Kiss of Death (1997)
3/10
Depressing, unwatchable z-grade crap
17 May 2022
I didn't have high expectations for "Kiss of Death", but I was underwhelmed regardless. It doesn't feel like a proper movie. It feels like the cut-scenes from an early '90s CD-ROM game. The production values are low, the movie is poorly shot, the dialogue is poorly recorded, and the movie often features loud, inappropriate music that is distracting and annoying.

I admit I only watched it for one reason: to look at the stunningly beautiful Cristi Harris (here miscredited as "Christy" in the end credits). I didn't however want to watch her being constantly traumatised and mistreated, though, which is about the only thing you'll take away from this movie. Harris plays a young woman in a relationship with a great guy. However, after exhorting him to make out with her while driving a car, they unsurprisingly have an accident, and this leaves the guy paralysed from the waist down. He starts drinking, starts abusing Cristi emotionally and physically, and even starts using heroin.

Meanwhile Cristi is trying to make it as a model/actress and keeps falling prey to Harvey Weinstein types who demand she takes her clothes off or try to rape her. Not bad enough we have to watch the insane husband slap her around, now we also have to watch this.

Other characters appear but the movie forgets to tell you who they are and doesn't make them interesting, so their appearances on screen are just dead air. Finally it appears that this one other guy is having an affair with Cristi, and his wife, played by model/actress Vanity, finds out and lets the crazy paraplegic husband know. Vanity is barely in the movie (and really doesn't need to be), and yet for some reason she's credited first.

The movie's conclusion has to be seen to be believed, but that is too high a price, trust me. It involves someone apparently disguising themselves as Al Capone before committing a murder, and of course, yet more pain and misery for Cristi. About the only through line this movie possesses is her experiencing pain; the plot is an after-thought, and god knows what they were thinking with the Al Capone thing.

This is z-grade crap, basically unwatchable, not worth it for violence or nudity, and genuinely distressing and hard to watch despite its awfulness. Poor Cristi.
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