The Apartment Complex Reviews

Pressed for tuition, psychology student Stan Wharton (Chad Lowe) accepts a live-in super's job at a dilapidated Hollywood apartment building. The residents include horny psychic Cissy Chenille (Amanda Plummer), retired CIA spook Frank (R. Lee Ermey), and impassioned lovers Alice (Fay Masterson) and Morgan (Patrick Warburton). While cleaning the pool, Stan discovers the body of the previous building manager and becomes the number one suspect of the overworked police. However, the true culprit may lurk behind apartment number nine, the residence of an obsequious tenant named Gary Glumley (Charles Martin Smith). What was this recluse's relationship with the drowned man? Can Cissy, Frank, and Alice find evidence to clear Stan? Will Morgan's jealousy of Alice undermine their efforts? Persistently offbeat, this wacky thriller never blends its mixture of laughter and lunacy into a unified whole. Its progenitor is Roger Corman's BUCKET OF BLOOD, which mined giggles from grotesque behavior. Here, however, the mystery is over-elaborated and the humor seems forced rather than intrinsic to the situations. The standouts in a hard-working cast are Jon Polito as an absentee landlord with an aversion to his own property, and Plummer as a flaky prophetess who finds inspiration for crime-solving in men's bedrooms. A sporadic hoot, it's an off-kilter farce that aspires to wry weirdness.