This film is surprisingly not horrible. A product of the mid-1990s Rebecca De Mornay boomlet, it takes the woman-in-peril formula and jiggers with it just enough to come up with something worth watching…and not just for De Mornay's bosom.Sarah Taylor (Rebecca De Mornay) is a psychologist who starts receiving threatening letters and packages, like someone is stalking her. But is her stalker Tony Ramirez (Antonio Banderas), the Puerto Rican charmer she's just fallen in love with? I s it Cliff Raddison (Dennis Miller), her upstairs neighbor who had a one-night stand with Sarah long ago and seems desperate for another encounter? Is it Max Chelski (Harry Dean Stanton), the serial killer she's analyzing in prison for his upcoming trial? Could it be her father Henry (Len Cariou), who's just re-entered her life and with whom Sarah has an obviously disturbing relationship? Or does her stalker have something to do with the fiancée who abandoned Sarah almost a year ago? The story keeps you wondering until revealing the truth, which turns out to be pretty decent for a twist ending.Clocking in at under 90 minutes, Never Talk to Strangers is like a well made wading pool. There's no depth to it but it works as it's intended to. There's some sex, some mystery, a little humor from Dennis Miller and just a touch of violence. There's not a lot of chemistry between De Mornay and Antonio Banderas. However, they're both very pretty and the movie moves quickly enough that it never asks you to take their relationship too seriously. De Mornay, Banderas and the rest of the cast do reasonably good acting jobs and the film is adequately written and directed. Despite the ambition of the twist ending, there's not a lot here that will stick with you. For less than 90 minutes, though, it's a pleasant diversion.The only thing that separates Never Talk To Strangers from the typical woman-in-peril movie you'd see on the Lifetime channel are a few F-words, Banderas' bare butt and De Mornay's naked breasts. So, if you're looking for a good, racier version of that sort of thing…you'll find it here.The only truly interesting things about this film are the fact that De Mornay was one of the producers, demonstrating again the principle of Producer Self-Nudity, and that it's a product of the aforementioned De Mornay boomlet. It's one of the more intriguing Hollywood phenomena, where an actress who may have had some success as a starlet but never became a star, suddenly experiences a career resurgence in her 30s. These women usually get one attention-grabbing role and it's like the movie industry notices them again and decides to see if they can squeeze any more juice out of them. Sometimes these boomlets reinvigorate a career, like they did with Sharon Stone. Sometimes it just peters out, like it did with De Mornay. But whatever the reason for them, the 30something boomlet is probably the one thing that keeps a lot of actresses plugging away in movies long after they should have found other employment. I'm pretty sure the beautiful and talented Winona Ryder is wondering when her boomlet is going to come along.

