They're Playing with Fire (1984)

Sadly Over-hyped

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

They're Playing with Fire (1984) * (out of 4)Married college professor Diane Stevens (Sybil Danning) seduces her student Jay (Eric Brown) and then asks him to do a favor for her and her husband Michael (Andrew Prine). Before long the husband's rich mother and grandmother are dead and Jay feels that they set him up.THEY'RE PLAYING FOR FIRE is one of those movies that you should start around one thirty in the morning. You know, just when you're starting to get tired but you want to watch something. This is without question one of the strangest movies I've seen from this era and especially since it really doesn't know what it wants to do. I became aware of the movie thanks to a review by Roger Ebert where he pretty much went off on the picture and it's easy to see why he would.The film starts off like a teen sex comedy where the sexy teachers seduces the boy. We then get a couple really graphic murders and the film turns into a murder mystery. As the movie plays out there's a hooded killer going around killing people in some rather graphic ways so out of nowhere this film turns into a slasher and you'll be surprised at how much blood the film got pass the MPAA. This film really is all over the map in terms of what it's trying to do but those who enjoy horror films will want to count this one as a slasher.The film is pretty darn bad but thankfully it's so weird and bizarre that you can't help but keep watching. Danning appears naked throughout 40% of the movie and that alone makes it worth watching. If you didn't see enough of her in HOWLING II: YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF then you'll be happy to know that there's even more nudity here. Prine is good in his role as the husband but it's always nice seeing him. The real problem with the cast is Brown. He's just not all that interesting. I'm not sure if the director made him give this type of performance or what but it makes for a very shallow and very boring character. Just look at how nervous and awkward he appears to be during the sex scenes!THEY'RE PLAYING WITH FIRE really is a lousy movie but it has enough nudity and enough blood to make it worth viewing.

Eric Brown became famous for about a week and half back in the 80s thanks to an appearance in the Sylvia Kristel comedy Private Lessons, where he plays a student who gets involved with his much older French tutor. Here he plays a student who gets involved with the much older wife of his English professor. Such acting range this kid had! Anyway, the two of them sneak around behind the prof's back for the first third of the movie and then the producers must have realized that there was no plot going on, and so bodies start showing up for no reason and the cops focus on the kid, also for no reason. Seriously, this is one truly brain dead attempt at writing either a murder thriller or an erotic melodrama, but not both, since it never manages to be both at the same time. The performances are just as bad as the script, with Eric Brown looking lost and amateurish, movie veteran Andrew Prine (who plays the prof) looking embarrassed, and Sybil Danning looking once again like a great chest with no acting talent attached, which continued to be true over her long and stinky career. She and Eric have less on-screen chemistry than Greg Evigan had with his chimp co-star in B.J. and the Bear. The whodunnit solution, when it comes, makes much LESS sense than usual for a bad 80s killer thriller, and we grade most of those on a curve already. In addition to crappy dramatics, bad plotting and mind-craggling dialog, the pacing is sluggish, plus the look is cheap and sometimes even grainy. When you find yourself wondering whether the producers were even willing to pay for new film stock or did they buy leftovers, you know you are not in the hands of anybody soon to be named president of the Screen Director's Guild. This is just bad. Not fun bad, not so bad it's funny, just plain old who made this incompetent crap bad. Avoid at all costs.

This film plays like a B-Film Noir from the 1950s coupled with the steamy erotica of the late night cable channels with some Dr. Giggles thrown in the mix. Needless to say, it was entertaining but in a cheesy, not too high-brow kind of way.Sybil Danning plays a sexy college professor married to another professor (Andrew Prine)who stands to inherit a sizable sum of money from his mother once she kicks off. The two espousers decide they can't wait for the dough so Sybil urges her obsessed student Eric Brown to assist them in gaining their inheritance. To persuade the young student, Sybil offers him two famous vices: sex and money.Their plans backfire when mommy proves too much for Eric and chases him off the family estate with a shotgun. As soon as Eric is gone, however, someone else blasts mommy. Eric feels that he is being setup for murder when Prine accuses him of foul deeds, but he can't separate himself from the case due to his attachment to the buxom Miss Danning. The film, which begins as an erotic thriller, then descends into the slasher genre as Eric and Sybil track a masked killer who just might be Sybil's hubby.STORY: $$$ (Nothing special here--just middle-of-the-road. The characterization could have used more work, as well as the overall plot. There are plenty plot devices that just don't make any sense, like their initial plan to have Eric scare mommy by breaking into her house. I mean, you don't read a will for a frightened dame, so what was going on there?) ACTING: $$$ (Nothing special here either. Eric Brown seemed out of place in his scenes with Sybil. Not much of an actor, Eric tries to get by on his grin, but fails miserably. Prine does a fine job as Sybil's odious husband while Miss Danning is in good form as the femme fatale).NUDITY: $$$$$ (This is really the main draw for this film, since it is Sybil at her most obliging. She has a couple shower scenes and three sex scenes. Had there been a better check and balance between the story and Sybil's breast exposure, this could have been a better erotic thriller).

Since her start in the late 1960's, Sybil Danning has been called upon to use her sensuality and statuesque physique to bail out many a "B" movie. No exception here, as the stunning Danning plays a college professor/seductress. The victim is gullible Eric Brown (who's acting abilities resemble those of a 4th grader). The highlight of this movie is the seduction of Brown by Danning in the yacht. Great camerawork and Danning's sensuality in her strip give a scorching rating to a scene that will be relived in the minds of red-blooded males. Her other sex scenes were Brown are equally erotic but that is as good as it gets with this movie. The plot is predictable and the suspense...well...is just not there. A must for all Danning fans though, so you can drool at the sensual charms of this erotic goddess who seems to have saved the face of many an aspiring "B" movie director with her presence.