I love this movie so much

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

***SPOILERS*** Even before he got there to L.A things went wrong for young Seattle architect Walter Woods, Rob Lowe, in having been almost run off the road by an enraged truck driver-Tony Longo-for mot going fast enough in a 70MPH lane. Reporting Longo to his employer later has the well over 300 pound brute come to visit Walter to get him to change his mind so he can get his job back. There's also the man who's hiring Walter to build his "Shining Mansion on the Hill" Mr. Harrison, James Belushi, who never seems to be pleased with Walter's work yet still puts up with him for reasons we and Walter later find out have nothing at all to do with his skills as an architect! Things get even worse for Walter at the rooming house that he stays in with his next door neighbor Catherine Langtry, Alex Meneses, making a play for him and later ending up murdered with him ending up the #1 suspect in her murder! If things weren't bad enough for Walter his apartment is infested with cat size rats that soil his blueprints for Harrison's house and his the house manager William, Dean Stockwell, threaten to throw him and his blueprints out on the street! ***SPOILERS***It's after someone-wearing a leather zip mask- breaks into Walter's room and fractures his big toe that he finally calls the police blaming the truck driver-Mr. Longo-that he earlier reported in a a fender vendor accident as the culprit without a stitch of evidence for the incident that the real reason behind Walter's problems finally come to the surface. Which go back to Seattle in what has to do with Walter's wife Linda's, Dana Wheeler-Nicolson, life before she met and married him. Effective thriller that has Walter fight for his life broken toe and all and when it looked like curtains for him he suddenly ties all the loose ends together along with the crazed killer who was out to murder him!

Well, let me say, I didn't know what to expect. I thought, well, Rob Lowe's in it so it can't be that bad. WRONG! Even his presence didn't save this loser. Sad to say the story line was inevitable and the conclusion not a surprise. I won't bore you with the details as I was bored with this film. Was this comedy? Camp? For real? Certainly it couldn't be taken seriously. Written by Patrik and Jasper Ersgard and directed by Jasper Ersgard, I found the film too dark in color and visibility, in some cases losing what was on the screen. You had to strain your eyes to watch this and strain your intelligence to believe it. As to the cast - Rob Lowe was terrible. Most of the film he's walking into one trap after another as blind as a bat. As an architect, he sure was missing some marbles. The scene when the slut comes after him was just downright horrible. How could he not know she was hot to trot on him. And how come he just didn't tell her to get lost? She was so obvious. He should have shut the door in her face. But then I guess we wouldn't have any more movie, would we? Rob, you can do better than this. James Belushi, another actor I respect, did bring some level of reality to his role and even made his character fun. I was rooting for him. Distinguished Dean Stockwell, whom I've liked since ANCHORS AWEIGH days as a child actor was wasted in this and gave his best. It's just great to watch him work, even in clinkers like this. Who can forget his better works like BOY WITH GREEN HAIR, GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT, GREEN YEARS, SONS AND LOVERS, COMPULSION and LONG DAYS JOURNEY INTO NIGHT. What a body of work that was. And to see him do this - it's embarrassing. Then there's Dana Wheeler Nicholson in a lack luster performance looking older than Rob as his wife. And let's not forget Alex Meneses in about the worst performance of the year as the slut. So obvious and not that attractive, she was laughable the way she climbed all over our hero. And poor Rob kept saying no as he fondled her and pleaded. Please! Special mention to my friend Richard Partlow as the detective and also one of the Foley Artists. Way to go, Rick! 3 stars for Belushi, Partlow and Stockwell.

It has Rob Lowe, which is good, but unfortunately the movie was just bad. There was a lot of random yelling, the acting was somewhat wooden in places and way to campy in others, and while you were apparently supposed to care about the peril Rob was in, you just didn't. As Rob so eloquently yelled somewhere in one of his paranoid tirades, 'Rat p*ss'. Yeah, that about sums it up.

This is basically a movie about Rob Lowe being terrified of fictional rats that he believes crawl out of his toilet at night and urinate on his blueprints. I'm not kidding. Add to this an ex-East German with no brains whatsoever, an expensive prostitute, James Belushi (no less annoying than he was in About Last Night, also with Rob Lowe) and Al from Quantum Leap and you have the entire untalented cast. Okay, so one has to admit that they had _nothing_ with which to work, I'll agree to that. However, one also has to admit that if they read the script before agreeing to do the movie, then they're all _really_ desperate for money. Even Bull from Night Court shows up to sell Rob Lowe a gun. The only worthwhile thing about this movie occurs in the first five minutes when someone uses a two liter of Coca-Cola as a deadly weapon. I approved of that. The rest of the movie is boring, and utterly peril-less, not perilous.