Man, is this lousy. It doesn't deserve much in the way of comment so, keeping it brief, Rebecca DeMornay is a highly disciplined police psychiatrist who falls for Latin Lover Antonio Banderas in a wine store, he of the ponytail and jail-house tats. When she cuts loose, she really cuts loose. Other than this torrid affair she's having (and we must admit the affair has its speed bumps) she's a pretty cold fish. Her broke, ailing father shows up for the first time in years and she boots him out. She's also adept at keeping her horny upstairs neighbor (Dennis Miller) at bay. And there's prisoner Harry Dean Stanton who's trying to maneuver her into giving him a diagnosis of multiple personality disorder so he won't have his privates nailed to the wall for the serial murders he's committed.All these people, and perhaps more, are immediately suspect when strange things begin happening to her. Somebody sends her dead flowers. Somebody does unspeakable things to her pet cat. (The next time I see a household pet turn up in a parcel or strung up in the closet or boiled in a pot, I'm going to puke.) So who's doing it? Guess. No power on earth could force me to reveal the ending, but maybe a hint will help: childhood abuse.The abuse excuse is an interesting business in itself, far more interesting than the movie. What does "childhood abuse" mean? Do we mean sexual abuse? Physical? Both? How about whacking a kid over the back with a wooden cooking spoon, hard enough to break it? That's what happened to me and my brother when we were kids, just as similar things happened to all the other errant boys in the neighborhood. Sexual abuse? That never happened to any of us, as far as I know, although I'm not sure it would have been rejected with any degree of animation. In the Samoan village I studied for two years, there was one case of an adolescent boy found playing sexually with a much younger girl. The girl's family beat hell out of him. The boy's own family sent him to live with another branch of the family in another village, an exile that lasted two years. By the time he returned the incident was forgotten by everyone, including the child. (By the way, the little girl we see here is under five so it's unlikely that she'd remember Dad's night-time visits in any case since long-term memory isn't really established until about that time.) DeMornay's experience leading to her mental disorder can be called "the social construction of trauma." It's not there unless we put it there. Enough of the psychiatric lecture. That will be fifteen cents.You want trauma? I'll give you trauma. The film absolutely forces us to identify with Rebecca DeMornay's character, right from the beginning. Then, when she has her first tryst with Antonio Banderas, and Pio Donnagio's score is pounding the eroticism into our heads, the camera gives us a shot from over her shoulder of the bare-torsoed Antonio crawling over us with his hairy chest. Now THAT'S traumatic. It makes any male viewer feel as if he's on the floor of the laundry room at the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo. Don't get me wrong. I don't dislike Antonio Banderas. It's just that I'm not in love with him. There aren't enough nude shots of Rebecca DeMornay's elfin body in the entire universe to compensate for that kind of anxiety.Here's an engaging way of surviving this movie. Instead of just sitting there puling, try picking out the scenes that were filmed in Toronto and separating them from the ones shot in Budapest. It's a challenge, really, and may, for all we know, preserve your sanity.

This thriller is a bit rough-edged, but a lot of people like that sort of thing. Rebecca DeMornay was the at the top of her game around this time (early to mid '90s).GOOD NEWS - Overall, an interesting and involving story, especially in the second half. The movie is capped by a surprise ending I defy anyone to guess correctly. There are a few steamy scenes, too.BAD NEWS - No likable characters, too much profanity; a few minor holes in the story; an obvious feminist bias and DeMornay's foul mouth and morals are pretty rotten for a psychologist, the character she plays. The guys - Dennis Miller and Antonio Bandaras - play pretty sleazy characters, too.OVERALL - Interesting movie but too sleazy a feel to it.

A more or less typical thriller made special by Rebecca De Mornay's awesome performance. She is the executive producer of this picture and must have badly wanted to do this role -- I'm glad she did.She plays a psychiatrist evaluating whether an accused serial killer is competent to stand trial. It becomes obvious early on that she was drawn to psychiatry because of her own severe emotional problems and difficult past. In the meantime, we are shown troubling relationships with men appearing in her personal life. An upstairs neighbor badly wants her, but she wants only to be friends. Her father shows up out of the blue seeking affection and assistance, but she resists him, and it is obvious that their relationship and her childhood were deeply troubled. A stranger (Banderas) she meets in a store ardently pursues her, and they begin an affair, but she has difficulty trusting him, both because he is something of a suspicious character and because, as she tells him, she has difficulty trusting anybody. Their relationship becomes volatile and angry, tinged with violent overtones. Then there is the issue of her ex-fiancé, who vanished abruptly and without explanation just before the scheduled wedding.As happens in these kinds of films, she is sent a series of mysterious messages and packages with no return addresses. Then violent things start to occur. Someone is clearly trying to terrorize her, but who? So many suspects -- Banderas? The upstairs neighbor (who is of course jealous of Banderas)? The serial killer, acting through friends outside of prison? Her father? The ex-fiancée? I did not anticipate the answer to this question, revealed of course at the film's end, but it was not an especially unusual conclusion for films of this kind. What made this picture worthwhile was De Mornay's utterly believable portrayal of, let us say, a difficult character, reminiscent of what she did in "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle". She is simply great at this kind of thing, besides being classically gorgeous.The other acting is fine, but no one stands out. Banderas is always good, but in this one he is mostly eye candy for the ladies. Harry Dean Stanton as the serial killer is suitably menacing and crazed, but this picture is really all De Mornay. I found it a bit slow at times, but the last 20 minutes or so made up for the weak spots. Definitely worth watching.