Attempting to meld social-issue melodrama with stalk-and-kill thrills, the low-budget DEAD WOMEN IN LINGERIE winds up borrowing the worst from each genre. Strangely, it only really comes alive when it threatens to break stride completely and turn into an out-and-out comedy.
Molly Field (Maura Tierney) designs frilly little nothings for women that are sewn and sold from an LA sweatshop owned by antacid-chugging Bartoli (Jerry Orbach), who almost exclusively employs undocumented Mexican and South American aliens as seamstresses, shippers and models. When the models
start turning up dead wearing her designs, Molly turns to klutzy private eye Nick Marnes (John Romo) to help her bring the killer to justice. The thriller plot keeps getting put on hold to make way for Molly and Nick's developing screwball romance and scenes in which illegal aliens discuss their
problems during Nick's interrogations. That's probably just as well, since the identity of the killer becomes painfully obvious to the viewer long before any of the characters catch on.
Satisfying neither as an exploitation thriller nor as a social drama, DEAD WOMEN IN LINGERIE lacks conviction in the former and development in the latter. The suspense is ham-handed when there is any suspense at all. The plight of illegal aliens is certainly a real and vital issue, but it is only
explored here in the most superficial terms through characters that never grow beyond initial dewy-eyed liberal stereotypes. Within the film, Bartoli is occassionally gruff and short-tempered, but his workers seem no worse exploited than those in the average hamburger franchise.
Further confusion results from director Erica Fox's attempts to clarify her political intentions. The opening title outlines changes in immigration laws that permitted undocumented aliens in the US prior to 1982 to apply for citizenship and, for the first time, allowed the prosecution of
employers knowingly having illegal aliens in their employ. However, this particular issue receives little more than lip service within the film itself. The end title, taking off on yet another tangent, carries a dedication to the director's grandmother, also named Molly, an activist who campaigned
for reforms in garment sweatshops.
The only scenes that come close to paying off are occasional throwaway attempts at comic relief, such as Molly's consenting to a blind date arranged by her mother only to find that she's been set up with none other than "Leave it to Beaver" villain Ken Osmond, as a comically crass yuppie. In the
romance between Nick and Molly, the idea of making him a health-food nut and her a junk-food junkie shows more potential than almost anything else in the film but, like so much else in the film, it never reaches its full potential.
Generally slapdash, inept and amateurish, DEAD WOMEN IN LINGERIE is one straight-to-video B-movie whose obscurity is richly deserved. (Violence, profanity, adult situations, nudity.) leave a comment
