The Lipstick Camera Reviews

This direct-to-video release about an aspiring photojournalist who finds herself involved in a deadly mystery strains credulity to the point of silliness. Young and pretty Omy Clark (Ele Keats) wants to be a news video-journalist like her idol Flynn Dailey (Brian Wimmer). One day, she approaches him about becoming his assistant, but he rebuffs her. When a beautiful woman (Sandahl Bergman) hires Dailey to shoot a secret sex video of her and her husband, the undaunted Clark tags along, offering her services gratis. In the woman's bedroom, Clark hides a lipstick camera--a tiny, remote camera the size of a lipstick. Clark has borrowed the camera from her friend Joule Iverson (Corey Feldman), a video freak and computer expert who secretly loves Clark. The next day, when Clark and Iverson go to retrieve the expensive camera, they're met by Raymond Miller (Terry O'Quinn), who claims he has no wife and sends them away. Iverson believes that Miller is actually a former member of the East German secret police who must have murdered his wife. That night, Clark goes to Dailey and tells him the story; after they have sex, the two set off to get the tape of the murder from Miller's bedroom. Once inside the house, Clark finds Iverson there on the same mission. Miller shows up and catches them in the act. Clark gets the film and escapes, but Iverson is killed. Then the police and media swarm over the house, allowing Miller to get away. On the following day, when the police come to Dailey's studio to get the tape, he tells them that the camera malfunctioned and the tape is blank. Clark is suspicious and steals the tape. Upon viewing it, she sees that it was Dailey who murdered Mrs. Miller--during sex. That night, she confronts her lover and mentor with the truth, videotapes his confession, and delivers him to the police. The publicity brings job offers pouring in. Although THE LIPSTICK CAMERA has obvious pretensions to the insights of SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE, depicting the kind of post-modern personalities who can only experience reality through the camera lens, it ultimately has no clear point. The script tries to paper over huge holes in the plot by giving everyone intriguing secret pasts, but this only heightens the preposterousness of the story line. Director Bonifer gives the film a stylish look, while Wimmer (LATE FOR DINNER) and relative newcomer Keats are talented, and deserve to be featured in better material. Direct-to-video mainstay Feldman is as irritating as ever, especially in the scene of his (welcome) death, when he just won't shut up. Viewers drawn to THE LIPSTICK CAMERA by the videocassette box, which promises libidinous thrills, will be disappointed by the few flashes of skin that the movie delivers. (Violence, nudity, sexual situations, profanity.)