Single White Female 2: The Psycho (2005)

We continue our look at 2000s DTV sequels of 90s thrillers with this sequel to the early 90s classic(?) Single White Female. Out of all the films we're looking at, this had the biggest gap between the the first and the sequel, but I think the vibe is still the same. In addition to us, Mitch at the Video Vacuum, and Tars Tarkas have covered this as well.

Single White Female 2: The Psycho, has She Spies alum Kristen Miller as Holly, a PR firm worker who, with her friend Jan (Brooke Burns), are competing to get a managerial position. That's when Holly hatches a plan with her Poor Man's Julian McMahon boyfriend (Todd Babcock) to win the PR job for his new restaurant opening. But Jan is more wily than Holly, and she sends Holly on a fake business trip to Chicago, while she beds the Poor Man's McMahon. Now Holly needs a new place to live, so she moves in with nice, shy nurse, Tess (Allison "Road" Lange--I added the "Road"). Turns out, Tess really is a nice girl after all, and they all live happily ever after--or Tess is "the psycho" and she does psycho stuff for the last half of the film.

I enjoyed this for what it was, a trashy guilty pleasure. Hot women in hot outfits in mid-2000s NYC stabbing each other in the back both literally and figuratively, while Poor Man's Julian McMahons and the manager of the Lake Edna KFC look on--that's right, Rif Hutton is back as another detective! (And it should be noted, Brooke Burns from this film was married to the real Julian McMahon at one time.) The thing is, I don't know if anyone involved, from the writers--who also did Wild Things 2--to the director, to the stars, thought they were doing anything else, and they still just kinda went for it, which I appreciate. It's not quite a Skin-a-max thriller, because no one really gets naked in it outside of some body doubles, it's more like let's do a low-budget thriller that plays on the Single White Female name and the popularity of Sex in the City, and see if anyone bites. By the same token, as fun as this is as a guilty pleasure, it doesn't have the iconic classic elements the original had. Steven Weber from Wings doesn't get it with a stiletto heel to the eye--in fact, there are no Wings cast members killed in this, they couldn't even be bothered to toss Roy out a window, or maybe push Fay down a flight of stairs. This just borrows as much as it can from that plot, and gives it to you in a low-budget, DTV fashion. As a free streamer I'd say go for it, especially if you dig this kind of thing or are with people you know who dig this kind of thing. If it's a rental, I say skip it.

I love Kristen Miller, so I was happy to see her here. I first remember her on USA High as Nicholas Guest's daughter, which was on USA in the late 90s while I was waiting for Highlander to come on--and this film features another USA High alum, James Madio. From there she was on one of my favorite syndicated shows, She Spies, but it looks like she never quite got beyond that--and a movie like this certainly wasn't going to help matters. She's gotten one-off TV appearances on shows like Mad Men and Dexter, but there's also a lot of The Dog Who Saved Halloween too. It looks like she'd given that all up to star in some indie projects like web series, but even that may be done, as she doesn't have anything on her IMDb bio since 2020, and nothing in production that's new. If that's the case, we'll always have She Spies... and this...

Would you look at that above? The fact that Miller continued on in the biz for another 15 years after seeing that this film's title screen looks like that is testament to her stick-to it-iveness. I mean the feeling you must have in the pit of your stomach if you're someone who worked on this film when you go to the premier or fire it up on DVD, and see that! Is that MS Paint? The greeting card template on Word? It looks like my friend and I making covers to our burned mix CDs in the late 90s. This was distributed by Sony too. Did anyone with them look at this? I have to guess not, otherwise they'd probably be like "come on guys, let's get a legitimate title screen up here." In all my years of doing this, I think this might be the worst one I've seen. And does the fact that "The Psycho" is in a different font in a different square mean they hadn't settled on "The Psycho" for it yet? What were some of the other ideas they had? "The Retread," or "The Cash Grab" or maybe "The Let's Hope Using the 'Single White Female' Name is Enough to Get Blockbuster to Buy Copies and HBO to Pick This Up". I guess that would've been too big to fit in the square.

For some reason, I got it into my head that this came out in 2008, but as I was watching it, the fashions didn't feel like 2008. How did I know that? Like if you asked me what the difference between 2005 and 2008 fashion was, I'd have no idea how to explain it to you, but I just knew it, and then I looked on IMDb and found out I was right. With next year being 20 years since this film came out, does that mean 2005 is considered vintage? Like I think when I was in high school in the 90s, 70s stuff was considered vintage, so that kind of tracks, right? I looked up the rule for cars, and it's 20 years for a classic car. So a 2005 Corolla is considered a classic car now? They said it's 45 for vintage, which means I'm vintage, but so is a '79 Oldmobile. So if movies and clothes follow the car model, then this is a classic, but it's not vintage yet.

Outside of Rif Hutton in Shotgun, I think the only other person in this who's been in another film on the site, was Brooke Burns when she did Titanic II. That means the most tagged... entity?... is McDonald's, who made another appearance, which brings us to 13 now. That's more than some Hall of Famers! I think if we put McDonald's in the Hall of Fame, that would be our Jumping the Shark moment, and unlike Happy Days, which had five or six seasons after that, many of which it was the number one show on TV, I think for me it would kill the DTVC. For a McDonald's update, on a recent trip up to New England to see my family, I got the new Chicken Big Mac while I was in South Station in Boston. Not great. The mix of the breaded chicken with the special sauce made it all taste like a Filet-o-Fish. On my way back I decided to just get some fries, and even those weren't that great. Am I going to need to tag another fast food place on the site now? I don't know if there's any I've seen as often as I've seen McDonald's in our films though. I guess I could just not tag any, but how much fun would that be?

While we ponder this question, it's time to wrap this up. I had to rent this on Comcast, but it looks like now it's on Prime, so if you have Prime, this isn't a horrible way to kill 90 minutes. It's good, schlocky, trashy fun.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448120

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