"Joe Bob's Drive-In" for 3/24/96
cutline: Ally Sheedy deals with the age-old relationship question--does A. Martinez want to kiss me or kill me?--in the weirdbeard erotic thriller "One Night Stand."
By Joe Bob Briggs
Drive-In Movie Critic of Grapevine, Texas
I recently made up with my girlfriend Cherry Dilday--for the 37th time--and we were on our way to catch "One Night Stand" at the triple-screen Astro Drive-In on Loop 12, and I was thinking how it was really weird that nobody has ever used the title "One Night Stand" before, since it's a great movie title, when Cherry started in on me again:
"Why do you have to see everbody nekkid?"
"I don't have to see everbody nekkid," I told her. "What are you talkin about?"
"You're not satisfied until you see every girl nekkid. You can't just say, 'Hey, look, there's a pretty girl.' You immediately think 'What's underneath there?'"
"What's underneath where?"
"What's underneath that T-shirt? What's underneath those ballerina tights? What's bulging out of those Wranglers?"
Lately Cherry has been going off like this.
"I don't wanna see Hillary Clinton nekkid."
I thought I would instantly end the conversation with this brilliant stroke of logic, but she came back at me from an unexpected direction.
"YES YOU WOULD! If you could do it without ANYONE knowing, you WOULD wanna see Hillary Clinton nekkid."
"Would not." I realized this was a feeble answer, and probly didn't convince her at all, but it was all I could come up with. My mind was racing, as I tried to come up with someone I would never want to see nekkid.
"Mother Teresa!"
"Old ladies don't count."
"Why not?"
"YOU KNOW WHY NOT!"
I liked Cherry a lot better before she became a junior lawyer about everthing. I tried philosophy.
"There's nothing WRONG with the nekkid female form. And there's nothing WRONG with the male appreciation of it."
"That's true, but you're a pervert."
"Do you wanna go to this movie or not?"
"And why," she screamed, "would we be going to a movie called 'One Night Stand' in the first place?"
"Well, uh, Ally Sheedy is in it, from 'The Breakfast Club' . . ."
"Uh-huh."
"And I always wondered what she would look like . . ."
"Uh-huh."
I realized I was about to set off World War III, so just in the nick of time, I got an idea. I reached over and grabbed Cherry's T-shirt.
"What's under THERE? That's what I wanna know."
It worked. She giggled. I don't know WHY it worked, but it worked. Remember, guys, whenever this starts to happen, always bring the conversation around to HER PHYSICAL BEAUTY. There's a brain lobe back there that shuts off the whole system. If she's thinking "I'm a fox, I'm a fox, I'm a fox," she can't think about anything else in the universe. This is a universal principle of the female psyche.
It was a good thing, too, because the movie didn't exactly deliver the groceries. It's one of those sensitive-professional-woman-grieving-over-her-broken-marriage-and-her-dead-mother-who-gets-into-a-dangerous-
affair-with-a-sexy-hunkola-Antonio-Banderas-type-but-starts-to-think-he-might-be-a-serial-killer flicks. Not exactly what you expect from the title "One Night Stand," but then, on the plus side, you do get to see Ally Sheedy flash a little pale Brat Pack skin.
One thing I love about this flick is that Ally's boss at the ad agency is Don Novello, better known as Father Guido Sarducci, in a straight dramatic role! And it's all part of the directorial vision of Talia Shire, better known as Rocky's girlfriend! No wonder we've got a Vaseline Jamboree going on here, with all kinds of flashbacks, flashfronts, fast fades, slow fades, and my favorite of all artsy-fartsy flicks, the closeup of a burning candle. We've got dream sequences, nightmare sequences, floating cameras, crane shots, dancing cameras--it's one of those flicks that makes you so dizzy you can hardly follow the story.
Anyhow, the whole deal is that Ally goes off one night when she's feeling crappy and makes the Sign of the Quadruple-Gilled Enchilada with the brooding A. Martinez, who hasn't built up enough credits to have a complete first name. When she wakes up in the guy's groovy condo, all the furniture is gone and he is, too. She gets weirded out, turns detective, finds out the condo is owned by super-geek Frederic Forrest, and before you know it we're into familiar erotic thriller territory--murder, incest, creepy relatives, blah blah blah.
Oh yeah--Ally can be pretty darn NASTY, if you know what I mean and I think you do.
Two dead bodies. Eight breasts. Multiple aardvarking, with wine-drenching. Bloody shower dancing. (Don't ask.) Plastic-surgery stitch-ripping. One fistfight. Head through the shower door. Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Ally Sheedy, for inspired aardvarking, for saying "I want you to make love to me, and I don't even want to know your name," and for telling her dead mother "I met a stranger--I think I've known him all my life--I love him"; Gina Hecht, as the sensible ad agency co-worker who says "The awful beautiful pain of obsession"; A. Martinez, as the guy who picks her up and puts her down and pretty much runs her through the Olympic tryouts, for saying "I was lonely--you could have been anybody" and "Even in death she made me feel guilty"; and Frederic Forrest, as the creepy stepfather who says "He's a good man, and he's been punished enough!"
Two and a half stars.
Joe Bob says check it out.
© 1996 Joe Bob Briggs All Rights Reserved