Night Eyes has Stevens as Will Griffith, who, with his brother (Cooper Huckabee) runs a private security firm. They're hired by an aging rocker (Warwich Sims) to keep an eye on his estranged wife (Tanya Roberts), but give him the ulterior motive of trying to get dirt on her (which doesn't make sense if they're estranged, but we won't think about it too much). As Stevens watches her though, he falls for her, and now he's in too deep. But that won't cause any issues, will it? Roberts wouldn't have any ulterior motives herself, would she?
Sorry if I got the Genesis song "In Too Deep" in your head in that previous paragraph--speaking of which, between Genesis, Phil Collins's solo stuff, and Mike Rutherford's Mike and the Mechanics, they had quite a run in the 80s, didn't they? "In Too Deep" might not even be top ten amongst all their stuff--but anyway, this absolutely is a classic like I described above, one of the first of the great DTV and made-for-cable Erotic Thriller boom of the 90s--perhaps the first when you look at it like that, as you see a lot of the hallmarks that makes these movies so much fun. Aspirational wealth; modern, hip, LA culture; Noirish, Hitchcockian elements; a seductive, in control female lead; and a hero who's a dupe, and perhaps figures it out and survives by the skin of his teeth, or doesn't and ends up at the bottom of a ravine or framed and stuck in a jail cell. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention, tons of plot holes, the kind of stuff you see when the story is secondary to all those other elements, and for us fans of the genre, we like to joke about those plot holes, but ultimately we're okay with it because we enjoy everything else. Then there's this added DTV Connoisseur factor, where almost 20 years in, I'm recognizing people I wouldn't have as a kid in the early 90s, like Chick Vennera as an attorney, Larry Poindexter as a trendy (possibly gay) member of Roberts's art set, and Cole S. McKay in an uncredited role as a guy assaulting a woman in the opening credits that Stevens and his brother are supposed to be protecting. It may not be the best of these, but as one of the ones that kicked off this cinematic movement we love so much, it's a great watch and worth checking out if you can track it down.
Now for the man of the hour, Andrew Stevens. Initially I had only credited his actor roles, but once I added in his work as a producer, he had over 30 tags, so we had to get him in for that alone, but beyond that, I think he really embodies the spirit of DTV and made-for-cable filmmaking. For the uninitiated it may seem crass, but similar to the PM Entertainment guys, he found a way to make money in the movie industry, an industry he loves, and to be able to do what you love for a living is something I'll always applaud. And while I think we can call him the King of the Erotic Thrillers, because of his work in these films, plus his production, writing, and directing work in the genre, if you click on his tag, you'll see a lot of action films, working with DTVC Hall of Famers like Steven Seagal, Michael Dudikoff, and the greatest of them all, Dolph Lundgren. And that's a big part of why he's in the Hall of Fame now, in the mid-90s when he saw where the DTV and made-for-cable Erotic Thriller was going, he pivoted to action right as big names like Seagal were dropping down, but also Michael Dudikoff was looking for work after the end of Cannon, and Dolph was coming to terms with the fact that those big screen roles weren't coming--at least for the time being--which gave Stevens another decade's worth of success, and now in the world of streaming he's pivoted further to adapt to this new ecosystem, whether it's "geezer teasers," Christmas movies, or Lifetime-style thrillers, he's still making it happen. For our purposes though, it's that 90s and 2000s stuff that got him here today, and it's an honor that's long overdue. Here's to you Mr. Stevens, you're one of the great ones.
