Pacific Heights

20^th Century Fox (theatre) and Warner Brothers (DVD)

present a Morgan Creek production

of

a John Schlesinger film

PACIFIC HEIGHTS

starring Matthew Modine, Melanie Griffith and Michael Keaton.

*******

Here's a trailer.

This 1990 film about new landlords doing battle with the tenant from hell could have been a good psychological thriller; sadly, an interesting idea was hampered by poor execution.  The film cost $18,000,000 to make and grossed $44,926,706, and Schlesinger certainly makes good use of the locations in San Francisco and Palm Springs; that said, the characters are so underdeveloped that it's difficult to care about what happens to them.  As with Event Horizon (already reviewed), as far as the look of the film is concerned the money's been used well; would that one could say the same for the content.

Drake (Modine) and Patty (Griffith) are young, un-married and upwardly mobile.  They move into a Victorian house in San Francisco which they plan to renovate.  The payments are beyond their means but the property’s been divided into three apartments so by combining their savings with rent from the other two apartments, Drake and Patty decide that they can manage.

Before long one of the apartments is occupied by the Watanabes (a kindly Japanese/American couple) but Drake and Patty haven't been entirely truthful about their financial position and in order to make the monthly payments on the house they need another tenant as quickly as possible.

Enter Carter Hayes (Keaton).

Hayes is expensively dressed, drives a very expensive car and is very polite; the answer to Drake and Patty's prayers.  Admittedly for someone so apparently wealthy he's strangely reluctant to undergo a credit check but so what?  Needs must when you are up to your eyes in debt; besides, he may be polite to the point of creepiness but he's got references, he's come along at just the right time and in return for waiving the credit check he's willing to pay six month’s rent up front by wire transfer; what could be better?

Now, there's an old saying about what happens when someone or something seems too good to be true.

Yes, that's the one.

Sure enough, Hayes is a nightmare; he moves in without permission, has another man whom one can only describe as a slack-jawed weirdo move in with him (together they carry out unauthorized do-it-yourself work on the apartment until the small hours of the morning), the promised rent shows no sign of appearing and the noise (plus an army of cockroaches) forces the Watanabes to move out.

Hayes, however, has absolutely no intention of doing likewise; from the moment he moves in on Drake and Patty, he’s waging psychological warfare.  He won’t even answer the door to the apartment and goes so far as to change the locks.  He also knows how to play the legal system to his advantage and when Drake cuts off the power, he calls the police and it’s Drake who finds himself on the wrong side of the law.

This pattern is repeated throughout the film and is, as it turns out, Hayes’ usual modus operandi: move into rented accommodation, refuse to pay the rent, make a nuisance of himself, push the landlord over the edge and then play the victim, continuing this pattern until a happy household has been destroyed.

There is, to begin with at least, an air of mystery about Hayes; what does he do apart from unauthorized building work?  Is he, perhaps, a satanist?  A serial killer?  Both?

No.

Hayes, we discover, is a loser, serial wrongdoer and general ne’er-do-well who is unhappy because he's been disowned by his family so in his mind, nobody else should be happy either.

That’s it.

Michael Keaton plays creepy-and-slightly-menacing like nobody else but for him to be scary the menace needs to come to the fore and that simply never happens.  Even when he’s seen sitting in the dark twirling razor blades, we don’t get the feeling that he’s going to do anything with them: at least, not to anybody other than himself.  He comes across as more pathetic than anything else.

Without going into too much detail from here on, Hayes is not above a spot of identity theft; having already assumed the identity of the property's former landlord (Hayes' real name is James Danforth), he pretends to be Drake in order to use his credit cards; however he is soon found out by Pattty and all Drake has to do to stop him is freeze the joint account.  With that done, Danforth's 'scam' unravels and it's downhill for him from then on.

I won't give away the ending but it is a happy one, should you be curious enough to watch this interesting misfire of a film.

4 out of ten.