Although CUPID may be the perfect Valentine's Day vid-rental for the romantically disenfranchised, this poisoned box of bonbons lacks the directorial sleekness and sinister screenwriting vision to accomplish its throat-grabbing goals fully. Minimally suspenseful as psychological
thriller, CUPID works best as a damsel-in-distress melodrama about checking the references of all potential dates.
Having fled her dippy boyfriend Richard (Joseph Kell), serious-minded English major Jennifer (Ashley Laurence) settles down in LA with her party animal sister, Susan (Annie Fitzgerald). At her new bookstore job, Jennifer swoons over an attentive, good-looking swain named Eric Rhodes (Zach
Galligan), not realizing that he is a psychotic obsessed with finding the "perfect woman" and who killed his last imperfect lover. While secretly scavenging through Jennifer's belongings at her home, Eric is surprised by the sudden arrival of Susan. He suffocates her and makes it look like she was
killed by her hot-tempered boyfriend.
Eric's courtship of Jennifer is impeded both by Richard, who is digging into Eric's past in an attempt to get Jennifer back, and by his own sister, Dana (Mary Frances Crosby), who wants to continue their long-standing incestuous relationship (a bond sealed when Dana murdered their parents years
before). Eric murders Richard at his house, then takes the body to his motel and makes it look like Richard killed himself. But when Jennifer arrives at Eric's for a Valentine's Day date, she discovers Richard's beeper there, along with a photograph implicating Eric in Susan's murder. Before she
can flee, Eric returns, locks her up, and threatens her with a bow and arrow, while Dana knocks out Detective Thompson (Henry Brown), assigned to investigate Susan's murder, with a champagne bottle. Dana attempts to murder her "rival" Jennifer with Thompson's dropped weapon, but Eric shoots her
with an arrow. Dying, Dana shoots Eric, and Jennifer finishes him off with one of his own arrows.
Despite some directorial grace notes (e.g., subtle dissolves from Eric's idealized perception of events back to reality as it actually unfolds), the relentlessly average CUPID usually falls back on genre conventions and the lazily conventional expression of those formulas. Although it tosses in a
few wicked one-liners, this stalker-saga usually eschews campiness, but its seriousness is too shallow to allow us to get under the clammy skin of the serial killer. Eric remains a cipher. At heart, CUPID is just another horror piece about the risks of holding hands with wavy-haired strangers.
(Graphic violence, extreme profanity.) leave a comment