Bovie Movie

When the grandmother of the publicist Karin (Gina Phillips) dies, she inherits her property in the fields. She travels with her boyfriend Jeff (Randall Batinkoff) for the weekend, but she decides to stay along the week cleaning up the place and packing the stuffs. Karin has horrible nightmares and visions of ghosts of her past, while she stays in the house with the creepy housekeeper Pierce (Tom Sizemore) and her younger sister Wendy (Jenny Mollen).

Jennifer Jason Leigh plays the lodger from hell who makes nice Bridget Fonda’s life a misery in this ludicrous but hugely enjoyable thriller from director Barbet Schroeder. Based on John Lutz’s novel, it has Fonda as a chic Manhattanite looking for a roommate, and Leigh as the shy, frumpy “perfect” candidate. That is, until she starts dressing like Fonda and even tries to steal her boyfriend. You may be able to guess the end from the first five minutes, but that doesn’t make it any less enthralling, and it should certainly win a few plaudits for the most ingenious use of a stiletto heel in a movie. 

This is the most complete of David Lynch’s films, made before his disturbing black vision of small-town American life veered into self-parody. The dark tone is set from the opening sequence, which starts with white picket fences and cheery firemen but ends with a man suffering a stroke in his garden while insect life seethes beneath the lawn. Lynch regular Kyle MacLachlan plays the young innocent who gets sucked into the bizarre sadomasochistic relationship between nightclub singer Isabella Rossellini and monstrous local crime boss Dennis Hopper. The latter resurrected his career with a crazed portrait of evil — legend has it that Hopper said “I’ve got to play Frank. Because I am Frank”. Once experienced here, listening to Roy Orbison’s In Dreams will never be the same again.