Lies (1983)

Beautiful, moving film.

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This is a great little thriller from brother directors Jim & Ken Wheat (AFTER MIDNIGHT). Struggling actress Robyn (Ann Dusenberry) answers an open casting call and is shocked when she is immediately offered the part by Jessica (Gail Strickland). Jessica, who is producing a film about a rich heiress who died in a mental ward after seeing her parents killed, wants to start rehearsing right away. Stewart (Bruce Davidison), the dead girl's brother, has other plans and shows up at Robyn's house to tell her that his sister is still alive. He tells her she has been lied to so his Uncle can uses Robyn's video taped rehearsals as grounds to have the girl committed for life in an effort to gain her fortune. Together, the duo of Robyn and Stewart map out a plan to foil this scheme.The previous text comprises only about the first half hour of the film. There are many twists and turns and to ruin them all would be no fun. The Wheats definitely want to live up to their title and, even though a lot happens, it is all logical. At one point a character asks someone why they didn't just kill their target and they actually have a thoughtful answer for it (although this clearly adheres to the "talky villain" code). The film sports an all-star supporting cast including Clu Gulager, Terence Knox, Bert Remsen, and Stacy Keach Sr. Even Dick Miller shows up as a sleazy horror film producer (I believe it was a law in California at the time that he had to be in everything). It is curious as to why the Wheats never did more than this, the anthology AFTER MIDNIGHT and EWOKS: THE BATTLE FOR ENDOR as directors.

Forever under-acclaimed slender, green-eyed, button cute blonde actress Annn Dusenberry, who got terrorized by Bruce the mechanical shark in "Jaws 2," gives a typically animated, engaging and on the money performance as Robyn Wallace, a sweet, struggling, down on her luck actress who's having a tremendously hard time snagging that frustratingly elusive big breakthrough part. Robyn's heretofore rotten luck changes for the better when independent film producer Gail Strickland hires her to play an insane, institutionalized wealthy heiress in a movie. The flick abruptly folds after one day's worth of shooting. Robyn finds out from the wealthy heiress' faithful, despondent husband (marvelously portrayed by the always super Bruce Davison) that the woman she played in the film is still alive (Robyn was told she was dead) and that she has inadvertently become seriously involved in an intricate and diabolical plot to acquire the heiress' considerable inheritance.Cleverly written and sharply directed by the constantly up to snuff Jim and Ken Wheat (the same brotherly film-making duo who later gave us the bang-up horror anthology winner "After Midnight," plus co-wrote the scripts for both the superior slasher item "Silent Scream" and the terrific sci-fi/horror dilly "Pitch-Black"), further enhanced by Robert Erbinger's crisply proficient cinematography, Marc Donahue's effectively spooky'n'shuddery synthesizer score, and a bracingly bravura hanging an in elevator shaft murder set piece, this deliciously convoluted and thoroughly absorbing nerve-rattling corker really makes the grade as a smartly crafted and adroitly executed Hitchcockian suspense thriller. Dusenberry simply shines in an all-too-rare substantial lead, receiving excellent support from Clu Gulager as a sinister, manipulative psychiatrist, Terence Knox as Robyn's earnest, supportive screenwriter boyfriend, Bert Remsen as Robyn's nice, gregarious agent, and the ubiquitous Dick Miller as a sleazeball B-pic producer who fires Robyn on the set of his latest crassly exploitative schlocky zombie fright feature when she refuses to show some skin ("Money honey," Miller growls to Robyn after she asks him why she should disrobe on screen, "T**s sell tickets!"). Compelling, exciting and briskly paced, this enormously entertaining and underrated overlooked little sleeper is well worth seeing and hugely worthy of rediscovery.

Writers Jim and Ken Wheat (PITCH BLACK) made their directorial debut with this back-shelf video palace gem, which registers as a cut above your average, ho-hum TV Movie-of-the-Week.Appealing commercial and sitcom actress Ann Dusenberry (whom movie buffs may recognize as a teen menu entree in JAWS 2), plays, what else? A struggling actress who is invited to audition for the role of a lifetime. She jumps at the part of a doomed heiress who is locked in a struggle to hold on to the last strands of her sanity, before succumbing at last, resulting in her unfortunate suicide. Of course, if you've seen the similar and superior DEAD OF WINTER, you know where this story is headed.Which is not an indictment of this movie by any means. The Wheat Brothers know how to create a suspenseful mood and to present sympathetic characters that we can be afraid for in the movie's more harrowing moments and plot twists, which are plentiful. What's notable about LIES is the opportunities it gives some veteran TV and film performers to cut loose in the kind of archetypal roles a lot of them literally created. Gail Strickland, Clu Gulager, ST.ELSEWHERE'S Terence Knox, Bruce Davison and the late, great Bert Remsen are among a seasoned cast who keep your interest piqued, even when the plot presents a few eyebrow-raising plot points.The truth about LIES is that it's another good (if not great) little movie worthy of hunting down.