Mirror Images has Delia Sheppard as Kaitlin, the wife of political consultant Jeff Conaway; and her twin sister Shauna, who lives a less settled life with her on again off again boyfriend Joey Zoom (Nels Van Patten). When Shauna has to go on the run because a guy she's encountered may want to kill her, Kaitlin takes the opportunity to pretend to be her sister and live her life. It's exciting to start with, but when she encounters that same bad guy, and Conaway's new assistant Julie Strain ends up dead, she decides to find out what's going on. With the reluctant help of detective John O'Hurley (that's right, Peterman from Seinfeld), she goes in deeper to get to the truth. But will she like everything she finds? And will she make it out alive?
This is a great one. I think the second one is even better, but this one does the trick. Sheppard is great in both roles, you always gotta love Julie Strain, and Conaway works as the jerk husband--plus how can you not appreciate Peterman as the detective! It does have issues, like the idea that the baddie has burning heroin in a small, ornate jewel case that he uses to drug the women, when it's not exactly clear how that works at all, but when the rest of the film is enjoyable, I kind of just went with that part; but then when the only African American character has the character name "slave girl," that's a bit more problematic, and probably would be reworked if there were ever a modern remake. That aside, it is still the early 90s you want, with the sex you want, and the cast you want, so I think you get what you came for here.
We'll start with Delia Sheppard, who I thought did a great job in the lead. I was looking at her IMDb bio, and she doesn't have many leading roles like this, if she has any, which makes this one unique in the Erotic Thriller genre. The way the story works, she doesn't have to play duel roles as much as she has to play the "good" sister pretending to be the "bad" sister, which is still not easy, but she makes it work. Director Gregory Dark and cinematographer Paul Desatoff (not eventual Christopher Nolan cinematographer Wally Pfister, who would do a lot of Dark's stuff after this) do a great job creating this juxtaposition between Kaitlin's home being bright and open, and Shauna's being dark and more confined; and costumer designers Lothar and Ricardo Delgado do a great job giving her white outfits when she's playing herself, and darker outfits when she's playing Shauna; but ultimately it's up to Sheppard to pull all this off, and as I said above, I think she did great at that. This is the fourth time we've seen her here, as she plays the German woman who develops feelings for Whirry in Animal Instincts, and has two small roles in the Amir Shervan films Young Rebels and Killing American Style, so we'll tag her, as I have a feeling as we do more of these Erotic Thrillers we'll see more of her here as well.
Our one Hall of Famer is the great Julie Strain, and while her role is small, it's always great to see her. This is her 12th film on the site, which puts her firmly as second-most all-time among women on the site, but still 35 behind the top spot, which is Cynthia Rothrock at 47. If I continue the site for another 20 years, it is possible she may catch Rothrock, but it'll be an uphill battle. Even if she doesn't she's one of the best, and we'll hopefully see her again soon. This is also our fourth Gregory Dark film on the site, and considering I have another three of his watched that I plan to review soon, I figured I might as well tag him now so I'll have fewer to have to go back and add tags for if we decide to do it later. This is also our third Jeff Conaway film, the other two being PM flicks. I feel like I can't be the only one who gets "Gimme Shelter" in their head when they see Jeff Conaway's name, can I? "It's just Jeff Conaway, it's just Jeff Conaway!" Finally, you heard right in the earlier paragraphs, the great John O'Hurley plays the detective investigating Strain's murder. J. Peterman in an Erotic Thriller is too fantastic for words. And he does have a love scene with Sheppard. One fun fact about him: he was born in my home town, Kittery, ME. Even I wasn't born there, I was born across the river in Portsmouth, NH, so it's rare to see that! Oh, and I can't finish this paragraph without mentioning George "Buck" Flower as the creepy landlord, another great touch.
We do have two Presidential Portraits in this, in Jeff Conaway's office he has one for Reagan and one for Bush 41. This is an interesting conundrum when it comes to these, which ones count and which ones don't. Like is just having a Presidential Portrait enough, or is the spirit of it that it represents the time that President was in office, and so having one in a film just to have it, even if that President wasn't in office at the time the film took place, kind of goes against that spirit. For example, when I was on the White House Down episode of the Exploding Helicopter Podcast, the White House is full of Presidential Portraits, do all of them count, or do none of them count? I'm kind of leaning toward the latter on that, but because both Reagan and Bush 41 have portraits here, and Bush 41 was in office during the time this took place, it still counts. The other thing is, if we only count this for Bush 41 and not Reagan, that leaves them both tied with four overall, so I guess then we'll use the fact that Reagan also appears here as a tie breaker.
Finally, we're going way off topic, but I wanted to give a quick shoutout to my Gunners, who won the Premier League this past week, their first time since 2004, meaning since I've been writing this site in 2007, they hadn't won a title at all. And in true European sports style, they won when the team behind them failed to earn all three points in their penultimate game, meaning there were no longer enough points available to catch my Gunners on the final matchday. It's an overall much better approach compared to how we do sports in America, where we have bloated leagues, unbalanced schedules, and regular seasons that don't matter because you don't win a title for that, you could go undefeated but if you lose in the playoffs, your season is a total waste. Even when one of my Boston teams were a favorite, a win for a championship wasn't guaranteed, so I don't get to enjoy a moment like I did today, where I could watch Arsenal knowing they were already champions. The reason US sports will never be that good? Billionaires, like everything else bad about America, Billionaires.
And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this free on Fawesome, fully uncut, which I think is a good way to go, but I think if you were able to track down a physical copy it would be worth having too. Either way, you should check this one out if you haven't seen it, or haven't seen it in a while.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102452/
And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.
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