Pacific Heights (1990)

Directed by John Schelsinger. Starring Matthew Modine, Melanie Griffith, Michael Keaton, Laurie Metcalf, Dorian Harewood, Beverly D’Angelo, Mako, Luca Bercovici, Carl Lumbly, Nobu McCarthy, Tippi Hedren. [R]

Young couple Modine and Griffith buy an expensive Victorian house in San Francisco with two apartments for rent; enter the enigmatic Carter Hayes (Keaton), who uses empty promises and legal loopholes to become the tenant from hell, protected from eviction while loudly doing God-knows-what behind his locked door at all hours of the night. Okay example of the early-90s domestic terrorized-couple thriller cycle (Unlawful Entry, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, et al), designed to keep the stomachs of yuppies and landlords in knots nearly the entire way. The plot gets mechanical in the middle when the three principal characters keep repeating the same mistakes/behavior over and over again, and the villain is ill-defined (can anyone explain exactly why he’s doing what he’s doing and what he expects to get out of it?), but it’s crafted with skill, and there are a couple of surprise developments that are effective (swarming cockroaches, anyone?). Keaton makes for a solid “smarmy psycho” despite the underwritten role, but Modine’s erratic jumps to anger are unconvincing, and Griffith gives her usual tepid performance, too frail and soft-spoken to believably turn the tables on the fiend in the final act. D’Angelo went uncredited; Dan Hedaya has a small role.

56/100