Crimetime [1996]

Struggling actor Bobby Mahone [Stephen Baldwin] lands a regular gig on one of those TV reality-crime shows, playing the so-called 'Stocking Murderer', a serial killer who carves out the eyes of his victims. As he gets into the part and starts enjoying his fame, he starts receiving phone calls from Sidney [Pete Postlethwaite], the actual murderer, giving him hints on how to play the part best. When the killings stop, because Sidney has been given a beating by a pick-up, Bobby's career and sanity start to come apart.

Similar in premise to the much subtler I Love a Man in Uniform, this finds George Sluizer returning to the extreme psychosis and elliptical story-telling of his original The Vanishing. But something has gone badly wrong in the script - which has obviously been in development for a while, since British Telecom's 1471 service would ruin the central plot contrivance - and a good cast find themselves floundering somewhere between satire [a ridiculously caricatured set of TV execs led by Dragon Lady Karen Black], slasher movie and psychological horror.

Baldwin and Postlethwaite, reunited after The Usual Suspects, are both creepy - as is Geraldine Chaplin in the tiny role of the murderer's ailing wife, but the script underlines all its points several times too many, and Sadie Frost emerges as the big loser in the trite part of Baldwin's long-suffering girlfriend. There's a lot of interesting stuff here, and patches of gripping filmmaking, but it's a long, slow film which ultimately irritates more than it enlightens.
KIM NEWMAN

First Published In: Q [issue unknown]

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