Here we have an example of the sort of movie for which the terms 'run of the mill' and 'formulatic' were invented. I'd believe this was made for TV if not for some nudity at the very beginning, but I can't imagine that it was released in theaters. My guess would be it went straight to video, especially as it was shot at the very beginning of Drew Barrymore's comeback and stars Kris Kristofferson. She is Tinsel, a 14-year-old who the cop played by Kristofferson must protect. Her ballerina sister was murdered, and it looks like she's next. I sort of enjoyed the beginning of the movie, as Tinsel shows some admirable spunk and self-reliance, but it veers quickly into soppy searching-for-family bunk as it is revealed that the cop's wife and daughter were killed in a car accident and the ballerina was Tinsel's last living relative. So of course neither of them has anyone and they bond, culminating in a scene sure to set just about anyone's eyes rolling. There's also some weird, boring, sort-of subplot about the police chief's involvement with some elitist secret society. It's supposed to be a testament to the great humanity of Kristofferson's cop, but the only thing this flick is a testament to is how far Drew Barrymore had fallen, and how far she has come.
10 Reviews
Mediocre, straight-to-tape action flick
moonspinner5523 February 2007
Disgruntled cop Kris Kristofferson (looking good sans beard and mustache) protects a sassy teenage girl (Drew Barrymore) from the killers who just did away with her sister, a professional ballerina who was killed during a performance. Barrymore's character (named "Tinsel"!) is tough to take, with lots of whiny outbursts and tantrums, but Kristofferson is decent and supporting players Martin Landau, Dey Young and O.J. Simpson are each very good. The slim production values render this a B-movie (maybe even a C-movie), but it isn't terrible. Richard Danus wrote and directed, and while the shabby-looking picture doesn't exactly showcase a hot, promising new talent, at least he gets the job done. ** from ****
Kristofferson tries to give it some feeling, but the script is awful
mbs13 May 2017
Watched this because a friend of mine is a huge Kristofferson fan and had never even heard of this one so I thought i'd give it a shot. Yeah, there's a good reason neither of us had heard of it before, as it is so very not worth watching. Everything about this movie you have seen before, most likely on TV in an episode of some crime show. The only thing even remotely interesting here is unfortunately seeing O.J. Simpson in a wheelchair. He gets one very brief scene where he gets to convey his feelings about being confined to a wheelchair after being a football star, (he literally shrugs off his grief immediately after his dramatic monologue by saying "hey its no big deal") and then he gets to save Drew Barrymore from two guys with guns who are trying to break into the safe house where he's guarding her. (he dispatches one guy with a mallet!) I'm making this sound a lot more entertaining than it is, its really dreary. Its not even so bad its fun, its just dull and plodding. Kristofferson has lost his wife and daughter in a car accident years before the present and he gets a flashback scene where he gets to act out his rage that may be the one effective scene he has in the film. The rest of the time he's just barely holding himself awake enough to get through his scenes. Its not good.
Typical formula thriller
tenn-noodlehead19 June 2000
Before going any further, I should note that I caught this on cable, so it may have been, and probably was edited to tv. I rather think they may have trimmed some minor nudity. The movie starts off okay, but it quickly becomes a formula movie about a tough, but good-hearted cop in disgrace, and a teenage orphan in fear of her life, running from a super-secret underground organization that killed her sister. If this had been a made-for-tv movie, I would say it was a little better than average, as a big screen movie, it was somewhat weak. The problem is mainly in the run-of-the-mill story, not the acting or direction.
Cannon American giallo
BandSAboutMovies9 August 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Director and writer Richard Danus only directed this one movie - he wrote a lot for TV, like on Serpico and Star Trek: The Next Generation - and somehow, Cannon got it.
Drew Barrymore plays Tinsel Harvey - this name feels like a porn star's or a hardboiled detective's love interest - and when her ballerina sister Pamela (Lydie Denier, who was in plenty of Zalman King movies) dies while dancing, she ends up being protected by Detective Joe Garvey (Kris Kristofferson) from a killer who dresses like a giallo villain. Also, one of the ways he protects her is by leaving her with a wheelchair-pound, hammer-carrying O. J. Simpson.
Yes, really.
Somehow, Martin Landau is also in this and when asked about the movie, he said, "Why would you want to know about that one?" That's better than Kristofferson, who often acts like he doesn't even remember making it.
Kane Hodder is in the cast as well.
