A BRILLIANT DISGUISE is a patently absurd folie a deux film. In most erotic thrillers, the cinematography is the most lurid aspect of the film, but here the outrageous plot developments and a slew of performances of the "inmates have taken over the asylum" variety eclipse it entirely.
While out carousing with the guys, macho sportswriter Andy Minola (Anthony John Denison) falls for a wan-looking English sparrow named Michelle Ramsey (Lysette Anthony), whom he spots in a snooty French restaurant. Michelle, a promising painter, responds to his advances. But she also tells
everything to her psychiatrist, David Martin (Corbin Bernsen), who's overseen every aspect of her life since puberty. The couple's first get-together with buddies Bill (Gregory McKinney), Brian (Nick Vallelonga), and their dates Barbara (Beverly Johnson) and Janet (Elizabeth Nottoli), and Andy's
best pal Jimmy (Robert Shafer) goes badly. In the ladies room, a ribald Michelle kisses Barbara; this causes a rift in Andy's circle of friends. Andy is slow to realize that Michelle suffers from multiple-personality disorder; her alter egos include shy Michelle, baby Michelle, controlling lesbian
Christine, and self-effacing Brandy. When Barbara is stabbed to death in a parking garage, suspicion falls upon Michelle, who brutally murdered her parents when she was 13 years old.
By the time Svengali shrink David meets his maker, Jimmy--who has been researching Michelle's bloody past--is convinced she's guilty. Andy refuses to believe it, even after she attacks him in a dazed state. Jimmy pays the price of amateur sleuthing. He learns that it was madly infatuated Andy
who slaughtered Barbara and David for interfering with his love life, and Andy kills Jimmy as well. Michelle commits suicide; Andy recovers from his injuries and frequents the French eatery in search of a new obsession.
Given the salacious screenplay, A BRILLIANT DISGUISE--a knock-off of the mainstream Bruce Willis-Jane March erotic thriller THE COLOR OF NIGHT--should deliver more guilty fun than it does. This is an indisputably bad movie, featuring ridiculously over-the-top acting and motivations that bear no
resemblance to the behavior of real people. Lysette Anthony's FOUR FACES OF MICHELLE performance recalls a grade-school child trying to win an oratory competition by doing great scenes from SYBIL; Denison's crazed glaring is almost as flagrantly awful. But for Golden Turkey connoisseurs, this tale
that witnesses madness doesn't give the elusive high of such unhinged psycho-classics as THE CARETAKERS (1963), CRIMES OF PASSION (1984), or A WOMAN OBSESSED (1989). (Graphic violence, extreme profanity, extensive nudity, sexual situations.) leave a comment