Sweet Murder (1990)

A girl is having trouble making the rent, so she advertises for a female roommate. A seemingly sweet and shy girl named Laurie moves in, and proves to be an insane killer!

Director:

Percival Rubens

Writer:

Percival Rubens

Stars:

Embeth Davidtz, Rex Garner, John Hussey

Cast

Credited cast:
Embeth Davidtz	...	Laurie Shannon
Rex Garner
John Hussey
Danny Keogh	...	Laurie's Stepfather
Ben Kruger
Michael McCabe	...	Mr. Pearson
Russell Todd	...	Del
Helene Udy	...	Lisa Smith

Storyline

A girl is having trouble making the rent, so she advertises for a female roommate. A seemingly sweet and shy girl named Laurie moves in, and proves to be an insane killer!

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Plot Keywords:

roommate | female frontal nudity | naked killer | female nudity | nudity | 

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Taglines:

Some people would kill for the perfect roommate.

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Genres:

Thriller

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Certificate:

R

Details

Country:

South Africa

Language:

English

Release Date:

1 May 1990 (South Africa)

Filming Locations:

Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa

Company Credits

Technical Specs

Runtime:

101 min

Color:

Color

User Reviews

Not an undiscovered classic, but not too bad either

This movie could easily be pegged as a South African/Canadian rip-off of "Single White Female" except it was made two years BEFORE the Hollywood thriller and the villain is not so much an obsessive stalker as a criminal psychopath along the lines of a female version of the Patricia Highsmith character "Tom Ripley". The rather implausible story involves a naive young woman (Embeth Davitz) moving into an apartment with a mousy roommate (Helene Udy), even though the latter is unemployed and she basically has to support this stranger. Luckily though, she has a good job at a bookstore, a handsome new boyfriend, and she's about to come into a lot of money. . .

Canadian beauty Helene Udy looks about as convincing as a shy, mousy wallflower as Jennifer Jason Leigh does in "Single White Female", and she's certainly not as good of actress as Leigh (but then few actresses are). She has glasses, stringy hair, and overalls, but all she really has to do is wash her hair, ditch her glasses, and take off her overalls (along with everything else) and she has no problem getting her roommate's boyfriend into bed. Still, this is one of Udy's meatier roles. Usually, she was relegated to playing a sexy young thing in dumbass Canuck-sploitation fare like "Pinball Summer", or the occasional bit part in superior Canadian horror flicks like "Pin". Davidtz is easily confused with another more famous statuesque actress of Afrikaner origins, Charlize Theron. She basically plays a rather dimwitted, sexy young thing in THIS movie, but would go on to meatier parts in Robert Altman's "The Gingerbread Man" and the recent indie favorite "Junebug".

The director Percival Ruben was responsible for the early 80's South African slasher/Cameron Mitchell film "The Demon", which is not good, but I think is rather unfairly maligned. This movie is about the same quality--it's not an undiscovered classic, but I'm not asking for my money back either.