#fleshtone

Fleshtone (1994)

Directed by Harry Hurwitz

There’s some decent music video style peppered throughout, but these things live and die on the basis of their protagonists, and Martin Kemp might be the worst lead I’ve seen yet in one of these things. At least Steve Guttenberg has some charisma despite his woeful miscasting in The Bedroom Window. All Kemp has is a British accent.

Also, for all the talk of his dark and twisted desires, the fantasy sequences are all super basic and vanilla, brightly lit bedrooms with white sheets and a faceless blonde woman at the centre. Would it have killed them to give these scenes even an iota of actual kink? Like throw in some bondage gear or something? I’m not asking for a lot, but a movie with this premise should be at least nominally perverted. 

I will say that the conspiracy thriller elements provide some comic relief from their halfassed execution, and the heroine’s resemblance to Melanie Griffith provided some counterfeit god vibes, as I may have zoned out and thought about Body Double instead. Now there’s a movie! And let us not forget Tim Thomerson’s amazing hair.