Mind Twister (1993) User Reviews (5)

SINS OF DESIRE sins again

[rduchmann · 5/10 · 8 June 2000]

Fred Olen Ray production is a remake, not quite scene for scene, of his own SINS OF DESIRE, filmed just a couple of years earlier and starring Tanya Roberts. In the new version, buxom Suzanne Slater investigates the mysterious murder of her sister, which the police are unable to solve. Ultimately, sex is a major tool in her detective work. Denouement is the same as in the original.

Telly Savalas plays his final role here as the cop on the case; it's no Kojak. Maria Ford, uncharacteristically, is not called upon to strip but I'm always happy to see her in any capacity. On the detection trail Slater meets a quack shrink, with whom her sister had connection, as well as his nympho wife. Dinner with the couple leads to the film's set piece. "Have you ever made love with another woman?" the doctor wonders. "Just at slumber parties, when I was younger," Slater confesses, "but lately I've been thinking about it." (I was thinking about it too, by that point. Great godamighty!) Slater thereon gets her breasts smeared with day-glo paint and she and the doctor's wife slither around on a bed in hooker underwear lapping one another's nipples for quite a while. Wow. Tanya Roberts' similar scene with Delia Shephard in the original was not nearly as salacious. (Original included a bit more full frontal but not so much lewd simulation.)

If you saw the original, it's basically the bare bodies that are different in the remake, mostly those of Slater and Erika Nann, as Mrs Shrink. (These are breasts better than the kind God makes.) There is a brief appearance by a Rottweiler, for admirers of this noble schwäbisch breed (Hi, Jack!). Tech credits are OK, performances tolerable for the genre, and there are no surprises pleasant or unpleasant.

Fred Olen Ray's directorial career has run a wide gamut, from crude horror (SCALPS) to better horror (THE TOMB), shoot-em-ups both silly and not so bad (BULLETPROOF, CYCLONE), post-apocalyptic action (WARLORDS), erotic thrillers (INNER SANCTUM, SINS OF DESIRE), wacky horror comedy (HOLLYWOOD CHAINSAW HOOKERS, BEVERLY HILLS VAMP), R-rated silicone shows (ATTACK OF THE 50-FOOT CENTERFOLD), G-rated kid stuff (LITTLE MISS MAGIC), and even a fairly decent B-western (THE SHOOTER). This isn't counting some aliases I did not realize were his until I read his IMDB listing and learned I had seen even more Ray films than I thought I had.

Ray's overall achievement is fairly high, considering the budgets with which he usually works. Some of his films are bottom-of-the-barrel stuff that even a marginal video distrib might have second thoughts about releasing, and some are downright wonders of Poverty Row. His output has been quite eclectic, though I'm not aware of any ventures into hardcore porn, and he is probably the closest living equivalent to a B-pic legend such as Edward L Cahn, who tackled almost every genre of the 30s, 40s, and 50s and who occasionally hit an honest double, if never quite a four-bagger. Thumbs up, Fred! What do you have coming out this week?

Standard issue erotic thriller

[capkronos · 4/10 · 3 November 2014]

A naked woman with a ball gag in her mouth is found beaten to death in an abandoned building. Lt. Richard Howland (a slumming Telly Savalas in one of his final roles) and a couple of detectives (Angel Ashley, Richard Roundtree) are on the case. Meanwhile, a well-endowed blonde named Heather (Suzanne Slater) shows up at the office of handsome psychiatrist Daniel Strahten (Gary Hudson) complaining of long blackout periods where she can't remember what she's done for hours at a time. All of that turns out to be a ruse however as Heather is actually there investigating the death of her friend, who was one of the doctor's patients. Another friend, Melanie (Maria Ford), has even secured a job at the clinic as a secretary to help dig up some dirt. While the shrink was indeed involved, it's not quite in the way the ladies were expecting. Daniel's wife Lisa (Erika Nann) turns out to be a psychotic nymphomaniac who flaunts her trysts in her spouse's face and has a taste for kinky and sometimes lethal sex, which her husband likes to videotape to add to their private collection.

