J360 Productions

Hello J360 Legion!

It’s J and when I’m not running J360 Productions, I’m often watching movies (especially bad ones!). If you like neo-noir/erotic thrillers like Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, Hand that Rocks the cradle, and Disclosure. Well this one wanted to join the same club and it missed the mark in various places due to horrible characterization, a slow uneven plot, and things that make you go “huh?”

Today’s lackluster stallion is called

Production Info located here and pictures use is courtesy of IMDB.com

Mortal Passions is a story about a man named Todd (Zach Gallagan, Billy from Gremlins) who inherits a mansion from his dead father and resides there to fix it up to live with his wife, Emily (Krista Errickson). Problem is his wife is an arrogant, snobby, whiny, nymphomaniac who pretty much does the opposite of what Sharon Stone does remarkably in Basic Instinct.

She has the original idea of killing off Todd so that she can collect the insurance money, apparently Todd is worth more dead than alive and by his acting you’d probably wished he was bumped off. Anyways Todd is going through severe depression due to his father’s death and has to often visit a psychiatrist (Jordan Perry, Villian from Tron) to be convinced that life is worth living. Meanwhile his lovely wife, Emily is scheming and seducing different men to make her plan come together in various laughable ways. A particular lover of hers named Darcy was going to commit the deed and failed miserably by having a few drinks before coming over to do Todd in, causing him to drop the gun (-laugh track-) before Emily found him and the two actors playing the role in this scene try to keep it together but fail… as Emily was corpsing but we’ll skip that part of the review.

After that botched attempt by the devious duo, Todd’s older brother Burke (Some blond guy) comes back into town and plays the role of the family bad ass…Whereas Todd is the good son, Burke would be the one that daddy never hugged. Burke seem to knew what Emily was all about especially with her behavior around Todd and while he was having his hazy depression lapses, Burke was following Emily’s trail. Burke headed to the cocktail bar where she worked, and eventually found where Emily was being intimate with Darcy. Burke & Darcy have that moment in 80s action films where one tries to be more bad-ass then the other but the dialog was so bad I can’t put it in this review. So Burke shot Darcy with his gun and had a bit of perplexed anger, Emily saw this as a moment to seduce and it worked as Burke made “lust” with Emily.

I could’ve turned the channel off but I had to see what happens next.

I was thinking in my head that nothing could be more stupid than this, but I was wrong.

Eventually Burke & Emily hide Darcy’s body, Todd at this point was starting to figure out something was going on and he begins to do something in the plot (Not Much). He finds out that Darcy was his wife’s lover but didn’t know that Darcy is dead. Eventually Todd meets up with a woman who noticed Burke from the bar earlier. She was a friend of Darcy who performs in theater acting and for some reason (probably plot filler) is looking for him. Todd seems better matched for her because in a way she seems to be just as insane as him but after much talk about Darcy’s disappearance, Emily’s strange behavior and Burke’s aggressive methods. The two “slowly” began to put plot pieces together in this movie that are painfully obvious to us as an audience,and I do mean painful.

Todd and the woman managed to dig up Todd’s garden seeing the remains of a body and what appeared to be Darcy down there, leading to a hilarious outbreak of Todd saying “Leave me alone” to the Woman and She runs off screen to nowhere. The next day,Todd spoke with Burke, loosely talking about how Emily & Darcy were trying to kill him. Eventually Todd reveals he knows Burke killed Darcy and Burke replies that he did it for him (blah blah blah).In the end the two brothers were arguing with each other causing a deep rift between them however once Burke learns that Emily wanted to kill Todd as she lied to him too, He prepares to get revenge on her. Meanwhile Todd leaves the mansion and confronts the psychiatrist putting up a very good defensive act at this moment because it is the only good acted scene in this movie.

Back at the estate, Todd reunites with the woman from before who was the only ally to him and she tries to blackmail him about Darcy’s Death while convinces him to tell her to blow off and goes back in the mansion. Meanwhile the psychiatrist confronts Emily to find out the whole truth about Darcy, the foregone fact that she is a nymph,  and why she slept with Burke to stop him from giving her that well delayed whupping she deserved through this whole picture. Once the truth is revealed, the psychiatrist attempts to call the police but is shot death by crazy Emily. You can tell the storyline is weak because at every attempt for karma to get Emily it never happens (character plot armor can be frustrating).