This risible, direct-to-video thriller tells the tale of porn video-maker Michael Torrence (Christopher Atkins), a budding psychopath who straps his female victims into chairs and forces them to watch via monitors their own deaths, by strangulation or asphyxiation, as he tapes them.
Michael's latest victims are stripper Sheila (Melanie Goode) and a prostitute (Laura Caulfield), whose murders are investigated by Detectives Lewis (Tim Thomerson) and Barry (Carlos Palomino). Michael's next door neighbor is artist Nola Carlisle (Vali Ashton), who, on the advice of her man-killing
best friend Gabriele (Erika Nann), is about to dump her loutish boyfriend Adam (Mike Jacobs, Jr.). Nola is attracted to the shy, nervous Michael, and the two work together on a promotional video for Nola's art. They wind up in bed together, where the next morning Michael confesses that he
witnessed (and filmed) his mother (Ashley Brooks) killing his father--who was in bed with two floozies--and then herself. Michael, who kills when aroused by his subjects' performances he is taping for the porn market, finds his life changed by Nola, and he cannot murder his next subject, the
stripper Marie (Avalon Anders).
Nola screens Michael's video for her agent Julienne (Sally Champlin), Adam--whom she finally throws out--and Gabriele, who intercepts and attempts to seduce Michael, instead becoming his next victim. Michael announces to the sleazy video distributor Jake (Michael E. Bauer) that he's quitting the
business but accidentally gives him Gabriele's murder tape instead of Marie's stripteaser. While disposing of his videos, Ralph shows up and, pleased by the tape mixup, blackmails Michael into making more "snuff" videos for him. Michael kills him, using his tripod like a baseball bat, but is
interrupted by the grief-stricken Nola, who, horrified, accidentally tunes in to Gabriele's tape. Adam turns up next while Michael is strapping down Nola and is knocked unconscious. Detectives Lewis and Barry arrive next; Michael flees to his rooftop, where he arranges his cameras and jumps to his
death, which the immobile Nola watches on the monitor.
DIE WATCHING's immediate inspiration is PEEPING TOM--in fact, it's a queasy rip-off of Michael Powell's classic film--and a line of dialogue ("He wouldn't hurt a fly") unfortunately recalls PSYCHO as well, but the references to these horror-genre landmarks only highlights the film's ineptitude.
The screenplay by Kenneth J. Hall is weak, sloppily constructed, and features some of the year's worst dialogue, from ersatz Large Question philosophizing ("Why are some chosen to be happy while others suffer?") to ludicrous understatement (Michael observes, "Sex has always been difficult for me")
and tough-guy palaver ("Let's brace this puke!," Detective Lewis declares). Charles Davis's direction is clumsy, and even when he reaches for something "new," like jerking the camera back and forth between speakers as Lewis and Barry interrogate a witness, it doesn't work. The filmmakers at least
understand their market, though lengthy footage of pneumatic strippers performing before their deaths feels unsavory, even in a genre which is, of course, predicated on pandering. The acting varies from rocky to incompetent, although Christopher Atkins (THE BLUE LAGOON, A NIGHT IN HEAVEN) is
adequate, if never sympathetic, as the psycho. Michael E. Bauer looks to be having fun as the scurrilous, cigar-chomping porn merchant (who in one scene has a mother and child looking around his creepy shop). This cheap-looking movie, filmed mostly in Arizona, was executive-produced by a pair of
its actors, leading lady Vali Ashton and Mike Jacobs, Jr., further proving the old Hollywood moguls' dictum that actors should stay in front of the camera. (Violence, extensive nudity, sexual situations, profanity.) leave a comment
