Mind Twister (1993)
4/10
Standard issue erotic thriller
3 November 2014
Warning: Spoilers
A naked woman with a ball gag in her mouth is found beaten to death in an abandoned building. Lt. Richard Howland (a slumming Telly Savalas in one of his final roles) and a couple of detectives (Angel Ashley, Richard Roundtree) are on the case. Meanwhile, a well-endowed blonde named Heather (Suzanne Slater) shows up at the office of handsome psychiatrist Daniel Strahten (Gary Hudson) complaining of long blackout periods where she can't remember what she's done for hours at a time. All of that turns out to be a ruse however as Heather is actually there investigating the death of her friend, who was one of the doctor's patients. Another friend, Melanie (Maria Ford), has even secured a job at the clinic as a secretary to help dig up some dirt. While the shrink was indeed involved, it's not quite in the way the ladies were expecting. Daniel's wife Lisa (Erika Nann) turns out to be a psychotic nymphomaniac who flaunts her trysts in her spouse's face and has a taste for kinky and sometimes lethal sex, which her husband likes to videotape to add to their private collection.

This is a standard direct-to-video erotic mystery thriller that's pretty typical of its time. As one user already pointed out, it has more-or-less the same plot as Jim Wynorski's SINS OF DESIRE (1993). Both were shot in 1992 (though released a year apart), both were written by Mark Thomas McGee and both center around a murderous, affluent couple who prey on vulnerable patients to feed their sick desires. The only real difference is that the couple here have a special S&M chamber they call "The Game Room" inside their own home where they lure the patients instead of working out of a clinic. The room is pretty hilarious and cheap looking. The walls are painted black, there are candles burning everywhere, Gothic statues, chains and even a disco ball (!?) hanging from the ceiling. During the most memorable bit, Heather is lured into the room for "sex therapy," which somehow involves lesbian sex with the doctor's wife and fluorescent body paint. There's are a few other straight sex scenes thrown in as well to fulfill the quota for this type of film.

Surprisingly enough, most of the acting is fine. Hudson and Ford both do their jobs competently enough. Nann is given the showiest role as the murderous sociopath and gets to go over-the-top in scenes where she casually strolls up to someone's front door dressed in a miniskirt and brandishing a switchblade, fist-fights the leading lady, bludgeons a woman to death with a telephone and then pushes her body out the window and rambles on about about how good it made her feel when she "crushed that little idiot's skull." Savalas and Roundtree are wasted in minor roles, given little to do and are clearly just there for name value (and a paycheck). In fact, all of the scenes featuring the cops prove to be utterly pointless since the film mostly just follows the freelance investigation being conducted by the girls. There's not really enough plot for this to ever become all that interesting, but at least some of the dialogue is witty and there's plenty of nudity.

No one's bothered putting this on DVD despite the presence of Savalas. It was released only on video by the company VCI in an unrated edition and has since fallen off the face of the Earth.
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