Scoop's notes

Everything Tuna said up there is fair, but I have probably watched this film ten times. There are a few moments of it that I might have watched a hundred times back in the eighties. I think I wore out a VHS tape that I recorded off HBO.  Back in those days the pause button didn't really work that well, and a paused image would usually get some distortion, and might even screw up the tape.

So what was all the fuss about?

Dude, Morgan Fairchild naked!

She was then a monster TV star because of her starring role on Flamingo Road, and she was a goddess, with a spectacular figure and an unearthly flawless face like a young Deneuve.  She had never been seen naked in public before this film. In fact, she had never even been in a film, naked or clothed. Look at it this way: this was the 1982 equivalent to Katie Holmes taking off her shirt in The Gift. But it was better. Imagine Katie having a much prettier face, being a much bigger star, never having been in any previous movies, and removing her panties briefly. That would be hot, right? Well, this was that hot.

The film itself was sort of a half-A, half-B hybrid.

On the "A" side of the ledger, it has some magnificent cinematography, and a score composed by an Oscar winner. In addition, the production values look rich, and the stalking theme was a fresh, hot-button topic These producers had in mind about the same thing that Body Heat's creators were going for -  elegant eroticism with a fresh star in a slick package.

Of course, we knew Body Heat, senator, and you are no Body Heat! Tuna summarized the film's failings. Lacking the scripting of Lawrence Kasdan and the charisma of Hurt and Turner, The Seduction was not prepared to take the field in the Body Heat league. The acting can be dreadful, led by Dr. Ben Casey (Vince Edwards is his real name) as a cop and Michael Sarrazin as Morgan Fairchild's boyfriend. The Razzies singled out Fairchild and her character's gal-pal played by Colleen Camp, but those two seemed like Dench clones compared to Sarrazin and Edwards. How bad is a movie when Andrew Stevens has all the acting chops? And some of the film's logic is preposterous. When the evil stalker kills the boyfriend in the hot tub (while he is in Fairchild's arms!), the killer drags the victim's body off to the hills to bury him, leaving Fairchild free to go inside and call the police, or even to get dressed and leave completely. She manages to do neither of those things, and I guess you might believe that she was in shock, but you can't believe that he could anticipate that. From his point of view, he murders a guy in front of his girlfriend, then wanders off for an hour or more to bury the guy with a little shovel, thus leaving the witness unattended. 

Except for the last ten minutes of the film, absolutely nothing happens. The plot is so paper-thin that the film had to be padded out to feature length with scenes of Ms. Fairchild swimming, bathing, preening, hot-tubbing, etc. The visceral impact of the only action (the boyfriend's murder) is immediately nullified by the confusing and seemingly interminable burial. Only the last scene, which presents the actual face-to-face confrontation between stalker and stalkee, is actually quite entertaining in an over-the-top way. Having exhausted all of her other choices, she manages to defeat him by coming on to him in a really trashy, aggressive way. Once he loses the power in the relationship, his hard-on deflates! Before the credits roll, we will hear Morgan Fairchild say "fuck me," and we will see her blasting away at the guy with a shotgun, blowing out windows and generally wreaking havoc in her own house. That part was campy fun, but the film just took too long to get there, with nothing for the viewer to do along the way but try to get a decent glimpse of Morgan Fairchild's flesh.