Deadly Obsession (Jenõ Hódi, 1988)

Despite its generic title, Deadly Obsession is an oddball little psycho-killer movie with a unique feel and lots of personality. The acting is hit and miss in an endearing way, and the driven young man directing it has a pretty unique life story. It's not a great movie, but it's likable, strange, funny, and charming, and a couple scenes deliver on the menace and suspense.

Jenõ Hódi, a Hungarian movie lover from Budapest, moved to New York City to get his master's degree in film from Columbia University. While still a student, he hustled and scraped together financing from a South African-based movie producer for a feature film he'd cowritten with two classmates. The resulting movie, shot on the campus of and primarily cast with students from Columbia, made history as the first feature film to be released by a Columbia student who was still attending school. Though it went straight to video in the United States and West Germany, Deadly Obsession got a theatrical release in most of Europe and in South Africa. After graduation, Hódi moved to Los Angeles and directed several low-budget action movies, including American Kickboxer 2, before moving back to Budapest and creating another history-making first, Hungary's first film school. Hódi continues to run the film school and helps produce its students' films. He also just finished his first feature in years, Skating on the Razor's Edge, a war-based anthology drama with stories set in World War II and the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Back to the beginning of his career. Deadly Obsession takes place on the campus of Gotham College, a barely fictionalized version of Columbia. Campus janitor John Doe (the amazingly named Joe Paradise) spends his time running experiments on rats and getting angrier and angrier about his station in life compared to the rich-kid students he cleans up after. He's also mad about the college's recent deals with a mega-corporation and its squashing of anti-corporate student protests. I have to say, other than the rat experiment hobby, I'm on his side here. He loses me with the next part of his plan. He will poison one of each product made by the corporation unless the president of the school gives him one million dollars. To show that he's serious, he has already poisoned one item on the campus, a carton of chocolate ice cream located in the convenience store of the student apartment high-rise where he works.

The president, despite his anger at being interrupted on his private phone number while he's showering in his swanky pad, takes the guy seriously and sends the cops to the convenience store to remove the chocolate ice cream. Unfortunately, student and apartment resident Denise (future filmmaker Darnell Martin (I Like It Like That, Cadillac Records, many TV shows), in one of her only acting roles) has already purchased and taken two bites of the ice cream before making the bizarre but life-saving choice to set the rest of the ice cream bowl down and take a shower. Who showers mid-bowl of ice cream? Denise (and her body double for the breast shots) does, that's who. This is important to the story because '80s horror films are required to have a nude scene every thirty minutes. While in the shower, she begins choking up blood and falls to the floor.

John Doe, who has been surreptitiously following the action since secretly poisoning the ice cream, sneaks into Denise's apartment to watch the poison do its work. He's shocked to find her still alive, and she gets a hazy look at him. Before he can do anything about it, undercover cop Dino Andretti (Jeffrey R. Iorio), bursts in to save Denise, and John Doe has to 23 skidoo back to the boiler room. Dino is a cocky young detective who greatly irritates his partner Lt. Walsh (Martin Haber), a frequently exasperated veteran of the force who's constantly applying decongestant nasal spray. Something tells me these guys are going to develop a grudging respect for each other before the movie ends.

After a brief hospitalization, Denise is escorted back to her apartment by Walsh, who warns her not to mention the poisoning to anyone so they can keep their investigation secret. She has to tell her roommate and best friend Pamela (Monica Breckenridge) that it was run-of-the-mill food poisoning. She also has to lie to explain the presence of Dino, who is keeping watch over Denise until John Doe is found. He plays the part of an uncharacteristic rebound one-night-stand who won't leave, but Pamela is not quite buying it.

We know Dino's a good guy from the exciting opening scene that otherwise has nothing to do with our story. As a character-and-atmosphere-are-a-million-times-more-important-than-plot guy (even though I do plot synopses on this blog because I think describing horror plots is a good time), I'm a huge proponent of scenes that reveal character but otherwise have nothing to do with plot mechanics.  Anyway, we like Dino from the beginning, but he's a bit much when he has to stay in Denise's apartment. He relentlessly hits on her, goes through her underwear, and uses Pamela's towel and drops the towel to expose himself when Pamela calls him out on it. Unprofessional, Dino! Denise and Pamela are unflappable and give as good as Dino gets. Pamela even gives him a solid small-penis zinger. This behavior made me like Dino a lot less, but when Denise asks for some privacy, Dino says, "Sure thing, babe," and puts on a pair of novelty oversized sunglasses he somehow had been carrying around in his back pocket the entire time, which made me like him again. Aw, Dino, I can't stay mad at you. Something tells me Dino and Denise are going to develop a grudging respect and attraction for each other before the movie ends.

The rest of the movie plays out as a solidly suspenseful cat-and-mouse chase between the unhinged John Doe hellbent on murdering his only witness and Denise, Pamela, and Dino. The extended scene in the campus gym at night is especially memorable and involves the swimming pool, the basketball court, the weight room, and the locker room, as well as multiple bathrooms, offices, lockers, and supply rooms. For a cast and crew with not much experience beyond student films, the results are pretty impressive.

Using the Columbia University campus as the film's sole location, other than a few shots of nearby streets, gives Deadly Obsession a much different look and feel than most New York movies. The student apartment building is lived-in and atmospheric, and it has a dreamlike mixture of specificity and anonymity that makes it seem like the events in the film could be happening anywhere and nowhere. Most of the bits with the apartment's goofball front desk/security guy are funny (except for one ultra-hacky racist joke), and Joe Paradise gives a memorably nutty performance as John Doe. It's so wild that his acting career consists of only this movie, a Darnell Martin-directed movie, and an episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent. Joe Paradise, if that is your real name, where are you?

I'm not sure how much Deadly Obsession would interest the casual moviegoer, but if you're a fan of independent, low-budget, DIY genre flicks, b-movies, and '80s horror, I think this one is worth your time. It's eccentric and scrappy and has a sense of humor. It looks and feels like it was made by people. Most movies of the 21st century don't.