Jane Street (1996) from Tuna

This is an erotic thriller with a transparent plot. Linda Hoffman has just taken a job in New York with an ad firm, and her boss not only finds her an apartment on Jane Street, but helps her move in. As he is leaving, we learn that he is unhappily married. That only leaves one fact remaining for us to figure out throughout the entire film. We get that last piece of information immediately as Hoffman gets in the tub and sees the ghost of a dead woman, Gabriella Hall, who lived there.

Spoilers

So, let's see. Hall must have been murdered, or she wouldn't be a ghost. The boss is a letch, and seems to move employees into apartments with an eye toward sex. If Hoffman turned him down, the movie would end there. So, he will have his affair with her, she will not do well seeing a married man, and the ghost will continue to make her life miserable until she solves the murder. The boss is the obvious suspect, so it won't be him. There's nobody left but his drunken bitch of a wife. Thus we can predict the entire film from the first two minutes.

End Spoilers

When Hoffman finally quits seeing the boss and takes up with the building handyman, her co-worker (former Playmate Carrie Stevens) takes up with the boss.

The few IMDb comments are evenly divided between straight guys who admit the plot is weak but like the nudity, and gay guys who were really turned off by the entire thing, but most especially seeing Robert Grant (Queer as Folk) play the handyman, requiring him to do a love scene with a woman.

I found it a genre cliché. Three attractive naked women, but a transparent plot, and poor to mediocre acting.

 

DVD INFO

  • bare-bones

NUDITY REPORT

Linda Hoffman - breasts and buns

Carrie Stevens - breasts and buns

Gabriella Hall - full frontal

The Critics Vote ...

  • No major reviews online

The People Vote ...

The meaning of the IMDb score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics, or a C- from our system. Films rated below five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

Our own guideline:

  • A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre.
  • B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. Any film rated B- or better is recommended for just about anyone. In order to rate at least a B-, a film should be both a critical and commercial success. Exceptions: (1) We will occasionally rate a film B- with good popular acceptance and bad reviews, if we believe the critics have severely underrated a film. (2) We may also assign a B- or better to a film which did not do well at the box office if we feel that the fault lay in the marketing of the film, and that the film might have been a hit if people had known about it. (Like, for example, The Waterdance.)
  • C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but will be considered excellent by people who enjoy this kind of movie. If this is your kind of movie, a C+ and an A are indistinguishable to you.
  • C means it is competent, but uninspired genre fare. People who like this kind of movie will think it satisfactory. Others probably will not.
  • C- indicates that it we found it to be a poor movie, but genre addicts find it watchable. Any film rated C- or better is recommended for fans of that type of film, but films with this rating should be approached with caution by mainstream audiences, who may find them incompetent or repulsive or both. If this is NOT your kind of movie, a C- and an E are indistinguishable to you.
  • D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. We don't score films below C- that often, because we like movies and we think that most of them have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know that, you should have serious reservations about any movie below C-.
  • E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre.
  • F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

 

Based on this description, this film is a C, a typical soft-core straight-to-vid erotic thriller.

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