Exquisite Tenderness
((U.S.-GERMAN))
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Dr. Theresa McCann ... Isabel Glasser
Dr. Benjamin Hendricks ... James Remar
Dr. Julian Matar ... Sean Haberle
Dr. Ed Mittlesbay ... Charles Dance
Lt. Daryl McEllwaine ... Peter Boyle
Dr. Roger Stein ... Malcolm McDowell
Sgt. Ross ... Charles Bailey-Gates
Tommy Beaton ... Gregory West
Lisa Wilson ... Juliette Jeffers
Milly ... Mother Love
Set in an unnamed North American town (but filmed around Vancouver), film starts with a thunderous B&W main-title sequence whose significance is explained only much later, though it's obvious the flashback refers to a trauma in someone's childhood.
Theresa McCann (Isabel Glasser) is a doc at a hospital where the clearly mad Dr. Stein (Malcolm McDowell, all bulging eyes) is experimenting with implants in live baboons.
McCann is suspicious of Stein's activities, not least when a baboon dies and hospital boss Mittlesbay (Charles Dance, with a shaky American accent) warns her off. Taking over one of Stein's female patients, McCann ends up temporarily suspended when the woman is killed by a loon who leaves a lollipop behind.
After dawdling around with its characters for some 20 minutes, pic starts to take some kind of shape here, easing into a shockfest format. Recognizing the lollipop, McCann realizes the killer is former b.f. and doctor Julian Matar (Sean Haberle), whom she shopped to the authorities years ago for his unlawful experiments in tissue regeneration. Reinstated, she teams up with colleague and putative lover Hendricks (James Remar) to trap Matar, who knocks off Stein and is locked up, but soon escapes.
From midpoint on, pic becomes a kind of medical slasher movie, with Matar hiding out in the bowels of the building and swooping on its staff and patients to provide raw meat for his experiments. Anyone frightened of needles should steer clear of this one: Aside from an unhealthy obsession with self-inflicted pain --"exquisite tenderness" supposedly being a medical term for the point where pain reaches its most extreme -- the movie reveals an obsession with syringes, and the damage they can inflict, that's almost certifiable.
Apart from McDowell's brief over-the-top turn as a mad doc, performances are mostly restrained, with leads Glasser and Remar getting little in the script to chew on beyond the action. Peter Boyle and Charles Bailey-Gates are by-the-numbers hard-nosed cops. Best playing, pitched between pathos and parody, is by newcomer Haberle as the psychotic Matar who, like Jason, just won't stay down.
Helmer Carl Schenkel ("Knight Moves") directs individual sequences slickly, but creates no real sense of growing or sustained tension. Tom Burstyn's widescreen lensing is always well composed, and is at its most atmospheric in the murky lower depths of the hospital building.
Camera (Fujicolor; CFI prints; widescreen), Thomas Burstyn; editor, Jimmy B. Frazier; music, Christopher Franke; production design, Douglas Higgins; art direction, Randy Chodak; costume design, Ushi Zech; sound (DTS Stereo), Eric Batut; sound design, John Fasal; stunt coordinator, Bill Ferguson; special effects supervisor, Gary Paller; prosthetic makeup, X.F.X. Inc.; makeup effects, Steve Johnson; assistant director, Robert Lee. Reviewed at Century Preview Theater, London, Oct. 5, 1995. Running time: 100 MIN.
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