Bad Influence (1990)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Alex	Rob Lowe	½
Michael Boll	James Spader
Claire	Lisa Zane
Ruth Fielding	Marcia Cross
Britt	Rosalyn Landor
Patterson	Tony Maggio	½
Pismo Boll	Christian Clemenson	½
Leslie	Kathleen Wilhoite
Club Goer	David Duchovny

Review

When this cat-and-mouse thriller was released in 1990, starring two of that period's biggest young stars, Rob Lowe and James Spader, it coincided with Lowe's infamous sex-tape scandal and Spader's rise to stardom the year before with sex, lies and videotapes. This is interesting (albeit mainly academically) seeing as one of Bad Influence's main plot devices is the Spader character's video camera - one of many features in his life taken control over by Lowe's bohemian, effervescent character. What the shy, average, white-collar Spader at first welcomes as a breath of fresh air in his life eventually spirals into something he cannot control, and doesn't know the magnitude of. And the game is on.

The director behind this obvious but not ineffective psychological thriller was a young Curtis Hanson, and he brings a lusciously attractive atmosphere to his film, with soothing images accompanied by Trevor Jones' jazzy score. And even if the plot is muddled and the antagonist becomes more and more plot-driven and less and less psychologically interesting as we go along, Hanson's visual skills and Spader's likeable lead performance keeps interest up. It's as superficially alluring as the yuppie culture it is set in.