Star Struck (aka 'Deception')

by Brian

They say that some things never die, and I guess one of those things would be the erotic thriller. Just when you think the marriage of erotic sex and murder had ended in a complacent divorce, with both parties going their separate ways for the benefit of all humanity, along comes Avalanche Home Entertainment with yet another entry in a genre already stacked to the rafters with Shanon Whirry and Shannon Tweed titles. Enough I say! We like the sex, but stop with the stupid and senseless violence.

American filmmakers, especially those in the b-genre, have long tried to capture the essence (albeit a much lighter essence) of the Italian giallos, where suspensful thrillers intertwine their storylines with erotic and often graphic sex. But with limited budgets and a limited talent pool, and without any desire or ability to take risks, they rarely pull it off effectively. In the case of Starstruck, we get neither suspenseful thrills nor erotic sex.

Ex-model Amber Smith stars in this contrived and unimaginative whodunnit, whose sole purpose is to show Smith's breasts every chance it gets. And when it doesn't get a chance it makes one up. Smith is attractive, and can sometimes look quite a bit like Claudia Schiffer, but as an actress she still has a ways to go. Her scenes show hints of a woman who can get a hell of a lot nastier than she did in this film, but she has an aversion to showing her pubes and all screwing was done under the cover of conveniently bundled blankets or well-placed hands. She is the only woman I know of who takes a candlelit romantic bath with her panties still on.

The story itself is derivative of about a dozen previously made movies, where a character (in this case a film director played by Nero Campbell) moves into a new apartment/house, etc and is witness to a crime while "peeping" at a sexually provocative neigbour (Smith). Of course the cops immediately suspect the director and the rest of the film is spent trying to unravel the mystery, while, of course, the real killer starts tantalizing the main character with clues, notes, and near-misses. Yawn.

Along the way some sex scenes are thrown in to...well, justify the movie rental, I guess. The scenes are in no way erotic, show very basic nudity (not one single pubic hair is shown), and have no heat or passion at all. Zip. We see some nice boobies and some well-concealed dry humping, but nothing else.  

What I liked about the film, aside from Amber Smith's breasts, was some of the tongue-in-cheek humour and self-deprecation thrown in by filmmakers. The low budget erotic thriller that Campbell's character is directing is referred to in the film as "schlock" and "crap", as if the real director knew not to take himself seriously. Also, Campbell's character repeatedly throws down his cordless telephone in disgust, and in a later scene we can see the receiver wrapped in duct tape. Nice touch. I also liked hearing Amber and Ursula both say the word "cock". I think it's sexy when women talk dirty.

You'll see better acting performances from the trained animals at Sea World than you will see here, and the story is full of more holes than Pebble Beach. Can't say I liked this one as the sex didn't balance out the weak points.