Silly title for a rather silly Brian De Palma thriller which nevertheless, once you park any expectations of realism or even seriousness, certainly entertains on a grand scale. I've read the word "camp" used around this movie and it's certainly justified with a cross-dressing, split personality John Lithgow who contributes a performance so over-the-top, he could look down on Everest from where he is.
He's Carter the ordinary, average, supportive husband of his altogether more glamorous, high-flying wife, Jenny, played by the wonderfully-named Lolita Davidovich, a brain surgeon who crosses the old doctor/patient line with the handsome husband, Steven Bauer, of one of her recently deceased brain-damaged patients who inconveniently has her fatal final attack just when the doc and the visiting hubby are - ahem! - otherwise distracted. Some time later, the two meet again by chance in a gift shop and their spark is rekindled although the way that she actually ends up in his bed couldn't be more contrived if it was an official governmental statement.
The other main plot strand concerns the disappearance of various infant children, which brings us back to Lithgow, who along with a seemingly evil twin brother and dastardly scientist father, kidnaps the kids for mean old dad to carry out his nefarious experiments.
It gets even crazier as we're introduced to a bewigged female psycho-analyst, a murder attempt involving a sinking car, lifted, surprise surprise, from the end of "Psycho", more murders and kidnappings and a big slow-motion finale where he re-uses a pram as a prop a few years after one crossed Eliot Ness's path as well as delivering a neat final shock-shot just for good measure.
At times, with its glossy, stylised visuals, soft-core sex-scenes and re-heating of many of his previous ideas, you sometimes think that this is the work of a devoted film student homaging De Palma the way he did Hitchcock years before, but even if it is ridiculously ludicrous and peopled with cardboard characters acting silly in more ways than one, there's always some camera-angle or surprise sequence occurring just around the corner to catch and usually hold your attention.
He's Carter the ordinary, average, supportive husband of his altogether more glamorous, high-flying wife, Jenny, played by the wonderfully-named Lolita Davidovich, a brain surgeon who crosses the old doctor/patient line with the handsome husband, Steven Bauer, of one of her recently deceased brain-damaged patients who inconveniently has her fatal final attack just when the doc and the visiting hubby are - ahem! - otherwise distracted. Some time later, the two meet again by chance in a gift shop and their spark is rekindled although the way that she actually ends up in his bed couldn't be more contrived if it was an official governmental statement.
The other main plot strand concerns the disappearance of various infant children, which brings us back to Lithgow, who along with a seemingly evil twin brother and dastardly scientist father, kidnaps the kids for mean old dad to carry out his nefarious experiments.
It gets even crazier as we're introduced to a bewigged female psycho-analyst, a murder attempt involving a sinking car, lifted, surprise surprise, from the end of "Psycho", more murders and kidnappings and a big slow-motion finale where he re-uses a pram as a prop a few years after one crossed Eliot Ness's path as well as delivering a neat final shock-shot just for good measure.
At times, with its glossy, stylised visuals, soft-core sex-scenes and re-heating of many of his previous ideas, you sometimes think that this is the work of a devoted film student homaging De Palma the way he did Hitchcock years before, but even if it is ridiculously ludicrous and peopled with cardboard characters acting silly in more ways than one, there's always some camera-angle or surprise sequence occurring just around the corner to catch and usually hold your attention.