Mirror Images II doesn't pick up where part 1 left off, instead going with a new set of twins embarking on their own Erotic Thriller romp, with Whirry playing both roles this time. Carrie's the nice one, Terrie the devious one, and we know this because the nice one wears white, and the devious one wears black... or do they? Terrie gets involved with Carrie's reptilian husband Luca Bercovici, an LAPD detective who makes money on the side shaking down sex workers, of which Terrie is one. Their plan, bump off Carrie and have Terrie pretend to be her, because everyone thinks Terrie is dead. Carrie is suspicious, so she hires a PI (Tom Reilly), who has a bone to pick with Bercovici anyway. But can he be trusted too when this much money is involved?
Joe Bob Briggs gave this 3 stars back in 1994, and I'd say on a five-star scale that's about right, with maybe another star or half-star added on 30 years later for the nostalgia factor. It has the twists and turns you want from a story standpoint, it plays on the twin factor well to keep you guessing, and it's not light on the erotic element either. Gregory Dark is great at directing these, and eventual Christopher Nolan cinematographer and Oscar winner Wally Pfister knows how to frame the scenes to give us that mix of old Film Noir and late night 90s cable guilty pleasure that we're looking for. I think Whirry does a great job taking a plot device that was used in the previous film, and making it her own, and Luca Bercovici's reptilian performance made my skin crawl, which may have been the idea. Also, despite not being a continuation of the first film, it does make little callbacks here and there, like when Whirry convinces the landlord to get the key to her sister's apartment, only here instead of George "Buck" Flower it's Frank Pesce, but the rest of it plays out the same. For a fun movie night pick, especially now while it's on Fawesome, it does the trick.
This is only our second Whirry Erotic Thriller we've covered, after Animal Instincts, and while I think that movie was better than this one, I think she still does a great job here. It's interesting, because she really sells us that she's playing two different people, but she can't sell on us why Carrie would marry Luca Bercovici's character. He doesn't have any redeeming qualities, and seems like a total jerkoff, plus they don't have anything in common. I can't even imagine that he was able to hide his reptilian nature on their first date, he would've had to have done something that showed what a creep he was. As good an actor as Whirry is, there are some things even she can't pull off. In terms of other stuff of hers we can review, we have two other films that Jon and I covered on the podcast, Body of Influence and Private Obsession. I'll definitely be doing the first of those two, but not sure about the second (Jon and I covered it on the same episode we did this movie, and didn't like it). Beyond that she has a ton of other stuff, it's just a matter of how available it is. Some of her DTV Erotic Thrillers are out of print, or didn't even get an actual physical release. We'll try to cover as many as we can get though, and hopefully if movies like this do well on streamers like Fawesome, more of her catalog will become available too.
Onto Luca Bercovici's character, which I keep describing by using the word "reptilian," though I think that may be doing a disservice to reptiles--I mean, what did a turtle, lizard, or even snake do to deserve being used to negatively characterize Bercovici's character? It's just, from the moment you see him, it's sliminess right from the jump, and it only gets worse. And this isn't a knock on Bercovici, the character was written like this, he was just delivering the role he saw on the page. But maybe that's it, he was written as a jerkoff, but Bercovici played it too well for the character to work, because there's no sense of why Carrie would've ever gotten involved with him; like none of the "he was a totally different guy when I met him" kind of thing, there's no way Carrie wouldn't have seen the slime residue on his chair after he got up to use the restroom on their first dinner date. Take Jack Scalia in Illicit Behavior, there's still some hot guy/could be charming at times in there that explains why Joan Severance would've thrown in her lot with him, and we need a little of that to make the proceedings at least a little believable.
Among Erotic Thriller directors, Gregory Dark, especially with the eight films he did with Wally Pfister, has to be up there as one of the best to do it. Jag Mundhra has more movies to his credit, and he did them over a longer period of time, so he's one that would be there, along with Fred Olen Ray and Jim Wynorski. I need to see more of Mundhra's films to say for sure, but Dark is definitely in the conversation, and I think this one is a great example of what he and Pfister did with these movies. I think too, because Dark was coming from the porn world, he understood where the line was between Erotic Thrillers and out and out porn, and not only knew how to avoid crossing it, but also knew how to blur the line, and I think that's part of what made Erotic Thrillers so much fun, that we were indulging in something explicit, but not fully explicit, and something that still had the hallmarks of film traditions we recognized like classic Film Noir. Jon and I covered two other Gregory Dark films on episode 261, Body of Influence and Stranger By Night, so plan to see those on the site sometime soon, though interestingly enough, Body of Influence is one of my favorite Gregory Dark films, but it's not one where Wally Pfister was DP.
Finally, look at the amenities at the Motel Tangiers. First off, the phone works 24 hours, they don't shut it off after a certain time, which I appreciate. Also, in addition to the color TV, they also have a radio that covers both AM and FM bands, so in 1994 I could listen to my top 40 radio during the day, then switch over to Art Bell on AM after midnight. They also have family units, that way you and your kids don't end up in separate rooms, which was important when traveling through LA in the 90s. But as you've noticed, I'm kind of burying the lead here: WATERBEDS. Talk about your classy joint. While I'm listening to either AM or FM radio, or watching TV in color, and my kids are prank calling people in the middle of the night because the phone works 24 hours a day, I get the added comfort of a waterbed. How is there vacancy in this place? Welcome to Tangiers, and how!
And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Fawesome here in the States, along with part one. You don't need to see part one to understand what's happening in this, but since they're both on a free streamer, why not do a double feature? Or don't and just do this one, that works too. And for the podcast episode Jon and I did on this, it's 265 in the archives.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110529
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