Intermittently suspenseful and genuinely unsettling, DESPERATE MOTIVE is an exercise in sadistic enterprise that will leave you cancelling your plans for upcoming family reunions. With a more scrupulous avoidance of improbabilities this might have been a bone-chilling classic instead of
just a remarkably nasty psycho-thriller.
Too busy for his wife and child, and too trusting for his own good, advertising executive Richard Sullivan (William Katt) welcomes the unannounced visit of his cousin Harry (David Keith) whom he hasn't seen since childhood. Accompanying smooth-talking Harry is Connie (Marg Helgenberger), his
pill-popping fiancee, who develops an unnatural obsession with Richard's precocious son Alex (Brian Bonsall) and who browbeats Harry about finding her the perfect home. Methodically, Harry and Connie insinuate themselves into the Sullivan family: they undermine the Sullivans' parental authority,
rifle through their computer for personal information, and secretly usurp their relatives' identities. The Sullivans have the perfect life Cousin Harry and his jittery bride-to-be have been searching for. Since they've already murdered Mr. Drummond (Tom Bentley), the owner of a mobile home just to
acquire some wheels, Harry and Connie easily victimize the Sullivans.
After Richard's wife Kate (Mel Harris) grows suspicious and contacts her pharmacist (John O'Leary) who's already tangled with the crazed duo over a phony prescription, Harry and Connie inject the druggist with a fatal dose of potassium. The take-over scheme kicks into high gear after Kate finds
Mr. Drummond's wallet in Harry's duffel bag and Richard learns that someone has been job-hunting in his name. Tying up Kate in the cellar and throwing Richard into the hold of his boat, the pitiless identity-thieves play Mom and Dad to Alex. While Harry later forces Kate to travel with him to
close out her joint accounts, the unbalanced Connie stabs Kate's concerned friend Marcie (Mary Crosby) when she noses around the house. Then she ties Alex to his bed when he starts asking too many questions. Managing to break free when they return from the bank, Kate attacks Harry with a poker and
frees Alex who runs for help. Wriggling out of his ropes, Richard smacks Harry with a shovel. In the meantime, when Connie tries incinerating Kate with an acetylene torch, Kate knocks over a shelf unit that causes Connie to catch fire. By the time the cops arrive, the Sullivans have reclaimed
their lives.
Because DESPERATE MOTIVE revolves around two of the most despicable white trash loonies ever to hit the screen, it's more unnerving than one would ever expect. Unfortunately, it's marred by exasperating credibility lapses since the character of Richard is so patently gullible. As his unthinking
hospitality jeopardizes his family, the viewer loses patience with him. The film also fails to capitalize on the intriguing juxtaposition of the blue collar, have-not killers and their enviably well-off relatives. As played for black comedy in a horror film like THE HILLS HAVE EYES, this kith and
kin parallel enriches a thriller's capacity to force us to question our own value system. When you ask an audience to swallow a premise as wild as this one, the script's logic must be unassailable. Here, too many questions pop up; we grow irritated by the Sullivans' inability to figure out what's
going on. Still, the movie's ace-in-the hole is that scary portrait of the cuckoo couple whose goals are made comprehensible through the sterling work of Keith and Helgenberger; if the other characters were delineated with as much depth, DESPERATE MOTIVE might have been devastating. Although this
film is riddled with plot-holes and hampered by a wishy-washy protagonist, its villains are first-rate predators whose cool drive to steal their benefactors' identities grips us no matter how scattered the film's screenplay becomes. A flawed but shuddery look at the downside of Good Samaritanism.
(Violence, profanity, substance abuse.) leave a comment
