Perfectly adorable

Absolutely brilliant

In truth, any opportunity to see the film on the big screen is welcome.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

After recently viewing this somewhat forgotten 80's trashy movie. That's part mystery thriller, part slasher movie. The plot is quite interesting we get a student named Jay Richards who has an affair with his teacher Diana Stevens (Sybil Danning), but that's not all she and her husband want him to break into his elderly mothers house to scare them and of course that goes wrong when grandma pulls out a rifle and the young student runs away, and no sooner a masked stranger is already in the house ready to kill.Okay this movie lacks logic and the storyline doesn't really make much sense, but the who dunnit angle does actually work, and I was geniually surprised when the killer is unmasked at the end. And the chemistry between Eric Brown and Sybil Danning was actually believable and spot on, and the sex scenes were probably the best thing about this movie. But there are several bad points to this movie, like for a start the pacing is quick enough and I did find myself getting bored at times and a lot of the performances were awful and the death scenes simply weren't up to scratch, they lacked imagination like the scene where the girl gets hit with a baseball bat, was just painful and not for the right reasons.But there are a few small blessings in this movie, like Sybil Danning is just simply beautiful and has a gorgeous body, and one of the only cast members to make an actual effort and Eric Brown was okay he had the innocence wide boy routine rather well, despite some rubbish dialogue.All in all "They're Playing With Fire" is not a terrible movie, in fact I found it quite fun and stupid at the same time, but I couldn't help that feel that if this movie was in more capable hands, then this could have been a hell of a lot better.

Eric Brown became famous for about a week and half back in the 80s thanks to an appearance in the Sylvia Kristel comedy Private Lessons, where he plays a student who gets involved with his much older French tutor. Here he plays a student who gets involved with the much older wife of his English professor. Such acting range this kid had! Anyway, the two of them sneak around behind the prof's back for the first third of the movie and then the producers must have realized that there was no plot going on, and so bodies start showing up for no reason and the cops focus on the kid, also for no reason. Seriously, this is one truly brain dead attempt at writing either a murder thriller or an erotic melodrama, but not both, since it never manages to be both at the same time. The performances are just as bad as the script, with Eric Brown looking lost and amateurish, movie veteran Andrew Prine (who plays the prof) looking embarrassed, and Sybil Danning looking once again like a great chest with no acting talent attached, which continued to be true over her long and stinky career. She and Eric have less on-screen chemistry than Greg Evigan had with his chimp co-star in B.J. and the Bear. The whodunnit solution, when it comes, makes much LESS sense than usual for a bad 80s killer thriller, and we grade most of those on a curve already. In addition to crappy dramatics, bad plotting and mind-craggling dialog, the pacing is sluggish, plus the look is cheap and sometimes even grainy. When you find yourself wondering whether the producers were even willing to pay for new film stock or did they buy leftovers, you know you are not in the hands of anybody soon to be named president of the Screen Director's Guild. This is just bad. Not fun bad, not so bad it's funny, just plain old who made this incompetent crap bad. Avoid at all costs.

Cunning and enticing college English professor Diane Stevens (the ever luscious Sybil Danning at her all-time hottest) seduces gawky, naive student Jay Richard (the hopelessly geeky Eric Brown of "Private Lessons" fame) so she can use him as a patsy for an intricate scheme to inherit a sizable sum of money from her wealthy in-laws. However, a vicious mystery killer gums things up to an alarming degree. Director/co-writer Howard Avedis concocts a really strange and sordid blend of your standard silly teen sexploitation romp (the sleazy soft-core sex scenes are genuinely steamy stuff) and more mean-spirited slasher horror schlock (the scene where the psycho dressed as Santa beats a luckless lady's head in with a baseball bat is truly jolting). The cool supporting cast includes Andrew Prine as Diane's jerky husband Michael, Paul ("The Beast Within") Clemens as Jay's amiable college roommate Martin "Bird" Johnson, Alvy ("Green Acres") Moore as cranky gas station owner Jimbo, and K.T. Stevens as Michael's bitchy mother Linda. Moreover, this picture deserves extra kudos for getting right to the point: a mere eight minutes into the film Sybil removes her top and bares her beautiful bountiful breasts. Gary Graver's crisp, handsome cinematography, several tacky rock songs blaring away on the soundtrack, John Cacavas' thrashin' rock score, a few ugly murder set pieces, and Danning's awesomely abundant eye-popping nudity further enhance the delectably cheesy charm of this vintage 80's exploitation junk.

Sybil Danning is an extremely stunning sight to behold when she's wearing just a smile, sure, but there's only so much so can do when saddled with an abysmal script (and that's 90% of her career's work). There's no question that she makes unwatchable films watchable. This time around she plays Diane. a teacher who wants her husband's parents money, but that won't happen until his mom and aunt are either dead or declared incompetent (the latter is kinda like the makers of this film). Enter Private Lessons' Eric Brown as Jay, a college student who's more gullible than a fifth grader (if that) and plans to scare the old women, but there's a 'mystery' serial killer at work. As I said before Danning is the ONLY reason for someone to watch this (and even then only when it's on cable, as it's not worth renting). The character's lack any kind of spark, the plot is very weak, and for a thriller, it's not in the least bit thrilling. Also the powers that be seemed to openly want to sabotage the film as with the amount of chances to get Sybil fully nude, they go to great lengths to not show her fourth acting talent, her tits and ass being the first three, so you know where I'm going with that one. Stick with a better Sybil film such as Chained Heat or Malibu Express instead Eye Candy: Sybil Danning shows T&A multiple times, Suzanne Kennedy'shows her right breast briefly My Grade: D