Weird and meandering, FLESHTONE is a meditation on Art and Sexuality masquerading as a run-of-the-mill erotic thriller. Alternately overblown and minimalist, this arty exercise never comes together, mainly because of the script's reckless disregard for logic and the understated performance
of former pop star and KRAYS lead Martin Kemp.
Emotionally isolated painter Matthew Greco (Martin Kemp) answers a phone ad and begins a long-distance affair with Edna (Lise Cutter) from Kansas City, believing he's found someone who can walk on the kinky side with him. After they exchange nude snapshots and fantasies, Edna requests that
Matthew paint her like the Black Dahlia, the victim in their favorite unsolved murder case. When Margaret Peel, an activist lawyer who exposes top-level government corruption, turns up cut in half in a Santa Monica motel, the Polaroids of Matthew's dismemberment masterpiece come back to haunt him.
Framed for the murder, Matthew ignores the advice of stoic pal Tony (Tim Thomerson) and travels to Kansas City to find his phantom phone lady. At first Edna, whose real name is Claire, is reluctant to explain, but when she discovers a bomb under her car and finds her boyfriend diced in her shower,
Claire becomes more cooperative.
Claire reveals that she was paid to snare Matthew through sex chatter, and that he must have been the choicest patsy her mob-affiliated employers found among the men who rang her. The pair survive a round of gunfire and a car chase before boarding a plane to LA, but Claire is quietly snuffed out
during the flight by a hit lady. Apprehended by the cops, Matthew clears himself by playing a tape of his explicit conversation with Claire about the crime conspiracy. Unfortunately, the maverick artist will have to keep looking over his shoulders because the case is closed but unsolved. Matthew
knows he was set up, but he doesn't know who killed Margaret Peel or why. He must live with that knowledge, and his loneliness.
FLESHTONE is too fussy and aestheticized to score as a make-out movie. Although the erotic elements range from a candlelight dinner (one of Matthew's wish-fulfillments) and a bisexual rendezvous (one of Edna's fantasies), the lovemaking sessions are as chaste as a nudist colony volleyball game.
And the wet-dream sequences are prosaic, not what one would expect from the colorfully warped Matthew. The plot is filled with holes, and it's hard to believe Claire and Matthew could elude professional killers as effectively as they do. (In the tradition of erotic thrillers, Claire and Matthew
take time out for lovemaking that might be better spent purchasing extra handguns or getting out of town more quickly.) (Graphic violence, extensive nudity, extreme profanity, sexual situations.) leave a comment