DEAD ON brazenly imitates Alfred Hitchcock's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, then has the nerve to call attention to the theft in its dialogue. Changing the sex of one of the principals, this erotic thriller uses its inspiration as a peg on which to hang revenge and cuckoldry plot formulations that
seem positively prehistoric. (The distaff revamp, ACCIDENTAL MEETING, is a much craftier jog through Hitchcock territory.)
Womanizing, high-living airline pilot Ted Beaumont (Matt McCoy) is taken aback when his wife Marla (Tracy Scoggins) threatens to rescind their pre-nuptial agreement. As owner of his airline, she could sentence Ted to a milk run in the Antarctic. While drowning his sorrows at an airline lounge,
Ted meets the pick-up: sleek, red-hot Erin (Shari Shattuck), the melancholy wife of brutal Dex Davenport, a filthy-rich industrialist. To his dismay (if not outright shock), Ted learns that the cost of continuing his erotic dalliance is participation in a twisted scheme to exchange spousal
murders. When Marla fails to show at a party attended by Erin, Ted jumps to the conclusion that his temptress has already consummated her end of the bargain. Ted reports Marla's disappearance to the police, establishes an alibi, and painstakingly plots Dex's demise. He stows away on board
Davenport's private jet, beats him on the head with a shovel, and temporarily takes the wheel of the plane. Davenport proves horribly tough to subdue, but Ted finally parachutes to safety and lets badly beaten Dex and his out-of-control aircraft crash without leaving clues. Before he can collect
his buxom blonde door prize, Ted discovers that Marla is alive, Erin is cagily framing him for Dex's murder, and the two women are in cahoots in a husband-elimination scheme. Released from jail on a technicality, Ted goes and beats Marla to death with a hammer before the investigating detectives
arrive. A coda states that while Ted got sent up the river, Erin jumped bail and is still at large.
Predictable from beginning to end, DEAD ON is a spineless erotic suspense film that will leave soft-core enthusiasts less frustrated than mystery buffs, who will quickly deduce that Ted is no match for two femmes fatales. DEAD ON is sleekly photographed, but the characters are two-dimensional
and the dialogue flat and cliched. With its half hearted employment of plot gimmicks lifted from better films, DEAD ON is mobile calendar art with a murder mystery motif. The hard bodies roll around on the bed; the plot just lies there. (Graphic violence, extensive nudity, extreme profanity.) leave a comment
