Rachel Hayward in Cruel and Unusual (2001)

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Review

This movie, also called Watchtower, is a straight-to-vid thriller about a serial killer. I would call it an erotic thriller, but I'm not sure how erotic it is to see overweight, 50ish Tom Berenger, who has breasts now, do sex scenes. You'll have to ask some women, I guess.

In the first two scenes we discover that Berenger will seduce, then kill, both men and women. That fact having been established, the scene shifts to a remote lighthouse where he is able to settle down by assuming the identity of his most recent victim. Perhaps he even chose the victim because the guy was headed to a remote lighthouse to assume a new job, and nobody there knew what he looked like.

We then have the premise. A seductive serial killer trapped in a lighthouse with a bitter kid of questionable sexual identity, while also conducting an affair with the kid's sister. Some of the above must die eventually. Which ones?

It's one of those with a surprise ending, then a surprise postscript which shows that the ending may not have meant what you thought.

As an erotic film - well, the starring woman is not really very attractive, and the mandatory bimbo victim chick, while gorgeous, is only seen briefly in a steamed-up shower. Tom Berenger, once a hunky guy and a pretty big star, is now really too old and fat for nude scenes. In fact, he quite literally had larger breasts than his co-star.

One reviewer at Amazon summed it up pretty well:

"First of all, don't expect any suspense. There is none. The "secrets" are revealed in the first 10 minutes, and you know the face of the serial killer from the first. But that would not be damaging the film if it holds some dramatic tension between this stranger in town and those sister-brother characters, in order to develop the initial idea about the bond between this murderer and the kid, or his sister. No. The film is all about ordinary love scenes with cheesy dialogue and self-indulgent, extended guitar play as its soundtrack."

Nudity Report: Rachel Hayward shows her breasts in sex scenes with Tom Berenger. Elizabeth Savenkoff shows her breasts in a very steamed-up shower scene.

IMDb Summary: IMDb voters score it 3.9/10. It is not that weak. Apollo voters say 52/100.

DVD Info: Widescreen anamorphic 1.85:1.


Written by: Scoopy …courtesy of Scoopy.net