A sort of "I Was a Teenage Postman Who Always Rang Twice," DEEP DOWN brims with pretentious attitude and oddball character studies that shift it from being mere junk to lost cause.
Midwest youth Andy (Chris Young) is adrift in LA as an unemployed musician. He rooms in an apartment complex with Craig (Kristoffer Tabori). From the beginning, Andy is entranced by their neighbor Charlotte (Tanya Roberts), an ex-dancer who's unhappily wed to abusive, alcoholic Gil (George Segal),
a hood so volatile he shoots a pal for talking with his mouth full.
Soon Andy and Charlotte have torrid sex right under Gil's suspicious nose. When Craig, Charlotte's other "secret" lover, tries to frame Andy after running down Gil, even Andy doesn't seem surprised. The conspiracy isn't very well thought out, though, and after Charlotte shoots Craig in turn,
Andy's quick lies to the cops leave her in the clear.
While most erotic thrillers of this sort go for the gauzy glamour of a Playboy pictorial, DEEP DOWN tries an intentionally tawdry kitchen-sink approach, a notch closer to the heart of classic film noir. But it's a small notch, and the script is disappointingly short on plot twists.
Roberts and the other cast members handle their soliloquies credibly, and Segal resists (barely) his tendency for over-the-top caricature. Like many direct-to-video sexploitation titles, DEEP DOWN was released in both an R-rated version and more explicit "Director's Cut," the latter doting on
Andy's flashbacks to bedroom antics with a former girlfriend. (Violence, sexual situations, nudity, substance abuse, profanity.) leave a comment
