Thy Neighbor's Wife (2001)

After seeing this movie listed, and then looking at the previous comments here, there was no way I was going to miss it. Everybody knows "Plan 9 from Outer Space," is the worst flick, ever, without a lot of argument. For me, another absolutely, fascinatingly awful one is the opus starring Bruce Jenner and the Village People, "Can't Stop the Music."Now, with this film, you have the perfect trio of absolutely, totally and wonderfully awful films, in three genres: science fiction, musical, and murder/drama.Early-on, I was fascinated how the vengeful lead blew-up the home (one story outside, two stories within, as another already pointed-out). That stove had to have emitted gas fumes, in just a few seconds, at a rate which had to revise at least a half-dozen basic laws of physics. And the explosion created upon the target's flipping a light switch was greater than the one Jack Hawkins, Bill Holden, and their crew of experts, spent all night arranging, with about a ton of ordnance, in blowing the bridge on the River Kwai.On to the bloodless stabbing, the placing the corpse in the freezer, replacing the frozen foods (all while the daughter operated the garage door opener) ---- and on, and on, and on.My only disagreement with some of the folks on this site is that -- like the fore-mentioned other two flicks -- this one is also SO AWFUL that it DOES rate moving the dial in reverse from "O" and back to a "10"!!------------------------------ Having entered the above comment April/07 -- I happened to notice this film being run again today (12/26/07) -- and couldn't miss the opportunity to view this bizarre story once more.In accordance with this site's policy, from here this would have to be considered in the **SPOILER** category -- although I don't think this flick evokes a feeling of suspense on anything near a Hitchcock level.What did intrigue me anew, and a point I can't imagine missing commenting upon previously, is some detail of the ending. When the mostly clueless husband, now widowed, looks through the box with the effects from his late spouse's office, he encounters the photo of the femme fatale with her husband; a quick call to her assistant reveals he was wife's predecessor, had committed suicide, and his wife had run amok in the office following. This guy was so low-key in performing this role, we can only guess this now provided him some clue as to recent household events. However, the villainess heard his call to the assistant on an extension (naturally!), and a few moments later, attacks him in the garage. The two of them move, in combat, outside into the rain by the family swimming pool. They duel -- like, say Jackie Chan taking-on Chuck Norris -- utilizing , NO KIDDING, a tire iron and fireplace poker, respectively. Each strikes successful blows, but there is later no real residual injury indicated on either.She is hurdled into the swimming pool, and appears to sink. He immediately dials 911 to report the incident. In the next scene, reference is made in dialog with the detective in-charge about the housekeeper's demise. This all could not have been more than a half-hour (in Beverly Hills!) since his call, probably less. The detective says something relating to the time span since she fell dead into the pool. Hubby/widower does indicate he had perhaps blacked-out for a bit, obviously indicating he could be 15 minutes off in his reckoning.Next, the cover is removed from the corpse at the pool's edge, revealing the prior domestic, slain and placed in the freezer by the current one weeks prior.The flick concludes with the villainess now driving happily on a highway to who-knows-where, hearing on the radio of the husband's arrest (he's identified as a prominent attorney, for Pete's sake!) and now also under suspicion for his wife's reason demise.Such silliness is wonderfully consistent with the rest of this offering. This anti-heroine deserves a sequel. And it should begin by showing a flashback, showing how, in a maximum of, say, 15 minutes she: extricated herself, drenched, from the pool (without husband/widower seeing her); then extricated the frozen corpse from the freezer and deposited it into the pool (again, without being seen/heard); and finally, got-the-hell out of there before the cops arrive - remember, this is Beverly Hills, far removed from any public transportation; got herself and her wardrobe together, obtained a nice vehicle, and managed to get onto the highway, all apparently by the next day or so. Thousands of films have produced many, many unbelievable occurrences. This climax could well be the most wonderfully outrageous of all-time.

