Lisa (1990)

Staci Keanan of 'My Two Dads' and 'Step by Step' stars as the title character, a girl in her early teens. She's a little too eager to grow up, especially since her mother Katherine (Cheryl Ladd), doesn't want her dating for at least another two years. One night, Staci literally runs into older man Richard (D. W. Moffett), and is struck by his good looks. She develops an obsession with Richard that includes following him to see where he works (he runs a restaurant). This escalates to a point where she goes ahead and phones him, and they engage in some seductive calls, with him not knowing that this mystery caller is the young girl whom he's just met. Ultimately, she's playing with fire: we learn early in the movie that Richard is the evil Candle Light Killer who has been offing various unlucky local women.People who love the other works of director Gary Sherman, such as his horror features "Deathline" (a.k.a. "Raw Meat") and "Dead & Buried", and his sleaze drama "Vice Squad", may be caught a little off guard at first with the tamer nature of this film. But in his own words, he basically made this for teenage girls, having also co- written it with Karen Clark. Taking it for what it is, it's watchable enough, with some adequate suspense and a climax that actually doesn't go overboard with violence. Joe Renzettis' music is good, and the lighting by Alex Nepomniaschy is appropriate from scene to scene.Keanans' appealing performance does go a long way towards making this work as well as it does. Moffett is similarly effective - he's charming when he needs to be, and refrains from being an over the top bogeyman, playing the part with some restraint. Ladd is good as the overprotective mom who believes to have the best interests of her daughter at heart; she doesn't want her to make the same mistakes she did as a kid. Tanya Fenmore is engaging as the best friend, and a rather under utilized Jeffrey Tambor gets little to do as the best friends' father.Even if "Lisa" is not really anything special, one could also do a lot worse.Six out of 10.

This film is a prime example of seeing a movie for the first time and liking it, then viewing it again years later and finding it completely ridiculous. I wouldn't put such a strong label as "completely ridiculous" on this film, but it's fairly close descriptor. "Lisa" is the story of a teenager who, with her best friend, basically stalk men that they think are "cute": Keeping scrapbooks of their polaroid snapshots, etc. This tactic finally goes horribly wrong when Lisa inadvertently fixes her attention on a man who ends up being "The Candlelight Killer", a serial killer who is terrorizing the city.As stated earlier, I had seen this movie about 12 years ago and thought it was fairly suspenseful. None of that suspense was apparent to me watching it this time, and unfortunately I can't blame it on knowing what was going to happen because I couldn't remember any of the scenes. The only vaguely interesting element to the film that made the film barely tolerable was the fact that the eventual "victim" was unknowingly stalking the killer - but I think I'm being generous in my assessment. This was basically a straight to video type film that could have been featured on the Lifetime network, and probably has been since it also features the horrible Cheryl Ladd. Unless you have a lot of patience to sit through a film with an unfulfilling ending, I would suggest bypassing this one.--Shelly

This was a beautifully crafted suspense thriller about an overprotected 14-year-old girl named Lisa (played by Staci Keanan) who, in her innocent attempts to have some involvement with the opposite sex, becomes tied up in conversing by phone with a handsome guy, who unknown to her is the crazed serial killer responsible for several murders of young single women in the area where she and her single mom live.Staci Keanan and Cheryl Ladd made a wonderful mother-daughter team. There are many suspenseful moments involving Lisa and the killer, yet the whole time she has no clue just how dangerous this handsome young man she stalks really is. It would make any teen think twice before trying to pick up a handsome stranger. I was thirteen when this film was first released in 1990. "Lisa" sure scared the hell out of me when I first saw it.

I remember when I first saw this film in 1992. I thought the story unfolded in a weird way, and I felt that the candlelight killer took too long to kill his victims; however, this movie contains a number of choice little parts. I especially liked the phone conversations that Stacy Keanan had with the killer. They sounded fun. The ending sparkled. I liked the way that Lisa and her mom kicked the bad guy's boonkey. Please check this film out. It's fun and different.