← Back to Reviews
 

Color of Night


Color of Night
(directed by Richard Rush, 1994)



Color of Night is a Basic Instinct clone from the era of early 1990's movies that deal with sex and psychoanalysis. It stars Bruce Willis as a psychiatrist named Bill Capa. In the hysterical opening scene to Color of Night, Bill pushes one of his clients - a frazzled, self loathing, drag queen imposter named Michelle (Kathleen Wilhoite, who played a memorable and marvelous psychic in 1986's Witchboard) - to commit suicide. She runs straight to the window of Bill's office and crashes through it, falling to her slow, beautiful, majestically filmed death until she splats on the road. Interestingly, Kathleen Wilhoite died the same way in Witchboard, sort of, when an old male ghost pushed her out of a window and caused her to fall on top of a sharp, spiky sundial she used as a lawn decoration.

As Bill stares at his dead, depressed client from the broken window above, something psychologically happens to him and from then on, he can no longer see the color red. Soon, he is invited to visit an old college buddy (Scott Bakula) in California and he is also a psychiatrist. This guy is running a little support group for wackos, which includes a full cast of character actors like Brad Dourif, Leslie Ann Warren, Lance Henriksen and Kevin J. O'Connor. Also among them is a bizarre gender confused creature - more on that in a moment.

Scott Bakula, who has been getting stalked for some time now, ends up murdered and Bruce Willis ends up taking over his support group for him. He also begins a love affair with an attractive woman named Rose (Jane March) whom he meets -- maybe not for the first time -- when she has a little car accident with him. There is also a VERY annoying cop character by the name of Martinez (Ruben Blades) and I swear to God this character is one of the worst characters I have ever seen in a movie. Anyway, it's plain as day that the seductive Rose is also the mannish/feminine gender confused creature from the support group -- to the AUDIENCE -- but not at all to the characters. In fact, these people are so out of touch that ALL of them are having sexual relations with Rose, although Rose is pretending to be someone else with each of them. Yes, even Leslie Ann Warren has a little lesbian fling with Rose.

The movie is basically about a support group of neurotics that are all sleeping with the gender confused creature while murders are also happening among them. There are also some strong sexy scenes with Bruce Willis and Jane March -- watch very carefully when he's naked in the pool, you can see his penis. There's also a couple of scenes where Bruce is dramatically chased around by someone mysterious in a car on the highway. The movie is much longer than it should be. However -- I've gotta admit -- I kinda loved the film. It's stupid as hell -- I don't understand what Bruce Willis was thinking when he agreed to be in it -- but for a cheesy psychological sex thriller where you see Bruce Willis naked, Color of Night is actually pretty entertaining if you like "so bad it's good" type of movies.

But I really, really do hate the cop character, Martinez, and they could have shown more of Bruce naked. I heard somewhere that in a foreign release, they actually do show more.

I'm sure you've already missed this (unless you watched it for Jane March) but if it crosses paths with you someday, I recommend it if you're in the mood for sex, stalking and silliness.