems to take her forever to figure out that there’s something strange going on. Lydia would probably seem unbearably daft if she wasn’t played by Shannon Tweed, who is capable of keeping the audience on her side even when she’s playing a role that, on paper, shouldn’t make any sense. Tweed is smart enough not to play Lydia as being frigid but instead as someone who is just frustrated that her immature husband has invited two complete strangers to spend the weekend with them. Rochelle Swanson and Martin Hewitt are impressive as the two drifters while John Laughlin is sabotaged by dialogue that reveals him to be untrustworthy from the first minute that he shows up.
Night Fire may not be perfect but it should keep fans of 90s-era Shannon Tweed happy.
Billy Colton (Derek Rydall) is a teenager who has a reputation for exaggeration. Lisa Grace (Shannon Tweed) is his next door neighbor, a high-priced prostitute who does not mind if Billy spies on her. When Billy tries to tell everyone about his wild new neighbor, no one believes him. Billy decides to prove his story by grabbing his camera and sneaking next door. Instead of getting proof that she’s a prostitute, Billy witnesses his neighbor being murdered by a robed Satanist, who just happens to be Zachary Willard (Allen Garfield), Billy’s hated science teacher! Billy goes to the police with his camera but Captain Crane (Richard Roundtree) points out that Billy forgot to take off the lens cap.
Howard Hansen (Ted Prior) is a best-selling horror writer who is suffering from writer’s block. With his agent, Murray (Frank Sivero), pressuring him to get something written, Howard decides to seek inspiration in Chinatown. When he steps into a curio shop and sees a grotesque, one-eyed blob floating in a jar of formaldehyde, Howard buys it. He hopes that the blob will give him an idea for a great book but instead, it just causes him to have nightmares and violent sex with his wife, Peggy (Sandahl Bergman).
“In an hour, I promise, you’ll be able to beg in two languages.” — Patricia (Shannon Tweed) in Scorned
Under the direction of their leaders, Oz (Andrew “Dice” Cay) and his second-in-command, Ice (Roddy Piper), a diverse group of terrorists have taken the Miss Galaxy contest hostage. If they don’t receive a ransom of diamonds, they will kill the Miss Galaxy contestants, including the daughter of a powerful senator. What the terrorists didn’t count on was that the show would be hosted by actress and kick boxer Sharon Bell (Shannon Tweed). Now, it’s up to Sharon to sneak through a locked-down hotel, killing the terrorists one-by-one. Her only help comes from a battle-scarred but supportive security officer (Robert Davi) locked outside of the hotel.
Scott Bruin (Jeff Lester) is a high fashion photographer who is haunted by nightmares in which he strangles a naked woman in the swimming pool. His nymphomaniac girlfriend, Lena (Shannon Tweed!), is surprisingly understanding when she wakes up to discover Scott strangling her but Scott is worried that he might be losing his mind. His psychiatrist (David Soul) is not much help. When Scott has a violent vision in the middle of photo shoot, he freaks out. “Hey, are you on drugs?” one of the models asks.