Also, there's a Satanic Brotherhood of Thorn underground conducting all of this from behind the scenes and this inches the movie toward the absolute dumbness that I need and want so badly.
I mean, it kind of makes sense. If the Italian exploitation industry had been around in its full power or if this was 1972, Drew Barrymore had been in enough public scandal - and done Poison Ivy - that Umberto Lenzi would have totally given her Carroll Baker roles. Alas, what could have been.
Drew Barrymore plays Tinsel Harvey - this name feels like a porn star's or a hardboiled detective's love interest - and when her ballerina sister Pamela (Lydie Denier, who was in plenty of Zalman King movies) dies while dancing, she ends up being protected by Detective Joe Garvey (Kris Kristofferson) from a killer who dresses like a giallo villain. Also, one of the ways he protects her is by leaving her with a wheelchair-pound, hammer-carrying O. J. Simpson.
Yes, really.
Somehow, Martin Landau is also in this and when asked about the movie, he said, "Why would you want to know about that one?" That's better than Kristofferson, who often acts like he doesn't even remember making it.
Kane Hodder is in the cast as well.
Also, there's a Satanic Brotherhood of Thorn underground conducting all of this from behind the scenes and this inches the movie toward the absolute dumbness that I need and want so badly.
I mean, it kind of makes sense. If the Italian exploitation industry had been around in its full power or if this was 1972, Drew Barrymore had been in enough public scandal - and done Poison Ivy - that Umberto Lenzi would have totally given her Carroll Baker roles. Alas, what could have been.
A vintage review, compliments of the Washington Post
khaosjr6 October 2008
Warning: Spoilers
Hey, folks, here's a blast from the past...
"No Place To Hide" By Richard Harrington Washington Post Staff Writer April 19, 1993
"No Place to Hide" is so bad it's not even any good. No guilty pleasures are to be found in its preposterously clumsy plot, or in the limp performance of Kris Kristofferson (someone check his pulse). Even Drew Barrymore regresses from the promise of "Guncrazy" by being forced to play a petulant 14-year-old caught up in a web of murder and intrigue. For both actors, this film is a triumph of underachievement.
Barrymore plays Tinsel Hanley, whose ballerina sister Pamela (the always alluring Lydie Denier) has just become a backstage corpse de ballet during her dance company's rehearsal ("Swan Lake" or "Swan Song"?). The case falls into the lap of Detective Joe Garvey (the laconic Kristofferson, whose acting range is measured between squinting eyes and a grinding jaw). Looking for clues, Garvey comes across Tinsel: a petulant, selfish brat, who's now a target for an unknown attacker (who looks and acts suspiciously like The Shadow).
Garvey is still suffering from the loss of his wife and daughter, several years earlier, to a drunk driver; the daughter, if still alive, would be about Tinsel's age. Do we detect a budding emotional subtext? Indeed, Garvey and Tinsel (both furiously resisting attachment) gradually develop a bond excruciatingly detailed in Tinsel's voiced-over diary entries. It's all very embarrassing, as is O.J. Simpson's wheelchair cameo (perhaps he was between takes on "The Naked Gun").
Director Richard Danus, who beats his own script to a pulp, has no idea where to take any of this -- loose plot threads abound -- and the inevitable revelation of a secret society run by Dirty Harry elitists is simply ridiculous (if ever a film needed a satanic subplot, it's this one).
In any number of confrontations, Kristofferson tells Barrymore to "Run, run!" and "Get out of here!" Take those as subliminal messages.
"No Place To Hide" By Richard Harrington Washington Post Staff Writer April 19, 1993
"No Place to Hide" is so bad it's not even any good. No guilty pleasures are to be found in its preposterously clumsy plot, or in the limp performance of Kris Kristofferson (someone check his pulse). Even Drew Barrymore regresses from the promise of "Guncrazy" by being forced to play a petulant 14-year-old caught up in a web of murder and intrigue. For both actors, this film is a triumph of underachievement.
Barrymore plays Tinsel Hanley, whose ballerina sister Pamela (the always alluring Lydie Denier) has just become a backstage corpse de ballet during her dance company's rehearsal ("Swan Lake" or "Swan Song"?). The case falls into the lap of Detective Joe Garvey (the laconic Kristofferson, whose acting range is measured between squinting eyes and a grinding jaw). Looking for clues, Garvey comes across Tinsel: a petulant, selfish brat, who's now a target for an unknown attacker (who looks and acts suspiciously like The Shadow).
