The Seduction (1982)

The Seduction is a grimy, sleazeball little movie that has been made for reasons outside of trying to make a good movie.  The ladies will want to see the movie because it stars Morgan Fairchild in her first feature film, after they’ve seen her on TV on “Search for Tomorrow” and on “Flamingo Road.”  The guy – will want to see the movie because it promises to show Fairchild naked, something they can’t get on TV.

Yes, the movie offers those things, but it also punishes the unsuspecting patron with a dumb, ugly little women-in-danger movie that makes no sense and, worse, trods out the excuse that it is usu

Fairchild plays Jamie, a successful Los Angelas anchorwoman who apparently lives the perfect life with her boyfriend (Michael Sarazzan) until she becomes the target of a relentless sicko who stalks her day and night, shows up at her home, shows up at her job and makes her daily life a living nightmare.

Okay, so there’s a promising premise.  Stalker thrillers have been made well.  Cape Fear was a good movie.  So was Play Misty For Me, Taxi Driver and Spielberg’s Duel.  Even Halloween was an effective stalker movie.  But those movies worked because they were put together with skill, with toying with the audience’s expectations.  They were packed tight so that you felt the tension being ratcheted up.

The Seduction hopes that you don’t think very hard about it.  It leaves massive plot holes and allows its characters to make obvious mistakes only because the movie needs to continue.  For example, the movie allows Derek to have way too much easy access to Jaime.  She doesn’t lock her door when she gets home.  He gets around security at her job and is apparently never asked what he’s doing there.  The police detective claims that he can’t arrest or even investigate Derek on the excuse that he hasn’t done anything wrong – all for the convenience of the plot.

Plus, the audience understands the landscape.  Jaime is a celebrity living in Los Angelas, therefore anyone seeing this film will know that in L.A. most people of her stature have security systems, electric fences, guard dogs, surveillance that would stop this guy before he got into her driveway. But no, he is allowed to bust in her door at will and do whatever he wants whenever he wants.

Worse, is the filmmaker’s apparent reasoning that this is really a feminist picture because she gets to do battle with the creep at the end.  Yeah, it’s such a feminist statement that it contains at least ten minutes of seductive footage of Morgan Fairchild walking naked around her house and going skinny dipping like she was in a Playboy video.  Fellas, that’s progress in the wrong direction.