Sex, Secrets & Betrayals (2000) (V)

Director:

Dave Franks

Writer:

Samm Croft (screenplay)

Release Date:

2000 (USA)

Genre:

Thriller

Plot Keywords:

Sex | Softcore | Female Nudity | Lesbian Sex

Cast

  (Credited cast)

Nikki Fritz	...	Maggie
Daniel Anderson		(as Dan Anderson)
Angela Davies	...	Lisa
Jezebelle Bond	...	Sasha
Wendy Rice	...	Tori
Alex Ferro	...	Matt
Jonathan Gray	...	David
Eddy Romio	...	Eric
Sarah Burress	...	Janice
Shelly Weiss	...	Judge Jenkins
Jon Briddell	...	Detective John (as John Riann)

Also Known As:

Betrayals (Canada: English title) (DVD box title)

Runtime:

USA:88 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:Not Rated | Australia:R

Company:

MRG Entertainment

A late night thriller where both the writing and the acting are above average

This is an amusing but amoral little trifle prepared for Direct-to-Video release and presumably intended primarily for the late night showings in hotels or on cable TV. Such films are often so uninteresting that they appear to have been designed to help the viewer fall asleep - especially when the volume level is set low. To cure a restless night, diverting an overactive mind with a little eye candy and a soporific story line appeals to many people such as myself more than taking sleeping pills. But if I need to do this I always play the film through my recorder so that, should I become interested in it and still fall asleep, I can replay it at normal volume another day. SS&B is one of the very few of these films which has made me glad I took this precaution, and so far I have even kept the tape unerased!

Traditionally films intended primarily as time killers used to be known as generic comedies or thrillers because they simply varied the permutations among a few basic well known story lines to form the plots. Some 30 years ago nudity, and later some simulated sex crept into those generic films which were intended for late night viewing. Most of the soft-core films of this type distributed today are classed as sex comedies, but I do not know how to classify the few thrillers - they are sometimes called erotic thrillers but few are in any way erotic, and if we call them sex thrillers we create perhaps unjustified expectations of a 'Peeping Tom' type storyline where the thrills are associated with the sex itself. Here we have a fairly conventional thriller in which Matt (Alex Ferro) owes a gambling debt he cannot pay to Carl (Dan Anderson), a gangster prepared to use physical methods to expedite payment. To save him, his wife Maggie (Nikki Fritz) offers sexual and other services to Carl for a week. Meanwhile the police are at last planning to arrest Carl, and so he finds he also needs to use Maggie's services to help him find out how much the police know. This later leads to Maggie becoming involved with Lisa (Angela Davies) an undercover police officer working for Carl. The build up of tension and the final climax are both inevitable and predictable (although relatively brief in duration and therefore unlikely to spoil the viewers subsequent sleep), but the acting is much better than usual for a film in this category, and it all remains quite enjoyable. Anyone who likes films with plenty of eye candy and some simulated sex scenes would most probably enjoy this film, although by its nature it remains a very forgettable piece of nonsense. Nikki Fritz and Angela Davies both act quite competently, as well as providing plentiful and very attractive eye candy; but I preferred Ms Davies for eye candy because her bosom appeared to be entirely her own.

This type of film is hard to rate, most of them barely (pun!) warrant a 1 or 2. In the case of those few that have a reasonably complex and coherent story line. plus some competent acting, the contrast is so great that I want to give them a 9 or 10 - which is ridiculous for lightweight fluff of this kind. I now have a simple rule - I will never give such films a higher rating than 6 and, since they very seldom warrant more than 3, there is still plenty of room for the few better films such as SS&B to stand out when rated at 5 or 6.

NOTE: IMDb refers to a DVD of this film released in Canada under the English title 'Betrayals'. Amazon..ca lists such a DVD with the matching French title 'La Complice', released by VVS Distributors last year and presumably featuring bi-lingual sound tracks, but I have no idea whether this is a DVD version of the same film