Bedroom Eyes 2 picks up however many years after part one left off, with Wings Hauser taking the baton from Kip Gilman in the lead role of Harry Ross. He's apparently married Carolyn (not spelled "Caroline" this time), the woman who used his toes to have an orgasm in a restaurant in the first film. The only problem is, she's cheating on him with an artist she's showcasing at her studio. To get revenge, he hooks up with Linda Blair, whom he met at the local aquarium, because he likes to go there? Anyway, the fun starts when JoBeth returns, the woman who tried to kill him in the first film, and did kill some other people, so it's kind of odd that she's on the streets now. Anyway, he needs to find out why she's out, and what she's up to, toot sweet, otherwise he could be her next victim.
Essentially, you're getting what you get from this one. Plot holes, elements that stretch credulity, needing to don safety goggles with all loose ends flying together at the end. But then you get the erotic elements of the erotic thriller, the sex, the stocking tops, the lingerie, which wouldn't be enough on its own to save a movie like this, so that's where Wings comes in. Maybe not something you'd put on your top ten Wings list, but it's Wings enough to make you satisfied if you're coming for the Wings factor, which on some levels we were. I think the final mark in the plus column for this is the 85-minute runtime, which always helps--even if it was a little scary when we got near the end and there wasn't much time to resolve everything, I just had to put on my seatbelt and go for the ride, but an okay ride it was.
We're now at 25 films for Wings, which seems like a paltry number for an inaugural Hall of Famer, but we lost him for a bit while we reviewed films from other Hall of Famers. A big part of that was that he didn't do anything DTVC worthy after 2010's Rubber, but then also with his older stuff, things were either hard to find, or I wasn't sure how much I wanted to do them based on who else was in the cast. The availability issue has changed over time, and more of these movies that I had trouble tracking down are now easier to find, like this one here (more on that in the next paragraph). Hopefully that means soon Hauser will be in the 30 Club and beyond soon. He truly was one of the best to do it, and we get a lot of that here. He's no Kip Gilman, he brings all the frenetic energy you want, he's a big guy, he's unpredictable, and that carries what would've been a run-of-the-mill late 80s erotic thriller. If anything, he's fun to watch in this, which for me is enough as a huge Wings fan.
Though, as you may have noticed, it's hard to see anything with this film quality. You'd be right in thinking I got this off of YouTube or Internet Archive from someone's VHS rip upload, and while this probably was a VHS rip upload, it's from a pay subscription streamer called Cultpix. That's right, and they charge almost $7 a month for that kind of quality. And beyond the quality, I suspected this was a VHS rip because it includes the open and close from when it aired on Joe Bob's Drive-In Theater on The Movie Channel back in the early 90s. Yes, that was fun to see, and would've been fun if I was watching someone's VHS rip on YouTube for free, but when I'm paying $7 a month, I expect a quality version. I mean, Christ, could I start my own subscription streaming service with a bunch of VHS rips? PoirierFlix? Or maybe use the DTVC name? Direct to Video Connoisseur Flix. I'll check at my parents' to see if my copy of Bill Maher's Pizza Man on an old SLP VHS marked "Matt's stupid pizza guy movie" by one of my siblings is still kicking around so I can add it to the streaming library. (And if you're curious, I'm one of four critic reviews on that movie.)
We didn't have a new McDonald's appearance in this, but we did get a Wendy's with that old sign that looks so beautiful. As a kid, we didn't have a Wendy's in our town, only McDonald's and Burger King, so getting Wendy's somewhere was a treat until I was in high school and Portsmouth, NH finally got theirs--which is still there I believe. What I liked about it here, is, in as much as I could see due to the poor quality version, is the old Wendy's sign gave the scene this gritty streets-at-night feel that added to the ambiance. Could you have that now with the current sign? Like if a character had just cheated on his wife and was wandering around the city at night after the fact, would the current iteration of the Wendy's sign add anything? I was trying to think of other old signs like that that would add that kind of ambiance. Maybe old Taco Bell? We do have a KFC in the shot too, but I don't know that it's adding anything the way the Wendy's is. I did a search, and the old Arby's is kind of cool, with the big cowboy hat, especially if it were in an urban setting at night.
Finally, this movie was shot in Toronto, which often passes for New York City in films. As you may or may not know, I've never been to Canada before, despite growing up in Maine, only about 4 hours or so from the border. Recently I watched Ms. Marvel on Disney+, and as Kamala Khan was visiting Pakistan and experiencing the county of her heritage, I thought about what that would be for me. Ireland on my mother's side, and then based on my last name you're probably thinking it would be France on my father's side, which might be the case, but as far as I know it can only be traced back as far as Canada. When my sister did one of those DNA tests, his side of the family came up as any one of Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Sicilian, or Mediterranean French, so if they weren't the last one on the list, somehow they picked up a French last name and ended up in Quebec from one of those places--which had to be a shock to the system after the first winter--and then from there, in the 19th century, they moved to New Hampshire in the US. I was thinking Montreal then, but my dad said when he did a trip there when he was in his 20s, he was told our relatives lived way up in the country, which I'd have no way of getting to without driving, so I guess I'd have to settle for Montreal, which I can take a train to from Philadelphia. I won't become a Canadiens fan though.
And with that, let's wrap this up. As I mentioned above, this is available on Cultpix, which I don't think is worth it, but if you see the VHS hanging around in a used shop or something, it's worth picking up, if only for the Hauser factor. And also check out the podcast episode I did on this with Jon, episode 207 in the archives, where we look at this and the one before it.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099113
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