for anyone who might tend toward romantic obsession, here's your cure. do yourself (or a friend) a favor and (get him to) watch this film. fifteen minutes into the film, you just want to punch andrew stevens in the mouth. the problem is that the harasser never seems to know what a jerk and a fool he is being. here's the message, written in big red letters. too bad more men don't see themselves this way until it's too late. of course, derek (mr. stevens' character) becomes a very bad person by the time he gets his due. if only derek could see himself in this movie, maybe then he wouldn't have taken that first step. sure, not all crushes are actually stalkings. and there is the risk that the truly disturbed stalkers won't understand that this movie is supposed to help them not to do it. the movie may just make a lot of people paranoid. still, it as an effective counterpoint to the CINEMA PARADISO-style treatment of unrequited love, and too much of that sort of fantasy romance in cinema just exacerbates this social problem.
it's not so much a thriller as a public service announcement. amazingly, farrah fawcett is in BURNING BED just two years later. one has to think that blossom kahn had more to do with this film than the credits reveal.
it's obvious why morgan fairchild took the script. ms. fairchild was never the bimbo that people accused her of being. (i have a friend who was at a bio lab at harvard when she phoned to discuss primate genetics for several hours! no kidding!) the kind of power that julia roberts uses today to deliver ERIN BROCKOVITCH was enjoyed by ms. fairchild in 1982, and she seems to have used it here. ms. fairchild even gives up her body with shocking compliance (with dozens of nude scenes, and almost constant appearance on screen) in order to keep the drooling men in their seats until the lesson is complete. as easy as it is thus to applaud ms. fairchild, mr. stevens deserves greater praise. not many leading men would have taken such a role in 1982, and mr. stevens is the perfectly detestable pretty-boy delusional peter-pan smarm. the boys will watch this film for ms. fairchild, and they will learn to leave the girls alone because of mr. stevens.
