The Dark Dancer Reviews

This energetic but generic erotic thriller features ubiquitous straight-to-video star Shannon Tweed as an expert on female sexuality. A pair of prologues detail the unhappy childhood of Margaret Simpson. At age seventeen (Amy Lindsay) she seduces her stripper mother's (Lisa Pescia) piggish boyfriend Ramone (Francesco Quinn), then watches her mother stab him repeatedly in revenge. Seventeen years later, Margaret is now Dr. Simpson (Shannon Tweed), a best-selling author and college lecturer on women's sexual issues. She is drawn to her only male student, Ron (Kevin Wickham), who pursues her relentlessly. Her defenses are weakened by her increasingly unsatisfying relationship with Dr. Paul Orenstein (Andrew Prine), who's being unfaithful to her. Meanwhile, fans of "Madame Ecstasy," the mysterious masked stripper at Michael's Plaza club, are winding up murdered, which has Lt. Hancock (Jason Carter) and cohort Kitty (Terri Harrel) stumped. "Ecstasy" is in fact Margaret, doing research for her next book. Orenstein is subsequently murdered, and Hancock, who's slowly been falling for Margaret, decides that Ron is the culprit. Margaret, despite her feelings for the young man, unaccountably betrays him to the police, causing his death. The real slayer turns out to be the badly scarred Ramone, who had been presumed dead. He has tracked Margaret down through her stripper bookings. After killing one of Orenstein's grieving lovers who has come to kill Margaret, Ramone stalks Margaret through her lavish home and grounds. Hancock arrives in time to save her and kills Ramone in a watery dockside fight. After the violence subsides, Hancock makes a date with Margaret as he helps her back to her house. The screenplay, by Bob Burge, who also directed, and co-producer Terry Chambers, is mostly by-the-numbers, and Burge (KEATON'S COP, VASECTOMY: A DELICATE MATTER) works hard to make it work, tirelessly setting up nearly every character as the mystery killer. Evererything rudely collapses, though, in the particularly preposterous denoument. Still, Burge manages some genuine suspense, and while not stretching the confines of the tired but popular direct-to-video erotic-thriller genre, he does add some new wrinkles, including male nudity and the LAURA-like subplot of the detective (nicely played by Jason Carter) falling for the victimized heroine. As the latter, sexy video queen Shannon Tweed (who has coasted through dozens of similar pictures and inane comedies) is more than usually personable, and she's also welcomely turning into a bit of an actress. Her nudity and sex scenes seem a tad downplayed here, but they're still ample enough to satisfy her fans.(Violence, nudity, sexual situations, profanity.)