Sean Young was molested by her step father (Chelcie Ross) as a child. He was a bad man. Then he apparently died along with her mother. But the terrible memories have haunted Young all these years. She is now a police sketch artist and she's called in on a case in which a little girl named Bria (Hertford) was kidnapped and held in a closet by yet another child molester. The girl manages to get free and when Young sketches the face that the girl is trying to describe, it turns out to be the face of her evil step father.
The local cop in charge of the case is sympathetic but, like the overbearing FBI agents, he attributes the likeness to the penetrance of Young's traumatic memories.
Bria, meanwhile, continues to insist that the face is correct except "something's wrong." What's wrong, as it turns out, is that the face of her kidnapper is about twenty years older. Otherwise, it's a dead ringer for Young's step dad. (Hint, hint.) Young solves the conundrum. It's her step father alright, only he didn't die. He strangled Young's mother and was sent to Leavenworth for murder. Now that he's been released, he's at it again. And he still has his eye on Sean Young, although why he's still interested in her, now that she's a grown woman, however succulent, remains a mystery. Perhaps it's love.
The police guard her house, using her as bait. But at a critical moment they're called away on a wild goose chase, or maybe a red herring chase -- ALL of the many cops are called away. Not one is left behind to protect Young and Bria when the wicked step father inevitably shows up.
His appearance is very bad news because he appears to have plans for both the grown Young and the ungrown Bria. Young is about to be strangled while duct-taped in a chair but Bria sneaks a pistol into her hand and the wicked step father takes one in the gut.
As in all modern monster movies, this hardly slows him down. He pursues the two of them through the deserted rural house, a rabid tomcat after two scurrying mice. They hide here, they hide there, they freeze into tonic immobility. It doesn't matter. There is a final struggle between Young and Daddy, who seems more vigorous than ever, until she finally dispatches him with a great big knife. This is all so formulaic that I was a little surprised he didn't leap back to life after collapsing for the last time.
I hated the little girl. Her scream sounds like a boatswain's pipe. I believe it was heard by bats for miles around. I hated her name too. No more girls named "Bria", okay? And no more Gillians or Jillians either. And no more Ambers or Megans. Enough is enough. Barbara is okay, or Linda, or even Abigail or Dolly. Let's get back to basics, shall we? Sean Young is no better and no worse than usual. She has a nose that looks deliberately designed. A little gratuitous nudity might have helped somewhere along the line.
The script is hamstrung by the formula it must articulate. Certain ritual events are demanded and there's no way around them. For instance, there can be no pathos associated with the evildoer. He must be dead-on evil. The script allows the child molester who is the red herring to whine for a while about how helpless he is in the face of his desires. (Cf., "M".) It also gives him an opportunity to weep and sob and overact in the most outrageous manner. (Cf., a much more convincing display by William Hickey in "The Boston Strangler," from which this performance is chiefly derived.) The red herring happens to be innocent of any crime except, towards the end, when his function in the narrative requires him to threaten Young with a knife while in a state of utter despair, half in love with easeful death. Nevertheless, innocent or not, he dies too. This morality is unforgiving.
One interesting detail provided by the dilatory FBI man. Child molesters at Leavenworth are on the lowest rung of the ladder. The other inmates beat them and brand them on their forearms. "It's their way of administering justice," says Mister FBI. He expresses this in a tone of some satisfaction, and the unthinking audience is inclined to agree with him that child abusers deserve whatever they get. Yet somebody -- sometime, somewhere -- should ask exactly who is at the TOP of that ladder, and is what they've done better than what the child molester has done? The acting, in general, is no better than should be expected, but the script gives us at least one sign of its writer having challenged the expectations of the genre. Young and the handsome young local cop in charge of the case may fall in love. They may even sleep together. But the cop doesn't try any hanky-panky and Young thanks him for it the next morning.
The film has two chief virtues. Since the savvy viewer knows almost exactly what's coming next, seeing it has a ritualistic quality, and therefore is as comforting as a church service. And there is a genuine moral to this story too. No matter how poor the movie is, if it incorporates an element of child abuse, it will still make a nickel.
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