Garvey is still suffering from the loss of his wife and daughter, several years earlier, to a drunk driver; the daughter, if still alive, would be about Tinsel's age. Do we detect a budding emotional subtext? Indeed, Garvey and Tinsel (both furiously resisting attachment) gradually develop a bond excruciatingly detailed in Tinsel's voiced-over diary entries. It's all very embarrassing, as is O.J. Simpson's wheelchair cameo (perhaps he was between takes on "The Naked Gun").
Director Richard Danus, who beats his own script to a pulp, has no idea where to take any of this -- loose plot threads abound -- and the inevitable revelation of a secret society run by Dirty Harry elitists is simply ridiculous (if ever a film needed a satanic subplot, it's this one).
In any number of confrontations, Kristofferson tells Barrymore to "Run, run!" and "Get out of here!" Take those as subliminal messages.
A bitter detective gains a more human side when forced to care for a potential victim, a young teenage girl.
oparthenon20 August 2007
An adult film -- only those who have experienced what it might be like to lose one's family to the carelessness of a drunk driver might find a certain resonance with Kris Kristofferson's superb portrait of an embittered yet vulnerable detective. A version of the "I've got to put my life back together" story, the film comes perilously close to focusing too much on Drew Barrymore's teenage angst -- her rebellion against authority is not simply the typical teenager's, nor merely the result of being spoiled, as Kristofferson's detective finds out when she begins to cling to him out of real need. As a potential victim of the mysterious group that killed her sister, she needs protection; but as the discarded and abandoned orphan she has become, she needs the love and care of the father she never had. A film to be watched for intense and subtle performances by the two leads, and as well, for OJ Simpson's final film role as Kristofferson's physically disabled pal - a nice counterpart to to the emotionally crippled Barrymore-Kristofferson duo.
VERY POIGNANT FILM
anitaken4 September 2023
Warning: Spoilers
I must have watched a very different film from the one all these reviewers are writing off. A lot of the "action" part of this film is indeed formulaic, which is why I took it down to an 8. But as a relationship film it is quite good. Both Kristofferson and Barrymore are excellent as two damaged and shuttered people. Kristofferson's "Joe Garvey" lost his wife and 9 year old daughter to a drunk driver, and his bitterness has driven him into a very cold place. He is also an outcast from the force because he refused to go along with a cover-up of an unnecessary killing by two cowboy-cops. No one seemed to mention this, even though it plays a significant role in the film's climax, which leads me to wonder just how closely some reviewers watched this film before they typed out their shallow and flippant reviews. Drew Barrymore's "Tinsel Handley" has never had any adult supervision, which might sound glorious, but the effect has been that she hasn't ever had anyone who gave a damn about her. She is a hardened little piece of work who acts like 14 going on 30 and who looks like a teenage hooker. But she has never had the opportunity to be a child, and she is a child -- a terrified one. The two eventually come together, forming a bond that they both need. The scene in which, at the urging of his female partner, Kristofferson's cop takes the sobbing child in his arms is one of the most poignant scenes I have ever seen. It finally shatters the reinforced concrete in which this man is encased, and taps into the emotional center which he thought had died with his wife and daughter. The sinister conspiracy almost-ending is a bit silly, except for one golden moment; given an opportunity to kill the drunk who killed his family, he cannot do it. The hatred has drained away. It is unfortunate that O. J. Simpson was in the film, but at the time he was cast, no one knew the unsavory details of his personal life. I think holding that particular casting against the film is inappropriate for anyone who wants to be taken seriously as a reviewer.
Watchable...barely.
bux19 April 2003
A good cast cannot save this one from poor direction, poor production values and some of the stupidest background music ever. The story is predictable, the characters seem to be reading their lines, and the action is contrived. Having said all that, how bad can a movie be that features O.J. Simpson in a story about a slasher?
An adorable young angsty drew barrymore
mullen197910 May 2021
My mom and I rented this at a video and variety store near our apartment back in the summer of 1994. It has a very nostalgic part of my heart, so my views are biased.
But there's no doubt drew barrymore will make you smile, even laugh a couple times. Her and kris kristofferson share a great chemistry here.
But there's no doubt drew barrymore will make you smile, even laugh a couple times. Her and kris kristofferson share a great chemistry here.
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