The Corporate Ladder (or Eine tödliche Blondine in Germany, which if my 20-year-old rusty German is correct, translates to "the Deadly Blonde") has Kinmont as an ad assistant who may or may not have tossed her sexually harassing boss our of his office window to his death. Anyway, she shows up in LA to work with ad exec Matt Taylor (Tony Denison), who's good, but not that good, and is dealing with guff from co-worker Ben Cross. Anyway, when he has a shot at the originally-named denim brand Indigo Jeans, he's not doing great, but when he leaves the room Kinmont takes over and makes it all great. He wins the account, splits the $20,000 bonus with her, and then they go back to his office and have sex. I forgot to mention, he's married to Talisa Soto, who was between Mortal Kombat movies and looking for something to do. Anyway, you know the rest of how this Fatal Attraction thing goes.
This is one of those ones that takes a while to get where it's going, and I don't even know if it even gets there, but along the way you get some genre-specific moments that make it a fun time. The runtime hurts it the most, as we're clocking in at a buck-52, and these complicated stories have all kinds of threads that need weaving. It was directed and co-written by eventual Oscar winner Nick Vallelonga--who also has a great one-scene role--but with his name third on the list of writers, I wonder if Playboy, who was one of the production companies, got the script and had him turn it into a softcore erotic thriller version of Fatal Attraction. And to that point, this didn't have a lot of softcore stuff going on with it. For a movie closing in on two hours, if people should be getting after it every 10-15 minutes, we should've had like 8-12 scenes, and I think we maybe had 4. One bright spot was Kinmont, who really went for it. Some of the dialog where she was supposed to just be sinister didn't work, but when her character was losing it, she went all in, as did she with her two love scenes with Denison. The other interesting element of this was the Jan Hammer score. That's right, the Miami Vice guy, and it was every bit that, which was an odd juxtaposition with the 1997 setting. Again though, there were plenty of fun moments, I think if it clocked in at a 90 or even 100-minute runtime, I'd feel better about recommending it.
Kinmont gets into the Hall of Fame on her 10th movie, which puts her in a tie with Julie Strain for second-most by a woman on the DTVC, behind Cynthia Rothrock's 47. I don't know if it's correct to say she's come a long way on this site, or more that I have, because when I first started back in 2007, I referred to her as "the chick from Renegade," thinking I was edgy and funny, and while I don't know that I'll go back and Lucas those old reviews, I know now that she and any other actor deserved more respect than that. (Okay, maybe not the 300-pound Pork Roast, but everyone else then!) If you look at her bio, this was right after Renegade, and I wonder if there was a part of her that wanted to get outside of that and the other action movies she'd been doing. If that's the case, she definitely did that here, even if I prefer the action movies from her. She still has some stuff we can review, so while I think Rothrock's 47 movies isn't in jeopardy, we'll definitely see her again on the site. Here's to you Ms. Kinmont, you're one of the greats.
Among the other names in this, I think Ben Cross might be the biggest. This is now his sixth film on the site, so I figured it was time to finally tag him. He played as smarmy a heel as you'd want. I wonder if the Star Trek reboot saw him in this, and that's why they cast him as Sarek. We mentioned Nick Vallelonga before, our film's one Oscar winner. We've seen him before too, most notably in Paydirt, which we also covered on the pod with Francis Rizzo III from the KilmerCast pod, back on episode 93. From a directing standpoint, it looked like he was trying for a Hitchcockian feel, or like a classic Noir, which I can appreciate, and then probably leaned on his DP for the sex scenes. Again, his one scene in the film, where he's an old friend that talks to Denison, is fantastic. A couple other notable names, Talisa Soto, our first time seeing her on the site, but 1997 was between her two stints as Kitana in the Mortal Kombat movies. She didn't have a lot to do in this as Denison's stay-at-home wife, I would've loved to have seen her throw a bladed fan at Kinmont; and then Meilani Paul, who played the model of the jeans campaign, she was in the Dolph classic Agent Red. Rounding out the cast, we had a few familiar mainstays, Tony Denison as the lead, he does what you want; Jennifer O'Neill as her and Cross's boss, same, she's exactly what you want in that role; and finally, the late Jon Polito as the head of the company, you gotta love seeing him whenever you can.
One cinematic device the film uses well is the multiple mirrors to duplicate the character onscreen, while giving us this sense that the character's not recognizing themselves as they're about to do something untoward, or if they have a self-loathing that causes them act out like Kinmont's character in this scene. The device first struck me as a literary device in Anna Karenina, where Tolstoy has that moment where Anna is with her daughter, who shares her name, and then is surrounded by portraits of herself. I think in that case similar to the shot from this film the reflections of the character are judging their behavior, and we find out later that Kinmont's character has issues with how she feels she looks, which may be part of what's driving this. It was great stuff, and worked really well.
Finally, there's a moment in the film where Kinmont shows Denison that she had business cards made up for him saying he's the president of the company. The idea she said is for him to visualize that success. While it's the only actual mention of moving up the corporate ladder this has despite its name (Eine tödliche Blondine makes more sense actually based on how the movie played out), it does bring up this concept of visualization, and whether or not it works. Like you'll often hear how an athlete like Aaron Rodgers visualizes success on the field, but is that visualization or preparation? And how well does it work if he's only won one championship and usually flames out in the playoffs? In some cases "visualization" comes up against Mike Tyson's adage "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." Also, remember the old bumper sticker that said "visualize world peace," which led someone to create a counter that said "visualize whirled peas." When I think of 90s bumper stickers, the worst was "unless you're a hemorrhoid, get off my ass," which didn't make any sense, because who would want a hemorrhoid to stay on their ass? Anyway, I'm getting off track, here the film uses the concept of trite visualization as plot device, as the business card becomes an issue for Denison later in the story. Chekhov's trite visualization?
And with that, let's wrap this up. I'm not sure where you can get this, unless you have a plug-in on your browser that reverses back a reversed video, then you can catch it on DailyMotion. It's long, and is more talk than action, but it has its fun moments. And here's to you again Kathleen Kinmont. You're one of the greats, and this induction is truly deserved.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115946
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