THE KISS (1988) is a movie that flew so low under the radar, not even the producers knew it was in the theaters. Okay, that’s a little bit of a fib, but I’m sure you know what I mean. I had never heard of this film until my editor Kenneth Gallant asked me to write something about it.
The movie starts out with sisters Felice and Hillary in the Belgian Congo, 1963. Felice has a cursed totem, and this is where this curse begins for their family. Years later in the 1980’s, we see Hillary (Pamela Collyer). She’s married to Jack Halloran (Nicholas Kilbertus), a somewhat successful architect. They have a teenage daughter Amy (Meredith Salenger). They seem like a happy, well-adjusted family having a pool party with friends and neighbors. Hillary gets a phone call from Felice. She wants to come for a visit and Hillary is none-too pleased about this.
While in town to get more sodas for the party, Hillary reflects a little on things, window shopping for a gun, which was her fatal mistake. A truck swerves from the road, hitting Hillary, pushes both through the window of the store and crushes her.
At Hillary’s funeral, accompanied by family friend - Brenda (Mimi Kuzyk) and a school friend- Heather (Sabrina Boudot), Amy sees a strange woman hiding behind the trees. Five months later, with the family dealing with their loss, Aunt Felice (Joanna Pacula-GORKY PARK AND TOMBSTONE) shows up and they see her at Hillary’s grave and find out she was the strange woman at the funeral.
They invite Felice into their home. Felice turns out to be a jet setting model. She eases Jack’s pain, as does friends Terry, Brenda and Heather. At first Felice is very friendly with Amy, but all that goes downhill after another strange death. Jack’s business in the meantime begins to fail after Hillary’s death. Felice helps out. She connects Jack to scientist testing products on animals. While there, Felice shows her love for the monkey’s that are test subjects. They don’t show her any love back. They begin to scream and rattle their cages. I almost wished the filmmakers had explored more of this story. Who knows what kind of movie it would have ended up being. An interesting angle, I imagine. At this point, jack gets the job with the scientist hiring him to design a building.
Then the horrible accident of Amy’s friend, Heather - at the mall Heather’s necklace gets trapped in an escalator. The escalator pulls the necklace across Heather’s neck, finally tearing the skin from her face and she ends up in the hospital.
From there things seem to get worse for Amy. She comes home to find Felice and Jack clearing out her mother’s clothes from the closets. That doesn’t sit well with Amy. Parenting isn’t Jack’s strong suit. As a matter of fact, I have to admit, there’s nothing strong about Jack at all. Even the actor is pretty weak. Maybe that was the filmmaker’s intentions, but there’s not a whole lot to the character.
Amy decides to search Felice’s things. She finds a pair of sunglasses with blood on them that belonged to Heather. In the process of putting the things away, she cuts herself on a totem pole. Felice catches her. Amy wants Felice out of the house. She makes the mistake telling Jack that Felice might be responsible. Jack tells Felice to leave.
At this point the movie picks up. An awful puppet of Felice’s familiar makes its appearance. Forgiving that infraction, it was a pretty good plot point. During a lovemaking scene between Jack and Felice, Amy experiences her period in class at school. Or was she experiencing the lovemaking? Not really sure. Amy figures out Jack and Felice are an item and the two have a falling out. Her friend Terry comes into the story a little more. He decides to straighten Felice out. That definitely doesn’t work out for Terry. Terry falls under the influence of Felice, gets out of his Jeep in the middle of traffic.
The Kiss has a lot more story to it and it would be a crime to tell you more. I think it should be experienced. There’s not a lot of information on this movie. It’s not a bad movie, but it is somewhat bland connected to a pretty good idea. The opening scene with the sisters was definitely the best scene in the movie. Production values were actually good, with the exception of the cat/demon. Today’s audiences would have a laugh fest with that. One thing you can give the filmmakers is that they did try to make something watchable, unlike now with tons of crap thanks to SCYFY channel and a good amount of so-called found footage films. The story was there, but the little stuff seemed to fall apart, like the accidents or murders, and the every-look-around the corner scares. It was common tools for horror and it’s still used today.
It was obvious Joanna Pacula was the strongest actor in the film. She comes off as the Aunt from Hell. Again, watching these 80’s films, you can see where everyone’s heads were at. It was all about how much sex I can get and how much money I can make - art mirroring real life in 1980’s society.
Mark Slade, HMS
Read the previous installment.