Yes, you heard me right. This film is very highly overrated, and given that it enjoys a 3.7 rating at the time of this writing, that should tell you all that you need to know about it. Maybe it is the gratuitous display of enlarged breasts that caused no less than seven people to give it a ten out of ten. It certainly cannot be the dialogue, which is about as stilted as one can get. Nor could it possibly be the acting, as the cast here make the Days Of Our Lives or Home And Away alumni look good.Then there's the plot devices. Any film that uses diabetes as a plot device, especially to attempt the murder of a character, automatically gets a thumbs-down from me. Having lived with the condition for seventeen years now, I can tell anyone who hasn't seen an example of it that it takes a lot more than our antagonist does to use someone's diabetes to kill them. It becomes quite clear from the prop syringes used in this film, as well as the fact that the diabetic stereotype (one cannot call these things characters) never checks what her blood glucose level is, that makes it clear the writers here did exactly no research into the condition. Oh, and before I forget, replacing the contents of a 10ml bottle of insulin with saline using a .5ml syringe cannot be done in a matter of minutes, or even an hour. That's one for the goof list.I had to add this, but I have no trouble believing that nobody in the past twenty years, under the age of fifty, has died from diabetes. Gloria Foster was sixty-eight when she died, and even then, I doubt that her diabetes was the sole factor. It would take a deliberate effort on the victim's part, and one that could not possibly be sustained in light of the incredibly painful symptoms of hyperglycaemia (a word I am sure the writer here has never heard).One will also note that while this character's synthetic insulin is replaced with saline, and her food spiked (both of which would be impossible to do without escaping notice), she still moves like a gymnast. When one's blood sugar is as high as is implied in one scene, it doesn't just make one feel heated. It makes one feel as if their bones have been hollowed out and filled with ground-up glass. This, and a few blood glucose tests, would invoke a visit to the hospital, which would absolutely defeat the purpose of this scheme.About an hour into the film, we all drop pretensions and wind up with what is essentially a porn film without the money shot. The horrible background music makes it abundantly clear that the distributor who picked this turgid effort up is also responsible for such stinkers as All The Rage or 2001: A Space Travesty as well as such soft porn crap as Illicit Dreams 2. In short, this is an effort from a porn producer who wants to look vaguely respectable.In my parlance, a rating of two out of ten is a damning score. This is mainly because it indicates a film that is not bad enough to be good in a reversed sort of way, but rather just plain bad. It is not as offensively awful as some of the stinkers I have rated here, but it is not that far off.

I could comment on the famously fakey shower-stabbing scene. I could comment on the fact that the film seems to be rooting for a woman who spends most of the film plotting the destruction of an innocent if slightly dysfunctional family. Instead I'll comment on the ending, because it's one of those endings that stick in your mind BECAUSE THEY DON'T ADD UP. Apply five minutes of deduction to the ending and it falls apart.STOP READING IF YOU PLAN ON SEEING THIS FILM.I'm going to try to be circumspect about this and hope I don't spoil it too much -- but if you have already seen this film, you know that eventually the police get involved, and that Person A is arrested. If you've seen the film, you may remember that someone has died before this and that the personal effects of that person are brought to the house. Mixed in with the personal effects are some things that belonged to the spouse of Person B, the person causing all the mayhem. One of these items was a framed photograph of Person B and the spouse. Think for a moment and you'll realize that Person B, after several days, has planted fingerprints all over the house. Recall also that Person A was told, not long after discovering the photograph, that (1) Person A's spouse replaced Person B's spouse at work, and (2) Person B's spouse had died, and (3) both events happened not long before Person B got involved in Person A's life.***HERE IS THE SPOILER:*** Person A is framed. The film tries to leave us with the impression that Person A is in massive legal trouble, while Person B drives off into the sunset smiling serenely -- that Person B has won. But wait a minute!What about all the forensic evidence that Person B would have left around? How much time could Person B have spent cleaning all of it up? Ask yourself if Person B would have known about the photograph showing Person B's face. Recall that Person B showed up at the place where Person A's spouse works and made a huge scene, so that at least two people who work there would definitely remember seeing and hearing Person B (along with however many people there would have been who weren't on camera but who were presumably working in cubicles and offices nearby).Ask yourself whether it's really Person A or Person B who's going to be facing legal trouble, when all Person A has to do is explain the events of the past few weeks and SHOW THE COPS THAT DAMNED PHOTOGRAPH. Ask yourself how long it would really take, if the cops had any competence at all, before the cops got curious about Person B.I realize this is just a cheap erotic thriller and you're not supposed to take it seriously, but still...

The other reviews are quite on-the-money, so I won't go over the same material, other than to state that this movie has to be one of the clumsiest movies I've ever seen.Things that ought to have been simple to get right, but obviously weren't:1) The astonishingly well-endowed housekeeper undresses and gets in the shower. Ann (Kari) sneaks into the house, grabs a VERY large kitchen knife, and proceeds to stab the housekeeper to death with blow after blow with the knife. There is NO blood being spattered. She then wraps the body in a white sheet, and is carrying it through the house. Still no blood. At ALL. With the number of times the housekeeper was stabbed, you'd think she'd be draining like a sieve. But apparently she clots REALLY well.2) Ann manages to empty a full freezer of its contents, put the body in, and refill the freezer, all in the space of about 30 seconds while the daughter is trying to open the garage door. Although the freezer was full when opened, adding an adult womans body and then piling everything on top doesn't seem to add any mass to the freezer.3) Ann sneaks into her husbands bosses house, turns on the gas, and sets a light to spark when the switch is turned on. The boss is upstairs, but comes down. Comes down a very large staircase. When he turns on the light, the house is shown (exploding) from the outside. The house is clearly one story.4) Numerous interior shots of the families house also shows it to be two story. Numerous exterior shots of the house show it to be one story. Apparently it is MUCH larger on the inside than the outside.5) How many times can a person REALLY get hit full-force with a heavy piece of steel and not be killed? Apparently a LOT of times, because both the husband and Ann repeately give each other good solid blows with both a crowbar and a tire iron. Neither one ends up in the hospital. The husband DOES get a minor cut on his forehead, though.One wonders if the director or producers even watched this movie prior to releasing it.