Lurid rather than provocative, the erotic thriller DESIRE is one of those JAGGED EDGE-convolutions in which a heroine must weigh a man's bedroom virility vs. his homicidal potential. Is he a ladykiller or literally a lady killer? DESIRE can pat itself on its negligee-covered back for one
reason: it juggles suspects skillfully enough to dupe viewers into guessing the killer's identity incorrectly.
LA is plagued by a series of brutal murders in which the female victims are doused with Desire perfume, the best-selling fragrance of Lantel Inc. As security chief for Lantel, ex-cop Lauren Allen (Kate Hodge) crosses paths with her former partner, Nick Palermo (Robert Miranda), while investigating
these killings, which are a public relations nightmare for Lauren's boss, Grace Lantel (Deborah Shelton). Agreeing to go undercover as a moonlighter for the LAPD, Lauren pretends to order a personally designed scent from Grace's former associate, prime murder suspect Gordon Lewis (Martin Kemp),
who's suing Grace over the ownership rights to Desire perfume.
Another possible perpetrator of the murders is delivery boy Kevin (Todd Joseph); his post as messenger for a posh Beverly Hills department store gave him access to the homes of all the victims. Although Palermo's gut instinct points to Gordon, Lauren falls for the debonair perfumer and can't
accept his guilt wholeheartedly, despite damning evidence that leads to his arrest. Late one night, Lauren gets paged to Lantel headquarters, where she's shocked to find Grace murdered. Having meticulously framed Gordon, Grace's ex-lover, Adrienne (Mary Stavin), a saleswoman for the same store
that employed Kevin, confesses to Lauren about her string of jealousy-motivated murders. Before Grace's dumped girlfriend can claim another victim, Lauren blasts her right out the window.
Although DESIRE neatly forestalls cluing us into the killer, the movie's actual barebones detective work is mundanely developed. Nor is the dangerous courtship of Gordon Lewis out of the ordinary. Too much time is wasted on the love-making flourishes of the smooth fragrance-meister, and not enough
on shading this screenplay with psychological explanations for the behavior of the principal players. One gets the nagging feeling that this flick's producers approached their project by doling out portions of sex and violence without caring about how those two crowd-pleasing elements would
intersect and support the storyline. It's hard to say which is less interesting: the standard, heavy-breathing mattress-wrestling; or the police search for fingerprints (which is duller crime-solving than the Barnaby Jones crew at their slowest).(Graphic violence, extreme profanity, extensive
nudity, sexual situations.) leave a comment