The other name in this is Tanya Roberts, who I remembered as a kid on Charlie's Angels, but who was also a Bond Lady in my favorite Bond film, A View to a Kill, and played Kiri in Beastmaster. If you look at her career between A View to a Kill and this, she does three films: Body Slam, which would've probably been a big hit cashing in on the rise of the WWF, but a lawsuit prevented it from being shown theatrically; Purgatory, a women-in-prison film; and Twisted Justice, a David Heavener film where she played "Secretary," so she didn't even get a great part in it! The trivia on this is that she took this role because she wasn't getting he parts she wanted, which I can totally understand, but she may have also been the first to learn the Erotic Thriller double standard: if a big star does an Erotic Thriller, especially a big screen one, it can make her career; but when someone who's trying to make it or whose career is on the skids does a DTV one, it has the opposite effect. The thing is, I think she knew it, because, despite the trivia calling her "the Queen of the Erotic Thrillers," she only does a few more of these over the next four years; but I think she'll always have a vaunted position in the world of Erotic Thrillers because she starred in this one. I mean, Jon and I have talked about this (and we do on the episode for this film too), the three Queens of Erotic Thrillers are Shannon Tweed, Shannon Whirry, and Joan Severance, you can't put Roberts in that group, but the fact that she did this is worthy of consideration.
Had our site not gone in the direction of doing mostly DTV action early on in our history, Jag Mundhra may already be in the Hall of Fame, but that's not how things worked out, and here we are almost 20 years in with almost 1400 posts, and this is the first time we're seeing him as a director, and only his second credit overall, after we covered Illicit Behavior, which he wrote. When you look at his bio, he has a good amount of stuff, including a lot of Erotic Thrillers, that were the kinds of movies I expected to cover more of when I first conceived of the site. What's interesting about Mundhra is, in the mid-90s when Stevens saw the writing on the wall with regard to Erotic Thrillers and started his pivot to action, Mundhra saw that too, but left Hollywood to make more Erotic Thrillers in the UK and India. Compare that to a Fred Olen Ray who can direct anything, he's not wedded to one genre, so when Stevens pivoted to action, Ray pivoted with him--and now has pivoted further and directs Christmas movies. That means there are a lot of ways we can run into a Fred Olen Ray film to review, as opposed to Mundhra, which will almost exclusively be Erotic Thrillers, and unfortunately a good portion of the ones he did aren't on any streamers, so we'll have to work to track them down--but I think the work will be worth it, so plan to see him more on here in the future.
Finally, we get a nice Prism Entertainment logo to start this film, which is a logo a lot of us are familiar with, as they were one of the early home video distributors, seeing the value in buying up B-movies and genre films in the mid-80s as the home video market was exploding. But that's only part of the reason I'm writing this paragraph. The other reason is, this was the only distributor or production company graphic we got, which is such a stark contrast to today where seven of these things isn't unheard of, and if you get to the opening credits with less than four you're coming out ahead. It's almost become a parody of itself, so much so that Family Guy even mocked the phenomenon. There was something about the 80s and 90s when you fired up one of these bad boys, and saw the Prism logo, or Vestron Video, or PM Entertainment, or probably our favorite, Cannon Films. That's all I needed, I didn't need to know who the money people were, or the co-producers, or the directors' production company--and even worse, when the opening credits start, we see all those names again, so why not just do that then! So many aspects of modern society have been enshittified, but what's interesting about movies being enshittified is we have access to the old ones instead of their modern enshittified counterparts. But maybe that's the idea, increasingly squeeze out modern DTV films by forcing them to be made on increasingly tighter margins, while movies from the past that had more leeway and now also have a nostalgia factor outcompete them for streams, which pay out less as it is, while the industry further consolidates and we're stuck with fewer new movies, at which point the industry shifts to gatekeeping the older films, and we're screwed either way. I hope it doesn't happen, and I'm sure a lot of people reading this would say physical media is the solution, but that ignores the fact that housing is more expensive now and most people don't have the space to buy every movie. The best we can do is support as much indie as we can, however we can.
And with that, let's wrap this up. Unfortunately this doesn't look like it's available unless you can find a used VHS--which can be tough now with resellers jacking up prices, don't get me started on them! If you can find it, it's worth checking out for sure. Speaking of worth checking out, check out podcast episode 280, where Jon and I discuss this and Night Eyes II. And finally, congratulations to Andrew Stevens, as I said above, this was an honor that was long overdue.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100251
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