If this film is not in a league with its obvious inspiration, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, at least it is not an inept rip-off like some other straight-to-video titles (witness SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS). This sporadically creepy dip into psychosis concerns an androgynous mute child who holds
the key to a series of mutilation murders of youngsters in New Orleans.
Resented by macho local cops when she's imported to profile their most wanted serial killer, high-strung Audrey Macleah (Ally Walker) plunges into the bizarre homicide case while suppressing her own legacy of childhood abuse. Butting heads with Chief Swaggert (Martin Sheen) over protocol, Audrey
drops by the State Psychiatric Hospital to interview feral child Jordan (Tara Subkoff) who was abandoned at the age of seven after his hands were dismembered and reattached. Gaining Jordan's trust, Audrey also sifts through old police videos that help pinpoint convicted molester Speckett
(Christopher Doyle) as the possible perpetrator. Although Speckett is apprehended, the real lunatic strikes again by nabbing a pre-teen girl.
By the time Audrey breaks into the house of Jordan's father, Dr. Eben (Ron Perlman), she has pieced together an horrific explanation for the unsolved mutilation-slayings. When Jordan's mother died giving birth to his twin sister Jennifer Lynn, his surgeon father went bonkers and tried to keep
alive the spirit of his pianist wife by grafting hands from reluctant child donors onto the deformed extremities of his daughter. Without back-up in the basement of the fortress-like Eben home, Audrey discovers the mad doctor's latest hysterical victim and Jordan's twin Jennifer, who inhabits the
cellar in an incestuous relationship with her father. After the freaked-out captive rushes out, Audrey confronts Dr. Eben. Unable to slip through a window quickly enough, the detective sets fire to the maniac with chemicals and then shoots him. Freed from their dad's malevolence, the twins are
reunited at the psychiatric hospital.
Although the fetching Walker is persuasive as a sensitive professional battling personal demons while stepping over a minefield of male egos, this one-woman manhunt isn't structured with enough clarity nor directed with enough cold, clammy atmosphere to steamroll an audience into accepting a
denouement that literally grafts THE HANDS OF ORLAC onto a police procedural yarn. Nor is this movie's suspense quotient aided by the screenplay's failure to weave in an effective confrontation between Walker and antagonist Sheen.
Instead of catching the audience off-guard, too much time is wasted on Audrey's search for evidence by computer, and too much energy is expended on her therapy/interrogation sessions with Jordan. Riddled with plot flaws, the film is often more stomach-churning than riveting, but Dr. Eben's
basement lovenest/workshop is spooky enough to earn a prominent spot in the same real estate guides featuring the houses from PSYCHO, DERANGED, and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.(Graphic violence, extreme profanity, sexual situations.) leave a comment
