Fascination (2005) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Fascination is an erotic thriller, basically another ugly step-child of the Body Heat era. (The film was lensed in 2004, but the script was written in 1989.)

A man drowns while taking his morning swim, despite the fact that he was in perfect physical condition and once won a silver medal in an Olympic swimming event. His distraught son finds dad's death rather suspicious, and the lad's suspicions deepen when his mom goes on a cruise after the funeral, and comes back engaged. The new beau moves in immediately and marries mom not long thereafter. Those ol' suspicions get as deep as a chasm when the son finds an old picture of mom and her new beau looking mighty cozy - while dad was still alive. Oops!

Having nobody else to confide in, the son turns for solace to his new stepsister (the daughter of mom's new beau), who fans the fires of suspicion even more when she admits that her mom also died under suspicious circumstances. The son finally has his dad's body exhumed and tested by a toxicologist, who determines that dad's drowning was probably caused by his being drugged out by a disproportionate dose of mom's sleeping pills.

Right from the beginning we know that the son is an innocent party - he's the mark -  but we don't know who, if anyone, conspired to kill dad, and we don't really know why. (The apparent motive keeps shifting.) We don't even know if the mother's beau and the daughter are really who they say they are. For all practical purposes, there are only three characters in the film besides the innocent son, and the answer to the puzzle may involve any combination of them. To say any more would be telling.

It sounds like your basic straight-to-vid, but somehow, in total defiance of reason, this film did not go straight to DVD or cable, but received a brief theatrical release. Very brief - ten days in ten theaters. On its second Friday it pulled in $519 in total, which must be some kind of record. Assuming each theater screened the film three times that day, it brought in $17 per screening. And some of that was accumulated at New York ticket prices, because Fascination was reviewed by the Times and the Village Voice! So we're probably talking about an average of fewer than two people per screening!

I suppose every cloud has a silver lining, including the unexpected theatrical distribution of this film, which generated some entertainment because mainstream reviewers rarely get to see a film this bad. Their infrequent exposure to bottom-feeders produces some funny and bitter reviews when they finally encounter one.

• The New York Times called it "laughably bad"
• The Boston Globe derided, "The German-born, first-time director Klaus Menzel got ahold of Daryl Haney and John Jacobs's ancient script (it's from 1989). It's believable that the screenplay was originally a parody, but it was written at a time when erotic thrillers had a certain sleazy seriousness. Say it with me: Wild Orchid. "
• The Village Voice chortled, "If you're in the mood for some unscripted belly laughs or a catnap, Fascination should do the trick."
• The Washington Post sneered, "I sat through something whose predictability managed to be both howlingly funny and crushingly dull, with a performance by a lead whose acting looks like he's trying to decide between the mushroom-Swiss burger and the Monte Cristo on the menu."

The Post was certainly right about Adam Garcia's performance. He's a very good looking guy, but if Hayden Christensen were suddenly transported to Planet Garcia, where everyone is Adam Garcia, Christensen would be hailed as their DeNiro, their Olivier, their Branagh. Garcia's character gets his first lines at his father's funeral, and his eulogy sounds like a particularly slow kid reading aloud from a book in remedial English.