Cover Story Reviews

Execrably scripted and turgidly directed, this direct-to-video thriller is an audience cheat that rips off VERTIGO, LAURA and others while leering over softcore beddings and contempo-music sequences. Grieving over his wife's suicide, alleged writer Matt (William Wallace) pours his heart out to an ostensible therapist (Robert Forster). Starting over in a rather funky neighborhood, Matt inherits the apartment of departed club habituee Reen (Tuesday Knight). On the prowl for drugs she pilfered, assorted thugs invade Matt's flat. Prying into Reen's involvement in the criminal underworld of gay gangster narcotics-smugglers, Matt grows enamored with notions of Reen's ballsy bravado, to the chagrin of mousy neighbor Tracy (Knight again) who moons over him. Tracy really is rip-off artist Reen, now disguised and planning to cash in on stolen stash. Matt endures even testicle-crushing torture to protect her interests, but unbeknownst to the belladonna babe, Matt is a DEA agent who's tipped off the cops. As the police bust Reen's big score, she fires a clip into Matt before dying in a hail of bullets. Recovered, Matt still reveres the memory of his bitch goddess. Even if one forgives the cheap trick duping viewers into believing Matt is a distraught mourner pouring out his heart to a shrink instead of his DEA boss, the film's list of other offenses would cover volumes. Ludicrously transplanting a Madonna Ciccone figure into the glamorous niche once reserved for Kim Novak in VERTIGO, COVER STORY stomps credibility in stiletto heels, giving Reen's vendetta against the male underworld hierarchy mythic stature. Reen is a punk Phyllis Dietrichson in a steel-tipped bra or a slamdancing Cora Smith wearing a nose ring. Unfortunately, the dubiously-monikered Tuesday Knight has even less oomph than the average music-video vamp, and she's not alone in the thespian mud-wrestling that passes for acting. Every scene runs too long. Each anti-climax seems to have a false bottom. The movie further fouls up by replacing effeminate gay character traits with nouveau S&M stereotypes a la Friedkin's CRUISING. With its Neanderthal dialogue, awkward flashbacks, and eyesore of a sex object, COVER STORY deserves nothing but contempt. (Graphic violence, extreme profanity, extensive nudity, sexual situations, substance abuse.)