This is a standard direct-to-video erotic mystery thriller that's pretty typical of its time. As one user already pointed out, it has more-or-less the same plot as Jim Wynorski's SINS OF DESIRE (1993). Both were shot in 1992 (though released a year apart), both were written by Mark Thomas McGee and both center around a murderous, affluent couple who prey on vulnerable patients to feed their sick desires. The only real difference is that the couple here have a special S&M chamber they call "The Game Room" inside their own home where they lure the patients instead of working out of a clinic. The room is pretty hilarious and cheap looking. The walls are painted black, there are candles burning everywhere, Gothic statues, chains and even a disco ball (!?) hanging from the ceiling. During the most memorable bit, Heather is lured into the room for "sex therapy," which somehow involves lesbian sex with the doctor's wife and fluorescent body paint. There's are a few other straight sex scenes thrown in as well to fulfill the quota for this type of film.

Surprisingly enough, most of the acting is fine. Hudson and Ford both do their jobs competently enough. Nann is given the showiest role as the murderous sociopath and gets to go over-the-top in scenes where she casually strolls up to someone's front door dressed in a miniskirt and brandishing a switchblade, fist-fights the leading lady, bludgeons a woman to death with a telephone and then pushes her body out the window and rambles on about about how good it made her feel when she "crushed that little idiot's skull." Savalas and Roundtree are wasted in minor roles, given little to do and are clearly just there for name value (and a paycheck). In fact, all of the scenes featuring the cops prove to be utterly pointless since the film mostly just follows the freelance investigation being conducted by the girls. There's not really enough plot for this to ever become all that interesting, but at least some of the dialogue is witty and there's plenty of nudity.

No one's bothered putting this on DVD despite the presence of Savalas. It was released only on video by the company VCI in an unrated edition and has since fallen off the face of the Earth.

Very bad.

[insomniac_rod · 3/10 · 4 January 2007]

I wonder what did Fred Olen Ray say to Telly Savalas in order to convince him to star in this movie.

The great, great Telly Savalas who is an actor that truly marked an era stars in this soft core sex thriller.

To be honest, I tracked this down because I'm a fan of Mexican soft core sex star Erica Nann. She has some decent scenes; the hightlight being in lingerie with another woman in a room at night. Well, you can guess the outcome (very good).

The movie deals with a strange crime and the killer's modus operandi. I can't remember that much, but that this movie is truly boring and does not have anything positive to comment about.

Please, do a favor and avoid it. I'm glad to see that it has somehow vanished from earth.

Bad for an erotica, even worse for a thriller

[jukkapetaja · 7 August 2011]

In Finland TV Viisi shows soft core movies every Saturday night during summer. I've seen a few of them and they have been quite bad. But this one was so bad I'm sorry I even watched it.

The soft core was bad. Only women with plastic boobs were having sex. Not the pretty ones. But when the movie ran out of sex and started to imitate thrillers, that was when it went really south. There was nothing thrilling.

There was a killer who could be invisible in an empty elevator until the victim steps in to it. Then the killer suddenly steps "out from the shadows".

Then there was a heroine who was in a killers home searching for a video film. And when she found it, instead of leaving she started to watch the film. Only to be caught by the killer!

Save your self from the disappointment and avoid this film.

Cut-And-Paste Trite.

[tfrizzell · 2 March 2003]

Sadistic psychiatrist Gary Hudson has murdered an exotic dancer and now her two friends try to figure out the real truth in this sexually-charged dud. Telly Savalas is also along for the ride, in one of his last films, as an old detective trying to figure out the complicated case. Pure late night cable fare that has no heart, mind or soul. Only twisted movie lovers will get anything remotely important out of "Mind Twister". Turkey anyone? Turkey (0 stars out of 5).